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Development and Applications of GIS in Asia
Anthony Yeh
Chair Professor,
Centre of Urban Planning and Environmental Management and
Director of GIS Research Centre, The University of Hong Kong, and
Secretary-General, Asia GIS Association
Introduction
Asia is a very large continent, with many countries, which have different political systems and levels of economic development. What happens in Japan is very different from that in China and Malaysia. Because of this, it is very difficult to generalize. In Asia, Japan is one of the early starters of GIS, and is the most advanced user of GIS. Many systems and data are available. In contrast, other countries are just starting to use GIS and developing their digital data. This paper will focus mainly on the development of GIS in some of the developing countries in Asia.
GIS has developed quite rapidly in Asia since the publication of my paper “The Development and Applications of Geographic Information Systems for Urban and Regional Planning in the Developing Countries” in 1991 (Yeh, 1991). There has been a marked drop in price of GIS hardware and great increase in computer speed, RAM and storage capacities and software capabilities and user friendliness, software and hardware may be the least important factors in influencing the development of GIS in Asia. GIS research and education are getting much better than before. There are more and more people who know GIS and GIS are getting more usage in government departments. There are also major improvements in the development of local software and the customerization of software into local languages. A lot of the constraints in the use of GIS in the developing countries are no longer severe constraints. However, as compared to the use of GIS in the developing countries, the use of GIS in the developing countries in Asia to a large extent is still lagging behind. The main reason is that GIS data is lacking behind (Legault, 1997; Wilson, 1997). The availability and pricing of GIS data and the lack of a GIS data development strategy and policy are the main bottlenecks in GIS development in Asia (Yeh, 1998).
GIS is an expensive toy if it cannot have applications and applications cannot be done without data. In most countries, because of heavy initial investment, GIS data are mainly being developed for the needs of different government projects. Some data, especially digitized maps are available to the public mainly as a spin off of government projects.
In Western countries, there is increasing use of GIS in business (Grimshaw, 1994, Longley and Clarke, 1995). The applications range from insurance, retail, restaurants, consumer packaged goods, telecommunication, marketing, real estate, transport, and courier services (Sherwood, 1995). Most business data is geographically related. Every business has customers who live somewhere. GIS can help business to process business data that are geographically related and
carried out forward strategic planning. The increase in the use of GIS in business is partly because of the availability of data and partly because many companies see the advantage of using GIS in their work. Many different forms of data are available and CD-ROM is the most common medium for the transfer of digital data. The government national mapping agencies and statistics bureaus prepare most of the data. Because of the market of GIS data for business and other uses, “value-added” data products are also developed by value-added resellers who integrate different data sets and aggregate statistics to different areas for use by a particular market and provide custom made software for users to carry out their own analysis. The richness and diversity of data sets and products, that range from maps, statistics and street networks, for countries in the European Union is one the reasons for the increasing use of GIS in Europe (Waters, 1995). The cost and ease of transfer of the types of data which business may need is also another contributing factor in the flourish of the use of GIS in business (Waters, 1995). Road centre-lines, which are essential for transport, related service industries are available for the whole of Europe from different suppliers with built-in PC-based route-finding packages.
The pricing and availability of GIS data are highly influenced by the interactions of economics, legal issues and public policies (Rhind, 1992 and 1996). The pricing of data is very important in the use of GIS data. Expensive data will make it use less than cheaper data. There are two main practices. One is to treat GIS data as part of public services, which the taxpayers have already paid for the services. GIS data are available at a very low cost, basically the media and handling costs, such as those in the United States. The other pricing practice is to charge GIS data at a cost recovery bases and the charges are much higher than those in the United States, such as GIS data in the UK. Many local governments are seeing the selling of geographical data as a potential source of income.
When we discuss data availability and pricing, we have to discuss the availability of different scales of map and data content. It can be generalized that except Japan, most countries are slow in making data available commercially. Ironically, third parties in a country and even those in foreign countries are digitizing and making GIS data available to users. The problem of their data is the map scale, coordinate system, accuracy, and currency of their data.
Sometimes their data are very difficult to register with other base maps, limiting their use when the integration with other data is needed.
Characteristics of the Availability of Data in Asia
National Security
Because of political instability and war, many countries in Asia, such as South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and People’s Republic of China, still treat maps and aerial photos, not to mention digital map, which could have more use in modern warfare, as national security for defense purpose. They regulate the use of maps and aerial photographs. Maps larger than a certain scale and area of military significance are classified and need high-level clearance before they can be used. Unauthorized possession and taking of maps and aerial photos outside the country can be considered as espionage with jail sentence. They afraid that large-scale digital maps will be used in war against them. Such attitude and practice make data to be unavailable at scale larger than 1:1,000,000. However, with the advancement of the GPS and remote sensing technology, we will be able to obtain very precise map of any scale and any country in the world. The practice is a bit out-of-date with the development of GIS, GPS and remote sensing technology, especially the availability of 1 m. resolution commercial remote sensing images.
Underestimation of the Time Needed for Data Conversion and Cost of Maintenance
Very often, data conversion takes a long time to complete because of the underestimation of the time and resources in data conversion. Take Hong Kong for example, it takes almost 10 years to digitize the 1:1,000 base maps. This makes data to be slow to be available to the users.
Type of Available Data
Most of the data available are related to the physical surface of the earth, such as topography and land use, because these data are readily available in paper form in the past. The paper maps are converted into digital form. These data are useful for some purposes, but they are of little use to business applications, which need socio-economic data and address matching facilities that are often not available. This is a big contract to that of the United States where the US Bureau of Census is one of the major developers and providers of GIS data for the business communities. Some of the administrative boundaries are in line form and not topological data and a lot of efforts have to be carried before they can be used by GIS and mapping software.
Third Party Data
Because of the slowness in providing GIS data by the government, very often-utility companies and other users have to do the data conversion to fit their own needs while waiting for the more accurate government data to be made available. These data are either converted through digitizing and scanning. If the maps are scanned, they do not need to be vectorized. The raster images can be viewed on the screen as background image for overlaying vector data sets. The scanned map image can be registered and georeferenced and layers of utility lines are superimposed on the map images. This method is also quite commonly used in the production of digital atlas in which paper maps are scanned and georeferenced with additional information added on to the layers of the map images. This is the fastest way for making GIS data available. These data sets vary in quality, accuracy, and currency of the data, which are vital considerations in making them useful.
Because of the need of the users such as researchers and businessmen in the region and the difficulties in obtaining these data outside the country or Asia, there are third parties, which develop data set for the region. Software companies, such as ERSI (Arc/Info) and MapInfo have produced CD-ROMs containing small-scale topographic maps of some countries in Asia with administrative boundaries for users to add on their own data. The Digital Chart of the World (DCW) and the Australian Centre of the Asian Spatial Information and Analysis Network also make digital georeferenced data available to the international community.
Pricing of Data
Many producers are aiming at cost recovery and very often overcharge. They do not consider data as public services. Take Hong Kong for example, the price of all the 3,207 1:1,000 map sheets of Hong Kong cost more than US$0.41 million, each costing US$128.
The high price in GIS data is understandable in some countries. The pricing of data has to take piracy into account. In order to offset the possibility of being copied and used unlawfully, the price are set high so that in case some of the data are pirated, they can still be able to recover the cost. Some government departments, such as those in China, have to make money in order to survive and to maintain the expensive GIS hardware and software and data updating. Apart from the unavailability of socio-economic data that are needed by business, the high cost in buying the digital georeferenced data is also one of the main hindrances in the use of GIS in business in Asia.
Pricing of Software
GIS Software is still relatively expensive, compared with other type of software. This makes the number of users to be very little and makes the price of data goes up because of limited users.
Data Format
Some of the data are not in formats that are readily imported into a GIS or mapping software. Much effort is needed in converting them to the format that can be used in GIS or mapping software. The socio-economic statistics which the business community need most are often not available in a format that can be readily linked with the digital administrative boundaries or imported to a GIS or mapping software.
Data Compatibility
Some of the data, especially those produced by third parties, cannot be overlaid on government digital data because they were separately created. The problem of data compatibility is diminishing because many national mapping agencies are producing digital base maps where users can use them to add data on it or link their data to it.
Copyright and Piracy
Same as other type of data, georeferenced data theft is becoming an important issue (Rhind, 1966). Asia, in general, has a poor record of the protection of intellectual property rights. Piracy of software is quite serious in Asia. This does not only apply to software but data as well. Paper maps are considered to be copyrighted and this can be extended to digital maps as well. But, in some countries, it is difficult to enforce copyright even on paper maps.
Freedom of Information
One of the main distinctions of the countries in Asia from those in West is the freedom of information, especially the Freedom of Information Act. In the United States, the Freedom of Information Act allows open access to nearly all government-owned information. Government GIS data, such as TIGER files, are available to the public at a reasonable price. This is still not very common in Asia. People do not have the right or culture of getting government data. Data are regarded as sacred. GIS data, which are related to government data, are also not readily available.
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