Proving the benefits of GI - GIS Professional€¦ · Book review: but what does “lining up data” mean? Jonathan Iliffe reviews Lining Up Data in ArcGIS – a guide to map projections

Address datasets can add economic value

Paying for software in the age of austerity

ArcGIS comes of age in San Diego

PSI and Europe: reverse engineering the rules

OGC, ISO, CEN: new standards for GI exchange

Going beyond Inspire: the ESDIN project

plus News | People | Products & Services | Books | GiSPro’s columnists

issue 36 : October 2010

Proving the benefits of GI

. . . joining the geography jigsaw

our mission. . .to help grow the business for the whole

GIS community by providing an effective,reliable and timely medium for news,

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read on. . .

Front cover: Increasingly CEOs want to seethe hard cash savings from GI projects: Andy

Coote and colleagues show how on page 12.Our thanks to Dr Gesche Schmid of the LocalGovernment Association for the main image.

Next Issue: December 2010Copy dates Editorial: 8 November

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> GISPro’s STANDFASTS

> GISPro’s COLUMNSp.23 Adena Schutzberg – Not all that is forecast for geospatial happens. . .

p.24 Eurofile – Shining up there in the sky is something quite worrying. . .

p.30 AGI Column – There’s plenty still to come in 2010 for AGI members!

For details of how to subscribeto GiSPro, turn to page 34.

contentsIssue No 36 October 2010

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ESDIN makes Inspire usefulCan we maximise location data? It is commitment to best practice thatwill change our treatment of data, argues David Overton and colleagues.

Subscribe or pay-as-you-go?How you pay for software is changing. Carl Hancock, AlignedAssets, makes the case for Software by Subscription.

Book review: but what does “lining up data” mean?Jonathan Iliffe reviews Lining Up Data in ArcGIS – a guide to mapprojections by Margaret M. Maher.

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Addressing EuropeProblems with address datasets are not unique to the UK, arguesMichael Nicholson. So will joining the European Address Forum help?

Location economics: valuing GIUsing proven modelling techniques, Andy Coote and colleaguesshow how to prove the benefits of geographical information.

ArcGIS comes of age!Adena Schutzberg was among the vast crowd of delegates at Esri’s 2010International User Conference – so what were the key messages?

PSI & Europe: reverse engineering re-use rulesLawyer Marc de Vries proposes a framework of reliable rules fordealing with the re-use of public sector information.

The geographic information exchangeSteven Ramage explains how the OGC has been forging links todevelop new standards for GI exchange.

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The GI sector faces major challenges across EuropeWelcome to the October issue of GiSPro. If you’re reading our magazine for the first timebecause of our distribution at the Intergeo exhibition in Köln or have just picked up a copyfrom a colleague, then I hope you will enjoy this issue. All of the articles apply equally to geo-information professionals across Europe and indeed help inform the worldwide geo business.Issues like the re-use of public sector data, the EU Inspire Directive, Standards, new softwaredelivery models and finding ways to prove the benefits of GI in these tough economic times,are all ones that are exercising and challenging geo-professionals across Europe.

One of the key aspects of the GI sector that impresses me is its agility in adapting quickly tonew circumstances. In less than a year we have seen major players as well as much smallersuppliers adapt their offerings to a rapidly changing public sector landscape. The days of bigsystems with maintenance contracts and regular training packages are beginning to fade. Anew generation of software savvy people are coming of age in the public sector. In the UK thenew Coalition Government’s expected cuts in public sector spending will eventually see abrave new world very different from that of today. It will inevitably mean more emphasis onefficiency savings – doing more for less, and here GI can help. Studies across Europe haveshown again and again that by re-using public sector data linked to geographical informationsystems local services can be delivered at lower cost and to the greater benefit of citizens.

By the time you read this issue of GiSPro the UK’s big annual GI conference – AGIGeoCommunity’10 – will have taken place. GeoCommunity’10 promises to be an outstandingsuccess. The vibrant programme reflects my opening comments about the agility of our busi-ness. There are sessions that deal with the potential consequences of freeing up of publicdata; the geo-web and cloud computing (read our US correspondent Adena Schutzberg’scolumn in this issue if you want a bumpy landing on this topic). And in the conference wingsthere are the usual suspects with teasing topics like “Cocktails on the Titanic” and “Oi! SirTim: Hands off my spreadsheet!” Expect to read all about it in our next issue.

In the meantime, I hope you will become a regular reader and maybe even contribute to ourcolumns. Full details of how to subscribe are on page 34 or go online to www.pvpubs.comwhere you will find, for subscribers, our searchable archive of back issues. By subscribing, younot only gain access to this valuable reference resource but you will be able to read the latestissue ahead of delivery of your printed copy.

Stephen Booth, editor

welcometo the October issue of GIS Professional. . .

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The days of bigsystems withmaintenancecontracts and

regular trainingpackages arebeginning to

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joining the geography jigsaw

from the editorIssue No 36 October 2010

Geo-data must not besacrificed Geographic informationis a business enabler, according to arecent survey by the UK’s Associationfor Geographic Information (AGI) andPricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Thesurvey, in which over 100 public andprivate sector organisations werepolled, found that 96 per cent sawGI as a business enabler. The“Opportunities in a changing worldsurvey 2010” found that 73 per centbelieved better use of data in thenext 12 months is imperative – in anenvironment where they “have to domore with less.” Also, despite geo-data being deemed business critical,nearly two thirds of respondentsstated their organisation did nothave a data strategy.

‘Worryingly, a lack of a data

strategy can lead to inefficientstorage and retrieval ofinformation,’ saysPricewaterhouseCoopers’ SimonDoyle. He argues that there is‘higher cost, as data is purchasedmore than once or not re-used’ andalso that ‘there is inaccurateunderstanding and interpretation ofthat information within decisionmaking processes’.

The three data types identified asthe most useful were national or pan-European mapping agency data(27%), national public sector dataholdings (22%), or from anorganisation’s own data holdings.Interestingly, crowd-sourced data,commercial data providers and “Web2.0” data providers such as Googleand OpenStreet Map failed to impress.

PSI: have your say Theautumn brings a series of actionsrelated to the review of Europe'sPSI Re-use Directive 2003/98/EC.The first stage is the Europe widepublic consultation process on thepolicy and legislative framework forthe re-use of public sectorinformation and the opening up ofgovernment data for re-use withthe European Commissionannouncing an online survey. Nowis the time to express your views, ifyou think the current frameworkneeds to be changed http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/ipm/forms/dispatch?form=psidirective2010. The results will bepublished online by the EuropeanCommission and the consultation isopen until 30 November 2010.

PSMA Transition Plan The UK’sDepartment of Communities and LocalGovernment (CLG) has published itsroad map for the implementation of asingle Public Sector MappingAgreement (PSMA), which will takeeffect from April 1st 2011. Theagreement will cover central and localgovernment departments andagencies and the NHS in England andWales. The public sector in Scotlandalready has an equivalent agreement.

Funding, to make available OSMasterMap Topography Layer, ITN andother products including addressingdatasets free at point of use for“core”government activities has beenagreed. The PSMA will also come withwider rights in relation to derived data.

The deal comes with technicalsupport from OS, periodic reviews ofdata specifications and agreement toexplore the options for working inpartnership to produce a NationalAddress Gazetteer.

The purpose behind PSMA is toencourage better use of OS datasetsfor more efficient government andto remove barriers to moving databetween departments. A new GIGroup will represent the interests ofthe public sector in advising CLG onstrategic management of the PSMA.

Missing the real issue?Royal Mail’s announcement thatcounty names are to be dropped

from their address database hasmet with mixed response frommarketers and the public. But thecontroversy misses the point,according to address dataspecialist, Postcode Anywhere. ‘Thereality is that little will change.Details such as counties can besomething very personal to theBritish mentality,’ says PhilRothwell, sales and marketingdirector. ‘Regrettably it may lead toconfusion internationally, whereaddress formats tend to be stricter.The crux of the matter is that thecounty problem has never beenwith addresses – it’s been indefining geographical areas. Wesimply don’t have consistentconventions for this, leading toconfusion when mapping out salesareas and definitive boundaries. . .Providing and maintaining definitiveboundary data is the thornyproblem most commentators seemto have missed’.

Addressing crime detectionSalford Crime and DisorderReduction Partnership is addressingcrime rates with a crime preventionproject that has the National Landand Property Gazetteer database atits heart. ‘What we needed was amap-based solution with an incidentpinpointing tool that enabled us toquickly and accurately locate anincident, identify possible highquality CCTV coverage and themeans to request coverage from anycamera owner,’ says Paul Coward,corporate GIS consultant at SalfordCity Council. The council hasdeveloped an online service enablingvisitors to identify and record CCTVcamera locations on a map beforeadding contact and camerainformation. ‘The NLPG is in effectthe glue that holds the whole thingtogether enabling us to accuratelylocate an incident, identify camerasin the vicinity and secure footage forcrime detection,’ Coward concludes.

Quick collection of US Overthree months, 95% of the contiguousUnited States has been imaged bythe RapidEye satellites. Almost 80%

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Belgiummappinggoes 3D

A hi-tech digital map captured using laser-scanning technology is beingcreated for the Flanders region of Belgium using 3D mapping software.Using Pointools’ point cloud software, Belgian surveying company, Teccon,has processed billions of individual measurements to create data for useby central and regional government, plus utility companies and thetransport sector. A combination of surveying techniques including mobilelaser mapping, satellite navigation and field and office data capturemethodologies has resulted in an attributed base map, which now coversmore than 1,200 square kilometres. The Grootschalig Referentie Bestand(GRB) is a project by the Agency for Geographic Information Flanders(AGIV) to create large-scale mapping for the region. The project aims tocreate an ‘inventory’ of ground features – including waterways, railways,roads and administrative plots, etc – recording the position, extent andcharacteristics of every feature.

of this imagery was captured withless than ten percent cloud cover. Thecampaign, which began 1 May, hasproduced an abundance of imagerywith many areas covered multipletimes. In addition, 97% of Mexicowas collected and almost 60% ofCanada. Many areas were imagedmore than once and totalled 17million square kilometres of NorthAmerica.

Aiding Pakistan After severaldays waiting for clearance to travelto Pakistan and a final rush to thePakistan High Commission for visas,MapAction volunteers HelenCampbell and James Steel departedfor Islamabad on 10th August aspart of the United Nations DisasterAssessment and Co-ordination(UNDAC) team. They were followedtwo days later by Andy Smith andAndy Kervell and then Ian Holt,Nick McWilliam and Becky Kervell,plus one of the UK charity’sGermany based team, MartinMainberger. A support team hasalso been providing 24-hour back-up with data and analysis.MapAction provides mappingspecialisation using GIS to ensurethat information such as the extentof the damage, affected populationand the state of the health facilitiesis available to all the aid agencies.

Call for GISRUK papers Theprogramme committee for the GISResearch UK (GISRUK) 2011conference has opened its call forshort papers. The conference is beingco-hosted by Ordnance Survey andthe department of geography of theUniversity of Portsmouth from 27-29April 2011. Papers on the followingthemes are particularly welcome:open source GI and Web 2.0; GIS forschools and colleges; disaster riskmanagement; remote sensing;GeoSemantics; historical GIS; healthgeography; coastal and fluvialgeomorphology; and urban planningand modelling. The closing date forabstracts is 17 December 2010. Formore details, visit www.port.ac.uk/departments/academic/geography/gisruk2011/callforpapers/.

EEA data in the cloud TheEuropean Environment Agency(EEA) and ESRI have signed amemorandum of understanding tosupport the design anddevelopment of ways to share andaccess essential geographicenvironmental data provided by theagency’s 38 European membercountries. The agency will now workwith the GIS software company toimprove the its cloud environmentmap services. European countrieswill share their environmental datamore easily, while nations, agencies,scientists and policy makers will beable to quickly access and consumethe data for viewing and analysis.

CONTRACTS & PROJECTS

Mapping wind flowsComputer-generated 3D city modelsfrom Bluesky are helping to give abetter understanding of the windenvironment around urbaninfrastructure projects. By creatingcomplex engineering models,consultancy, Mott MacDonald,simulates the flow of wind around asite and creates different scenariosbased on the project design. Theconsultancy processes the Blueskydata first using Pointools' Rhino 3Ddesign software for CAD to add orremove structures based on theproject design and then usingspecialist software for surfacemodelling, analysis andvisualisation. Having created anairtight envelope around themodelled project area, the windflow is calculated and differentdesign scenarios can be considered.

Extended agreement Thebusiness partner agreementestablished in 2004 betweenTrimble’s mapping and GIS divisionand Critigen’s former parent, CH2MHILL, has been extended. Critigenwill serve as system integrator andprovide data management andvisual business intelligence productsto support Trimble’s technology andproducts in the utilities, state andlocal government, and

environmental managementmarkets. The companies will providea range of product development,joint sales, data collection, dataconversion and implementationservices.

Keeping sales on target A

package of software and digitalmapping products is helping theL’Oréal Professional Products Division,part of the international L’Oréalcosmetics group, to sustain stronggrowth in its market. Managing theterritories served by the division’ssales teams requires constant review


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Engineering consultancy Mott MacDonald is using computer generatedmodels from Bluesky to help understand wind behaviour around structures.

and reorganising. MapMechanics hassupplied products includingGeoConcept Enterprise and digitalmap datasets such as Navteq street-level UK mapping, Geoplan postcodeboundaries and Ordnance Survey’sCodepoint postcode geocoding.

The coal mining legacy TheUK Location Programme is startinga pilot project with The CoalAuthority to share spatial data onformer coalmines. The CoalAuthority is leading the work tospatially identify sites in coalfieldsacross Britain and share relatedinformation in an automated wayusing consistent digital standards.Mining and site inspection reportsare being combined with the landownership details held by 180 localauthorities whose areas coincidewith the coalfields.

OGC and ISPRS collaborateThe Open Geospatial Consortium(OGC) and the International Societyfor Photogrammetry and RemoteSensing (ISPRS) have signed amemorandum of understanding to

enhance the development and useof geospatial standards. Under theagreement, the two organisationswill work cooperatively to raise theawareness, acceptance andimplementation of open standardsand to promote educationalprograms and best practices thatbenefit their memberships andpractitioners worldwide.

BRIEFS

The Association for GeographicInformation (AGI) has organised twonew awards for 2010: innovationand best practice – business case &ROI (sponsored by ConsultingWhere)and innovation and best practice –charitable status (sponsored by ESRIUK). All awards will be presented atthe Annual Awards Dinner on 25thNovember 2010 at the Royal Collegeof Physicians in London. In addition,the award previously namedinnovation and best practice (localgovernment) has been changed toinnovation and best practice – localpublic services (sponsored by PitneyBowes Business Insight).

Aligned Assets’ One Wales – OneVoice best practice day will be heldat the Media Resource Centre inLlandrindod on 2 November 2010.The event will see presentationsfrom local authorities, theemergency services and the WelshAssembly Government. In addition,the company has announced twonew one-day BS7666 trainingcourses in November 2010: “AnIntroduction to BS7666” and“BS7666 for Developers”. Both theupcoming training courses and thebest practice day have beenaccredited by the AGI. For moreinformation, visit www.aligned-assets.co.uk/events.

RapidEye has mandated RolandBerger Strategy Consultants tosupport its effort to raise additionalfunding for the company. The newfunding will be used to makenecessary investments into themarket development, to upgradeand improve the systems to handlethe additional growth and to initiatedevelopment of new geo-information products and services.

Ordnance Survey has published itsAnnual Report and Accounts for2009-10. You can view anddownload the report at www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/annualreport.The national mapping agency hasalso launched a new onlinenewsletter, OS Insider, whichhighlights some of the projectscurrently being worked on at OS.

The membership ofEuroGeographics, the association ofEurope’s national mapping landregistry and cadastral agencies, hascontinued to grow with the generalassembly approving two newmembers: Agenzia del Territorio,Italy and the National Agency ofPublic Registry, Georgia.

GIS Professional is again to be amedia sponsor for next year’s DGIEurope conference on 24-27January 2011 at QEII Centre inLondon. For more information, visitwww.dgieurope.com.

PEOPLE

Advising utilities

Operating from Infotech Enterprises’Sydney, Australia office, Greg Oatenhas been hired as the strategy advisorfor utilities. He will help develop thecompany’s new service offerings inareas such as Smart Grid and powerengineering for its customers andprospects in the APAC region.

Focusing on alliances

Dr Mike Clark has been appointed ashead of partners and alliances forESRI UK. He will focus on supportingthe partners and alliances team indeveloping business with existingpartners and establishing newalliances and partner channels.

Marketing SaaSColm Mulcahy is now chief salesand marketing officer at eSpatialwith responsibility for its softwareas a service GIS business andidentifying and addressing newmarkets for SaaS.

Leading plugfestsDr Luis E Bermudez has been appointeddirector of interoperability certificationfor the Open Geospatial Consortium(OGC). He will manage the OGCcertification programme, lead plugfestactivities and support OGC testbeds,pilots and interoperability experiments.He has co-authored publications anddone work in geospatial interoperabilityincluding ontologies and geospatialmetadata frameworks.


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Getmapping’s web mapping service (WMS) is being used by Vtesse Networksto plan optical fibre networks. Aerial photography is streamed via a WMSfeed over the Internet directly into Vtesse’s planning and asset managementtool. The service provides an efficient way to access large datasets, reducingnetwork overhead. ‘Aerial photography reveals so much more about thesituation on the ground than a map ever can,’ said Steve Roberts, fromVtesse Networks. ‘The WMS feed from Getmapping is an extremely efficientway of providing us with access to nationwide aerial photography. It enablesour network planners to zoom in, locate and identify buildings, at a sub-postcode level. They can get a really good idea of the issues involved withbringing our optical fibre networks into clients’ buildings’.

Web mapping helps optical fibre network

Addressing is afundamentallyco-operative

exercise, whichneeds

leadership butalso crosses

administrativeand operational

boundaries.

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THE BRITISH FREQUENTLY believe themselves alone inbeing euro-sceptic. They are not. In France and Germanyand some of the Nordic countries euro-sceptics abound.In Spain and Greece, opinion polls point to a sharp declinein popularity for the EU. And yet all these countriesprovide willing experts to help develop EU initiatives – andwho are paid for their pains – whilst the UK, relative to itssize, is generally under-represented in EU projects.

It cannot be because of a lack of language skills. The

working language is generally English. It cannot be a lackof expertise. It cannot be because of a lack of fundingbecause generally the arrangements are attractive whentaken in the round, even if not highly profitable. Perhapsit is the variety of initiatives and acronyms guaranteed tobaffle any lexicographer. Perhaps it is a sense that theirefforts would only be a drop in the ocean in comparisonto the challenge that the EU often offers. However, asGhandi said, each ocean is made up of drops.

Looking Europe wide In 2008, IntelligentAddressing was invited to take up a challenge byDanish colleagues who are also experts in theaddressing field. The EU Commission had issued aninvitation for tenders within their e-Contentplusprogramme and a Spanish company, TRACASA, wereforming a consortium to seek funding for a projectto investigate the viability of harmonising Europeanaddresses and making them inter-operable.

Anyone with a modicum of knowledge ofaddressing within the EU would realise that this conceptappears to be hope attempting to triumph overexperience. Denmark and some of the Nordic countriesare well-advanced with their addressing systems. The UKis generally well served by good addressing (even if thealternatives seem to be more confusing to some thanhelpful). The Dutch have good plans, parts of Italy arealso well-served but after this it is still patchy.

Nevertheless in June 2008, a consortium of 30 public

and private sector organisations from 16 countries acrossthe EU received funding to support the examination andthen creation of a Best Practice Network aimed atpromoting address harmonization across the EU. Ofcourse, the initiative was well-timed, given the workbeing undertaken by the EU following the InspireDirective. The two activities have many synergies.

The emphasis of the project, EURADIN (EURopeanADdresses INfrastructure), was placed on defining the bestmethod of securing access to existing address datasetsacross the EU and what steps must be taken to ensureinteroperability between them, so as to further open-upaccess to pan-European information infrastructures.

However, the scope of the project was considerableand required an analysis of; what currently exists; theright model for data collection; the user needs; the bestdata structures; metadata needs; the business model.The result was a series of reports examining each aspectin some detail. Comparisons were fascinating andchallenging. What level of currency and quality reallywas optimal in terms of cost and payback? The fulldetails can be found at www.euradin.eu

A resounding success The project, which theSpanish chaired with aplomb and had a different chairfor each sub-working group, was adjudged aresounding success by its assessors within theEuropean Commission. The reports helped them torecognise that the use of addresses is all-pervasive andthat the vast majority of both public and private sectorservices are delivered by people to people at a givenlocation described by an address. It gave practicalcontext to crucial parts of Inspire and set a BestPractice framework for countries developingaddressing solutions. Some forty-one differentaddressing models were examined in all.

Addressing is a fundamentally co-operativeexercise, which needs leadership but also crossesadministrative and operational boundaries. Therewould be little purpose in an address base that onlyserved one city. It must provide value to the region,to the cadastral authorities (potentially a differentshape of administrative area), to the educationauthority (potentially yet a different shaped area),and so forth, as well as to the country and to othermember states. If it fails to do so then the value ofthe address data is limited and opportunities will belost. EURADIN gave addressing an overall EU context.

Common views The recommendations from theteam examining the business model, whilstacknowledging the potential risks and contradictions,

Addressing Europe Although the UK continues to grapple with its severaladdress datasets it is not unique. Our European partners often have similar problems,

explains Intelligent Addressing’s Michael Nicholson who argues that addressing has asubstantial economic and practical value. Joining the European Address Forum may help.

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the value of addressing

Above: Contrary topopular belief theBritish are not alone intheir euro scepticism.


were blunt and not universally popular amongst theconsortium members although the recommendationsrepresented the views of the clear majority:• there should be a single national “official”

address reference database;• the process should be sponsored and controlled

by the Public Sector (its practical operationmight, however, be sub-contracted to the privatesector if financially beneficial to do so);

• the data should be owned by the Public Sectorand probably the state;

• the dataset must be comprehensive, up-to-date andfit for the purposes of central and local government;

• if such datasets are created at regional or locallevel then they must be capable of nationalintegration and of following the Inspire standardfor subsequent Pan-European integration;

• there should be an integrated creation andmaintenance process. This would not prevent thecreation of many “added-value address products”by the private sector, suitable for differentapplications, but all should have the officialaddress reference database as their origin;

• the primary “official” creators of address datashould be identified;

• those bodies involved in the creation processshould be encouraged to participate, preferablyby law or possibly by binding contract withassociated funding where necessary;

• the basic data should be free or available at themarginal cost of distribution.

Work was done on trying to estimate the value ofaddressing to the EU. It is not possible to reproduce the fullreport here and its authors were uneasily aware that it isvery difficult to adjudge the true economic value ofaddressing. For example, how can one properly compare asituation where there is no addressing to its transformationby the introduction of high quality addressing? Thecomparison tends to be between one where addressing ispoor or inaccessible and is then improved.

The value of addressing In 2002, Denmark spentsome 8 million Euros over four years acquiring theIPR of their (2.2 million) addresses. They nowdistribute addresses without charge and a recentstudy (http://www.adresse-info.dk/Portals/2/Benefit/Value_Assessment_Danish_Address_Data_UK_2010-07-07b.pdf) concluded that some 15 Euros million perannum of net benefit is derived.

Extrapolating statistics is a tricky business but if theDanish benefit calculation was true of the EU as awhole, it would equate to about 1.5-2.0 billion Euro perannum. Closer to home, if the UK Government was todecide to buy-out all the IPR of the addressingprotagonists in the UK at the same rate as in Denmarkin 2002, then the cost would be over 150 million Euros,an unlikely scenario although it gives an indication ofhow important the Danes considered resolution to be.

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EURADIN looked at the contribution of goodaddressing to a number of specific applications. Forreasons already mentioned the authors found itdifficult to make conclusions that were other thantentative but by looking at activities such as transportand taxation, the socio-economic value shown byhaving a comprehensive and current address listrapidly became stratospheric. The actual figure was upto 63 billion Euros or about 0.5% of the EU’s GDP.

So what happens next? Work relating to addressingcontinues in both Inspire and EURADIN. Following acompetitive process, Simon Barlow, NLPG Custodian, wasselected as an Expert by the EU Inspire team. Simon willbe part of the ‘Buildings’ Technical Working Group,tasked with the development of the Buildings theme dataspecification for annex three of the Inspire Directive.

The EURADIN partners wanted to ensure thattheir work continues to provide value and so formedthe European Address Forum (EAF) to extend,continue and reinforce the work of the EURADINproject over the coming years. The EAF web pagesare accessible from the EURADIN website.

Membership of the EAF is free in monetary terms,but all members are expected to contribute an agreedlevel of voluntary time to further the key aims of theorganisation, which are essentially to maximise theavailability, efficiency and quality of European addressdata. Better addressing has a substantial economic andpractical value and a very considerable, if oftenunrecognised importance; the EAF wants to encouragethe realisation of its benefits, from emergency responseefficiency to new value-added products and application.

As one of the key contributors to the EAF, the UK isleading in its establishment and providing the dynamismthat every successful organisation needs. The UK is wellrepresented in at least this European initiative.

About the authorMichael Nicholson BSc(Hons)FRICS is the founder and MD ofIntelligent Addressing. He isalso Deputy Chair of the PSIAlliance and former Chair ofthe Locus Association, a bodyof private sector companiesconcerned by the re-use of PSI.


Above: NLPG CustodianSimon Barlow was

selected as an Expertby the EU Inspire team.


the value of addressing

Above: Addressingsystems have to be able

to meet a variety ofoften challenginglocations such as

multiple occupationwithin buildings and

developments.



. . . we can expectthe benefits to

accrue fromenterprise

deployment at afaster rate than

has beenobserved to this

point.

“

“

WHILST THERE ARE many case studies that make aneloquent pitch for the value of using geospatialinformation (GI), few express the benefits in financialterms. This often leads to a “so what?” response fromsenior managers. In today’s harsh economicenvironment the mantra is “save money and prove it!”The only new projects that are likely to be approved arethose which can show cashable savings and rapidly.

This problem is particularly acute for local publicsector providers such as local authorities, emergencyservices and local health services. GI alreadyunderpins many services and policy decisions butwithout economic justification the resources thatprovide these services and the investment required toextend them are under threat.

Against this backdrop, the Local GovernmentAssociation (LGA) commissioned ConsultingWhereLtd. to (i) provide a better understanding of the valuethat GI offers in economic terms to local publicservice delivery within England and Wales and (ii) torecommend ways in which this might be furtherenhanced in the future. ACIL Tasman, based inCanberra, Australia, which had undertaken similarexercises in Australia and New Zealand, wereengaged by ConsultingWhere to assist in theeconomic modelling and the expression of the resultsin terms that policy makers would understand.

Approach The initial stage of the study includedprimary and secondary research, interviews, aworkshop with key opinion formers and discussionswith many interested parties. The assembled evidencewas then packaged for analysis using ACIL Tasman’scomputable general equilibrium (CGE) model, whichprovides a representation of the local public servicesector in a national and international context. When aneconomic shock or disturbance such as an increase ina sector’s rate of growth is applied to the model, eachof the markets adjusts to a new equilibrium accordingto a set of behavioural parameters, which areunderpinned by solid economic theory.

Policy Drivers To gain credibility, any investment mustsupport the political agenda. The project team identifieda series of broad policy directions where geospatialclearly “intercepts” the Coalition Government agenda,to guide selecting areas for further study:• Operational efficiency: the need to reduce costs

while delivering high quality services;• Shared Services: working across organisational

boundaries and to operate through partnership;• The Big Society: local government as an enabler

of a more self-service approach that facilitatescitizens to act for themselves; and

• Information economy: the move to ‘datademocracy’ and greater transparency.

It also identified sector-specific statutory regulation,which relies heavily on GI. Key examples, referencedin the study, include planning; traffic management;flood risk and environmental protection.

Adoption Waves To understand the maturity of theimplementation of GI across the sector, and to informpredictions of future growth, we looked at patterns ofadoption and diffusion of the technology. We identifiedfour waves of innovation commencing around 1990, seeFigure 1. The first wave saw basic GIS on desktops, withthe second wave the gradual linking of databases gavepublic service providers wider access to internal data. Athird wave began in 2000 with the introduction of webmapping, has seen informational and transactionalusage. This wave is still working its way through localgovernment. A fourth wave, involving the integration ofthese technologies into mainstream enterprise systemsand the interoperability of data across organisations isjust getting underway. Much of this research is based onwork done by the LGA in 2009 in their GeographicalInformation survey.1

We concluded that the value of GI will only befully realised once this wave has been completed.Furthermore, we can expect the benefits to accruefrom enterprise deployment at a faster rate than hasbeen observed to this point.

Barrier to Adoption A survey of the local publicservices community identified the top three barriersto further implementation of GI as (i) lack ofawareness of benefits and resistance to changeamongst users; (ii) implementation costs (hardwareand software); and (iii) inappropriate data pricingand/or restrictions on access.

There is a range of possible explanations for the“sub-optimal” rate of progress in implementation

Location economics: valuing GI for local public service deliveryProving value from GI and location based services is not always easy. Using proven

modelling techniques, the authors show how public service policy makers in England andWales can be shown clear benefits.

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valuing GI for public services


Figure 1

1. http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/core/page.do?pageId=6597688

Year:


based on the experience of the study team in othersectors and geographies:- Capacity building issues – lack of necessary

human resources with the right skills andknowledge;

- Policy conflicts;- Lack of incentives for managers to make

changes;- Concerns about mistakes or inaccuracies in the

data or maps impacting on reputation or fearsof potential litigation if data are released;

- Data “hoarding” – where officials seek tomaximise remit or influence by retaining controlof information; and

- Institutional inertia.Fortunately, powerful paradigm shifts in the marketare offering opportunities for step change, includingtechnological advances such as location-basedservices designed for the consumer market butapplicable to local public service delivery. Opensource, shared procurement and site licensing arealso positive trends in the market, driving downsolution costs and encouraging competition.

Case Study Results The case studies reveal strongbusiness cases in many application areas, including:Channel shift – through deployment of transactional

web mapping systems to move the main methodof communication between citizens and providersfrom face to face or telephone contact onto theInternet. South Tyneside (Case Study 1) illustratesthe savings achievable.

Improved transport efficiency – by wide application ofroute optimisation and better streetworksmanagement. Daventry District Council has beenthrough two generations of route optimisationwith dramatic results in terms of reducing costs.

Better decision making – using geospatially-enabledlocal information systems. There has been some veryimpressive work done to prove savings in this area,led by Professor Paul Foley of De MontfortUniversity2. The Nottingham Insight project is aprime example of using the quantifiable benefitsmethodology, developed in this study (Case Study 2).

Reduced data duplication – using master datasets suchas the National Land and Property Gazetteer(NLPG). A detailed analysis of the value of theNLPG data sharing alone shows net benefits over afive-year period in the range £15-£24million.

Empowering frontline workers – by speeding upanalysis and enhancing mobile working.

Helping identify social deprivation – through dataintegration and analysis.

The research also found that the average annualisedcost to benefit ratio was approximately 1:2.5considered over an average five-year project lifecycle, i.e. for every £1 invested a return of £2.50

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would be realised over this period. The rawanalysis suggests a figure closer to 1:3.75but we have reduced our assessment onthe basis that our sample has a biastowards more innovative and bettermanaged projects.

The case studies also provided insightsinto the further increases in productivitythat could arise by 2014-5. Drawing on theadoption waves, it was estimated that bythis period, further innovation could lead toa 33 per cent increase in these productivityestimates for the business as usual case. Weassess that an additional 25 per centincrease in take up could be realised underthe optimal policy case.

Wider Economic Impact The economicmodelling estimated that Gross DomesticProduct (GDP) was approximately £320m higher in2008-9 in England and Wales than would have beenthe case without adoption of GI by local publicservices providers.

Under a business as usual scenario, thiswould be expected to rise to an estimated£560m in 2014-5, but with more rapidintroduction of government policies to freeup data access and copyright and withimproved awareness of the value of GI atsenior management level, this could beimproved to an estimated £600m by 2014-5,with significant gains across various areas,but particularly in local health care.

Furthermore, taxation revenue was £44mhigher than it would otherwise have beenand this could rise to be £95 million higherthan it would otherwise be with favourablepolicies towards geospatial.

We also estimated that the improvedservices have led to about £120m perannum improvement in the productivity ofthe construction, land transport andbusiness services sectors. In addition, therewas a general increase in labour productivityequal to an increase of approximately 1,500full-time equivalent staff across the economies ofEngland and Wales. This is as a result of theaccumulated effects of improved citizen and businesscontact with local service providers.

Recommendations The report’s strategic recom-mendations for improving the rate of adoption of GIand the consequent benefits include gaining politicalcommitment, increased accessibility of public data, a“light touch” approach for copyright and licensing,raising geospatial awareness and a training for thosedeveloping the business case for geospatial projects.The full report can be accessed from the following site:http://www.consultingwhere.com/reports.html


About the authors:Andrew Coote is chiefexecutive of ConsultingWhereLtd., specialist IT consultants ingeospatial information. GescheSchmid is function lead forgeographic information policyat the Local Government GroupAlan Smart is chief economistspecialising in geospatial andearth observation science atACIL Tasman.

Case study 1: Improved services in SouthTyneside enabled by GIThe Metropolitan Borough of South Tynesideutilised GI to create the ‘My South Tyneside’ webfacility. It is designed to be quick and easy to useand includes a property search facility based onthe Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG)and “My Nearest” search facility for findingschools, libraries and other local facilities. Anemail alert service enables citizens to receiveregular alerts about local planning applications,road works, etc.

The web statistics for the council site areimpressive and the email alerts service has over2,000 subscribers since its inception. 2009 saw38,295 unique visits to the site. Research carriedout by SocITM calculated typical transactioncosts of £0.17 for a web transaction, £4.00 for aphone transaction and £7.81 for a face-to facetransaction. Using these figures, estimated costsfor web transactions, as opposed to phonetransactions, represent an estimated savingof £146,669 in the calendar year.

Case study: 2 Better decision in NottinghamNottingham City Council, working with the localNHS, police, districts and county council havecreated a Local Information System designed toprovide a platform for better decision making forthe city's Strategic Framework and the policies andplans that support it. It provides ready access tocomprehensive, up-to-date information to a veryfine-grained level, which in tandem with the site'sanalytical tools, enables decision-makers in serviceplanning and policy implementation to assembleevidence to support strategic choices. Almost allthe information within the system is geospatiallyreferenced, so not only does it aid visualisation butsupports a wide range of geospatial analyses. TheInsight team estimate that at least 70% of all useswould not be possible without the geospatialinformation capabilities.

Using the online value assessment tool, fromthe CLG study they assessed the net benefits,taking into account development and ongoingsupport costs, of Nottingham Insight at between£320,000 and £460,000 per annum.


valuing GI for public services

2. www.communities.gov.uk/publications/communities/establishlocalinfo


ESRI’S INTERNATIONAL USER CONFERENCE has becomemore than just a gathering of users of ArcGIS and relatedtechnologies. It’s the umbrella for official co-locatedevents such as the Education User Conference, theSenior Executive Summit, the Survey and EngineeringSummit and less formal gatherings of industry groupssuch as oil & gas and electricity users as well as regionaluser groups. There are even “birds of a feather” sessionsbuilt around timely topics such as the US government’snew geospatial platform or the geospatial community’sresponse to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Key announcements Still, the event must put thehuge variety of Esri software users on common ground.That’s done on the first official day of the event in a hugehall where founder Jack Dangermond and his colleagues(and a few users) show off what the company feels arethe key messages. This year that session and hundreds ofothers brought a record crowd from 6000 organisations,representing 134 countries, up to speed.

The key message for 2010 is that ArcGIS is acomplete system for geographic data management andanalysis. ArcInfo and ArcView are no longer the star

players, but rather are parts of the system, along withArcGIS.com and ArcGIS Explorer online. Esri’s director ofsoftware development, Scott Morehouse and director ofsoftware products, Clint Brown compared the vision forArcGIS to how the world accesses music today: It’severywhere and accessed with whatever device is athand (desktop, laptop, tablet, phone, etc.).

Since many users had already installed ArcGIS 10,which was available for download before theconference, Dangermond offered some hints as towhat was coming later in 2010:

• Further development and expansion of the company’sCommunity Maps program (its effort to crowd-sourceshared basemaps for use in desktop, mobile andother applications) including new global imagery andelevation services and downloadable data:

• Social and Community Analysts - products akin toBusiness Analyst - aimed at offering snapshots ofgeographies for those in policy and other arenas

• A certification programme - coming early in 2011 -that will enhance a user’s “reputation and status”

• Expansion of the virtual classroom, the online deliveryof teacher led classes, which launchedin spring 2010.

Easy eesri The other significantannouncement related to themuch talked about change of thecompany’s name capitalisation andpronunciation. From here on thelogo includes all lower case letters,but the company name is written“Esri”. How is it pronounced? JackDangermond, who at one time hada preferred way of articulating thefour letters, made it clear he didnot care. That means “eee ess are

ArcGIS comes of age Adena Schutzberg casts an eye round Esri’s (nolonger ESRI) vast International User Conference 2010 and gets to grips with the many sub

themes and co-located events bound together by the company’s flagship product.

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conference report

Above: This year's opening session included a record number of attendees from6000 organisations representing 134 countries.

Above: Esri Founder andPresident JackDangermond served ashost for the open day ofplenary sessions anddiscussed, among otherthings, that there's noincorrect way to say Esri!

Right: Esri andhundreds of

partnersshowed theirwares on theexhibit floor.

Like their peersin other

enterprises,university

champions facemany obstaclesfrom those. . .who can’t seethe potential

return oninvestment in a

GISimplementation.

“

“


eye,” “ezri” or as Dangermond says it, “essri” areall quite acceptable. (As an ex long-time employeeI’m still using the first option!)

Awards The user conference always boasts awards.This year Dangermond gave the Secretary General of theExecutive Council of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed Ahmed AlBowardi the “Making a Difference Award.”Dangermond noted not only the Emirate’s use of GIS butalso its dedication to serving others – those in Haiti,Africa and Afghanistan. He also acknowledged the U.and the City of Frisco, Texas which won the President’sAward for its SAFER, public safety application. Thesolution includes 1700 live video cameras providingpublic safety personnel views inside buildings.

Carlos Salman Gonzalez, ESRI’s distributor inMexico, received the Lifetime Achievement Awardand gave an entertaining talk about being happy andfollowing your passions. Gil Grosvenor of NationalGeographic gave the Alexander Graham Bell medalto both Roger Tomlinson and Jack Dangermond.More than one hundred Special Achievement in GIS(SAG) awards were also announced.

Co-located Events The Education User Conferenceincluded sessions for educators just starting to use GIS intheir curricula to sessions aimed at universities aspiringto build true enterprise use of the technology. The keyideas in some of the former presentations addressedboth the opportunity to teach GIS itself and to use GISto help teach other subjects, such as conservation, socialstudies, and math. Speakers in a session aimed atuniversity-wide licence holders told stories that would bevery familiar to cities and towns or large-scale businessestrying to infuse GIS into every corner of the enterprise.In the case of the university, that means takingadvantage of GIS not just in the curriculum, but also inthe management of the physical plant, student safety,and marketing to prospective students. Like their peersin other enterprises, university champions face manyobstacles from those who fear technology or job loss orwho can’t see the potential return on investment in aGIS implementation.

Esri’s Senior Executive Seminar took a hard look atthe business value of GIS. Senior players fromgovernments around the globe (Mexico, Abu Dhabi,Australia, and New Zealand to name a few) shared theirstories of how GIS was improving their citizens’ lives aswell as saving money. US efforts were shared by JerryJohnston, Geographic Information Officer (GIO) for theUS Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and MichaelByrne (GIO, Federal Communications Commission) asthey spoke to how the US government’s data sharingsite, Data.gov should work and how the FCC is mappingwho has, and who does not have, broadband.

The Survey and Engineering Summit (SEGSummit), in its eighth year, is gaining momentum.Esri is spending more time and energy working withhardware and software players in these areas as

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evidenced by the platinum sponsorships from Trimbleand Javad for the User Conference, not just the SEGSummit. The SEG Summit is being spun into a newevent for 2011, to be held alongside the UserConference. The American Congress on Surveying(ACSM) and Esri will launch the first of three plannedannual Survey Summits next year.

Exhibit Hall Floor While attendee numbers wereup, exhibitor numbers seemed down. Still, the Esripartners had wares to show and stories to tell.Trimble’s “Yuma” tablet computer runs a full versionof ArcGIS, can be used as a portable navigationdevice, and can call home when necessary using a cellnetwork to upload field data in real time. Like manyconsumer devices, it sports two cameras, both frontand back for additional field verification photography.

Safe Software used the event to launch a new tagline, highlighting how its flagship software FME allowsfor “Spatial Data Mastery.” Safe was perhaps the onlycompany with a shipping product for ArcGIS 10 at theconference, suggesting a steep learning curve fordevelopers working in the new environment. The newversion of FME will help users mix and match 2D and 3Ddata, deliver data in the INSPIRE XML data model andeasily crunch data into Esri Community Maps templates.

Besides vendor booths, Esri also hosted showcasespecific demos aimed to illustrate solutions andworkflows for public safety, defence and GEOINT,environment and climate change.

Conclusion With ArcGIS 10 as a system, Esri andpartners have moved another step toward being allthings GIS to all people. If you need tools on a particularplatform, say an iPhone, they have them. If you need acloud implementation, they have them. If you need toolsfor a particular use, say agriculture or fire management,they have them. If you need free or simple-to-use toolsand data, they have them. The goal of this event is makeusers aware of all that Esri offers, while still making itrelevant to individual and organisational users’ needsand efforts to create a better world. Esri’s 2011International User Conference will be held on July 11–15in San Diego California.

• All images are courtesy of Esri.



conference report

Above: Manyconversations wereheld on a spacious

exhibition floor.

Year Study PSI value assessments for Europe

2000 The PIRA Study Investment value: €9.5 billion Economic value: €68 billion

2006 The MEPSIR Study Market size – all PSI: €27 billion

2006 The Pettifer Study Market size – weather and climatological services: €530 million

2007 FEBIS Study European business information market: €1.5 billion

2008 MICUS Study Market assessments in various Member States in three sectors



This article has been edited from a paper by theauthor, who in the full spirit of the re-use philosophy,cordially invites you to use and/or to pass on the linkwithin your networks and other forums. He waives allrights, particularly copyrights, to the paper under thecondition that you cite him as author. Readerswishing to read the full article can do so via ourwebsite, www.pvpubs.com – select GIS Professionalfrom the “Magazines” menu on the home page.

DESPITE VARIOUS STUDIES evincing the huge potentiallocked up in public sector information (PSI), thispotential is far from fully exploited. This failure iscaused mainly by the immensely complex, legallabyrinth surrounding PSI re-use. This complexity worksin two ways: public sector bodies do not comply withthe regulatory framework and re-users do not availthemselves of the legal instruments offered, resultingin an unexploited economic potential.

What makes the legalframework so complex is thetranscending nature of PSIre-use, as it blends fourareas of law – freedom ofinformation law, ICT law,intellectual property law andcompetition law – whichhave been regulated at aEuropean, national and evensectoral level, but inisolation. The fundamentalimpact that ICT has had onour society – rocking thelegal rules and underlyingprinciples and axioms –makes the picture even morecomplicated.

In this article I reverseengineer these legalframeworks anddemonstrate how they

interact, culminating in a conceptual framework thatallows public sector bodies and re-users (and courtswhere necessary) to apply and rely on the rulesinvolved and to bring to the surface areas for policyaction.

PSI a unique European opportunity We areexperiencing significant change in the way thatgovernments deal with their information bothinternally and towards the outside world. This isdriven by a changing society in which relations arebecoming increasingly horizontal and bytechnological developments within a ‘Europeanising’and globalizing economy. PSI – the blood in the veinsof government and society as a whole – is bothinstrumental for, and a part of, these changes.

PSI potential is not yet fully exploited TheReview of the PSI Directive (Brussels, 7.5.2009COM(2009) 212 final) describes the battles going on

in the trenches of PSI re-use between PSI holders andre-users, and among re-users themselves. Complaintsfrom re-users mirror a lack of knowledge on theproper application of the PSI policy by public sectorbodies (PSBs), resulting in high prices, restrictivelicensing conditions and discrimination.

The focus on short-term cost recovery, triggeredby pressure on PSBs to finance part of their activities,as opposed to benefits in the wider economy, resultsin competition between the public and the privatesectors, restrictive licensing and charging policies.PSBs seem very lukewarm to the basic idea of thecommercial re-use of their information. This is morethan a cultural issue, as it means changing internalprocedures and processes.

There are also practical issues hindering the re-use of PSI, such as the lack of information ondatasets available or the absence of acceptedstandards and metadata schemes. The InspireDirective may change this picture for theenvironmental spatial information sector. However,other sectors remain untouched.

Re-users find that PSBs fail to meet transparencyrequirements, not only with regard to licence termsthat they impose, but also in the build-up of pricingschemes. It is therefore unclear whether theconditions for re-use are non-discriminatory.

Re-users also complain about exclusivearrangements that are still in place and the failure ofmember states to take action against thesearrangements, which were to be phased out by 31

Reverse engineering Europe’s PSI re-use rulesAn integrated conceptual framework of rules for public sector bodies and re-users to relyon for the public sector and re-users of PSI, is proposed by lawyer Marc de Vries, in the

hope that it will identify areas for policy action.

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PSI & Europe rules for re-use


Chart 1: overview of the most important studies and reports on PSI potential.

The underlying principle of the PSI DirectiveAccording to consideration 25, the objectives are: “tofacilitate the creation of Community-wide informationproducts and services based on public sector documents,to enhance an effective cross-border use of public sectordocuments by private companies for added-valueinformation products and services and to limitdistortions of competition on the Community market,”

What is public sector information?In this article, PSI has the broad meaning adopted by theOECD: “information, including information products andservices, generated, created, collected, processed,preserved, maintained, disseminated, or funded by or forthe Government or public institution”, thus also includingpublic domain material, for instance, cultural heritageinformation. In the same context, ‘use’ means further re-use by business or individuals for commercial or non-commercial purposes, thus (only) excluding internal use bygovernmental organisations. [C(2208)36]


Experiencesvoiced by re-

users, inparticular SMEs,highlight thatthe Directive

fails to beeffective, ascosts, effortsand time forredress are

currently toohigh. . .

“

“


December 2008. Such arrangements basically blocknew market entry and, often, infringe competitionrules. Well-established re-users that rely on existing tiesand deals with the public sector defend their positionsquite fiercely, threatening to take to court those PSBsthat want to open up their resources and lower theirprices. Experiences voiced by re-users, in particularSMEs, highlight that the Directive fails to be effective,as costs, efforts and time for redress are currently toohigh in most countries. Moreover, re-users feardeterioration in the relationships with the public sectorsupplier with whom they need to work in future, anddread the time taken to obtain a court decision.

Concerns are also raised as to trends wherecontent in the public domain, including culturalheritage information, library information andscientific information paid for by the public purse, isbeing drawn (back) into the private domain not onlyby PSBs but also by organisations claiming copyrightsand database rights in return for digitizing thecontent, thus privatising public domain material.

Legal questions blend four areas of law Clearly,a large part of these battles point to legal issues. Putin the context of PSI re-use, this complexity can bestbe grasped by looking at the issues a re-user will faceto create a product based on PSI. These issues are:a. Can I get to the PSI — is there access? If so,b. Can I find the PSI — is there accessibility? If so,c. Can I re-use the PSI — do I have to get

authorization? If so,d. Are the conditions for PSI re-use fair — is there a

level playing field?Chart 3 mirrors these steps and connects applicablerules thereto.

The PSI Utility Equation The key to understandingthese legal frameworks is how they interact. Once thatis done, we can make the applicable legal frameworkwork for us in the spirit of the PSI Directive, allowingPSBs and re-users (and courts where necessary) to applyand rely on the rules involved and, at the same time, tobring to the surface areas for action.

So how do we untangle them? If we take themaximization of utility of PSI as a starting point, thefour determining factors – Access, Accessibility, Re-use limitations, Fair re-use conditions — can becaptured in the following formula:

Re-use limitations Note that this is not a mathematicalformula. Nor will the result actually be a concrete figure.It merely indicates the interconnection of the factors andtheir impact on the Utility of PSI, thus leaving untouchedissues such as whether the variables are discrete ordichotomous. In other words, the total utility of PSI is the

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result of: the access to PSI over the extent that PSI isaccessible, divided by the legal limitations to re-use the PSImultiplied by the presence of fair conditions for the re-useof the PSI. Let’s take a closer look.Access The legal right to get to PSI is dependent on theaccess regimes laid down in national and occasionallyEuropean freedom of information regimes (FOIAs), andsector specific regimes. By its very nature access is arelatively quiet area that builds on years of knowledge.Access regimes need to strike a balance between thepublic and democratic interests of knowing what thegovernment is doing versus the interests of government(e.g. security) and other stakeholders such ascompanies’ trade secrets or individuals’ privacyprotection. Obviously, it all starts with the factor ofaccess: if there is no right to access the PSI, no re-usecan exist (if access = 0, the PSI Utility = 0). Accessibility However, access alone does not dothe trick. In this digital age, where information isdetached from its physical carrier and the technicalcapacity to store information doubles every year,accessibility becomes the crucial factor. Accessibilityis the culmination point of the information paradox:



Chart 2: overview ofelements and

accompanying legalframework impacting

PSI re-use.

Chart 3: the four sequential elements determining the re-use potential of PSI.

PSI Utility =Access & Accessibility × Fair re-use conditions

Re-use limitations



. . . it has becomequite clear thata vast majorityof PSBs holdingPSI of interestto re-users are

reluctant toallow re-use

since they fearthe legal risks. . .

“

“

making more information available does not lead toan increase in usage, since it gets lost in the mass ofinformation available (a library is the best place tohide a book!). Thus, the accessibility factor is notonly a prerequisite for effective access, it is also amultiplier since it will significantly impact thepotential re-usability of PSI.

For this reason, in the PSI Equation, accessibilityis an exponent, hence significantly determining theoutcome of the ‘democratic part’ of the equation(jointly comprised by Access and Accessibility).

Increasingly, the accessibility factor is no longerregarded as just a technical issue, but a legal issue. Itraises the question whether there is a legal obligationfor governments to make PSI accessible and if so, howthis should be addressed, e.g. by regulation.Re-use limitations Even if there is access andaccessibility, it may still all be in vain, if a PSB limitsre-use of the PSI by exercising copyrights and, inparticular, database rights or, even worse, in absenceof these rights, simply relies on contractual meansdisallowing re-use. In this context, it is veryimportant to distinguish between access and re-use:a PSB can be under legal obligation to allow access,but this does not imply that it needs to allow(secondary) re-use of that information, as it can actagainst unauthorized copying and dissemination inits capacity as rights holder.

If the re-use limitations amount to fullprohibition, re-use becomes practically non-existent

since re-users will not be able to copy and makeavailable the PSI embedded in their products and inessence the only thing that remains is access.Ultimately, these impediments will impact the entireproduct reducing the Utility to almost zero (only thePSBs themselves will be able to exploit their PSI). Fair conditions Even if the first three conditions arefavourable — access, accessibility and authorisation —the re-use conditions such as pricing, format, and speedof delivery need to be fair. The conditions need to betransparent or the re-user will not be able to compete onthe market. For instance, if a competitor has a muchbetter or even exclusive deal with the PSB providing thePSI, or the PSB exploits the PSI itself in a discriminatorymanner, in the long run the re-user will not be able tocreate an economically sustainable product and,ultimately, will disappear from the market. In other words,if re-use conditions are unfair and discriminatory, thebeneficial effects of full competition will not be reaped.

Nothing as practical as a good theory! So howdo we make the equation instrumental in Europeanand national PSI re-use policy objectives?

First, the equation can help PSBs to grasp betterthe legal aspects surrounding PSI re-use. Having donesome empirical research in my home country, it hasbecome quite clear that a vast majority of PSBs holdingPSI of interest to re-users are reluctant to allow re-usesince they fear the legal risks it may have. In fact, onecan see a clear division between those PSBs that rely onthe exploitation of their own PSI, which havemeticulously studied their position and in particular the(legal) opportunities at hand to continue this businessmodel (like the Cadastre, the Chamber of Commerceand National Meteorological Services) and those PSBsthat did not traditionally exploit their own PSI as partof their core activities and, consequently, are veryhesitant to step into this legal terra incognita.

Clearly there is a role for national ministriesleading the PSI re-use dossier to educate theircolleagues. The Spanish Aporta project is a perfectexample of how much can be done, even withlimited resources.

Second, the Equation allows a connection of thefour determining factors to their ‘owners’ so thatthey get a face, name and address, and can be calledupon, as detailed above in Chart 4.

Access and Accessibility: enabling synergy Onthis basis, stakeholders, coordinating ministries andre-users are able to let the factors work by lining upthe right priorities and establishing leverage betweenaccess and accessibility.

Examples surfacing throughout Europe and the US— most notably data.gov.uk, which has already madeover 4000 datasets available, and the US data.gov —demonstrate that creating accessibility is the sparkthat ignites a whopping tidal wave of re-useinitiatives.

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Chart 4: the owners of the determining factors and their responsibilities totake re-use further

Access

Accessibility

Re-uselimitations

Fairconditions

Press, citizens,companies,researchers,politicians

Nationalgovernmentscreating a sounddata policy.Companiesoffering technicalsolutions

Coordinatinggovernmentsdealing with PSIre-use policy.Ministries ofFinance andEconomic Affairs.Politicians

Re-users,competitionauthorities

Citizens, companies and researchers just need to exercise theirrights. When these are jeopardized, the press should jump in,voicing the feelings of society. Increasingly, politicians areinterested in and appreciative of the publicity value of citizen rights.

National governments need to appreciate the strategic andeconomic value of a well-established (PS)informationinfrastructure, turning it into a national competitiveadvantage and seeking healthy collaboration with innovatoryprivate sector providers of technical solutions, obviouslyobserving competition rules.

Political courage, enhanced by the need to cut costs, willenable national governments to minimize the loss ofeconomic potential by disallowing PSBs from imposing re-uselimitations, and by optimizing the length and width of thepublic task. Transitory measures will be needed to cater tothe cash flow needs of PSBs, where incomes are to be (partly)rechanneled.

When the rules of the PSI Directive are not complied with, re-usershave a responsibility to exercise their rights. Where infringementsare grave, increasingly there will be a case to address nationalcompetition authorities that can act spontaneously or uponcomplaints if Article 101 or 102 TFEU is infringed.

Factor Owner Roles and responsibilities



Database & copyrights: kill limitations top-downAlthough enhanced access(ibility) will put pressure onPSBs, it will not impact their powers to exercise re-uselimitations since the Directive does not impose theobligation to allow re-use and explicitly states that it doesnot affect existing regimes of intellectual property rights,including those held by PSBs. This legal stronghold isfiercely defended by re-use savvy PSBs, backed by aregiment of in-house legal counsel and high budgets thatwill scare off almost any re-user, which may have beenconsidering picking up the boxing gloves.

Breaking this spell will require a top-downapproach, whereby sufficient political pressure andleadership will coerce (ministries formally in chargeof) these PSBs to change their modus operandi.

Interestingly, the Spanish Cadastre changed its re-use regime radically. It now gives away its data for freeand allows re-use practically without any limitations.And, quite amazingly, the UK Ordnance Survey, whichhad been fighting some re-users for years, has made asimilar move. Both would have been unthinkablewithout political support at the highest levels.

Let competition law set the boundaries WherePSBs are able to disallow re-use on the basis of theircopyrights and database rights, there is still hope tobe found in the basic principles of competition lawand European law. In 1995, in the Magill case, thethen European Court of Justice (ECJ) said that theexercise of intellectual property rights is limited bythe general rules of competition law. The caseconcerned three Irish broadcasters who refused tolicense rights to lists of TV programmes. The ECJ heldthat the exercise of copyright can lead to an abuse ofa dominant position (then Article 86 EC, now 101TFEU), thus making such conduct illegal.

Of course, interaction between intellectualproperty rights and competition law will differdepending on the PSI domain. Exertion of copyrightmay have a quite different impact in the field ofmeteorological information, where more routes toacquire the data are opening up. Whereas forcadastral information, in most member states, thegovernment has a legal monopoly to register, processand distribute. In other words, what works in PSIsector ‘A’ may not work in PSI sector ‘B’, so oneshould choose PSI (sectoral) battles carefully.

Let the CJEU do its job Finally, as there is an urgentneed to answer a number of ambiguities in PSI re-use, itwould be good if national courts would submitpreliminary questions to the Court of Justice of theEuropean Union (CJEU), which would be the mostefficient way to help both PSBs and re-users throughoutEurope better understand their rights and obligations.

Final observations I have tried to clarify the legalissues surrounding PSI re-use by reverse engineeringthe legal framework into determining factors (access,

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accessibility, limitations and fair conditions), thushoping to contribute to a better understanding of thiscomplex field of law. By examining the fourdetermining factors and connecting them to thevarious stakeholders and guardian angels, I haveunderlined the importance of bottom-up policies thatenable synergy (access through enhanced accessibility)and top-down policies that restrict re-use.

My observations have been largely limited to thenational level, leaving the role of the EuropeanCommission untouched. This is because PSI re-use rightsare exercised at member state level and, wherenecessary, in national courts. Apart from that, it is mystrong belief that it is now truly down to member statesto make PSI re-use work, taking into consideration thefull spectra of European policy measures that have beenundertaken over time, which is explained in Chart 5.

Wisely, the Commission has considered itpremature to amend either the substance or scope ofthe PSI Directive, calling for additional time for fullimplementation and allowing PSBs to gain moreexperience in applying the policies and rules correctlyand to address the implications and effects thereof,both towards re-users and internally.

In its last Communication, the Commissionstressed that its efforts will be focused on memberstates ensuring correct implementation andapplication (in particular in relation to exclusivearrangements), active dissemination of best practicesand further study of the functioning of the PSIregulatory framework.

The Commission has launched a thematic network(LAPSI – Legal Aspects of Public Sector Information)for the study of legal impediments that prevent PSI re-use. Also, the Commission has announced the launchof sectoral studies focusing on the identification ofdrivers for PSI re-use and it is likely that it will maintainthe funding for the PSI platform –www.epsiplatform.eu - which has gradually turnedinto an unprecedented source on PSI re-use.

In the long run there is hope for those that seek amore active (legislative) role by the Commission, as it hasannounced that it will undertake another review of thePSI Directive by 2012. At least until that time, it is downto us to make things work, without pointing to Brussels.



About the authorMarc de Vries Ba LLM hasprofessional degrees in bothlaw and economics (Utrecht1991). He has been active inthe field of PSI reuse for morethan 15 years, both atnational and European level.He has published variousbooks and articles on (legal)PSI re-use issues. Marc deVries [email protected]+31 653897002

Chart 5:overview of

European PSIre-use policy

measures overthe last two

decades

AcknowledgementsThe author would like tothank Chris Corbin, Robbin teVelde, Richard Pettifer, TonZijlstra and Marco Ricolfi fortheir highly valuablecomments on the first versionof this article.



Representativesagreed that

“test early, testoften” should

be a keymessage.

“

“IN MARCH 2010, the European Committee forStandardisation’s (CEN), Geographic InformationTechnical Committee (CEN/TC 287) convened aNational Spatial Data Infrastructure best practiceworkshop in Paris. The workshop provided anopportunity for representatives of TC 287, ISO/TC211 (the equivalent committee from theInternational Organisation for Standards) and theOpen Geospatial Consortium to discuss howcoordination between these standards bodies couldbe improved to better address European andinternational standards requirements. The workshopincluded representatives from participating usercommunities and led to general agreement forcloser, more formal cooperation between OGC andTC 287, as well as agreement to consider continuedimprovements in OGC and ISO/TC 211 coordination.Emphasis was also placed on the testing of standardsfor viability, fulfilment of purpose, ease of

implementation and improvements in interoperability.Representatives agreed that “test early, test often”should be a key message.

The three organisations are exploring theadoption of a common “Change Request /Requirements Registry” and examining ways inwhich XML schema for adopted standards can bemanaged more effectively and efficiently. Gatheringall requirements and change requests in an openforum visible to the public will also make thestandards process more transparent and moreresponsive to community needs. All parties agreedthat continued exploration of process improvementswould be valuable to the community, with particularfocus on improved coordination, reduction induplication of effort, and streamlining of standardscoordination processes.

These activities reflect growing appreciation ofthe role of standards in the “Digital Agenda” forEurope, as documented in various EuropeanCommission publications over the last two years.They also reflect a growing trend towardinternational cooperation in the standards world.

Background In 1998, OGC signed a cooperativeagreement and also became a Class A Liaisonorganisation with ISO/TC 211 (Geomatics). Sincethen, six OGC standards have been submitted to TC211 and gone through the formal ISO process tobecome joint OGC and ISO standards. These includethe OGC Simple Features (SF), Web Map Service

(WMS), and Web Feature Service (WFS) interfacestandards and the OGC Geography MarkupLanguage (GML), Filter (FE), and Observations andMeasurements (O&M) encoding standards.

A close correspondence between OGC standardsand ISO international standards supports marketdevelopment and policy development in Europe,Asia, and other world regions. The relationship alsoadds a vetting process that “puts more eyes on” thestandards, ensuring that they are as good as they canbe, addressing all relevant requirements.

ISO has a “Publicly Available Specification” (PAS)process that is faster and less demanding on humanresources, and the OGC may make more use of thisprocess in the future. Similarly, OGC membersrecently approved an OGC “Fast Track” process toallow rapid adoption of de-facto industry standardsand “community-of-interest" standard encodingsthat have been broadly implemented.

The OGC has had a formal liaison with CEN/TC287 since September 2005. The Liaison agreementwas approved by the TC 287 Secretariat for a three-year term, and continues in accordance with theprovisions of the Liaison letter issued to the OGC.

CEN/TC 287 and the OGC are currently engagedin discussions regarding cooperative activities thatwill help both organisations contribute moreeffectively to the development of a European SpatialData Infrastructure through the EU Inspire Directive.

Current environment: Location is hot in thestandards world! Numerous standards activitiesand standards development organisations (SDOs) –such as ISO, OASIS, W3C, open mobile alliance,buildingSMART International Alliance for Interoperability,IETF, 911 NENA, and OSGeo (see full names below) –have requirements for encoding and/or using location.Over the last five years, location has become anincreasingly important part of their standards work.OGC has worked with ISO/TC 211 for more than adecade, but since 2003, the OGC staff and memberrepresentatives have also become much more involvedin standards work in other SDOs. The primaryobjective of such work has been to ensure that theencoding and processing of location elements inother, non-OGC standards is, at a minimum,consistent with the OGC and ISO abstract models forcontent, information, and service.

Through this ongoing effort, the OGC plays a keyrole in ensuring the common and consistent use of

Partners for advancing interoperability Standardsbodies have been developing closer links and cooperating in developing new standards for

geographic information exchange. Steven Ramage of the Open Geospatial Consortium(OGC) explains how they have been forging links with ISO and Europe’s CEN.

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developing new standards


Steven Ramage isExecutive Director,Marketing andCommunications atthe Open GeospatialConsortium.

13:46 Page 2

The “rippleeffect” ofstandards-

within-standards. . .

highlights theimportance of

ourco-ordination

efforts.

“

“


location/geography across the spectrum ofinformation and communication technology(ICT) standards. Location and geographyare important in many industries, butoften these industries are not aware ofstandards activities outside their domainsof interest. In an era of rapidly evolvingtechnology and business requirements,each of the standards organisations could,without active coordination, developsubstantially different geospatial interfaceand encoding standards that would resultin widespread confusion and lack ofinteroperability.

Viewed from a different perspective, location andgeography are also important in localities, countriesand regions, and it is very important for agencies andregional commissions to deliver governmentrequirements for interoperability into industry-focused standards activities. Government agenciesand commissions also play an important role inadvancing market uptake of standards. For example,the Inspire Directive provides an importantcoordination function to improve the sharing ofgeospatial data and services across politicalboundaries. Inspire documents make extensivereferences to OGC, ISO and CEN standards.

OGC Alliance Partners OGC standards, especiallythe OGC Geography Markup Language EncodingStandard (GML), have been integrated orincorporated into standards from other standardsorganisations. The OGC has formal relationships withthese organisations to support standards coordination,harmonisation, education and outreach. OGC alsohas alliance partnerships (primary alliances forstandards coordination) with:

• buildingSMART alliance and buildingSMARTInternational

• Defence Geospatial Information Working Group(DGIWG)

• Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association (GSDI)• IEEE GRSS (Institute of Electrical and Electronics

Engineers - Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society)• IEEE Technical Committee 9 (Sensor Web)• International Organisation for Standards (ISO)• Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)• National Emergency Number Association (NENA)• National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS)• Open Grid Forum (OGF)• Open Mobile Alliance (OMA)• Organisation for the Advancement of Structured

Information Standards (OASIS)• OSGeo (Open Source Geospatial Foundation)• Taxonomic Data Working Group (TDWG)• Web3D• Workflow Alliance• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

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These alliances are established to support broadstandards coordination, harmonisation, educationand outreach. The OGC also has a number of otherpartner organisations – see (www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/alliancepartners). Already OMA, OASIS and IETFhave leveraged OGC standards to address location intheir own fields.

The IETF and “the ripple effect” The “rippleeffect” of standards-within-standards, such as theOGC’s GML standard embedded in the IETF PIDF-LO(Presence Information Data Format – LocationObject) standard, highlights the importance of ourcoordination efforts.

OGC staff have collaborated with the IETF since2005. The mission of the IETF is to make the Internetwork better by producing high quality, relevanttechnical documents (Requests for Comments –RFCs) that influence the way people design, use, andmanage the Internet. Five years ago, the IETF formedthe GEOPRIV Working Group which is chartered to:

1) Define privacy mechanisms for location payloadstransmitted by the Internet

2) Develop and refine representations of location inInternet protocols.

The group analyses the authorisation, integrity, andprivacy requirements for the creation, storage, anduse of representations of location. The group hasnow published a number of internet RFCs. Based onthis work, technical amendments have been made orproposed to numerous other internet standards –ones that deal with VoIP, emergency numberingservices, the mobile Internet and so forth.

The key document providing a commongeospatial encoding for these standards is a GMLapplication schema that is also an OGC Best Practice.This GML application schema is referenced in avariety of Internet RFCs:

1) An IETF Location Object (LO) is defined in RFC5491 as a GML application schema (OGC BestPractice document 06-142r1).


Above: Figure 1 – Anexample of the ripple

effect: An OGCapplication schema isembedded in the IETF

Location Object, whichis now embedded in

the JAIN SLEEApplication Server.

(Figure from Mobicentsopen source project).



S


. . . the push forinternational

standardsinfluences SDOs

to “thinkglobally”.

“

“

2) Then LO is referenced with normative text in otherIETF standards where normative text appears in codeand applications that have a “minor” geospatialcomponent, such as JAIN SLEE (Java standard forService Logic Execution Environment). The JAINinitiative has defined a set of Java technology APIsthat enable the rapid development of Java-basednext generation communications products andservices for the Java platform.

When part of an OGC standard is adopted for use byan organisation such as the IETF, the OGC standardcontent “ripples” into other applications, domains,and business process chains (Figure 1). This is onereason why working with other SDOs is so important.

Embedded standards help ensure futureinteroperability, despite hyper-competition inmarkets. For example, the mobile applicationscommunity has been developing non-interoperablesilos of “interoperability” for market advantage, justas the GIS community did prior to OGC. But openstandards are gaining a foothold: The deCarta DrillDown Server, which implements OGC OpenLSstandards, is implemented in Samsung and T-Mobileapplications. And Ericsson’s recently announcedMobile Sensor Actuator Gateway implements OGC’sSWE standards.

Global standards Global commerce and growth ofthe global information infrastructure depend oninternational standards, and the push forinternational standards influences SDOs to “thinkglobally”. This means seeking input from globalstakeholders and it also means coordinating withother standards bodies. Commerce within Europehas benefited from European standards and at thesame time Europe’s international competitivenessbenefits from strong European participation ininternational standards bodies, including ISO TC/211and the OGC. As explained in the Digital Agendadocuments mentioned at the beginning of thisarticle, commerce and international competitivenessdepend increasingly on active engagement in globalstandards activities.

Geospatial information technology stakeholdersaround the world benefit from the growing influenceof OGC and ISO/TC 211. They also benefit fromgrowing cooperation and strengthening ofrelationships with regional standards bodies, such asCEN/TC 287 and other ICT SDOs. It really all comesdown to the notion that the value of a network ofcommunicating nodes (people or machines) increaseswith the size of the network. OGC, ISO and CEN playcritical roles in growing the European and global ICTnetwork.

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columnist adena schutzberg

Adena Schutzberg isPrincipal of ABS

Consulting Group Inc.and Executive Editor

of DirectionsMagazine,

www.directionsmag.com

www.gisprofessional.co.ukjoining the geography jigsaw

. . . potentialearly majority

individuals whomay know of

practicecontinue to fearit and denounce

it withoutexploration.

“

““THIS IS THE YEAR OF. . .” began many predictionsrelated to geospatial technology for 2010. So manytechnologies and process were to “come of age”and become “widely used”. Did they? With amajority of the year behind us, sadly, there’s been farmore buzz about clones of existing technologiesthan uptake of the best location focused offerings.

A year after Foursquare, a mobile social location-based game, was the breakout hit at South By Southwestin March 2009, 2010 was to be the year of location-based services. What perhaps happened instead was that2010 became the year of the “check-in”. That is, moreand more mobile services and games tried to figure outhow to get users to confirm their location at a musicvenue, coffee shop or anywhere else they happened tobe. The companies behind them began to link up withadvertisers, slowly bringing in some well needed, andsometimes the first, non-venture cash.

In August those who checked-in with a service

called Loopt at various California airports or taco trucks,received 2-for-1 Virgin America plane tickets to a newroute to Mexico. The promotion drove lots of check-insand plane reservations. Still, per Forrester Research, just4% of online US adults do any sort of checking-in.

Check-in shut down Also adding to the check-inexcitement was Facebook’s launch of Facebook Places inAugust. It’s yet another check-in opportunity, albeit withsome quirks, including the ability for individuals to check-in their friends. And, as several industry watchers pointedout, the reaction the new Facebook got was just thesame as that for its predecessors: “Privacy?” The rush ofinterest in Places included too little coverage of whatFacebook was offering and its potential benefits and farmore about how to “shut it off”. While this may be theyear of the “check-in” for early adopters, potential earlymajority individuals who may know of practice continueto fear it and denounce it without exploration.

Another hyped technology for 2010 was augmentedreality (AR), that is, using technology to overlay additionalinformation onto the real world. Many readers will befamiliar with it from TV sports; AR an enhanced view ofspeeding hockey pucks and overlain first down lines forAmerican football. In the world of geospatial data it canmean looking through one’s smartphone at a streetscapeto see venues of interest or Tube stations overlain on thehorizon. Other applications help travellers get moreinformation about historic buildings or identify amountain on the horizon. For the construction industry,there is serious research underway into how an accuratepicture of underground utilities can be overlaid on a real

world scene to help excavator operators and othersplanning to open up our streets. But for most ARremains a toy – fun apps to amuse and entertain – butreally are solutions in search of a problem. Many, manypeople are happy to use a map or simply point a smartphone at a building to receive that same information.

Volunteers for GI Closer, perhaps, to the world of thegeospatial professional was the continued interest inuser generated geospatial data, sometimes referred toas volunteered geographic information (VGI). Twoprojects, OpenStreetMap and Ushahidi, tapped theirexisting communities and recruited and trained others toprovide mapping, services and communication effortsduring and after the Haiti earthquake. In comparison,the dozens of apps that appeared and were offered tothe public to capture and track the location and damagefrom BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico seemed to be awaste of the public’s energy. It was unclear in too many

cases how much data, and of what value, was collectedand how and with whom it was shared. VGI is valuable,but clearly we are still learning how to get the most outof it in times of calm and crisis.

The final trend buzzing around geospatial and othercommunities this year was cloud computing. Perhapsseveral dozen geospatial companies with “cloud” in theirnames or as part of their offerings popped up in 2010. Stillthere continues to be healthy skepticism on the requiredinvestments, returns, and security. And, as Oracle’s CEOLarry Ellison noted two years ago, it’s still quite a fuzzy idea:

“The interesting thing about cloud computing is thatwe’ve redefined cloud computing to include everythingthat we already do. I can’t think of anything that isn’tcloud computing with all of these announcements. Thecomputer industry is the only industry that is morefashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m anidiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about.What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When isthis idiocy going to stop?”Source: C|net http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-10052188-80.html#ixzz0yfG6WoaY

Ellison may be quite right. What’s going on ingeospatial may be a rerun or renaming of what isalready in place. That indicates to me a lag betweenthose “inventing” the trends and those meant toexplore, champion and implement them. At threequarters gone, 2010 geospatial technology seems tobe in a bit of a holding pattern as we reinvent thewheel and try to understand how and why it spins.

More fashionable than fashion? Not all that is forecasthappens. Not all that happens makes much sense. Adena Schutzberg looks over the geospatial

trends as 2010 slides into the final quarter and asks, are we trying to reinvent the wheel?

A


THE AVAILABILITY and use of location based data forthe public sector, commerce and the humble citizen isnow well established and still increasing. This isfacilitated by new and ever improving computer,telecoms and satnav systems and by increasingopenness of PSI providers prompted by UK and EUpolicies. The growth of the internet and the ubiquity ofsmarter mobile phones have reduced disparities inglobal access to information and have been achieved inpart by unprecedented international standardisation ofcommunications protocols. The availability of accurateGPS signals have also enabled very accuratepositioning of people and assets in real time.

In the UK and at the leading edge ofdevelopments we have Sir Tim Berners-Lee anddata.gov.uk pressing for access to more and betterformatted PSI; we have a huge demand for bothfixed and mobile broadband; and we have constantinnovation in positioning technology to overcomeGPS weaknesses – particularly in the urbanenvironment or even inside buildings.

Although the private sector is doing much of the

innovation, it does rely on governments to help. TheEuropean Commission and Parliament are keen toensure that these developments continue to ourcommon benefit. Beyond the Inspire stuff there arelesser-known but perhaps even more importantinitiatives being pursued by the Commission.

Getting rid of the red flags There is an inherenttension between standardization and innovation –particularly if the former becomes embedded in legalrequirements that are enforced to the detriment ofnew developments, which might benefit commerce,consumers or the environment. We used to quotethe law requiring a man with a red flag to walk infront of the first motorcars. Now we might feel thatsome laws on access to data and rights to privacy arecompletely outdated in the age of the Internet.

The European Commission has launched a publicconsultation to help review the Directive on the re-use of PSI that was adopted in 2003. PSI coversmaps, weather data, legislation, traffic, etc. that canbe re-used by anyone for innovative products such ascar navigation systems, weather forecasts, and travelapplications. The Commission estimated (in 2006)that re-used public data generated business worth€27 billion every year. The questionnaire can befound at:

http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/ipm/forms/dispatch?form=psidirective2010

Commission Vice-President for the DigitalAgenda, Neelie Kroes, says: ‘Better and more use ofPSI has great potential to generate new businessesand jobs while providing consumers with morechoice and better value for money. The mobile appsmarket, partly based on PSI-generated data, couldgrow to €15 billion by 2013. We cannot lose out onthis opportunity. We need to consider whether andhow the EU rules on re-use of PSI should beamended to fully unlock PSI’s economic potential.’

The Commission is reviewing the scope, chargingfees and licensing of data, the definition and digitalformat available to users; practical measures like theneed for awareness-raising through national webportals; and the effects of changes that have takenplace and/or barriers that still exist.

There are also tensions between intellectualproperty rights (IPR) and ICT standardisationprocesses. The Commission and The European PatentOffice (EPO) are jointly organising a conference in

Brussels on 22nd November with the objective offinding policy solutions for identified challenges.http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/ict/files/10-08-24_announcement_of_the_event.pdf

No one with a mobile phone that worksanywhere in the world or a web browser accessinginternational websites can possibly argue thatstandardisation stifles innovation. We have ISO, CENand the OGC (see elsewhere) to help in our ownmarkets. However, as the promoters of this event say,“as key ICT standards are perceived by many ascritical technology platforms with a strong publicinterest dimension, concerns are voiced thatIntellectual Property Rights (IPRs) and their potentialfor exclusivity may hinder or preventstandardisation”. The conference flyer continues:“Consensus building between stakeholders onrelevant technical matters often leads to standards. .. But the rights of those owning intellectual propertyincorporated in standards compliant solutions alsoneed to be taken into account and rewarded.”Among other topics the conference is to address: • How to ensure certainty on the availability and

continuity of essential IP rights for licensing?• What is the best relation between standards and

open source software and freely availabletechnologies?

PSI, IPR and Sunspots The European Commission has much on itsplate at present with public sector information (PSI) and intellectual property rights (IPR)very much to the fore. But shining up there in the sky is something more worrying, says

our Eurofile correspondent, Robin Waters.

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The mobile appsmarket, partlybased on PSI-

generated data,could grow to€15 billion by

2013.

“

“

Robin Waters is anindependent consultant. Heis also chair of the AGI’sINSPIRE Action WorkingGroup and secretary of theBSi IST36 StandardsCommittee for GeographicInformation.


eurofile

E

It’s the sun what might stop it! Arguably evenmore important than these two legally-enmesheddebates is the possibility of our current power,telecommunication and satnav infrastructure beingcatastrophically damaged by increased sunspotactivity in 2012/13 at the next ‘solar maximum’.

In a written answer to a question posed by twoPolish MEPs, Mrs Geoghegan-Quinn, theCommissioner for Research, Innovation and Science,admitted that there were substantial concernsbecause recent technologies and business plans havebeen deployed during a solar minimum. According toone US study a geomagnetic superstorm mightgenerate an economic loss of up to $70 billion,including the disabling of about 80 satellites, andadditional impacts through the potential failure ofsatellite navigation systems.

Those additional impacts might not be veryserious for the loss of a ‘find-your-nearest-pizza’, butmight also include the loss of vital navigationsystems – and, at the very least, increase the requiredseparation of aircraft in crowded airspaces. In acouple of years time when drivers who have not usedan ordinary route finding map for at least ten yearswill right up lovers lane!

But, if the extra radiation begins to affect theinternet infrastructure (in 1859 many telegraphlines succumbed to a previous event) then even

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those of us that work athome are going to beaffected. No telecoms forseveral days – it doesn’tbear thinking about.

Big mistake? But back tothe legal stuff. Former UKprime minister Tony Blair hasrecently written thatlegislating for Freedom ofInformation was his biggest mistake! Will DavidCameron rue the day that he signed up to the ‘greateropenness’ agenda set by Gordon Brown? Both appearto be in thrall to Sir Tim Berners-Lee and it appears tobe taken as read that more open access togovernment data is a “good thing”.

Yes Minister’s Sir Humphrey would not of courseagree – and may well have a trick or two up his sleeveto frustrate the new coalition government’s ambitionsin this respect. But some of us remember the whitespaces on Ordnance Survey maps – the evil empiresurely targeted every one of them as a probablemilitary airfield. If it’s in the real world it is very difficultto hide it – whether of military, commercial orpersonal value. The days of the censor are gone; onlythe sun can stop us now! (No offence to newspaperproprietors intended!)

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• Course modules supported by keytextbooks, software and on-line resources

• Flexible study options - full distance learning or distance learning plus residential workshops

• No examinations - full continuousassessment, plus credit for prior learning or experience

• Networking with an internationalcommunity of GIS professionals

UNIGIS is a partnership between Huddersfield, Manchester Metropolitan andSalford universities that delivers postgraduate GIS courses by distance learning.With twenty year's experience, and as a founder member of the prestigious UNIGISInternational network, we provide high quality courses that meet the requirementsof busy GI professionals and of those seeking to enter the GIS industry.

Our courses can be completed entirely by distance learning, although we also offer optional residential workshops. Assessment is by coursework only - there areno examinations. We support you with personal tutors, online help and adedicated UNIGIS office.


eurofile

Sunny times could spelltrouble ahead for someof our high-techsystems.



LEGISLATION ALONE is typicallyineffective at changing public orinstitutional behaviour. So it isunlikely that the INSPIRE Directiveobligations on EU member stateswill, of themselves, have the desiredeffect of creating interoperable pan-European location data. Nor willthey be enough for the increasedprosperity, efficiency and societalbenefits that properly standardisedservices and datasets could achieve.

Traditional publishing models are often cited as thegreatest barrier to exchange of data - and thereforeinnovation - in the digital content world. Relaxing thesemodels requires considerable behavioural change inorder that Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s dream of “linked data”across the internet can really happen.

Recent history shows how legislation often has

little more than a supporting role in realising thestrongest societal benefits. The change in smokinghabits for example is dominated by awareness. Verylittle has been credited to legislation on labelling andsmoking in public spaces. Ultimately research andpublicity has driven smoking levels down from 82%of male smokers in 1948 to 22% in the UK today,with corresponding drops in lung cancer rates as aconsequence. Like smoking it will be the resolve ofthe data providers to kick old habits based on theknowledge that the alternatives are better.

The Inspire legislation is a component of change,but it is the commitment to best practice in data andservices for location information that will form the

basis of behavioural change in our treatment oflocation data. This is the focus of Eurogeographicsand its partners in the ESDIN (European Spatial DataInfrastructure and best practice Network) project. Itis our ambition to make Inspire “useful”.

The combination of best practice, interoperablespecifications, and an active community network willhelp to unlock digital datasets and release the manysocietal benefits of shared location information.Together, this combination can build a European LocationFramework that will make Inspire useful. (see Figure 1)

Understanding requirements: a propositionsapproach Changing the pricing and licensingmodels in order to maximise the use of location datarequires a determined effort to understand userneeds. But even if all users (and potential users) areknown it takes new skills to understand all of theirimplicit – as well as explicit - needs. The ESDIN

project now employs user-centred design techniquesto unlock these implicit needs, working with themain beneficiaries of future harmonised pan-European data. This will take us beyond what ismandated by Inspire to what becomes genuinelyuseful in practice.

ESDIN examines new business models from aproposition perspective. The approach is to look atwhat will meet the needs of the particular marketand users and evaluate the gap between the currentsituation and what would meet their needs. Theproject then proposes best practices that enablethese future uses of national mapping data in a pan-European context.

ESDIN makes Inspire useful Maximising the use of Europeanlocation data is essential argues David Overton of Eurogeographics and colleagues. TheESDIN project goes beyond Inspire requirements to make practical, desirable and usable

mapping products and services.

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ESDIN: maximising location


Figure 1: Thecomponents needed tomake INSPIRE useful.

Figure 2: Migrating existing harmonisedpan-European specifications into the

Inspire framework.



. . . the qualityof the dataneeds to be

assessed. Wewill then be in a

position toconfidentlyedge-match,

generalise andapply consistent

uniqueidentifiers.

““

Changing the offer The European Commissionwants a European spatial data infrastructure (ESDI)built from the national spatial data infrastructures inMember States.

EuroGeographics has been harmonising nationalmapping datasets to create European level products likeEuroGlobalMap, EuroRegionalMap and EuroBoundaryMap for over a decade. This experience iscritical in extending the harmonisation process to largerscales, larger regions and greater numbers of themessuch as all of those encompassed by Annex I of Inspire.(co-ordinate references; administrative units; transportnetworks; cadastral parcels; hydrography; andgeographical names).

To create the ESDI, EuroGeographics will help allmember states to prepare their data for Inspire byproposing consolidated data specifications.Interoperable topographic and administrativereference data from European NMCAs then becomespossible at both European and global levels.

The ESDIN project goes beyond Inspirerequirements to make practical, desirable and usablemapping products and services. So it proposes“extensions” that still conform to the genericconceptual model of Inspire (see Figure 2). Thespecifications developed in ESDIN will significantlyraise the prospects of success for the Europeanspatial data infrastructure.

Applying the benefits of best practices As abaseline, in the creation of pan-European harmoniseddata, the quality of the data needs to be assessed. Wewill then be in a position to confidently edge-match,generalise and apply consistent unique identifiers. Allof this happens in a dynamic environment withdifferent providers updating their data at differentrates. All these processes are becoming increasinglyautomated, and the ESDIN project is proposing bestpractices to embrace these advances.

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For example ESDIN provides a model to enablediscovery and evaluation of services based on quality.It also goes further to create a web-based dataquality evaluation tool for reference information.Once the quality of data has been evaluated andbrought up to the desired specification, the trans-national edge-matching process and the applicationof unique identifiers can take place. ESDIN proposesbest practice for services that perform these steps.Together with the project’s work on generalisationand transformation, these allow sustainable dataconnectivity within cross-border areas whilst meetinguser needs like delivery of incremental updates. Aharmonised pan-European offering can then becreated and readily maintained from multiple feedsof national data.

And with the growth in usage of data by broadercommunities, services are needed to automaticallyauthenticate the use (and distribution rights) of datato users. ESDIN therefore contributes to the OGC’s(Open Geospatial Consortium) InteroperabilityExperiment on Authentication. ESDIN has alreadycreated an open source extension to the Degreesoftware and has also created a federation ofmapping agencies and academic institutions withservices administered using this open source basedauthentication service.

Making it grow: A European LocationFramework community Specifications and bestpractice are never completed in the dynamic world ofgeographic information. The macro environment willalways provide new technologies, ideals, rules andchallenges, which will necessitate a constantiteration of best practices and specifications.

We are already growing our community. From the 19members of the ESDIN consortium of mapping agencies,academics and commercial developers we are nowembracing more “non-beneficiary” members. In the main



ESDIN is a collaboration of 19 organisations part funded under the European Commissions eContentplus programme. Intentionally set up toinclude the supply chain for a European spatial data infrastructure the partners include 12 national mapping and cadastral agencies (NMCAs)from the EuroGeographics Association plus commercial and academic developers, solution suppliers and researchers.

EuroGeographics has been instrumental in pulling together the concepts and consortium behind ESDIN. The head office staff projectmanage and coordinate the ambitious ESDIN workload as well as leading three of the 12 work packages.

The partners are:• EuroGeographics• Bundesamt für Kartographie und Geodäsie (Germany)• NGI Belgium• IGN France• Statens kartverk (Norway)• Geodeettinen laitos (Finland)• Lantmäteriverket (Sweden)• Kort & Matrikelstyrelsen (Denmark)• National Land Survey Finland /Maanmittauslaitos (Finland)

• Interactive Instruments• Bundesamt für Eich- und Vermessungswesen (Austria)• Geodan Software Development & Technology• 1Spatial Group• National Datacentre University of Edinburgh• National Agency for Cadastre and Real Estate Publicity (Romania)• National Technical University of Athens• Institute of Geodesy, Cartography and Remote Sensing (Hungary)• Helsinki University of Technology• Beuth Hochschule für Technik Berlin

The ESDIN Project

these are mapping agencies that do not benefit from theproject’s eContentplus funding, but identify that thebenefits to their communities far outweigh the cost ofcontribution to the project. The same can be true for dataproviders, solution vendors and end-user beneficiaries ofpan-European offerings (such as insurers, academics,cross-border projects and services, European EnvironmentAgencies and other federated organisations).

As the project draws to a close (in February 2011)EuroGeographics will facilitate platforms for thisgrowing community that will help others develop,extend and adopt the services, specifications and bestpractice (See Figure 3). We hope this will generate newintellectual property, collaborations and sustainableproducts and services in the journey toward the fully

harmonised production of pan-European offerings fromnational spatial data Infrastructures.

EuroGeographics brings this togetherEuroGeographics members are all part of a community ofEuropean national mapping, land registry and cadastralagencies. The ESDIN project has been able to fostercollaboration between this community, the best commercialdevelopers in our sector, and the users and service providersin the public, private and academic sectors. ESDIN hastherefore provided a unique opportunity to crystallise theexperience and innovation needed across the whole supplychain of the European spatial data infrastructure.

Maintaining, supporting and facilitating theproposed European Location Framework clearly needsleadership and commitment. Through the leadershipof ESDIN and participation in related pan-Europeanprojects such as EuroRoads, RISE and EuroGeoNames,EuroGeographics members and its head office teamhave proved more than capable of taking this role.

About the authorsDavid Overton, EuroGeographics; Jörgen Hartnor,Lantmäteriet, Sweden; Anja Hopfstock, Bundesamt fürKartographie und Geodäsie, Germany; Laila.Aslesen &Morten Borrebaek, Statens Kartverk, Norway; ChrisHiggins, EDINA,UK.

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Figure 3: The processneeded forsustainabledevelopment of theEuropean LocationFramework.




. . . unlike withyour toaster,

there arerestrictions on

who canactually use the

product andwhere it can be

installed.

“

“THE SOFTWARE INDUSTRY has always been in a stateof permanent revolution, driven by customer needfor that which is “faster and better”, combined witha philosophy within the industry to strive for theinnovative and the new. This revolution has fuelledcommercial competition, with companies trying tooutdo one another to be the most innovative, andthrough that increase their profit margin.

But this was the limit of the revolution. Newer,better, more innovative: these were superlatives thatremained in the domain of software development.This product-based thinking never crossed theboardroom table into the way that software andsolutions were actually purchased; until recently.

Traditionally, and in the majority of cases today,software is bought in much the same way as someonebuys a toaster, i.e. you purchase the product outright,with the price determined by the cost of production,plus a healthy profit margin.

In some sectors there is a “maintenance” fee,which is normally paid in exchange for the correctionof bugs, and upgrades and improvements. In thepublic sector, this means that most software incurstwo costs: a one-off cost to buy the software and anongoing cost to keep it maintained.

Another element of this traditional model islicensing, which in essence means, unlike with yourtoaster, there are restrictions on who can actually usethe product and where it can be installed. Though theindustry needs a method to defend itself against piracy,licensing is far too often inflexible and expensive.

SaaS In addition to cloud computing, Software as aService (SaaS) is becoming one of the key businessmodels that moves away from the traditional model.Though its precise origins might be open to debate, it isundeniable that recent years have seen significantgrowth. SaaS, put very simply, is the process of usingsoftware over the Internet, rather than installing itlocally on the user’s PC or system. The process has manybenefits, though two tend to stand out from the crowd.

Firstly, you pay for what you use, when you use it.Consider: you use two computers, one at work, one athome – traditional software licensing would require youto pay twice, not so with SaaS. Consider also that if youuse a piece of software for only one hour a day –traditional software licensing means you pay the sameas someone using it for eight hours a day; not so withSaaS. Secondly, although software costs money,whether locally installed or accessed over the web, withSaaS, the vendor hosts your data, hosts the application,upgrades the application etc, all of which reduces thehardware/infrastructure costs to the customer.

In both instances, the advantage to the end user isthrough cost savings, which is always an advantage, butnever more so than today, especially in the public sector.

SbS Aligned Assets has always liked to consider itselfpart of the revolutionary brigade, and by focusingsolely on gazetteer solutions, we’ve always managedto remain flexible and responsive to customer needs.Despite this, we too had focused on trying to be thebest in terms of software and our business modelhad remained relatively unchanged since ourinception over 14 years ago.

As a keen watcher of the GI world it has beenhard to ignore the changes occurring in the deliveryof software and as someone who spends a largeamount of their time conversing with people in thepublic sector, the horrendous effects of budget cutsis something I see daily. Change was needed, whichis why we created Software by Subscription (SbS).

We liked the way that SaaS removed the upfrontcosts of buying software, but we weren’t convinced byall the arguments for hosted solutions. For one thing,we’ve all had the experience of our internet servicegoing down – it’s hugely annoying, but even more so ifyou’re reliant on that connection to do your work.

More importantly though it’s a question ofmindset – people, quite rightly, like to have control.There will always be things that interrupt thefunctioning of systems, but what people like is thecontrol to get it back working themselves, ratherthan blind reliance on a third party.

And so was born SbS – a business model in whichthe user pays one simple, unrestricted subscriptionfee, with all the support and maintenance included,but the security and flexibility of having control overhow and where that software is installed.

It’s all about choice I’m naturally going to be anadvocate of SbS, but what I’m more in favour of ischoice. Too often the end user wants X, but has tosettle for Y because that’s all the market will offer.

Some people will like the security that comes frompaying for software and ongoing maintenance, hosted oninternal infrastructure (traditional model), whilst otherswill be more than happy to hand all of this over to a thirdparty in exchange for a fee (SaaS). Some on the otherhand will prefer a combination to two (SbS), and thenthere are also those looking to embrace open source.

We live in a world of market forces but it shouldbe the customer who dictates the market and notthe other way around.

To find out more about Software by Subscription,visit www.aligned-assets.co.uk/sbs

Subscribe or pay-as-you go? How you pay for software ischanging. Carl Hancock from Aligned Assets believes that changes in the way software is

delivered can revolutionise how supplier companies do business with the public sector.

software delivery models

Carl Hancock is the ExecutiveMarketing Coordinator atAligned Assets (www.aligned-assets.co.uk), a companythat specialises in gazetteermanagement software. Oneof his primary focuses is inmarket intelligence and theconversion of this into new,cost-effective solutions forboth the public and theprivate sector.


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... a growingbody of

evidence thatgeospatial can

bedemonstratedto make real

cashablesavings with

rapid paybackof investment...

“

“A National Conference on Location Economics London, Tuesday 2nd November, 2010 (10:00am -4:30pm) Special early bird rate available untilMonday 11th October

Keynote Speaker: Alan Smart, Chief economist,ACIL Tasman, AustraliaGeo-economics – how economists evaluateinvestments in geospatial

Alan is Harvard trained and has previously been agovernment minister in Australia. He has morerecently been in the vanguard of establishing thevalue of national investments in location-basedapplications.

Whichever way you look at it, public and privatesector executives are going be very focused oncutting costs over the next few years. Fortunately,there is a growing body of evidence that geospatialcan be demonstrated to make real cashable savingswith rapid payback of investment in many

applications, from supply chain optimisation,customer relationship management and enterpriseresource planning, including many customer-facingservices. Come and learn from economists and seniormanagers who have successfully developed robustfinancial business cases and the experts in how topresent the arguments at chief executive andpolitical levels.

The event will include presentations on:

• Location in the political agenda• Transport route optimisation: the universal

solution• Jumping through hoops - the practicalities of

board approval• Evidence-based decision making • Ubiquitous Location• The scene of the crime - the business case for

location based mobile applications• Dispelling the ‘Intangible’ Myth

C: AGI Annual Awards 2010The Royal College of Physicians, London, Thursday25th November, 2010 (18:45pm to 23:00pm)

One of the main AGI annual events, every year, AGIjudges and presents a set of industry awards. This isjust one of the ways in which AGI encourages bestpractice, innovation and maximum use of geographicinformation. It is also a great way for our membersto get actively involved and be recognised for theirefforts and achievements.

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AS YOU READ THIS the AGI GeoCommunity ’10conference will no doubt be over, but that does notmean the close of the AGI year by a long stretch!Below are just some of the activities and events stillto run in the AGI calendar. Further details andbookings at: www.agi.org.uk/events/

A: AGI Northern Ireland: Quick Savings,Quick Wins using Geographic InformationW5, Belfast, Wednesday 27th October, 2010(08:45am to 13:45pm)

In the current economic climate both public andprivate sectors are coming under increasing pressure toreduce costs, increase efficiencies and realise greaterbusiness benefits. The utilisation of GIS has deliveredsignificant efficiencies and benefits to many localorganisations and the technology is increasinglyrecognised by Government as having potentialstrategic and other benefits in a range of areas, acrossmany sectors of the economy, for example:

• delivering more for less, • better service delivery, • enabling the provision of innovative new

services, and • enhanced interaction and transparency with

other businesses and the public

Registered delegates will have the opportunity to beinformed on how GIS can add value to corporatedata sources, streamline operational procedures,improve services and provide efficient and effectiveevidence-based decision making in an everchallenging environment.

There will be two main sessions, with themorning starting with a keynote industry overview ofcurrent and projected national developments in GI,followed by a number of varied presentationsfocused on local regional examples in NorthernIreland, with a number of practical demonstrationsof how GIS is delivering effective benefits, relativelyquickly, in a number of organisations. Also includedis an exhibition area and of course, there exists theusual opportunity to network with other delegatesand fellow AGI members.

This event will be of benefit to anyone interestedin the potential of GIS implementation and relatedsolutions to realise organizational efficiencies andbenefits.

B: AGI: Exploiting location information tosave your organisation money!

It’s not over yet! says AGI Director and CEO Chris Holcroft as he reviewsan exciting series of events between now and the end of the year.

AGI column

Chris Holcroft is Directorand CEO of the AGI.


Each Award is announced and presented at theAnnual Awards Dinner, which takes place this yearon Thursday 25th November 2010. The awardcategories ensure a spread of entries from acrosscentral and local government, the private sector,research and education.

Awards are presented in ten categories:

• Innovation & Best Practice (CentralGovernment) - Sponsored by IGGI

• Innovation & Best Practice (LocalGovernment) - Sponsored by Pitney BowesBusiness Insight

• Innovation & Best Practice (Private Sector) -Sponsored by ESRI (UK)

• Innovation and Best Practice (Business Case& ROI) - Sponsored by ConsultingWhere

• AGI Student of the Year - Sponsored byOrdnance Survey

• Best Paper from the AGI Conference -Sponsored by Informed Solutions

• Past Chair’s Award• Director’s Award• AGI Volunteer of the Year• Best Young Researchers Paper - Sponsored

by Cadcorp• Best of GISRUK Paper

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D: Location Wales 2010City Hall, Cardiff, Wednesday December 1, 2010

The AGI Cymru conference this year comes off theback of the successful launch of “Location Wales –opportunities and challenges”. Location Wales setsout the exciting opportunities that can be achieved bythe intelligent use of geographic information. Itpresents 26 challenges to Wales that will need to beovercome in order to deliver the tangible benefits of it.The conference streams are:• Delivering data; • Innovation in geography;• Leadership in geography;• Lightning talks on ‘anything geo’.

A full programme will follow shortly.

AGI column

The AGI exists to“maximise the use ofgeographic information(GI) for the benefit ofthe citizen, goodgovernance andcommerce”.Membershipdetails are availablefrom [email protected] by calling: +44 (0)207036 0430

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Lining Up Data in ArcGIS –a guide to map projections

By Margaret M. MaherESRI Press, Redland, California.ISBN: 9781589482494, 184 pages,$24.95

This book describes itself as apractical guide to lining up data ina geographic information system –specifically with reference to ArcGIS,but with potentially someapplicability to other systems. Theauthor, Margaret Maher, isdescribed as a veteran member ofthe ESRI support team, who in thecourse of handling some 12,000customer queries has come acrossjust about every problem there isthat concerns map projections anddata conversions.

The book is organised into achapter structure that mostly

reflects the generic operations thata user is likely to need. Thus, forexample: “Identifying the correctgeographic coordinate system”;“Identifying the projectedcoordinate system”; “Aligningrotated CAD data”; “Applyinggeographic transformations”; andso on. These chapter titles areusefully supplemented by the typicalcries for help that would result ineach chapter being consulted,examples being: “when I add aclient’s data to ArcMap it draws atan angle – how can I fix that?”;“how can I find out what datum mydata is on? I tried to find out fromthe source but they didn’t know”;and “when I add the data I get anerror message saying there’s amissing spatial reference and thedata doesn’t line up”.

As a reviewer I’m slightlyhampered by the fact that I’m not adaily user of ArcGIS, and generallyhave to go crawling to PhDstudents with offers of pints of beerif I need a map knocking up toillustrate something. However, I cansee that as a practical guide forthose with datasets that are notaligned and are close to pressingthe panic button, it explains theoptions clearly and is extensively

illustrated with screen shots of theArcGIS interface. However, inpitching itself as a practical guide itthen veers away from being anordered explanation of theprinciples and is not an easy readfor someone trying to get to gripswith the subject: it really needs tobe propped up next to the screenby a user who is going through allthe suggested options, clicking andediting where directed to do so.

So it’s potentially useful, but Ido have a couple of problems withit. One is that it is very muchcentred on the US: I mean, seriouslyso – about the only reference to“abroad” is a mention ofsomewhere called the “GreenwichNaval Observatory” in England. Ifyour data mismatches north-southby about 200 metres, then you’vegot a problem with mixingNAD1927 and NAD1983 datums:no equivalent possibilities, such asexamples relating to OSBG36, aresuggested for other countries. Ingeneral, the assumption of usingvariations on the State PlaneCoordinate System is hard-wiredthroughout.

My other concern is that inaddressing itself to solving aproblem there sometimes seems to

be a bit too much emphasis onmaking it “look right” (maybethat’s what “lining up data”actually means) at the expense ofunderstanding the underlying cause.True, the author does suggest in acouple of places that contacting thedata supplier for a correct definitionof the coordinate system is theideal, but elsewhere there seems tobe something of a trial and errorapproach. Does it not line up whenyou change the datum toNAD1927? Try changing the unitsto feet. Or if that’s still not quiteright, try international feet insteadof US feet. At one stage the falseeastings and northings of thecoordinate system are adjusted untilthings line up.

So I can imagine that there willbe plenty of people (predominantlyUS based) for whom this book issomething of a God-send, as theystruggle to integrate road networkswith building plans and utilitiesdata; but I would perhaps advocatea greater emphasis on the use ofthese techniques as diagnostic toolsthat should support propercoordinate descriptions.

Jonathan IliffeUniversity College London

booksIssue No 36 October 2010

Clear explanations with screen shots for those at the ArcGIS workface but what does“lining up data mean”?

e n v i r o n m e n t i n f o r m a t i o n a t y o u r f i n g e r t i p s

Visitwww.bluesky-world.com/gp

BS0061AD/GISPRO/1010


products & servicesIssue No 36 October 2010

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Shared access to data Thedata sharing platform, Contractor Portalv2.0, can be hosted or installed whilstthe pricing model supports end userand organisation payment options. Inaddition to providing self-service accessto data licensed under collectivepurchase agreements, from OrdnanceSurvey and other data suppliers, theportal enables organisations to sharetheir own, internally-generated data ina secure environment.

‘Simplification is key to opening upimportant data access as it enables morepeople in more organisations to makebetter decisions,’ says Ben Allan,managing director of Dotted Eyes. ‘Thataccess is critical to meeting theimperatives of localised data sharing

inherent in new government drives.Contractor Portal equips localgovernment organisations to workcollaboratively and cost effectively,breaking down traditional barriers,opening up GIS siloes and releasing vitalinformation for sharing acrossorganisations with the minimum of fuss’.

Data on demand The Geoskplatform is a location-based data-as-a-service (DaaS) offering with acomprehensive geospatial datacatalogue delivered via a cloud-basedportal that lets customers pay as theygo. Introduced by Pitney BowesBusiness Insight, the platform enablescustomers to access and integratecurrent geospatial data into business

analyses, location-based marketingprogrammes and risk managementcalculations. The data catalogueincludes both free and fee-basedgeospatial data from PBBI as well ascontent from third-party dataproviders such as Ordnance Surveyand TomTom. The new platformsupports GIS mapping and analysisapplications like MapInfo Professionaland Stratus, plus applications fromother GIS vendors.

GeoMedia goes 3D New 3Dcapabilities in GeoMedia productline integrate advanced spatialanalysis and data capture with the3D “virtual earth” style ofpresentation. The Intergraphsoftware suite is a set of well-integrated applications that providea range of geospatial processingcapabilities. With GeoMedia 3D,users can navigate with full freedomof movement in all dimensions toevaluate geospatial assets andanalytical results. The software is afully integrated, add-on product forthe desktop version of GeoMedia.For more information, visitwww.intergraph.com/geomedia3d.

Inspecting utilities A newversion of Trimble’s Field Inspectorsoftware for utility infrastructure andsmart grid asset maintenance andinspection includes versions forhandheld computers and desktop PCs.Designed to be scalable and easy todeploy, it leverages the company’sGPS and handheld computingtechnology to automate a variety offield applications for electric, gas,water and wastewater utilities – fromsmart meter deployments to routineasset maintenance inspections. Formore information, visit www.trimble.com/fieldinspector.shtml.

Flexible mapping on themove The StreetMapper mobilemapping system is now availablewith four system specifications,ranging from dedicated surveyvehicles to a portable system thatcan be checked in as standardluggage at the airport. In additionto the conventional 360 system, thenewly launched StreetMapper Podfrom 3D Laser Mapping offersimproved protection with a compactcase that can accommodate up totwo scanners and three cameras.

New management tool Theonline mapping website, FIND, haslaunched the expired data licencemanagement tool. The new tool helpsorganisations demonstrate transparentlicensing during audits for hundredsof datasets they may hold. It allowscompanies to centrally manage andtrack data licences, as well identifyingwhen they are due to expire to helpquickly renew licences. Themanagement tool is free to use; log-into view expired data licences atwww.findmaps.co.uk.

BRIEFSSoftware By Subscription is the newmodel adopted by Aligned Assets. Itoffers smaller organisations anaffordable method of using theNational Land and Property Gazetteer.With SinglePoint NLPG, now availableon subscription, organisations can holdthe NLPG centrally and utilise webservices to give users access to NLPGdata at lower cost. More at: visitwww.aligned-assets.co.uk/imatch

Location information and GIScompany, eSpatial, has announcedthat its iSMART product supportsaccess to the OS OnDemand servicesprovided by Ordnance Survey ofGreat Britain.

The Global Software Institute (GSI)has announced that a suite of imageanalysis and raster GIS capabilities,including image enhancement,geometric correction, measurementand statistics is available for freedownload. Visit www.open-dragon.org for details.

New historic PhotosBluesky has added over 100,000 aerialphotographs to its online historicalphoto archive, www.oldaerialphotos.com,following an agreement with Land andProperty Services (Northern Ireland) tosupply the entire Ordnance Survey ofNorthern Ireland photographic archive.

The Zeno Office v1.1 and Zeno Field v1.1 software updates are available forthe Zeno series of GNSS/GIS products. The Zeno GIS from Leica Geosystemsprovides a one-click automated workflow between field and office toenhance productivity and ease-of-use. The Zeno Field software is an OEMversion of ESRI ArcPad 8. New features include: the support of several radiodevices to receive RTK GNSS data; CDMA phone support for internetconnectivity and receiving RTK GNSS data; and Italian language support inZeno Field. Meanwhile, Zeno Office maintains, manages and post-processesGIS, GNSS and surveying data. New features include: the software is nowbased on ArcGIS 9.3.1; Zeno Office v1.1 databases are 100% compatiblewith v1.0 databases; support of 64-bit operating systems; and support ofSQL Express databases in Zeno Office on ArcGIS.

Updatesfor Zeno

series

calendarIssue No 36 October 2010

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Leica Geosystems' GeoWorld 10 RoadshowMultiple dates and venues. More information: www.geoworld10.co.uk/

Intergraph UK 2010 User Conference12-13 October, Intergraph Technology Centre, SwindonMore information: www.intergraph.com/global/uk/sgi2010.aspx

Everything Happens Somewhere 2010 – NLPG NSG annual conference 20 October, Cutlers' Hall, Church Street Sheffield S1 1HG.More information: Email, Gayle Gander [email protected]

One Wales - One Voice: Aligned Assets' Gazetteer Best Practice Day2 November, Media Resource Centre, Llandrindod.More information: www.aligned-assets.co.uk/events/events.html

Trimble Dimensions 2010 - 8-10 November,The Mirage, Las Vegas, USAMore information: www.trimbledimensions.com

GeoDATA 2010 Seminars10 Nov, Glasgow Audi / 16 Nov, Hastings Stormont Hotel, Belfast.More information: www.training4gis.com

GEOTUNIS International Congress 201029 November - 3 December, Tunisia.More information: www.geotunis.org/2010/

NAV10: Position, Location, Timing: Everyone, Everything, Everywhere.30 November - 2 December, Church House, Westminster, London.More information: www.rin.org.uk/

StreetMapper 2010 International User Conference2 December, The Hague, Netherlands.More information: Email, [email protected]

GIS in Mining & Exploration 201118-19 January, Venue to be Confirmed, Stockholm.More information: http://gisinmining.com/Event.aspx?id=383902

| seminars | conferences | exhibitions | courses | events | workshops | symposiums |We welcome advance details of conferences, seminars, exhibitions and other events which are likely to be of interest to the GIS community. Please mention the name of the event, venue, date and point of contact for further information and send to Hayley Tear,GISPro, 2B North Road, Stevenage, Herts SG1 4AT Fax: +44 (0)1438 351989, e-mail: [email protected]

OCTOBER 2010

JANUARY 2011

DECEMBER 2010NOVEMBER 2010

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