| Industry Insider: Have You Bought Your Last GIS Land Base?
By David K. Nale It is hard to believe that 14 years have passed since the concept of geographic information systems have become a reality. Ronald Reagan was in his second term, the stock market was about to break 2000 for the first time ever, a 33 MH computer cost over $30,000, and every major city and county in America was about to wrestle with the question of how to afford the cost of buying GIS technology. Municipal planners and engineers would argue with the county commissioners as to who would own the technology. Remember, the concept of an IT manager had not yet been conceived. The county engineering office had to have extremely large-scale digital mapping, but the county planning department was satisfied with much less accurate mapping. Indeed, the property appraiser or assessors office concluded, "simply digitize the tax maps, who needs this new GIS map anyway, digitize the paper maps and stick 'em in a computer (an IBM 400 was all the rage) and we'll be up and running!" What is topologic structure anyway?
The path through the technology forest to GIS has been a costly and painful experience for many. Fourteen years ago there was no such thing as digital ortho photo images, GPS was just a "James Bond"-like toy, and personal computers and networks were nowhere near powerful enough to handle CAD data. What's the difference between CAD and GIS, anyhow? High-resolution satellites, lasers, internal guidance, the Internet, and soft-copy digital photogrammetry were all in the black world of secret military technologies that the average city and county official could only fantasize about. Mobile phones were the size of toasters, and ESRI, Intergraph, AutoDesk, Microsoft, Dell, Gateway and dozens of other now-giant companies were either infants or did not exist. What was it that Bill Gates said in 1989? "I can't imagine any one needing more than 640K of memory in a personal computer."
Well, in case you haven't noticed, things have changed. But old habits die hard, kind of like hitting yourself in the thumb with a hammer. Do it long enough and you'll assume that even though it is painful, "it's the only way." Take, for example, building a GIS land base. As a city or county department manager, one must go to the elected county officials, exercise the political process until it is painful, and get a million dollars or more deep into the city or county budget. Then he/she must write a highly technical request for proposal (that you barely understand) to be put into the public bidding process to contract a company to build a GIS map base. Chances are, the company that will do a good job-the one that will stand the test of time-isn't the cheapest. So now you're stuck with picking the best of the worst companies that responded to your RFP.
Remember, things have changed, and your thumb is getting very sore. Today, the mapping community has at its disposal inexpensive ground based GPS, airborne GPS, digital ortho photos, soft-copy digital photogrammetric work stations, high-resolution commercial satellite images, LIDAR, inertial management units, high-speed bandwidth and digital mapping cameras. Now imagine the power that comes from the integration of these technologies!
Today a handful of companies have a clear vision of the future of high-resolution map land bases. They have integrated the technologies and are assembling the financial capital to build highly accurate, detailed image maps of the entire Earth. The Earth will be mapped with an accuracy never seen before in human history. These maps will be built, not for any single buyer with wheelbarrows of money, but instead for an untold number of commercial applications that virtually the entire world population with Internet access will be able to view and download.
Pie in the sky? Won't ever happen? Well it already has. Go to any PC with Internet access and type www.yourhome.ch and, in an instant, you will be online to the Swiss Bank, Credit Suisse. At a click of your mouse you will have a highly accurate, high-resolution image map of the entire country of Switzerland at your disposal. You can locate bank branches, look for houses for sale anywhere in the country, find restaurants and hotels, culture centers, tourist attractions and post offices. Type in any address in Switzerland and, at the speed of light, you will be connected to a server in Zurich. Almost before your fingers leave the keys, a detailed image map of that address will appear on your computer screen. This is just the beginning.
Wireless Internet appliances will have access to geographic data world-wide. Whether it is your cell phone, the automobile navigation system in your car, or the palm organizer in your pocket, you will soon have access to highly detailed maps of any place that you want to have a virtual visit.
What does all of this mean to the city and county official reading this magazine? The answer to the question, "Have you bought your last GIS land base," may be a resounding, "Yes!"
Of course, these detailed image maps of the Earth will not be available overnight. But in a very short time, every major population center worldwide will come online, one by one. My recommendation is to put that sore thumb back in your pocket and pay very close attention to these rapidly developing mapping technologies. Instead of tears in your eyes you could have a smile on your face, and your city or county could save millions of dollars in the process. Back |
