| GIS
The Commoditization of Data
As GIS use increases worldwide, the demand for data is growing exponentially and, with it, a whole
new market for GIS data products is emerging.
By J.D. Wilson As president of Land Info International Ltd., Michael Blakeman has built his business around the idea that quality off-the-shelf digital geographic information can be affordable. He is proving that theory in the global marketplace, where the demand for GIS data is growing exponentially and outstrips every effort to deliver.
Awareness and use of GIS is on the rise like never before. It has become a standard element in a variety of projects, especially in infrastructure development, utilities, communications, agriculture and urban planning.
In Asia, for example, fast-paced economic development has led to an explosion in GIS use. With growth rates more than double the rest of the world, many formerly third-world countries in Asia are quickly becoming global economic powerhouses. They need to develop the civil, social and technical infrastructures to support their stellar growth.
As a result, trillions of dollars will be spent in Asia by the turn of the century on major infrastructure development projects. And GIS will play a major role in that development.
"People are crazy about GIS here," declared Paul Hastings, director of the Environmental Information Center (EIC), part of the Thailand Environment Institute (TEI). "Every agency that has any reason to is looking for GIS data it can use. They see the value."
Founded in May 1993, TEI is a non-profit, non-governmental organization focused on environmental management. The institute is chartered to "help to formulate environmental policies at the national level and collaborates with various international organizations to promote environmental awareness at the global level."
Directed by Hasting's, the EIC is responsible for building Thailand's state-of-the-art, comprehensive land information data base. It operates as a support agency, providing policy, research and data development services to other agencies and private organizations who want to use official land data.
He estimates the market for GIS data in Thailand at about 1 billion baht, or US$40 million. No wonder ESRI, Intergraph and other major players have opened offices there. New Users, Different Focus
The recent growth of GIS is a by-product of the radical advances in personal computers in just the last two years. Not long ago GIS was wed to high-end UNIX-based workstations. Today it is possible to run most GIS applications on Intel-based PCs under the Microsoft Windows NT operating system.
GIS software has also become less costly. Driven by companies like Bentley Systems Inc. and Autodesk, GIS data management and analysis can be run as an extension of their popular and familiar CAD packages, with little additional investment.
This migration to the PC has made GIS accessible to a new and much larger sphere of potential users-users who might never have considered it before, but who recognize its benefits. These new users are quite different from traditional GIS users, both in their expectations of the technology and how they want to integrate it into their organizations.
The traditional, high-level GIS users include local and provincial government agencies, utilities, telecommunications firms and transportation agencies. Bearing a primary responsibility for land and infrastructure management, they pioneered GIS over the past two decades and made major investments in the development and refinement of their geospatial data.
New users work typically in organizations that do not manage the land and infrastructure directly, but which are involved in its use and ongoing development.
For traditional users, GIS has been a rather specialized and exclusive technology. Operators required a strong background in both computer science and mapping.
The new breed of GIS users do not have this background. They expect GIS to be more intuitive. They want it to run as easily as their word processor.
"These users are very results oriented." Explained Alex Castro, vice president for Land Info. "They're very interested in implementing GIS solutions but, if creating the data becomes too great of a time and financial challenge, then any potential return on investment is minimized and it is no longer a clear asset to the project."
"In the past GIS existed as a market within itself," Castro said. "Now many companies have adopted GIS as a function of what they do, much the same way you have accounting, engineering and legal departments within a single company. GIS has taken its place as a discipline within the whole of a project."
Ray Yep, managing director for CH2M Hill's Asia Pacific Region, is one of these new high-productivity users. He said GIS use is growing rapidly in his organization and playing a larger role in the projects he manages-projects as diverse as developing fiber optics networks in Malaysia to building a US$6.8 billion wastewater improvement project in Singapore.
"GIS mapping is required to locate cables and services," Yep said. "It can be integral to designing and building a large-scale projects." New Data Challenge
While the cost of hardware and software has dropped by an order of magnitude in the last five years, the cost of data has changed little. Traditional data acquisition approaches account for 60 to 80 percent of GIS project costs.
Data availability remains the biggest problem for most users.
For example, Yep gets data anywhere he can-official maps, if they're available; aerial photos; satellite images; third party data sets.
He explained it can be very difficult to get reliable maps in much of Asia. As a legacy of centuries of war, maps are still viewed pretty much as a matter of national security. Most countries regulate the use of their maps and limit the use of aerial photography.
"In most of the world there is no consistent source for the digital map data people need," Castro said. He explained that the dramatic increase in GIS use in such a variety of vertical markets has led to a corresponding explosion in data requirements.
He believes the problem requires a fundamental paradigm shift in how GIS data is developed and marketed.
Under the traditional model, a user organization will develop its data base as a unique resource. Every organization must build its own data base and undertake a long and expensive data conversion project.
"We think digital base map data should be supplied as a product, not a custom service," Blakeman declared. "There are certain types and layers of information that are universal. Our goal is to provide that information in the most effective manner possible." Data as Value-Added Product
Unlike the early primary users who created their own data bases, most new users cannot justify the high cost of creating a map data base. For them it is a matter cost vs. value.
"They see the cost of data conversion and they can't justify it in the scope of their project," Castro said. "Our off-the-shelf products offer a cost-effective alternative."
To Castro, geographic data must be a value-added product. Users want easy-to-use, easy-to-implement solutions. He explained that users have three main criteria for their data:
1. Consistent, quality digital data they can rely on for long-term use.
2. Geographic files standardized to widely accepted industry protocols and formats.
3. An affordable price.
"That's the Land Info business model," Blakeman said. "Our goal is to deliver a quality product at a price that makes it accessible to every potential user. We want to provide one-stop-shopping availability for geographic data.
"There are literally thousands of potential users for most of our data," he added. "Why should GIS be limited to a municipality and the local utilities when half the engineers, construction companies, researchers and other business owners have some need for the same basic geographic data at any given time in any given location?" Bounty of Products
To meet that need, Land Info has developed a series of products, all of which are delivered on CD-ROM in as little as 24 hours. They include:
Color Topographic Maps. Scanned from USGS Quads, or similar sources in other countries, these raster images are georeferenced and seamed to provide a reliable, stable reference image of a requested area. The digital files are delivered in standard TIFF format for use with most standard systems that support raster images. In the United States, Land Info quotes prices as low as $1.99 per map for this product. International maps typically run in $99 range.
Contours. Blakeman said these contours could be his most versatile and popular product yet. Edgematched and delivered in DXF format, the contours have proven useful in a variety of infrastructure design and construction projects, as well as environmental management and monitoring programs.
Digital Elevation Models. DEMs provide a three-dimensional representation and can be used with various software packages to develop 3-D presentations, watershed analysis, wave propagation and other analyses.
Satellite Images. As a reseller of Spot satellite imagery, Land Info has formatted and packaged these satellite images in the same manner as its other digital map products.
Today, Land Info's catalog includes maps for about 60 countries and their adding new maps every day. Blakeman said his sales are split about 70 percent U.S. and 30 percent international. "That ratio will reverse in the next 18 months," he said.
He gets requests every day for maps in countries all over the world. "The hot areas right now seem to be Asia, South America and the Middle East," Blakeman said.
"The international demand for data is nearly unmet, he explained. "We're delivering our products as fast as we can ship them." About the Author:
J.D. Wilson is a freelance writer and analyst in Aurora, Colo. He reports on technology in business, especially the GeoTechnologies. Back |
