“Location enabled devices:changing the nature of geographic information and its use”

Page 1 of 1

“Location enabled devices: Changing the nature of geographic information and its use”

Sumit Sen
sumit.sen@gisdevelopment.net

As a person walks from store to store in a mall, a path is created. In this era of location critical decisions such a piece of geospatial information is vital for managers of the mall. Technology now provides new opportunities to capture, store, and process geospatial data. It addresses the growing demands of emerging markets, especially concerning location enabled devices.

Geospatial information is no longer confined to conventional cartographic uses and temporal aspects of data are becoming increasingly important for preferences we make in daily life. Most importantly, both creators and users of such data have changed radically. These give rise to challenges which are also being seen as opportunities around the world.

The need for updated and accurate data has burgeoned because of two reasons. Firstly, the data itself needs to remain relevant to the user at that point in time since the user is physically present to verify the correctness of the data. Also the accuracy is critical at the micro level of decisions that users take.
Additional data such as direction and orientation may be required to supplement conventional geospatial data. For example, in handheld devices with routing applications, it may be necessary to provide travelling instructions based on the orientation of the end user. Details about landmarks and road routing instructions are necessary.
Multiple modes and near real-time delivery of such services is a desiderata for any LBS based applications. This presumes the earlier two necessities and loads an additional requirement for geospatial information. Users can be expected to "pull" or receive "pushed" information and also it needs to reach quickly to keep them "geospatially relevant"
The ubiquitous, reliable and hassle free nature of such services can only be ensured when data is compressed and interoperability is ensured in some sense. This can be achieved when standardisation, encryption and compression techniques are combined with a variety of techniques such as service oriented architectures.

The emerging trends also herald a new era in the communication of geospatial information based on techniques of compression and communication networks which cope with delivery of information "about the right time and right place". (The requirement of delivery of information at the right time and right place remains uncompromised) . The room for error is very small and ironically systems have to suggest users to make corrections for mistakes and omissions (wrong place names, etc) in addresses and other details that they provide.

Simply put, smart applications now need good quality data at real-time, all the time. While challenges in making the applications smarter, are big. However, equal challenges lie on the data side of the application. It is impossible to trivialize the emergence of social networking as a close associate of LBS usage, especially in mobile phones. The concept of trust and the tendency to exchange geospatial information in such networks has led online communities to create, share and use geospatial data, be it relief workers in Africa using GPS enabled phones to generate road maps, or the branding of national mapping agencies, such as Ordnance Survey, in providing accurate geospatial data to mobile phone users.

The entertainment value of locational information is also a related opportunity. Gaming software in association with position technology have shown new avenues for next generation gaming and interactive entertainment technology. In such contexts, open development platforms such as Android and Open Handset Alliance are steadily gaining focus. The effects of such developments on the geospatial data market is still to be seen. The one most important aspect of what mobile location based platforms has done to geospatial data is that it has put it to the "point" where it is most needed (pun intended!). Perhaps this is the biggest revolution in terms of the "requirement specifications of geospatial data since the beginning of Geographic Information Systems themselves. While GIS ensured that geographic data was corrected for topological errors, LBS ensures that road data is not "off the road". With increasing number of users, such inaccuracies are quickly becoming things of the past. One look at the winners of the global LBS challenges in Europe and Americas shows the significance of another crucial property of geospatial data being put to the test - the usage of geospatial data in association with other data sets Taxistop uses taxi prices, availability along with road network data around different countries.

America's Emergency Network uses emergency bulletins with geospatial data while UbiSafe uses emergency messaging along with location information of family members. In summary, geospatial data needs to be used along with data from different domains which may or may not have been collected for the same purpose. It is inevitable that location based services face challenges of "Mix and Match" and interoperability of data (and services in future) remains a way forward, in order to produce richer and more "usable" applications. The dynamism of the LBS industry drives the dynamism of geospatial data markets. Data producers can no longer remain complacent and need to be on their toes to produce "exciting" and "accurate" data. The element of trust and confidence on LBS application is intricately linked to the trust that can be put to the data it uses along with the positioning accuracy that is provided. As a result the geospatial industry has now grown many years younger, to achieve the agility and smartness of the smart and sleek location enabled device it serves.