Geo Spatial Systems Metaknowledge Mashup Dan Rickman Geo

Geo. Spatial Systems – Metaknowledge Mashup Dan Rickman Geo. Spatial SG

Agenda What are GIS What is Geo. Spatial Data management issues Neo-Geography Standards Current and future developments

What are Geo. Spatial Systems? Known as Geographic Information Systems, Spatial Information Systems Enables capture, modelling, storage, retrieval, sharing, manipulation and analysis of geographically referenced data Not CAD! Database is at the heart – as is “attribute” data Model developing – perhaps Geo. Spatial data better seen as “attribute” of alphanumeric business information Presentation does not have to be map-based in all cases Key element is spatial indexing – uses different techniques to alphanumeric indexing

What is Geospatial Information? - 1 Spatial data which relates to the surface of the Earth Geodetic reference system as base e. g. WGS 84 used for Global Positioning System (Earth as an ellipsoid), Latitude and Longitude (Earth as a sphere) Ordnance Survey (GB) define National Grid – projection onto flat surface – NB: OS(NI) use Irish grid Spatial relationships – defined around concept of neighbourhood – relates to two “laws” of geography: • Most things influence most other things in some way • Nearby things are usually more similar than things which are far apart

What is Geospatial Information? - 2 Unstructured – spaghetti data Topology – information structured as networks, polygons Geo. Spatial information requires metadata – e. g. minimal information such as map projection used Geo. Spatial information may also temporal modelling – e. g. farm subsidies vary as utilisation and legislation change Field-based model versus object-based model of space, e. g. rainfall versus buildings on which rain falls Geo. Spatial information requires ontology – What is the “real world”, how classified Relates to semantics

Where used? Examples Central government – DEFRA, ODPM, Land Registry, ONS Local government – planning, highways authorities Utilities – physical and logical network Insurance – flood plains Health – epidemiology Travel, multi-modal route planning More widespread use – addresses, postcode based data against regional boundaries, infrastructure (“geographies” used to divide country, catchment area) Fiat boundaries verus “bona fide” boundaries – what is “real world” how do we structure it?

Structured geo-database Paradigm shift? ERP Spatial Data (proprietary format) Spatially extended RDBMS -Complex data types for spatial data -Computational geometry -Spatial indexing -DDL and DML extensions Real Time/Engineering Systems CRM Relational Database (Attribute data)

Networks and Topology Routing Connectivity Explicit spatial relationships Can be complex - one way, - restricted turn - average speed …

Terrain and 3 D Line of sight Radio Propagation Flood Water Pressure

Temporal Time as a dimension or measure How things change over time

GIS

Geospatial data modelling Field-based model versus object-based model Geographic Information Systems are object-based in practice Most common field based information, e. g. Digital Elevation Model (line of sight applications), attached to objects Objects rely on field-based model, i. e. spatial co-ordinates Initiatives such as Digital National Framework encourage organisations to structure data on references to objects, not recapture and duplicate data Geo. Spatial equivalent of “referential integrity” Nevertheless duplication, lack of (referential) integrity is common place and hard to eradicate

Digital National Framework Capture information once and use many times Benefits: – avoid cost of duplicate data capture – benefit through 3 rd party data maintenance (i. e. avoid cost of maintaining one's own data) – benefit of improved data management especially where COU is used to identify area of change (which can then be used to focus and improve maintenance of non-spatial business object data, as appropriate) Capture at the highest resolution possible Benefit: – avoid re-capture later on – improve potential for data interoperability Publish lower resolutions from this data - if required – avoids data recapture Use existing proven standards – provides framework, avoids costs of "re-inventing the wheel" NB: sort of benefit one would expect from a strategy!

In search of the BLPU Basic Land Property Unit “Holy grail” of industry – no Da Vinci code produced yet! Example of Ordnance Survey Master Map (OSMM): "St Mary's football stadium, Southampton" is one object Typical detached house and its plot of land, likewise Complex entities such as "Southampton railway station" are defined in terms multiple objects: one for the main building, several for the platforms, one more for pedestrian bridge over the tracks. (NB: See Wikipedia article on TOID) Defining the candidate BLPU, their lifecycles and their attribute data and verifying that these are meaningful/practicable from the wide variety of business processes which apply to the BLPU and the aggregate entities which are created from them Dependencies so that data sets are based on the BLPU wherever possible limited by business use, e. g. field use change quite different from a tenant/owner perspective

Evolution of geographic information database records digital records geographic information paper records digital mapping paper mapping 1950 1970 1990 2010

Raster map data Scanned ortho-rectified map or map-based data – metadata is coordinates, projection, extent For example Google Maps/Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth Traditionally stored outside the database as external files, analogous to vector data storage, e. g. Oracle 10 g Geo. Raster Data stored as BLOBs, metadata required regarding number of bytes per pixel, compression algorithms and so on Benefits limited as “intelligence” in map requires interpretation Still limited progress on map-based pattern recognition – there are semi-automated solutions from companies such as Laser. Scan

Benefits of integration Geo-spatial data mining – Spatial links – Shipman example Visualisation Provide new ways of linking data – Avoid capturing data e. g. DNF – Maintenance of data Lower costs of integration and delivery at front-end Back-end integration still an issue – data Reduce endless data cleaning – as part of information management strategy Reduce data maintenance costs Improve data in business – does this matter?

Geospatial - Drivers Awareness Current use of data Front end integration – Mashups Back end – Database Data providers – Ordnance Survey – Developing middle/large scale market – Open source data – Free our data

EDRM Electronic document and records management Increase usage in local/central government due to Freedom of Information act Contain potentially significant geospatial data Most common example is address Requires capture of appropriate metadata or appropriate pattern recognition to identify addresses Requires gazetteers to provide reference to spatial co-ordinates NB: most familiar gazetteer – list of streets in Ato. Z maps

Df. ES Web Mashup

www. schoolmap. org. uk

Costs Hardware – no special hardware required Network – bandwidth generally adequate Software – Increasingly delivered through “thin” clients SOA – promise of mashups (WMS/WFS, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft), Geo. RSS Development skills – limited specialist skills required Data – Still expensive – Complex – Requires re-engineering/data management – “Boring” issue – drivers often hidden in BAU

Standards Geo. Spatial widely used – in database technology, web-based systems and developing IS architecture. Organisations already exist -BCS must be relevant • Open Geo. Spatial Consortium http: //www. opengeospatial. org/ • ISO TC 211 (GI/Geomatics) - http: //www. isotc 211. org/ • BSI Committee for GI (http: //www. gistandards. org. uk/) • Association for Geographic Information (http: //www. agi. org. uk) A topic for parliamentarians (EU e. g. INSPIRE http: //inspire. jrc. it/ & Westminster e. g. GI Panel http: //www. gipanel. org. uk/gipanel/ Already an issue for business – significant investment Needs to be a credible BCS specialist group Provide voice for BCS in Geo. Spatial issues Public policy - Free our data?

Web 2. 0 – interactive integrated information

GSG: WHY Benefits for BCS – Embracing part of cultural change within IS/IT/IM • Microsoft, Google and Oracle significant investment and developments • Prominence in “Web 2. 0” sites, e. g. www. platial. com (“Collaborative atlas”) • Enabling technologies/architecture such as SOA • Seen as being relevant – BCS recovering lost ground • GIS SG previously existed – No vendor tie in – no conflict of interest • BCS recruitment mechanism for potential BCS members

GSG: WHY How we address Geo. Spatial issues? – Vendor, academic, end user/ business experience – Survey and consensus of Group Members How do we convey this message ? – Meetings minimum once a quarter, but ideally every 6 weeks. – A positive effort to hold meetings in the nations & regions. – Contribution to discussions, events (representation). – Web site communication – Email bulletins – Press

Summary Geospatial now becoming mainstream Significant developments in market, e. g. Pitney Bowes purchase of Map. Info, increasing demand for linking BI with GIS Neo-Geography and wider awareness drive use of geospatial data However data availability and quality are key issues, implications of this not always well understood Metadata and catalogue standards exist not always integrated with wider standards and not always well implemented or implemented at all …