Using Semantic Web Technologies for Location Intelligence: Why the GIS Community Needs RDF (aka Web 3.0)

A new pillar of the Web is RDF, a W3C supported technology to represent structured and unstructured metadata and to link very diverse datasets into a linked web of data. In some areas we are beginning to see the geospatial community incorporate semantic web technology to model geospatial objects and annotate objects with metadata. (The USGS National Map project being a great example.) One reason the geospatial community needs to embrace RDF is the capability to reason over ontologies and annotations for geospatial classes and instances. As a participant in this emerging technology field, we see an increased interest from telecom providers, the transportation industry and defense integrators in tracking and reasoning over hundreds of thousands to millions of objects in real time. Consider fleets of trucks, swarms of airplanes, track data for soldiers on the (urban) battlefield, track data for endangered animals, or location-based services like Loopt.

In this presentation I demonstrate RDF database technology combined with geospatial and temporal capabilities. I will show in a single query how to "Find another truck that can pick up package X at location Y so that I can pick up package A at location B so that we both will arrive at P before time T." I will discuss design choices, performance considerations and some additional query capabilities.

We are beginning to see adoption of semantic technologies in large enterprises; Cisco, Adobe, DOD, NASA, and others. The consistent theme in these cases involves managing metadata and extracting actionable knowledge from this information. There is increased funding and well as new projects starting which leads us to conclude the results are encouraging.

Delivering powerful capabilities and compelling user experiences in Predictive Analytics Solutions

GIS for Garbage Collection Optimization for the Municipality of Tirana (Albania)

The Municipality of Tirana‘s need was to address the city’s garbage problem, which had never been addressed and which was creating serious problems in the Sharra Landfill, a United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) post-conflict “hot-spot.” The Ministry of Cooperation issued an RFP, which was won by a group of Italian companies. In addition to the landfill problem, the town had never a garbage collection program. The steps to be addressed were: 1) best site location of the bins; 2) route optimization of the bin collection routes; and 3) certification and control of the activity done by the vehicles. The garbage collection is done by four private companies trying to do the minimum and get paid anyway. The group immediately realized that GIS was the right technology to base these three activities on. They asked the University of Udine, with wide experience in the use of GIS in the ecology sector, to take care of this part of the project. Meetings were held to analyze needs with the heads of the different Tirana Municipality departments (personnel, ecology, infrastructure, taxes, etc.). They are all very young and motivated people ready to absorb the new technologies.

The project is now under way using the three different prototype GIS tools. SITEfinder: a GIS that uses genetic algorithms defines the best position of the bins taking into consideration the parameters the municipality wants to handle (number of inhabitants around the bin, number of commercial activities, ...). PATHfinder: a GIS that uses genetic algorithms given, for each bin, the constraints (number of times it has to be emptied during the day, the time windows, etc.). SATfinder: a GIS that uses black boxes, with GPS and mobile modem, installed on the vehicles to give real-time position of the vehicles, the routes done and the bins emptied. In this way the municipality can verify if the planned activities have been performed correctly or if some streets/bins have been forgotten. All the tools have been developed as WebGIS by using .NET, SQLserver and Virtual Earth.

I am going to describe the technical approach and show to the audience the real applications online in order to allow them a clear realization of the easy access for the users to such a complex problem.

Demonstrating the Benefits of Open Source Geospatial Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence applications are efficient and profitable tools to better understand historical, current and future aspects of business operations. As it is commonly recognized that "about 80% of all data stored in corporate databases has a spatial component,” this can be used to enhance the BI user experience with map displays and spatial analysis tools. Some phenomena or trends in the data can moreover be observed and adequately interpreted only if they are represented on a map (e.g. spatial distribution or spatiotemporal evolution of a given phenomenon). Geospatial BI, combining GIS and Business Intelligence (BI) technologies, has thus recently stirred marked interest for the huge potential of combining spatial analysis and map visualization with proven BI tools and techniques such as data warehousing, Online Analytical Processing (OLAP), reporting tools, dashboards and data mining.

Tools recently made available on the market rely on a loose coupling between existing GIS software and some proven BI components (e.g. ESRI with SAP and MapInfo with IBM/Cognos or Microsoft with Analysis Services and Virtual Earth). However, there are many challenges with these couplings, which will be discussed during this presentation.

Dimensional data structures are more efficient to reply fast to complex analytical queries which would have involved numerous time consuming join queries in a transactional system. These dedicated data structures make then possible to reply to complex analytical queries within a 5-10 seconds limit, which do not hinder the train of thoughts of a decision maker while he/she is exploring/analyzing the data in an analytical dashboard or in an on-the-fly generated report. Together with the emergence of the geospatial BI interest, the IT sphere has seen the rise of the open source community. This follows significant strategic moves by some key players as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and others to incorporate open source software into their long-term portfolios. Such a successful trend for the open source community is due to the numerous and important advantages the open source software provide.

The GeoSOA Research Group (http://geosoa.scg.ulaval.ca) at Laval University, Quebec, Canada started to consistently and completely integrate the geospatial functionality into an existing, mature, efficient and reputed open source BI software stack. It results in the release of GeoKettle (http://www.geokettle.org), a spatial ETL tool based on Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle, http://kettle.pentaho.org) and targeted for geo-analytical data warehousing and GeoMondrian (http://www.geo-mondrian.org ), a "spatially-enabled" version of the Mondrian OLAP server (also named Pentaho Analysis Services, http://mondrian.pentaho.org). GeoMondrian is an implementation of a Spatial OLAP (SOLAP) server. As far as we know, it is the first implementation of such a server and it is open source.

The OGC, Standards, the GeoWeb and the Cloud

Standards will enable the successful integration of geospatial content and services into the cloud. This presentation will describe the role and relevance of geospatial standards in the deployment of geospatial content and services in the cloud. Examples of the use of OGC standards in the cloud by organizations in Canada, Europe and the US will be described. Finally, the relationship between between the GeoWeb and a geospatially enabled cloud will be explored from a business decision support and intelligence perspective.

A Guide to Successfully Implementing Immersive Data for LBS

Problem: Increase Revenues and Differentiate your Brand How do you leverage Word of Mouth Marketing and Social Networks such as Facebook, Twitter and You Tube? The ability to put your business on a map so people can see where you are located is a good starting point. It helps people find you using landmarks as visual guides and shows them the exterior of your location. BUT, how do you really give potential customers an appreciation of the environment and really show them everything you have to offer? More and more time is now spent watching videos on the Internet. Nearly 75% of web surfers now play videos. Time spent on videos has grown to an average of 7 minutes/day/viewer. US Online video ad spend is projected to reach $3B by 2014. Engagement offers compelling value: o Average video viewer streamed 2.4 videos per day o 31% of online video viewers went to the company's website after viewing the ad more than 20% actively searched for information about the product Immersive Media has over 70,000 miles of georeferenced, street-level spherical video that easily integrates into standard mapping applications. With Immersive Videos the viewer can look in any direction so they can see it all - it's just like being there. The Immersive Videos is engaging and viewers will watch the video over and over again, seeing a different angle or perspective each time. The video can also easily be embedded in other site so your Brand's video can go viral. Immersive Media's platform is engineered to integrate into other applications (e.g. ArcGIS, MapQuest, Google Maps) and other interactive elements (e.g. pictures, comments, incentives) can be overlaid onto IM's platform. Immersive Media will showcase various Client Case Studies highlighting their ROI and Lessons Learned. For a demonstration of a Brand Implementation please visit: www.armanijeans.com

Turning Spatial Data Into Actionable Intelligence: Use Cases for Combining High Resolution Imagery and Business Intelligence Tools

When it comes to business decision making, geospatial data is only as useful as what you can do with it. Many organizations spend large amounts of time and money acquiring location information, but aren't able to fully leverage the power of that data because of the difficulty associated with managing it, making it easily available, and putting it into proper perspective. Two key trends are helping businesses around the globe overcome these challenges and turn geospatial information into intelligence. First, the easy availability of current, international high resolution earth imagery is adding real-world detail and context to existing vector and point data. Second, more powerful, user friendly software technologies are helping more non-technical business users make location related business decisions.

One way of enabling non-technical business users is by automating the task of creating interactive maps with analytics data overlain on top, so that the business user can focus on data analysis, and not on the mechanics of map creation. I'll utilize DigitalGlobe's online Web services and Oracle's Business Intelligence solutions to explore specific use cases of how businesses can use cutting edge spatial and database technology to cost effectively make better tactical decisions for managing and growing their businesses.

Attendees will see how such an integrated approach helps lower the total cost of ownership for companies while at the same time extending the benefits of new ways of analysis to a much wider audience. Learn how to utilize premium imagery at half the cost of traditional delivery and in a fraction of traditional implementation times.

How to Get More Bang for Your Buck - Reduce Server Requirements Using Tile-based Maps in Your Location Intelligent Applications

Traditionally, Web mapping applications have relied on the process of creating a single image for all map requests. This process requires that the entire map and all map contents be redrawn, regardless of whether the request was for a simple pan or zoom, or a more complex change to the overall map content. This labor-intensive process puts a heavy load on the servers trying to both handle business logic, as well as render maps.

This server load can be immediately alleviated if unchanged map sections could pre-render as the user interacts with the application. This is accomplished by reducing the amount of work needed to respond to a user request or interaction. This presentation focuses on new methods that allow an application to use pre-rendered or cached tiles, in combination with real-time rendering of enterprise data. These methods reduce the amount of server resources needed to address similar applications. Additionally, the presentation covers tile-based map architectures, caching schemes, HTTP caching header manipulation, and existing application migration performance statistics.

I will take attendees through the architecture and design points of tile-based Web applications and show performance numbers of an existing application moved to this new design.

Going spatial in the Cloud - the theory is straight forward but the reality is difficult

Cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS ) are quickly becoming hot topics for companies serving applications on the web. The promise of increased availability and scalability make these platforms very attractive. But, the missing piece, which is critical to success, is the absence of location intelligent capabilities in large platforms. This presentation provides an overview of the major Cloud Platforms available today, and outlines the basic architecture needed to reap the benefits of the specific cloud provider.

Additionally, the presentation focuses on the ability of Cloud Platforms to offer location intelligent services, while continuing to provide high availability and true scalability. Many of these platforms not only restrict data location and application access, they also make it very difficult to use external services. The presentation concludes with an examination of an application built on a particular Cloud Platform, and reviews both the lessons learned and the performance statistics based on load testing.

Next Generation Web and Cloud Technologies Make LI a Personal and Organizational Productivity Tool

Rich Internet Application technologies coupled with cloud-based computing and Software as a Service offerings are creating the perfect storm to enable true Enterprise Location Intelligence 2.0 Solutions. These will be solutions that just aren't easier to use, they will be easy to use. Using experience driven design methodologies coupled with Rich Internet Application technology with a focus on personal and collaborative analysis and decision are enabling these next generation solutions to be deployed as personal and organizational productivity tools rather than as the tools for well trained experts that their GIS and BI predecessors are.

These tools won't offer the power of leading GIS tools, nor the sophisticated data analysis or leading BI tools. What they will offer is an easy to use platform that allows people throughout an organization to analyze and collaborate on the day to day location based decisions that most directly impact the organizations success. Case Study One - Ogden Police Department Use by Ogden Chief of Police, Command Staff and Crime Analyst of Organizational and Individual interactive reporting and analysis for crime and operational data that enables faster better focused operational awareness and response which improves departmental effectiveness. Case Study Two - Social Compact is a leader in inner city revitalization, using innovative approaches to demographic and economic analysis to guide decision-making. Case Study Three - Armed Conflict and Crisis Analysis and Reporting. Dr Raleigh and her team capture and report on incidents involving civilian populations in areas of armed conflict. Her information is used by multiple stakeholders to better understand and manage crisis situations. The type of solution discussed above has enabled her to accomplish in minutes what previously took weeks of work using traditional tools.

Geo-enabling Local Communities and Conservation in Brazil: the GeoWeb Helping Save the Rainforest

One of the world's top five biodiversity hotspots, the Atlantic Rainforest of Brazil is in a critical state. At the Iracambi Research Center they are working on the cutting edge of sustainable development. Their job is to find better ways of managing both forested and cleared land and work with the local community to figure out ways that both forests and people can flourish. The four main areas are GIS and land management, forest restoration, environmental education and community outreach, and the search for alternative income sources, focusing on the medicinal plants native to the forests. In November 2003 it was discovered by chance that a mining company, Rio Pomba Empresa de Mineracao, was seeking a license to mine bauxite in the Serra das Aranhas, on Iracambi's western boundary. GIS has been instrumental in monitoring this activity by being able, for the first, time to show how mining activity could affect land and local communities. I will outline the techniques and strategy as to how I devised how to show the mining activity, my tutoring of ESRI GIS at 'Iracambi' in the Rainforest and I will also discuss how GIS is used in other ways at this unique research institute.

GIS provides maps and other information resources to identify the critical areas for conservation and the environmental degradation hot spots (erosion, deforestation), the institute trains potential users in how to use this material, and provides local planning agencies with the technical assistance that will allow them to make rational decisions on conservation management and planning.

Igniting the Fire for Location Intelligence: How to turn ordinary analysts into geographic heroes

Physical location is one of the most important dimensions in visualizing certain patterns, correlations, and trends - especially in the areas customer analysis, operations, logistics and service. But many people analyzing data are often scared away from geospatial analysis because it's complex, hard to do and not usually integrated into their usual modes of analysis. This lecture will focus on applying visual analytics integrated with location intelligence into the basic data analysis function. A case study will be used in order to create a "real world" understanding for the practitioner. We'll use spatial analysis to discuss principles of visual thinking. This lecture is designed to help you "think different" and stimulate new ideas by introducing the core concepts of data visualization; using spatial data to explore and present new perspectives; and discussing real-life examples of data visualization.

How Quickly Can You Spin Up Your People? A Look at Mapping Platforms and Their APIs

As project leaders, one of the first questions we ask ourselves is: “Do we make it, or do we buy it?” Building your own mapping applications is unreasonable in most cases, but which one do you buy? What's important to your bottom line? Developer time, learning curves, vendor cost models... What's important to your user base? Ease of use, high performance, tons of data, offline access... What's important to you? Will it work, vendor risks, volatility of vendors, support... We've done a lot of that homework for you and we'll let you under the hood.

This presentation will quickly demonstrate some of the most used platforms out there and then dive under the hood on developer productivity (how many lines of code to put a dot on the map, plot of line, raster a graphic, etc), performance (how many dots until it breaks), licensing structures ($$), architectures (API’s, 'openness'), what it's made for, and what it's not. If you're about to dive into a trade study of your own, this presentation will get your 85% of the way there before you get started. We'll run through a mock organization, its priorities and objectives, and let the trade study tell us where to start our buying process.

Picking the best mapping platform will have long term financial and technology affects on your organization. Knowledge, in this case, is money in the bank.

Using Visual Intelligence to Drive Improved Marketing Analysis

In a fast-paced and increasingly globalized economy, effective market analysis is critical to maintaining a competitive edge. By integrating internal data on products, markets and sales with external data and displaying it through an easy-to-use map interface, key trends and competitive insights emerge. We call this Visual Intelligence. Visual Intelligence is rich, dynamic and actionable information. Obtaining Visual Intelligence is a matter of finding the right data to address specific business questions, then presenting the data in an intuitive way that provides the insight necessary to make critical and essential business decisions.

Because executive decision-makers have vast amounts of internal and external business intelligence available to them, they need to quickly understand the trends, opportunities, anomalies and threats contained in data to make the best decisions. As more data become available, it is increasingly becoming more difficult to find the right data for solid analysis. Further complicating this challenge is that much of the most valuable data are trapped in disconnected databases or in proprietary formats, making them difficult to find, access and use. Solving this problem is the mission of FortiusOne's GeoIQ - a multi-sourced data repository and market analysis tool. GeoIQ aggregates a wide variety of geographic data from not only official government and NGO sources, but also proprietary data vendors and citizen contributors via the GeoCommons Community. To date, over 11,000 datasets have been aggregated - providing over 150,000 attributes that can be visualized on the map.

This presentation will include a live demo of the GeoIQ software being used to demonstrate how a marketing professional would use GeoIQ to access, analyze and visualize various sales and marketing data sets and draw conclusions from their resulting visualization and analysis.

Location-based tracking, alerting and geofencing-SpatialRules: A tool for real-time evaluation of GPS and sensor data

Our ability to collect data is increasing at unprecedented rates. The number of GPS devices, handsets, and location-aware sensors is making location data increasingly available. But perhaps even more significant is the access to location-tagged data becoming available through service API’s from social networking sites, mobile carriers, and open source data. But how do we use all the data to our advantage when our capacity to analyze the flood of information is limited? This presentation explores how a rule engine specifically designed to analyze location and time-based data is used to detect conditions, filter data and generate alerts while the information is still relevant. Performing analysis as part of the collection process significantly increases our ability to get the right information to the right people at the right time.

I'm going to walk through some live demos to show how a location-based rules engine can be used to identify hidden behaviors in a mountain of data and analyze data as part of the collection process. In one case our SpatialRules location-based rules engine successfully reduced a manual analysis process from eight hours to less than a second

Location-enabling Your Service: A One-stop-shopping Solution

Enterprise services can benefit greatly from access to device location. The challenge for the developer is that accessing location is often operator-specific. Doing individual deals with each operator individually is expensive and time-consuming. Veriplace provides a single, secure interface for accessing location across all operators and location technologies. In this presentation we will walk step-by-step through the process of location-enabling your Web, mobile-Web, SMS and mobile-resident service.

Through a single interface, participants will learn how to access location across mobile operators and location technologies.

Eliminate Business Inefficiencies with Geospatial Cloud Computing: Take Home a 10 Point Business Transformation Checklist You Can Share With Your Executive Management

Location and time are key to societal existence. Likewise, corporations rely on timely response to economic signals for survival and competitive superiority. Timely interpretation of space and time variables provides business stake-holders the power to act quickly. In this session, learn how cloud computing capabilities combine Internet data with business variables to empower stakeholders with tools to make operational and strategic decisions in real time. Learn how Web 2.0 concepts like Wiki and Tweet streams combined with Supply chain metrics from ERP systems help in accurate demand forecast and lean manufacturing cycles. See a visual demonstration of how cloud data from a Google spreadsheet and inventory data from an SAP system combine to provide a geospatial analytical dashboard. Geospatial cockpits now utilize the wealth of macroeconomic data available on the Web to help supply chain planners define the optimum inventory networking strategy. Finally, see a real-life case study of a utility company that combines cloud data for wild fires, service data from a dispatch management system and field data from mobile smart phones to position the right people at the right time in the right place. Lastly, take home a 10 point business transformation checklist that you can share with your executive management.

I am going to show how to eliminate inefficiencies and use a real-life case study to show layers of information such as wild fires, service data, and cloud data to effectively eliminate any untimely errors and processes.

Growing Local Colorado Economies from the Ground Up With GIS

This presentation will demonstrate how GIS tools and subscription services are used to support local community economic development and Economic Gardening programs. Topics covered will include site prospecting, market analysis, market development and competitive intelligence.

I will take the audience through the process of supporting a local Economic Gardening program using GIS tools, data, and subscription services. The City of Littleton, Colorado doubled their jobs and tripled their sales tax base in the 15 years they have used their EG program in their community.

Geo-enabling the Enterprise Mobile Workforce 2: Technologies and Trends in the Evolution from GPS Data Collection to Data Use Solutions

Organizations throughout the world have successfully deployed GPS and GIS technology to accurately document their field assets, resulting in a measurable return on investment for using location in business decision making. However, while field data collection will continue as more and more companies realize the benefits of accurately capturing their assets, the adoption of GPS technology is expanding well beyond the few collecting data to encompass the majority of field workers who are actually exploiting the assets. In other words, the enterprise mobile workforce is becoming "geo-enabled," resulting in a huge number of potential users; the mobile worker population worldwide is projected to grow beyond 1 billion in 2011 which represents just over 30% of the global workforce.

Among the many challenges companies will face when geo-enabling their mobile users, two stand out:

1. Managing the exchange of information to and from the field. Traditional import/export methodologies are being replaced as real-time data communication and GPS correction technologies evolve. Understanding the technology and managing the flow of information is critical, particularly in large enterprises where connected and disconnected users are working together.
2. Training the enterprise mobile workforce. The broader mobile workforce is generally not comprised of GPS or GIS "experts" and has access to minimal training at best. Organizations do not have the time or money to train all their mobile users, so field applications must be simple and may not follow a complex desktop GIS paradigm.

This paper outlines the evolving technology available to provide mobile workers across the enterprise with access to real-time data and GPS corrections, and highlights current trends in field application design and capabilities for improving the productivity of the enterprise field worker. Examples of organizations that are successfully "geo-enabling" their enterprise mobile workforces are also included.

Forecast: Cloudy. Let It Rain Efficiency - GeoEye Leverages Private Clouds to Reduce Costs, Increase Capabilities

GeoEye, the premier provider of commercial satellite imagery to the Department of Defense and intelligence community, was looking for a way to reduce infrastructure costs, to ensure that system obsolescence could be avoided, and that application innovation could be kept at its highest level. Specifically, GeoEye wanted their private cloud initiative to cost effectively address the following issues:

1. Infrastructure costs: Between the initial price tag in the millions and recurring maintenance fees in the hundreds of thousands, purchasing high-end multi-processor servers just wasn't cutting it anymore, not when growth was going at the pace of GeoEye's.
2. Hardware obsolescence: GeoEye's applications are typically deployed longer than the hardware they are originally architected to run on, so system obsolescence - and the potential need to re-architect a deployed application when vendor support for the hardware platform ends-was a real concern.
3. Complexity and risks of application development for multi-processor environments: Programming for symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) servers requires specialized development skills and prolonged development efforts. GeoEye could put its best mind to this task, but realized its skills were best spent focusing on the company's core value.
4. Platform rigidity: Expensive, high-end servers require accurate, upfront forecasting of capability and scalability needs: not flexible, not realistic.
5. Innovation limitation: Once GeoEye's images are ingested, they are "exploited" by downstream applications that turn the images into actionable information. As with improving ingest applications, the high-end server approach creates barriers to GeoEye's ability to innovate new exploitation applications. Developers were forced to conceive of and architect applications within the constraints of the infrastructure's limitations, stifling the company's competitive agility.

I will demonstrate how the private cloud environment can be applied to data-intensive applications such as those driving the GeoEye business - with measurable results.

Approaches to Spatial Data Sharing in Government: SDIs and More

With the increased importance on timely, accurate geospatial data and the growing demand for inter-agency cooperation, government agencies are seeking more efficient ways to share their spatial data. This presentation discusses how three government agencies are using spatial ETL (extract, transform, load) technology to power SDIs (Spatial Data Infrastructures) and other data sharing initiatives. First, we'll discuss how the State of Arkansas is efficiently disseminating their spatial data to other agencies and the public through a data clearing house. Live demonstration will be used to illustrate how spatial ETL powers this system to provide an online data clip, zip and ship service to enable users to get data in the precise formats and projections they need for use with their GIS applications. Second, we'll explore how the North Central Region addressed their schema mapping challenges to build an SDI that enables ten counties to upload their data and transform it into the required data model for self-service download. Lastly, we'll discuss how the Indiana Department of Homeland Security (DHS) addressed the challenge of presenting timely data to first responders for situational awareness during emergencies through the dynamic transformation and consolidation of multiple data sets, formats and schemas into the federal DHS schema.

On Demand GIS-based Cartography Software as a Service (SaaS)

In an ever-changing economy, businesses are looking for collaboration and service globally. Maps continue to serve as critical navigational resources and their function has even broadened to influence government, private industry and individual citizens. Map-making today has come a long way since the early days of pen and paper; it generally rests on a one-way, linear process, relying on installed technologies. This process can take months to create a map.

I'll present a case study based on an On Demand GIS-based cartography Software as a Service (SaaS) model that is being used completely over the Internet. There is no need to install and maintain software, there are no license costs, only subscription fees for the application you need, when you need it and for how long you need it. Best of all, you can work efficiently with all your partners from anywhere and produce excellent maps quickly and effectively without passing your valuable data back and forth. This allows for assignment of maps and tasks to any of your partners. You maintain full control over your data, the production process and quality assurance at all times. For map makers this includes everything you need to complete the production process including layout for several different output channels including print and Internet. I will present a great new business model and a solid ROI case in the current challenging economic times.

The customer's ROI: transformed +500 graphic map files (Freehand) to one seamless geo-database and they are now producing maps efficiently by collaborating with multiple partners across Europe. Extremely low investments, high returns using one seamless database, fast, cost efficient and flexible in the choice of partners. The service partners loved it too as their investment in this case was close to zero.

Confluence of the GIS and LBS Industries (and the apps that are driving it)

Most LBS companies are currently unprofitable. Many of those that do reach profitability will do so by moving into the GIS arena and developing GIS applications for the LBS market. My presentation will discuss this transition and identify those apps, based on my 14 years experience heading up ESRI's BusinessMAP group, which will most likely transcend to profitable LBS apps. I can guarantee the apps I discuss are real world and the GIS companies that use them have been in business for many years and are profitable.

Increase Operational Efficiencies & Reduce Costs with Full Function GIS running "in the Cloud" as Software as a Service (SaaS)

Software as a Service (SaaS) has gained widespread acceptance and adoption. Just as the GIS sector is changing, so too is the wider software industry with SaaS applications that are hosted by application providers "in the cloud" and delivered, on demand, over the Internet. SaaS removes the need for end-customers to install and manage their own software solutions. In the GIS arena the costs and timelines associated with desktop software integration and deployment are prohibitive for smaller organizations or departmental deployments. GIS in the cloud can combine easy-to-use yet powerful GIS functionality with universal access and faster integration, to enable more users in more businesses and government organizations to realize the benefits of geospatial analysis, visualization and maps, faster. Based on a secure and scalable platform, GIS as SaaS, enables knowledge workers in all organizations to organize and understand complex business data through the use of geographic relationships inherent in most information. It can help organizations to answer questions, solve problems and plan ahead by looking at data in a way that is quickly understood and easily shared as digital maps.

The presentation will address how the move to cloud computing can eliminate the complexity, high cost and difficult integration of traditional GIS and can be replaced with a SaaS model that is easy to install, configure, and maintain with limited or no operational support from a company's IT organization.

Digital Mapping and Location Based Systems on a Geospatial Cloud Computing Platform

Abstract: Digital Map Applications frequently involve processing large amounts of data on large multiprocessor systems. Typically these systems are not interactive. This paper describes how Grid and Cloud computing can be applied to Digital Map Data modification, publication, community, and other location based services. As the quantity and diversity of data under management grows, client server architecture based on relational technology limits the ability to scale not only the number of Map Data clients, but the number and complexity of processes manipulating and extracting Map Data. With the objective to expand the group of Map Data providers beyond the walls of NAVTEQ to the millions of Map Data consumers, we need a scalable system to support hundreds of thousands or even millions of users. This paper describes a critical piece of the Next Generation Architecture, the Geospatial Grid. The Geospatial Grid will combine and consolidate all Map Data into one virtual repository scaling to millions of users in the most cost management way. The Geospatial Grid is a data management and processing grid of potentially thousands of nodes which provide Map Data retrieval, parallel validation, change event feeds, extraction and transformation of all products, and scalability in a cloud computing like architecture. This paper will discuss the impact of social computing on the concept of Map Data modification and Location Based Systems (LBS), concentrating on the aspects of the Geospatial Grid that impact social computing and Location Based Systems.

Open Source Solutions: SaaS and GIS in the Cloud

Natural Resource Management is a complicated business, regardless of the scale at which it is done. The task requires collecting and analyzing a variety of information from all stakeholders about the natural and human environment, analyzing this data in a timely and comprehensive manner and making decisions that affect everyone based on the data available to the decision makers. Currently, the data required to effectively manage our natural resources is scattered and sequestered throughout hundreds of organizations and individuals which makes it largely inaccessible or difficult to find.

The OpenNRM platform provides users with the tools to aggregate and display relevant information about our natural resources in a convenient place for stakeholders to discover and use. The OpenNRM platform is dedicated to providing the natural resource management community with the Web 2.0 tools they need to effectively collaborate and problem solve among many stakeholder interests and goals.

I will demonstrate how a natural resource manager can effectively aggregate, organize, analyze and collaborate around maps, projects, wikis and more. The process will emphasize access to GIS features that are generally available to back offices users and integrating these features with projects and wiki pages. Open Source tools like OPENNRM can help you save costs while delivering outstanding performance in terms of scalability, flexibility and security. Although the Internet and Internet technologies have substantially improved access to information, integrated tools for aggregating, organizing, visualizing, comparing, educating and sharing this information are limited and expensive. This is especially significant in the world of collaborative natural resource management, which lacks significant technological advances due to limited government and private sector financial resources.

Deployment of a SaaS Enterprise GIS platform to Small Government: a Case Study of SaaS Enterprise GIS in 90 Days

Project Challenge: to get a fully functioning City Enterprise GIS up and running within 90 days. After struggling for over three decades to become a city, 94 percent of residents just north of Atlanta in unincorporated Fulton County, GA voted in June 2005 to approve a referendum in favor of cityhood. The community of nearly 90,000 residents became the City of Sandy Springs, Georgia's seventh largest city, on Dec. 1, 2005. Striving to create the most efficient, responsive and cost-effective city possible, the City of Sandy Springs opted to employ CH2M HILL and their On Demand Spatial Solutions (ODSS). ODSS is a service based COT's GIS solution stack, that includes data, desktop, server and Web GIS, all delivered as a Web service. The major benefits of the solution is the deployment of an enterprise GIS without the cost and complexity of buying, setting up and managing the underlying hardware and software infrastructure. ODSS breaks down typical governmental department silos by integrating with all facets of City services including Community Planning, Public Works, Administrative Services, Police and Fire activities.

The City has benefited from a 40% savings by employing ODSS versus a traditional implementation approach to enterprise GIS.

Reconciling Location Tracking and Privacy, and the Benefits of Location Sharing, in the Enterprise

Enterprises are increasingly turning to location tracking functionality to empower their workforce and increase productivity. Yet, indiscriminate location sharing can lead to employee distrust of new applications and to evasive behaviors (e.g. employees turning off cell phones and other location tracking devices). This presentation will review lessons learned from large-scale deployments of a location sharing platform that empowers companies and their employees to define rich privacy preferences such as "Only share my location with colleagues in my department during work hours and while I am on company premises." The presentation will include a discussion of how new interface technologies can reduce user burden and empower companies to leverage the benefits of location sharing technology while allowing employees to retain control over access to their location.

Greener is Better: Location Improves the Bottom Line

Newly available, highly accurate data now allows users (drivers, fleets, MRM): 1) to find the most optimal route to their destination; and 2) to better estimate their travel time. This provides for reduced cost in time, labor, and fuel as well as improved profit in scheduling efficiencies and customer satisfaction. In addition, high-definition, high-update-frequency traffic information now enables dynamic routing to support both these user benefits. These functionalities are the result of systems of human and algorithmic input designed not to 'model' reality but to actually reflect reality with shrinking latency.

I will discuss the latest in multiple-source and multiple-type of data inputs to generate dynamic content that best reflects current reality.

How the User Community Is Revolutionizing Geospatial Data

What's needed in geospatial data is a quantum leap in both quantity and quality - an innovative approach that will bring more change at a faster rate to users of critical information. This is now possible through a fusion of sources - both 'active' and 'passive' - some requiring human interaction and some based on logic. Such a system combines several technologies which working in tandem create a solution that is not otherwise possible. Today it is possible to collect, ingest, validate, and apply changes from millions of sources around the world, twenty-four hours a day. The results are cost savings and increased profits (as a result of improved accuracy).

How Crowd-Sourcing GPS Data is Reducing Costs and Saving Time for Companies and Consumers

Navigation companies (such as MapQuest, TeleNav and TCS), auto OEMs (such as BMW and Ford), departments of transportation, fleet companies and others need accurate traffic information across entire roadway networks for integration with their consumer and commercial solutions. Aggregating traffic data from traditional road sensors or solely from radio broadcast reports cannot provide the road coverage or accuracy that is required. To address this challenge, INRIX "crowd-sources" real-time traffic information from over 1 million vehicles and consumer devices. Supplementing INRIX's vast network of GPS-enabled commercial and consumer vehicles, INRIX collects anonymous "GPS probe" data from consumer mobile phones and connected portable navigation devices. This information is sent to INRIX servers which intelligently combine the information with billions of real-time speed data points from other drivers in the INRIX Smart Driver Network and road sensor information from departments of transportation across the country. Billions of data points every day enable INRIX to continuously and instantaneously update traffic for INRIX customers and INRIX-powered user communities resulting in the most accurate current and forecast traffic information available anywhere.

I will share a case study on the challenges and lessons learned with crowd-sourcing live GPS data and other information from user communities, including how crowd-sourcing is helping customers like Ford provide the best driver experience possible for turn-by-turn routing and traffic alerts.

Building a Rich Internet Mapping Application on the Cheap

This presentation demonstrates how to get started building rich Internet mapping applications (RIAs). Specifically, it shows how to build the following two sites (one an advance on the other): http://www.flexmappers.com/mymodestmap/ and http://www.flexmappers.com/myadvancedmodestmap/ . There is an increasing interest in building map RIA's. A range of proprietary mapping solutions/API’s have been launched (Google, MapQuest, ESRI etc). Open source remains an ever more viable option, both for GIS and consumer sites. This presentation will be focused on building consumer sites using the Flex Modest Maps library and open street map/Blue Marble base maps. It is targeted at developers, project managers and business owners.

The results will be twofold: 1) showing users how to build a RAI mapping solution from scratch and 2) showing how to do it inexpensively using open source tools, with the cost and control advantages which come with this approach.

Maximizing ROI on Existing Geospatial Applications with Geocoding Accuracy

You're already using geospatial solutions and applications in your organization as part of critical business processes and transactions. But, as supply, retail and logistics companies globalize or expand, they face increasing challenges with global intelligence data. Too often, geospatial data is inaccurate or is based on extremely wide postcode areas instead of pinpoint locations. This contributes to wasted resources, delays, cost increases and exposure to customer service risks that will negatively impact your business and customer satisfaction. And in this challenging economy, that could be the end of the line for your company.

But, most organizations can ill afford to simply rip out and replace their existing global location technology, even though they realize the many quantitative benefits of obtaining more accurate, pinpoint location information. So, by simply adding more refined geocoding to your existing systems, you can improve and better define global intelligence data to realize new business and savings opportunities that translate to real dollars.

Geospatial Harmony: A Practical Approach to Success in a Multi-vendor GIS Environment - Finding the Right Balance Between Commercial and Open Source GIS Software

Many vendors claim interoperability, but it is left to individual GIS organizations to work around the limitations of this interoperability. Is it really possible to utilize interoperability features of multiple GIS vendors to realize cost savings through "Best-of-Breed" advantages of these tools? Jeddah Municipality in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a large Enterprise GIS database that was not well utilized in the organization due to its proprietary format.

In order to realize the benefits of the strengths and each GIS software tool Jeddah Municipality set a strategic objective to move this data to Oracle Spatial and expose it for use by any vendor who could read or write the central format. In this presentation we will examine all facets of Jeddah Municipality’s attempts to fully realize geospatial harmony in a multi-vendor environment. We will discuss the upper management motivation to support this approach all the way through to a detail technical review of the capabilities and limitations of this approach as utilized in the Jeddah GIS center. Along the way, we'll look at the costs vs. savings and develop the business case for multivendor interoperability in a Municipal GIS organization. In summary we will discuss the extent to which the effort was successful and make recommendations for any organizations considering this approach.

Stream Processing of Location Data

Our ability to collect location data from moving devices threatens to exceed our ability to make sense of it. When the number of devices grows to the millions (think mobile phones), you need a computing infrastructure that scales flexibly to handle millions of messages per second, can apply custom, sophisticated analysis, and produces results and actions in milliseconds or better. IBM InfoSphere Streams, announced last May, provides such an infrastructure in a flexible, extensible, and broadly applicable package. We will discuss the results of a few location-based application prototypes, which show that this approach can yield enormous throughput, superb scalability and hardware utilization, and extremely low response latency. We will show and explain in some detail the architecture, configuration, and programming used to achieve these results.

The Economics and Challenges of Hyperlocal Advertising

The promise of interactive local advertising for small business has been talked about for years. However, the truth is most local businesses are not moving their advertising dollars online. For the majority, self-service options such as Ad Words are too hard to understand. There are interactive advertising agencies that help small businesses; however, with tens of millions of small businesses across the country, the challenge of effectively impacting sales for this group is daunting. Geotargeting to a general region is a start, but do businesses really care about potential customers 20 miles away? A hyperlocal approach can target people right down to a specific street corner, but the inventory (people that you reach) gets much smaller, while the price for certain key words may be inflated.

For businesses to embrace hyperlocal selling, the result must be sales, not just leads, and the question becomes how much will I pay for a customer's action? A $30-50 spend at a local hardware store is worth more than a $3 Mocha at the corner coffee house. This session will address the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for hyperlocal ads. How do you calculate a fair cost-per-action (CPA)? How do you create online experiences for local search that mimic off-line consumer behaviors? What are the opportunities for mobile hyperlocal search? Without a solid understanding of these issues, targeting a consumer down to the street corner may not be any more effective than having someone in a chicken suit waving a sign.

Which Is the Best for Data Visualization on the Internet: Comparing the Performance of Google Earth, Google Maps, Bing, ArcGIS Explorer and World Wind, Using StackSymbol

Google Earth, Google Maps, Bing, ArcGIS Explorer and World Wind are state of the art of mapping solutions on the Internet from Google, Microsoft, ESRI and NASA respectively. In this presentation, I am going to compare their performance in terms of the abilities of displaying and visualizing data. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has adapted KML (formerly Keyhole Markup Language) as a standard language for "expressing geographic annotation and visualization on existing or future web-based online and mobile maps (2d) and earth browsers (3d)".

For comparison purposes, we created outputs from real world data in KMZ file (KMZ is the same as KML, but in a compressed form), using a software called StackSymbol. StackSymbol is a location intelligence software that helps you visually see the location, quantity and quality of your data. To help you see the location, it plots one or more symbols at each location mentioned in your data. To help you see the quantity of your data, the number of symbols to be plotted at a location is proportional to the numeric value at each location, or proportional to the frequency of occurrence at each location. If a location is to be plotted with two or more symbols, it stacks the symbols up, creating a three-dimensional view - the location with the highest stack of symbols means that location has the highest numeric value or the highest frequency of occurrence.

How a Logistics Company Uses Web Mashups to Decide Faster

Analysis based on location, as is fundamental in any business, is indispensible in logistics. Quality Distribution (a public company traded in NASDAQ) needed a better way to analyze the incoming and outgoing loads between its business regions, states and terminals because analyzing the loads and load ratio and improving this ratio meant increased profitability. Reports and table-based visualizations cannot provide much understanding of the business situation. Besides, the type of visualization and analysis they needed could not be implemented using most of the solutions they have explored. BlueNet provided a solution that can integrate with Quality Distributions' existing BI system and used open map providers to retrieve map information. Moreover, the solution created just the type of visualization Quality needed for the analysis.

The presentation will provide the business case and the technical details of the implementation. Technologies used in the implementation include Web mashups, Google Maps API, system integration and how new Location Intelligence systems can be added on top of existing BI investments to increase total value. I am going to show the participants a Location Intelligence architecture that can be implemented without much change in the existing business systems. The system will be using Web mashup technologies and open map providers (such as Google Maps).

The Quality Distribution lane analysis process that would typically take a couple of hours can now be visualized in a couple of minutes. The technology will be rolled on to other business (bidding, marketing, operations) processes shortly.

Data Quality and Field Force Empowerment: An Australian Example - Creating the Digital Infrastructure for the Smart Grid

In the US there are 9,200 electric generators, but most of them were built in the 1960s or earlier. There are over 12,000 sub-stations and the average age of substation transformers is over 40 years, beyond their expected life span. Outages and interruptions cost Americans at least $150 billion annually. The reliability of the grid is decreasing while our dependence on it is increasing. The risks associated with our current, increasingly fragile power grid and the impact of global climate change are forcing us to invest in a more resilient, efficient, and green smart grid. A smart grid involves price signals to consumers, distributed generation, automated load management, a new bidirectional communications network, storage, redundancy, and self-healing. Managing and operating the new smart grid requires a reliable digital network facilities model, based on accurate, up to date engineering information. In many power utilities estimates of the reliability of current network facilities databases are in the range of 40% to 70%. Around the world regulators are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of data quality as we migrate our power networks to a smart grid architecture.

In this presentation I will discuss the important business process issues that are responsible for the poor quality of much North American power utility facilities databases and practical steps that can be taken to optimize business processes for improved data quality. A practical example from a power utility in Australia will be described.