Mobile Mapping and Virtual GIS

Mobile Mapping and Virtual GIS

Larry Diamond
Vice President, GIS Solutions Division, Autodesk

GIS professionals worldwide are increasingly aware of mobile and web based GIS solutions. These professionals depend on today’s facts and not tomorrow’s predictions. So, why consider the future of mobile and virtual GIS? The answer is this: the Internet’s distributed computing environment is revolutionizing the way we do business by delivering compelling technologies that answer real needs. This distributed computing environment supports applications that quickly reduce operating expenses, increase productivity, and dramatically improve customer satisfaction and retention.

While no computing environment has been entirely eliminated (mainframe and workstation computing is still active), the industry has seen the rapid adoption of desktop and now distributed models. Distributed computing is a catchall term that includes other terms like mobile, Internet, intranet, extranet, the Web, and network-centric. Regardless of the terminology, the growing trend is to distribute computing services across a physical infrastructure of networked data storage devices and computer processors. Newer environments includes two, three, and n tier models where the physical locations of data storage and application processing are not on the same machine (or in the same country) as each other or the client interface. It is this migration from a workstation or desktop’s one-tier solution to a component and transaction based model that has reshaped GIS.

Many end-users won’t receive GIS products in a product box any longer. Of course, there will still be thousands of GIS professionals who are creating data and applications using desktop software out of the box, but awareness of GIS exposure is increasing for the average citizen. In addition to applications and services offered to customers across the Internet, we are seeing GIS move to the field. Autodesk was the first major GIS vendor to lead this charge by putting data in the field with distributed and mobile GIS solutions; no matter what your data looks like, no matter where you are. For example, Australia’s leading telecommunications company, Telstra, is working with Autodesk and our partner, Geomatic Technologies, to equip its field engineers with mobile GIS software and data. These mobile applications provide precise engineering and mapping data integrated with work order management and customer service applications. Telstra is taking its GIS solutions into the field where technicians can mark-up the maps and send edits back to the office. This is integrated with the complete business process. This isn’t on the drawing board. This is a real application. The future is here now.

GIS can be delivered today as a fast, reliable and secure service (not a standalone desktop) through a network cable as a hosted or mobile application across shared enterprise servers.

What Is Called “New” Is Often Not
Software vendors regularly announce new versions of their flagship products. As an example, Autodesk regularly improves its flagship product, AutoCAD. But in addition to these efforts, Autodesk has also invested heavily in products built from the ground up with distributed computing in mind. Indeed, we regularly integrate new features into Autodesk Map and Autodesk Civil Design that take advantage of distributed computing. These features help civil engineers collaborate with their entire construction team, including the government inspectors, builders, and material suppliers. But these products are still desktop mapping and civil engineering tools. Some software vendors have struggled with the new paradigm of distributed computing, trying to use their desktop, legacy products as mobile map or web map servers. The right approach for a the customer is built from the ground up for distributed computing. Even better, web and mobile technologies should work well with other GIS and CAD systems.

As software vendors, we must be responsive to your business and to your data by building open systems. Autodesk is a great example. You may not be an AutoCAD user, but many of our happiest, most valued customers use our web and mobile software only. Our most recent release, Autodesk MapGuide 6, is a perfect example of a stable, proven technology built on the strengths of distributed computing. This software uses standard, open programming interfaces for developers and accepts virtually all standard design and mapping data formats without conversion. The computing industry is rife with victims of proprietary systems who chose to remain with a single vendor despite compelling, complimentary, and open architectures offered by other strong players. Make the right decision for your company based on the best available tools in the market. Insist to us, your vendors, that these tools work and play well with your existing environment.

The Principles of mobile and virtual GIS
Estimates suggest that for every single back office professional who manages data, there are between 6 to 10 front office or mobile field-based employees who need to use the same data. We can consider the 1980s and 1990s as the decades of data acquisition. This was the era when organizations were collecting and synthesizing vast amounts of geographic data. Having acquired all these data, our customers are looking for ways to leverage this investment by distributing it.

The main driver for this is, of course, profitability. But profitability can be achieved in two ways. First, businesses are looking to improve process efficiency and reduce operational costs. Making faster, better decisions based on faster, better information helps businesses streamline their day-to-day tasks. If a field engineer for an electric utility company has the right information on the initial service call, the company will save money because additional trips back and forth to the office for better information are unnecessary. Companies with large networks and outside plant usually have large mobile teams to maintain and improve these networks. Much of these companies’ operational costs are in the field. These same companies are using digital design and spatial data to improve process efficiencies and reduce traditional costs. Having the right information at the point of work helps them achieve this.

A second way to increase profitability is to expand market share, discover new ways to market and invent new products. Today, one place companies are looking to find new products is within their own spatial database. There is tremendous value in your organization’s data. Again, we’ll use the example of an electric utility. Quite often, there are communications companies that want to attach their new broadband network on utility poles that belong to an electric utility. If the electric utility can provide a quick and accurate description of their network, the electric utility can raise new revenue by leasing space on their outside plant. But a comprehensive pole and network inventory was not always easy to provide to a prospective customer in the past. A complete GIS database can make this service easier to aggregate and market to other utilities and customers.

In order to achieve the goal of reduced costs, increased productivity, and improved customer satisfaction, the future of GIS will embrace the following principles.

Data Interoperability
Spatial data are stored in many formats including raster and vector, GIS or CAD, flat files or data warehouses. These categories can include subcategories like DWG, SHP, DGN, SDF, and more. The user community will demand and expect systems that offer direct support for all these formats with little or no data translation in addition to direct support for data warehouses like Oracle8i Spatial or the Autodesk Design Server.

Access and Ease of Use
First, the client interface of your chosen solution will require little or no training. Second, your users will have easy access to their GIS even if they are in the field. Just as today’s cash machines deliver your money or “liquid assets” immediately to your fingertips, mobile GIS will deliver your spatial assets immediately to your mobile, tablet computer.

Network Architecture
The standard will be an efficient architecture that distributes computing across your infrastructure to intelligent clients and packs intelligence about a given application into a single metafile. Changes to the metafile will be made easily and without service disruption.

Standard and Advanced GIS Applications and Flexibility through Customization
Thankfully, pure “Web GIS toolboxes” for developers are becoming a thing of the past. Professionals who suffered by writing custom code to zoom or color a map will have standard GIS functionality and authoring tools. This will be enhanced with richer APIs that support customization in non-proprietary languages.

Administrative and Deployment Tools
Internet GIS, like the Internet in general, will require a rich set of administrative tools that foster the rapid deployment and aid the long-term management of your applications. Expect close integration with standard Web development tools like Microsoft’s Active Server Pages and network architectures like Microsoft’s .NET.

The Future Is Bright
The future of mobile and virtual GIS is bright and brimming with opportunities. Those communications companies looking to drape their new broadband networks are doing so at an unprecedented rate. Two years ago, the rate of broadband cable installation worldwide was over fifteen million miles per year. That rate is projected to grow to over twenty-two million miles this year. This growth is the fuel for distributed computing. But what about the growth in raw computing power?

Moore’s Law is the observation that “the amount of information storable on a given amount of silicon has roughly doubled every year since the technology was invented.” The observation is attributed to Intel founder Gordon Moore, in 1964, and is still widely referenced today. Recently, Intel released a Pentium IV at 2GHz with a 400MHz System Bus (less than $500 for the CPU today). But Gordon Moore miscalculated. The truth is that the speed of power is growing faster each year. And what Mr. Moore’s observation does not account for is the more revolutionary increase in network bandwidth and the quickly growing selection of form factors, especially mobile or tablet-based devices. These three factors: increased processing speed, increased bandwidth, and increasingly mobile devices are opening new opportunities for mobile mapping, and indeed all of computing. Actually, they are forcing new opportunities, not just opening them. These are dramatic times as companies like Telstra provide access for every employee to the organization’s digital knowledge-base and business processes, even if they work out of a truck, hundreds of miles from the office in a remote town.

But companies like Telstra must ensure that a few criteria are met for real success.

Engineering Accuracy - First, the information these companies provide their employees must maintain engineering accuracy in order to be truly useful. It doesn’t matter how far you can extend an inaccurate database to the field. If the information is incorrect, profitability will be impacted.
Real Applications - In addition, the data must be tied to real office applications like a work order management system or customer service application; a precise geographic database can be useful as a general reference tool, but the power of the information grows tenfold when integrated with existing applications.
Open Systems - Also, the information must arrive in an open data format like GML, open XML, or Land XML, for example. Proprietary data formats and software systems will jeopardize a company’s increased profitability by tying them to a single vendor.
Right Data, Right Device - And, finally, the information must be the right data on the right device. It must be actionable data; in other words, something that helps you make the right decision immediately and it must be on the right device. The past decade saw many failed attempts at mobilization and the associated litter of expensive laptop computers.

There will be opportunities to reduce operating expenses by, among other things, accessing and paying for GIS functionality on an as needed basis through a cable and not having to invest in the overhead of buying and installing boxed desktop products. We will find opportunities to increase productivity not only by placing friendly GIS interfaces at the disposal of novice users, but by placing it in their tablet computers, as well. Smart companies with fast deployment tools will extend GIS-based services to their staff who will use these applications to retain and serve customers more predictably and offer them new products.

All these opportunities are now appearing with the adoption of distributed, intelligent architectures combined with effective tools for development. And when offered with client interfaces that make GIS easy to use for everyone, the result is a vivid reminder of the power of GIS. GIS has been a powerful tool for sophisticated and trained professionals, but for decades you have heard GIS people like myself promise that GIS will be a breakaway technology, adopted by everyone, “Societal GIS”. Now that we are seeing services on the web, on mobile computers, this is actually becoming a reality. Furthermore, Autodesk’s own experience putting GIS in onboard automotive computers in Italy and delivering location services via a mobile phone speaks volumes about GIS technology finally reaching the mainstream consumer. GIS is making a much greater impact today. The power of geographic analysis is matched today with distributed computing’s power to increase the return on your huge investments in spatial data. These two technologies are joined and put information in the hands of millions. Thanks to the pioneering spirit of people like you, GIS is no longer confined to our offices. It is exploding into the hands of everyone.