Geoinformatics 2011 Vol05

Future Development of Check-in Services Is Europe getting INSPIREd?
DMCii and Emergency Response Virtual 3D Urban Design

Magazi ne f or Sur veyi ng, Mappi ng & GI S Pr of essi onal s
July/August
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0
1
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Volume 14
5
Terrago
Critical User Base and
Location Based Services
In this issue, two articles focus on location based services (lbs). The rst is from
Florian Fischer and is about the future development of check-in services. The second
is my report on the Location Business Summit, which is about lbs in general and
monetizing of lbs in particular. Both articles touch on the successes and failures of
check-in services. From a user perspective, a check-in service may not be as inter-
esting or as useful as it might be from a commercial perspective. Of course, theres
money to be made with these services and thats where commerce comes in. From
a user perspective, lack of privacy may inhibit you from using such a service, or
maybe there is no direct advantage. Or possibly, its just not very handy to use,
and therefore you just don't bother to use it.
But failures aside, check-in services and lbs in general are far from dead. Google's
Ed Parsons proved that there really is no 'check-in fatigue' by showing a heat map
of check-in services used worldwide, with Europe, North America and Asia being
areas where check-in services are the most popular. During one of the latest panel
discussions during the summit, Navteq announced that pedestrian mapping might
possibly have large market potential, as large as mapping for the automotive indus-
try for example. Tourism, shopping and leisure are applications where new market
approaches can be expected in the coming years.
This may also be a eld where augmented reality could be used. Last year I heard
a lot of promises made in this eld, but I have yet to see anything big happen. Is it
too early or too late for augmented reality to take off? At the moment, things just
arent that clear. What is clear though is that the hype mechanism that surrounded
lbs and augmented reality seems to have disappeared, and that the big guys with
smart plans and a solid user base, are in the drivers seat. Also, there is a lot of
marketing and effort involved in growing a small but fanatical user base into a large
user base, when it comes to lbs and check-in services. I wonder how things will be
in a years time.
Enjoy your reading,
Eric van Rees
evanrees@geoinformatics.com
GeoInformatics is the leading publication for Geospatial
Professionals worldwide. Published in both hardcopy and
digital, GeoInformatics provides coverage, analysis and
commentary with respect to the international surveying,
mapping and GIS industry. GeoInformatics is published
8 times a year.
Editor-in-chief
Eric van Rees
evanrees@geoinformatics.com
Copy Editor
Frank Arts
fartes@geoinformatics.com
Editors
Florian Fischer
fscher@geoinformatics.com
Huibert-Jan Lekkerkerk
hlekkerkerk@geoinformatics.com
Remco Takken
rtakken@geoinformatics.com
Joc Triglav
jtriglav@geoinformatics.com
Contributing Writers:
Florian Fischer, Craig R. Dylan, Joc Triglav,
Huibert-Jan Lekkerkerk, Beatrice Eiselt,
Adina Gillespie, Konrad Saal, Remco Takken.
Columnist:
Graham Wallace
Financial Director
Yvonne Groenhof
nance@cmedia.nl
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Ruud Groothuis
rgroothuis@geoinformatics.com
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Latest News? Visit www.geoinformatics.com July/August 2011
C o n t e n t
Ar t i c l e s
Checking-out already 6
All In a Years Work 10
Broadband versus GPS 14
Combining GIS and GPS 18
Is Europe getting INSPIREd? 22
International Rescue 28
Virtual 3D Urban Design 34
E v e n t s
Hexagon 2011 36
Location Business Summit 2011 42
B o o k r e v i e w
ArcHydro Groundwater 46
C o l u mn
There is a paradox at the heart of the location-based informatics revolution 48
C a l e n d a r / Ad v e r t i s e r s I n d e x 50
At the cover:
A view of the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi. Bickhardt Bau is one of the
most experienced Formula One firms available, and they completed this
world-class formula one circuit under tough conditions in only one year. See
article on page 10.
22
6
34
Since only incomplete records
of the original building
existed, project organizers
decided to capture the existing
features of this old conference
hall and its surroundings using
laser scanning. The acquired
data is now available to archi-
tectural consultants for their
designs and for virtual tours.
14
In 2010 we have seen an
immense interest in check-in
functionalities by Facebook,
Yelp and other big players in
the social media market. But
why is it a multi-million dollar
business to tell others that I am
here now?
In the USA the battle around
wide area broadband solution
provider LightSquared rages
on. John Deere & Company
gave the first report of interfe-
rence to the FCC (Federal
Communications Commission).
As from 2010, the first results
of the Member States
monitoring and reporting
activities on the implemen-
tation of INSPIRE became
available, and it is now
possible to make a first
assessment.
46
A few years ago Esri presented us
with the Arc Hydro data model as
a standardized way to store (and
analyze) surface water networks.
Now the time has come to add
groundwater to ArcGIS.
28
DMCii has recently taken over
the day-to-day running of the
International Charter Space
and Major Disasters.
How did this Surrey-based
company become the only
non-space agency in the
Charter to hold such a
signicant leadership role?
18
TERRAIN is a very young and
fresh cartographic company
from Greece. Fotis Reppas,
Chief Cartographer of terrain,
Cartographic and Publishing
Company talks with editor Joc
Triglav about company values,
technologies used in the daily
work and its customer base.
10
Bickhardt Bau AG is a 1,600-
person German firm based in
Kirchheim that specializes in ro-
adway and racetracks. They
completed a world-class formu-
la one circuit under tough con-
ditions in Abu Dhabi in only
one year.
When Foursquare started its service in 2009 many experts could hardly make any sense out of it: A
service that asks registered users to check-in when entering a shop, a bar or a restaurant? You can
get badges and become the mayor of a place if you visit it more often than your friends? Making the
visit to a place into a game might have been unfamiliar to many, but it has since gained acceptance.
In 2010 we have seen an immense interest in check-in functionalities by Facebook, Yelp and other
big players in the social media market. But why is it a multi-million dollar business to tell others that I
am here now?
Foursquare goes outer space
It might have been entitled a great click for
mankind when NASA astronaut Douglas H.
Wheelock checked-in at the international
space station ISS by Foursquare. Being a mar-
keting gag obviously, as only ISS visitors can
battle for mayoralty, but Foursquare created
several NASA Badges that will attract peo-
ple to visit NASA institutions. If you visit the
Kennedy Space Center or the US Space
Camp you can just take your Smartphone
and check-in via Foursquare to get a badge.
NASA takes this chance and the increased
popularity of Foursquare to gain the attention
of a young audience. If this sounds out of
this world to you, let me do some ground-
truthing and tell you what on earth
Foursquare is all about - and where it will go.
Using the location-based service Foursquare
a user can check-in at a place, meaning to
log-in and tell your friends about your where-
abouts. On the other side you can see where
your friends are, who is visiting the place you
are at and what places near you might be of
interest. Foursquare rewards every check-in
with a number of points. You can get certain
rankings and if you have the most check-ins
6
July/August 2011
Ar t i c l e
Future Development of Check-in Services
Checking-out already
?
Foursquare mobile app
By Florian Fischer
at a place, you are
appointed the Four-
square mayor of that
place until another play-
er outruns your achieve-
ment. It is all a game and that
might be the reason why people
started to use it passionately. Meanwhile,
Foursquare has several millions of users
and the main idea of check-in has barely
changed. It has turned out that the playful
character of Foursquare is now a big chance
for local businesses to attract and analyze con-
sumer behavior.
From check-in to turn-over
Big business concerns, like the US-based chain
for consumer electronics RadioShack, use
Foursquare to attract customers to their shops.
Every user who checks-in gets a 10% discount
while mayors get a 20% discount. A newbie
discount guarantees an immediate discount of
20% for users who have never checked-in at
RadioShack before. Also the European-wide
restaurant chain Vapiano offers free Italian cof-
fee for its Foursquare mayors. For other busi-
nesses the Foursquare badges are a good
alternative. In the skiing area of Ischgl users
need to check-in at several places to receive
the Xperia-Ischgl-Badge. The operators of the
skiing area installed wi-hotspots at those
places to enable everyone to check-in regard-
less of mobile roaming fees. Every user who
obtains a badge is rewarded a one day test
of a brand new pair of skis for free.
A chance for real-time
geomarketing
According to marketing specialists half of all
purchases made by Foursquare users might
be induced by these kinds of special offers.
Thereby the costs of such a campaign are
relatively low and the results are measur-
able. Foursquare offers its own Merchant
Platform, which hosts more than 300,000
companies. The companies can create offers
like Flash Specials, Friends Specials or
Swarm Specials, and analyze their
Foursquare customers. The service allows
companies to see the number of check-ins,
and the frequency and distribution of visi-
tors over the day by gender and time. A
company with several branches can aggre-
gate the data as well. Altogether, the
Merchant Platform offers basic functionality
for geomarketing in near real-time including
the customer analysis, the advertisement
analysis and the realization of advertising.
Foursquare is expected to expand these ser-
vices for CRM and other marketing services.
However, this is far from a general market
analysis until it makes use of Foursquare
data only. Companies like SimpleGeo (sim-
plegeo.com) already go one step further by
combining data from several services (e.g.
Gowalla, Loopt, Whrrl, etc.) and provide a
basis for geomarketing analysis and loca-
tion-based services built on that ground-
work. These tools make up the business
model that Foursquare has been searching
for after the rst round of hype in 2010.
Decline of average check-ins
Things couldnt have been any better. In
2010 many other services followed the
check-in idea, amongst them were
Facebook, Yelp, Friendticker and actually
Twitter, which does it as well. So, the phe-
nomenon of check-in has become main-
stream. By the end of 2010 ve million
Foursquare users performed two million
check-ins per day. That is impressive but
marks a decline in the average check-ins per
user of 20% compared to early 2010.
However, there was a growth in user num-
bers but the users seemed less active, indi-
cating many inactive accounts. It is a pat-
tern that is quite typical for a hype that
7
Ar t i c l e

Foursquare - get badges for check-ins
consolidates. Many users started trying out
the new service with enthusiasm and
engagement for a while, but later became
inactive and abandoned their accounts, but
were still included in the statistics. This trend
continues in 2011, meaning that the num-
bers of active users will stagnate in the best
case.
Why do people check-in
Of course this does not put Foursquare,
Gowalla and all the other check-in services
out of business but it should makes us think
about the individual meaning of a check-in
and how these services deliver on that mean-
ing. There are four main reasons to check-
in. The gaming aspect is probably the moti-
vational factor to do check-ins. You get a
better status, make a hot deal and collect
points. It makes checking-in a challenge that
can be easily integrated into everyday life
something you can do alongside friends,
and its fun. The encounter aspect is often
advertised by a service of this kind. Finding
nearby friends and meeting them in a bar
might happen from time to time. But Im sure
that this is more of an urban myth promoted
by advertisers more than by users. But a
check-in enables users to see where friends
have been and where they frequently are.
This kind of asynchronous co-presence is an
important indicator when searching for
appropriate restaurants and bars.
Next to networking the diary
aspect is an important feature of
a check-in service. It is interesting
for the users themselves to get a
geographical overview of their
whereabouts. It might be a dimen-
sion of the new trend called self-
tracking that means to track every
single detail of your life to opti-
mize it. On the other hand a geographical
diary is important to remember new venues
and special features in the city. The most
important aspect for a check-in might be
identity formation. The dissolution of the indi-
vidual in global ows of mobility and com-
munication gives rise to a remarkable renais-
sance of small-scale territorial relationships.
The increasing relevance of spatially-related
identity results in demonstrative consumption
best objectied in cafs, bars and restau-
rants. But it is not enough to just be there
but also make everyone in the interpersonal
networks of communication be aware of it
too. A check-in makes the presentation of one-
self through location perceptible in communi-
cation networks. It communicates the symbol-
ic values connected with the respective
location to the networked audience after all.
Why Yelp and Facebook are
more interesting for a check-in
And here is the actual problem with
Foursquare. They offer the check-in function-
ality and make a perfect game out of it, with
special offers, badges and mayoralty oppor-
tunities. But they lack two additional features
that are offered by local searchers like Yelp
and Qype, and social networks like
Facebook: Interesting content about mean-
ingful places and a really broad audience.
In order to keep a geographical diary and
the presentation of oneself through location,
it might be necessary to nd out about
places that are appropriate for this. These
places might be recommended by direct
contact, but user-generated content of local
search media like Yelp, is more comprehen-
sive. The presentation of oneself through
location needs awareness to become oper-
ative. Most of my friends and weak-ties are
on Facebook, while only some shape my
audience on Foursquare, even though
Facebook Places offers quite poor function-
ality for a check-in as there are no points,
no badges and no extras. But it has the bet-
ter audience for a check-in and offers better
added value for the presentation of oneself
at the moment. Some might claim that
Foursquare check-ins can be forwarded to
Facebook but why do that if I can check-in
on Facebook directly?
We will still check-in
All in all there are several developments that
might change the check-in landscape in the
future. The big hype about Foursquare con-
solidates, competitors integrate the function-
ality in their services, and the respective
market for advertising and real-time geo-
marketing is starting, surely? That is, the
money to earn for a check-in is getting big-
ger but at the same time people will not
check-in without having extra-services, com-
prehensive city information and a wide-
spread audience. That is the x Foursquare
is in at the moment. While its competitors
integrate the check-in better and better, it
needs to generate more added value to use
the service, as the hype ebbs away. Because
of that, checking-in will not be out in the future
but quite the opposite. The functionality might
have a brilliant future but maybe without
Foursquare if they dont get a move on.
Florian Fischer, GIS Editor and Research Assistant at the Austrian
Academy of Sciences, Institute for GIScience in Salzburg, Austria. He
has a blog with small essays on the Geographic Information Society,
Locative Media, Geobrowsers and the like:
www.ThePointOfInterest.net
Links:
SimpleGeo, https://simplegeo.com
Foursquare, https://foursquare.com
Yelp, www.yelp.com
Qype, www.qype.com
Gowalla, gowalla.com
Friendticker, http://friendticker.com
SimpleGeo Demo at SXSW Interactive 2010,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gpypn-JIPng
Foursquare Merchant Platform,
www.howcast.com/videos/439940-How-to-
Acquire-Engage-and-Retain-Customers-with-
Foursquare
Ar t i c l e
8
July/August 2011
SimpleGeo is combing data from Gowalla, Foursquare, brightkite, Twitter and other services.
Foursquare on Google Trends, showing a decline in user activities
Completing a World-Class Formula One Circuit
All In a Years Work
Bickhardt Bau AG is a 1,600-person German firm based in Kirchheim that specializes in roadway and
racetracks. They completed a world-class formula one circuit under tough conditions in Abu Dhabi in
only one year. Since its completion, Since then, the Yas Marina Circuit has become the home of the
Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, held in November as the last race on the Formula One calendar. This article
explains how high precision and control was achieved in the project.
I
f you want to build a world-class Formula One race track in chal-
lenging conditions, your rst call is likely to be to Bickhardt Bau
AG, a 1,600-person German rm based in Kirchheim that spe-
cializes in roadway and racetracks. Bickhardt Bau is one of the most
experienced Formula One rms available, and is especially noted
for overcoming construction challenges in exotic locations. The
Shanghai International Circuit, for exam-
ple, where Bickhardt designed and staked
the binder and wearing courses, was built
in very swampy conditions and required
approximately 340,000 cubic meters
(444,700 cubic yards) of expanded
polystyrene (EPS) to stabilize top layers.
And Bickhardt also built the Middle Easts
rst Formula One track, in Bahrain. Their
work has powerful admirers; the vice-pres-
ident of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport,
Norbert Haug, has said of the rms
Hockenheimring in Baden-Wrttemberg,
which bi-annually holds the Formula One
German Grand Prix, I dont know of any
other racetrack that is as even as Hockenheimit was created in
racing speed and is of the very highest quality.
Yet even while the rm is comfortable with tough conditions in far
ung corners of the world, the Yas Marina Circuit, in Abu Dhabi,
was unique. Start with the combination of extraordinarily high tem-
peratures and humidity. Add to it the lack
of local roadway material and you have
a difcult project. But there was an addi-
tional factor to consider: Bickhardt was
asked to complete the construction, from
breaking ground to race-ready track, in
just one year. Could the rm rise to the
challenge? Well of course! says Horst
Walther, Bickhardts survey division man-
ager.
A Bit About Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi is the largest of the seven
United Arab Emirates, comprising about
80 percent of the young (founded in
10
July/August 2011
By Craig R. Dylan
Ar t i c l e
Racing track
Caterpillar with GPS
1971) countrys area. About 70 percent of Abu Dhabi is coastal
desert, but since the Emirate controls huge oil reserves its extraordi-
narily well developedthe city of Abu Dhabi boasts a Manhattan-
like skyline that includes some of the worlds most spectacular mod-
ern buildings.
Temperatures are extreme, and so is humidity. The year-round aver-
age temperature is 27C (80.6F) and the coastal location pushes
humidity to 80 percent. By comparison, the year-round average in
Las Vegas is just 19C (66.2F) with much lower humidity. For fur-
ther comparison, a typical steam sauna is about 50C (122F) and
100 percent humidity.
Heat this high seriously affects roadway construction. Staking was
done only during relatively cool morning and evening time periods,
and asphalt was only poured at night. During summer months, no
work at all was done from noon to three. It takes time to acclima-
tize, and one has to drink water, water, water. Also, we had to learn
to work slower, says Walther, which is very hard for Germans!
Bickhardt had 25 employees onsite in Abu Dhabi, and the survey
team included survey engineer Markus Bolaender and his assistant
Jrgen Heinemann, supported by Frank Straub, a dedicated staff
member back in Kirchheim. All 25 team members, including Project
Manager Frank Dittrich, were in Abu Dhabi from July 2008 to August
2009, working six days a week. On the seventh day they would
get a good nights rest, and do washing, emailing, etc. says
Walther, who oversaw survey operations from Kirchheim. And they
did take one sightseeing trip into the desert. But mainly, they
worked.
An Extraordinary Track
The Yas Marina Circuit is
designed by Hermann Tilke,
which is a little like having Arnold
Palmer or Jack Nicklaus design
ones golf course. Tilke is a former
winning racer, and his tracks
hes designed more than 20 from
scratchare known for long
straight sections and tight hairpin
curves, which he believes encour-
ages overtaking. Yas Marina
(which is built on an articial
island) is no exception; it features,
after turn seven, the second-
longest straight on the Formula
One calendar. This section has recorded top speeds of up to 320
kmh (200 mph). Yas Marina is also one of the largest tracks overall,
with a total length of 5.53 km (3.43 miles), 12-15 meter (40-50 feet)
track widths, and 20 spectacular turns. Formula One tracks are high-
ly engineered, and Yas Marina incorporates nearly one million tons
of subbase and 200,000 tons of asphalt.
Even on a typical highway, a sudden bump or pothole can be a
shock; in Formula One racing, where speeds well over 290 kmh
(180 mph) are common, theyre a disaster that must be avoided at
all costs. Consequently, tolerances are exceptionally tight. At ground
level, all surfaces had to be within four centimeters (1.5 inches) of
design, says Walther, subbase had to be within three centimeters
(1.2 inches), granular subbase had to be within two centimeters (0.8
inches), and the nal surface had to be extraordinarily atin any
four meters (13.1 feet) of track, no more than two millimeters (0.08
inches) of deviation was permissible.
Yas Marina was a perfect storm of project challenges: remote site
with an extreme climate, very tight tolerances, and an even tighter
construction schedule. But it turned out to be all in a daysor rather,
yearswork for Bickhardt Bau AG.
Good Control
Control was established with very long GPS observations by a
Trimble 5800 GPS Receiver, and the control net was made up of
concrete monuments, spaced 100 meters (328 feet) apart, and set
deep to minimize the effect of high surface temperatures. Spirit lev-
eling was performed to verify and
tighten vertical measurements.
The Trimble 5800 was used to
stake ground level, and the
drainage system. Other staking
was done with a Trimble 5600
Total Station, a Trimble SPS730
Universal Total Station (UTS), and
the SPS730 was also used to con-
trol the Trimble GCS900 Grade
Control System that guided earth
movers and graders on the site.
Several strategies were used to
achieve the precision needed,
and for quality control.
Calculations were performed by
11
Ar t i c l e
Yas Marina Circuit
Racetrack September 2009
experienced staff in Germany, using CARD/1, a proprietary CAD
system developed by the German rm IB&T. Data was emailed to
the site each day. This system worked very well, says Walther.
The entire project was calculated in Germany and the set out data
always got to use on time. The design digital terrain models allowed
excellent control, and formed the basis for all subsequent stakeout
and machine control work. Even last minute changes were adapted
quickly, and a centralized document management system kept all
stakeholders informed of the current project status.
Staking was only done during relatively cool parts of the day, with
constant checks to multiple benchmarks. Walther says the Trimble
GCS900 and SPS730 worked very well together: The SPS730 was
designed to work dynamically with very little delay, and it really per-
formed well. It was very quick and exact with the GCS900, and we
were easily within tolerance on the subbase levelschecking with
the Trimble 5600 conrmed that.
Paving was done with the hot on hot method, which required three
Vgele paving machines to work simultaneously along with six
Hamm steel rollers, all imported (with all other equipment) by a con-
tainer ship assembled in Hamburg. To counter heat, all paving was
done at night, by the light of the largest permanent lighting system
ever created for a sports venue. With all the steel rollers operating,
it looked like a race, jokes Walther. So who gets all the champi-
onship points?
Final track layout consisted of 30 cm (11.8 inches) of crushed stone
base, 20 cm (7.9 inches) of granular subbase, eight cm (3.14 inch-
es) of binders, and four cm (1.6 inches) of wearing course. Since
there is little but sand to work with in Abu Dhabi, most of this mate-
rial was imported from the United Kingdom and Malaysia. For exam-
ple, all the gravel used on the track surface is known as Graywacke
Aggregate and came from the Bayston Hill Quarry in Shropshire,
EnglandGraywacke is prized by Formula One drivers and circuit
bosses for the high level of grip it offers. All asphalt was mixed on
site in a batch plant operated by MKW, a Bickhardt subsidiary.
Maximum precision, perfect workmanship, passion, optimum equip-
ment, and the necessary expertise were the solid foundation of the
high quality we were able to achieve, says Walther. Add to that
the team spirit of all the employees involved, including the 16 locals
who joined our staff for the duration, and you know why we are
able to do what we do so well.
World-Class Praise
The Yas Marina Circuit is built on Yas Island, and is the anchor of a
very ambitious development. In addition to the racetrack, the island
includes a theme park, water park, marina, residences, hotels and
beaches. The track itself has four grandstand areas, and passes by
the marina and underneath the Yas Marina Hotel. Its only the sec-
ond Formula One Circuit in the Middle East, but is already a very
popular and busy venue.
The Fdration Internationale de lAutomobile (FIA), Formula Ones
governing body, granted nal approval to the Yas Marina Circuit
on October 7th, 2009. Bruno Senna completed the rst test lap.
Since then, the track has become the home of the Abu Dhabi Grand
Prix, held in November as the last race on the Formula One calen-
dar. In 2009, the event was the rst to begin in the daytime and
end at night; to ensure a smooth transition, oodlights were on from
the beginning of the race. In 2010, Sebastian Vettel sealed the driv-
ers championship by winning his second race at Abu Dhabi.
Throughout its inaugural seasons, the circuit has won praise from
drivers. Every corner is unique, says Nico Rosberg, and two-time
world champion Fernando Alonso says that Abu Dhabi is, enjoy-
able, because there is always something to do. Notably, there have
been no complaints of unevenness in the track.
The complete surveying on this project was made possible by the
intelligent fusion of modern components like GPS, total stations, and
machine control, said Walther. This allowed a single survey to
manage the site very effectively and comply with all tolerances.
Civilizations are sometimes dened by their sports venues, just as
Rome was dened by its Coliseum. In the Yas Marina Circuit, Abu
Dhabi has created an excellent emblem of the state it has become:
modern, powerful, extremely fast, and able to import the resources
it needs. And thanks to the survey team of Bickhardt Bau AG, very
precise.
Craig Dylan is a freelancer with a land surveying background
who specializes in writing for the AEC industry.
Thanks to Stephanie Kirtland.
Ar t i c l e
12
July/August 2011
Who is the fastest paver? Race track asphalt pouring
GNSS Update
Broadband versus GPS
In the USA the battle around wide area broadband solution provider LightSquared rages on.
Lightsquared operates in a frequency band that is overlapping the GPS L1 band and is causing
interference to that frequency band. In total, over 40,000 ground stations are planned all over the
country and the high precision industry in particular could suffer the consequences. John Deere &
Company gave the first report of interference to the FCC (Federal Communications Commission).
J
ohn Deere reported substantial interference with their StarFire correc-
tion system as far away as 35 kilometers from a transmitter. It also
reported that it has not found a solution to the problem as of yet.
Testing by the US military conrmed the results from John Deere. From
the tests, it was also concluded that high precision receivers suffer more
from the interference than consumer grade receivers due to wideband
lters for Glonass and precision code reception. LightSquared were
accused of producing too optimistic results from their tests near Las Vegas,
because the transmitters used were broadcasting roughly half the power
dened in the companys business.
Other news from the GPS front included the denitive switching off of
SV 49 on May 6. The satellite, which carries the L5 test payload, was
causing multi-path problems satellite side. No further information was
given but it is widely assumed that the satellite will function as a spare
satellite. The big question is how the second Block IIF satellite, scheduled
for launch in July, will now fare.
Galileo
The rst two Galileo
operational satellites
are expected to be
launched into space on October 20 of this year. This should lead to
initial operational capability in 2014 / 2015 with a full constella-
tion now predicted for 2019. The initial capability is now said to
have 18 satellites and three initial services, but not enough for 24
hour per day worldwide coverage. The launch will be the rst Galileo
/ Soyuz launch from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.
Meanwhile the payload package for the next satellites has passed
the Preliminary Design Review. The payload packages are built main-
ly by SSTL, the builder of the GIOVE-A satellite still functioning in
orbit after 64 months of operation. The rst package is expected for
late 2011 with another 13 to follow at 6-week intervals under the
current contract.
GIOVE-B, the second of the In Orbit Validation satellites has now
been operational for three years, nine months longer than expected.
All this time the atomic clock installed, a passive hydrogen maser
clock, has remained at the required level of accuracy. This type of
clock is, until the launch of the new satellites in October, still the
most precise clock ever brought into orbit with an accuracy of one
second per three million years. For comparison: the Rubidium clocks
used in GIOVE-A have an accuracy of three seconds per million
years. The operational satellites will carry two clocks of each type
for back-up purposes.
Galileo is more than just the satellites in space. On May 20, the
most Northern Galileo ground station was inaugurated at Svalbard,
Spitsbergen (78N) less than a 1000 kilometers South of the North
Pole. It is a very remote place with more polar bears living there
than humans.
Glonass
The K1 Glonass satellite launched in February began operational life
on April 7. Various sources report the reception of the new Glonass L3
14
July/August 2011
Ar t i c l e
By Huibert-Jan Lekkerkerk
Effect of LightSquared on GPS receivers (source: John Deere & Company)
Opening of the ground station at Svalbard, Spitsbergen (source: www.esa.int)
Artist impression of the first
two Galileo satellites
(source: www.esa.int)
CDMA signal. Transmitted at 1202.025 MHz, this signal should pro-
vide easier interoperability with GPS receivers. The signal is, accord-
ing to Javad, quite similar to GPS data. With the addition of these satel-
lites, the total number of Glonass satellites that are operational is now
23, just one shy of full operational capability.
In the same timeframe, information on Glonass status has also been
greatly improved. The previously mainly Russian site (www.glonass-cen-
ter.ru) now hosts a number of pages in English that allow a quick
overview of the number of visible satellites and DOP values for the
Glonass constellation. From this information, it can be seen that Glonass
coverage for most of the world (with the exception of the equator) is
now around 100%.
Beidou / Compass
On April 10, the third Beidou inclined geosynchronous orbit (IGO)
satellite was launched bringing China yet again a step closer to full
operational capability over their country.
Javad has tracked both signals from Galileo, Compass, Glonass and
GPS and has noted that the monitored Compass signals have a much
higher signal strength than the corresponding signals from either GPS
or Galileo. The tracked signals are those presumably from the Open
Service, although with no Interface Control Document released this is
still unconrmed.
Augmentation Systems
GAGAN
Indias GAGAN had a major boost in May with the launch of the GSAT-
8 geosynchronous satellite on May 21 from Kourou using an Ariane 5
rocket. The satellite is initially positioned at 47 degrees East but should
drift to its nal position at 55 degrees East putting it West of India. The
satellite is expected to be ready for transmission in July. Whether this
also includes the GAGAN satellite-based augmentation (SBAS) pay-
load is not sure. The GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation (aka
GAGAN or sky in Hindi) has been long awaited and is the rst non-
commercial SBAS in the Indian Ocean.
Egnos
The European Geostationary Overlay Service (EGNOS), which was
declared operational for aviation in March this year, has now seen its
rst practical use. Pau Pyrnes in Southern France is now Europes
rst airport to use the signal for guiding aircraft during landing. By
2020, all of Frances 100 airports should be Egnos capable. The rst
Egnos-equipped aircraft are believed to be the Beluga airplanes used
to transport Airbus parts between the various factories and assembly
locations. Currently Airbus uses Pau for training. Further aircraft that
will be equipped with Egnos are the A-350 range from Airbus.
WAAS
The WAAS satellite with PRN 135, which was switched off after drift-
ing, has now resumed normal operations. The satellite is being moved
to its nal destination at 133W and is fully operational. The satellite
covers most of Alaska, which did not have any SBAS coverage while
the satellite was switched off. It seems that the failure was due to a mal-
function in the software following a loss of control from the ground.
After some time the satellite was brought back into contact and could
be restarted. New software has been uploaded to prevent this happen-
ing again.
SDCM
The Russian counterpart to Egnos, WAAS and GAGAN, is called the
System for Differential Correction and Monitoring (SDCM).The rst satel-
lite to carry a payload for transmitting this signal is currently under con-
struction, with the satellite launch planned for the second half of 2011.
Acquisition time
Trimble, one of the major companies selling professional GPS equip-
ment is on a shopping spree. Over the last few months they have
acquired OmniStar from Fugro as far as the land-based side of opera-
tions are concerned (Fugros marine operations remain unaffected). For
the next few years, Fugro will continue to operate the network.
Just a month after all this activity, Trimble announced that they had
bought Ashtech (formerly Magellan Professional, Thales Navigation,
DSNP and Sercel) and its afliates. This effectively merges two major
OEM developers for the professional market. The products are expect-
ed to be marketed under the Spectra Precision brand. The results of
Ashtech sales will fall within Trimbles Engineering and Construction
segment.
Huibert-Jan Lekkerkerk hlekkerkerk@geoinformatics.com
is a freelance writer and trainer in the fields of
positioning and hydrography.
Ar t i c l e
15
Glonass coverage (DOP <6, elevation > 5) for June 12 (source: www.glonass-center.ru)
Dassault Falcon test aircraft equipped with Egnos
(source: www.esa.int)
Host
DVW e.V. German Society for Geodesy,
Geoinformation and Land Management
www.dvw.de
Conference organiser
DVW GmbH
Egbertstrae 46, 40489 Dsseldorf
DGfK e.V. Deutsche Gesellschaft fr
Kartographie | www.dgfk.net
Trade fair organiser
HINTE Messe- und Ausstellungs-GmbH
Bannwaldallee 60, 76185 Karlsruhe
Fon: +49 721 93133-0
info@hinte-messe.de
www.intergeo.de
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for Planet Earth
Nuremberg, September 27
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, 2011

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, German Society for Geodesy . DVW e.V
Host

.dgfk.net Kartographie | www
Deutsche Gesellschaft fr . DGfK e.V
DVW GmbH

info@hinte-messe.de
Fon: +49 721 93133-0
Bannwaldallee 60, 76185 Karlsruhe
Ausstellungs-GmbH HINTE Messe- und
rade fair organiser T

Introducing a Greek Cartographic Company
Combining GIS and GPS
TERRAIN is a very young and fresh cartographic and publishing company in Greece. Fotis Reppas, Chief
Cartographer of TERRAIN, talks with editor Joc Triglav about company values, the technologies used in
its daily work, its customer base, its products and the challenges that arise when mapping the coast-
line.
Introduction
TERRAIN was founded in 2008 by
Stephanos Psimenos, the former
owner of Road Editions, a carto-
graphic company in Greece.
Stephanos brought together his expe-
rience in eld surveys and his love of
good maps, and paired them both with
the sound knowledge of the latest carto-
graphic technologies (GIS & GPS) provided
by his team of GIS analysts. TERRAINs team
consists of certied GIS analysts who have
received special education in eld data col-
lection. Reppas: We have introduced new
cartographic standards by recording virtually
everything in the eld. We want our maps to
be an experience for the user, not just a piece
of paper, though we do
not print on
paper we use
Polyart. He states that it is
extremely rewarding getting feedback
from people who used the companys maps
in their travels and had a really good time.
From the very beginning TERRAIN focused
on three basic principles that covered a
gap in Greek cartography, namely preci-
sion, user friendliness and a high level of
information.
Meeting client
expectations
When asked
how TERRAIN dif-
fers from other
cartographic com-
panies on the Greek mar-
ket, Reppas answers that
everyone at TERRAIN is a map
user rst and then a map
maker: It is impossible to cre-
ate a good map if you have
never used one. At TERRAIN we
think like hikers, bikers, climbers,
divers, canyoneers and week-
enders as well, because we are all
of the above. So, our maps perfect-
ly meet the expectations of these
demanding groups.
Another funda-
mental con-
cept of TER-
RAIN is
sweep-
ing eldwork. TER-
RAIN bases its quality
on extensive and exhaust-
ing (for men and machines)
eld research: We go to our
working area and scan all the details that
should be on our map, what we call a 100%
eld survey. Thats the only way to know if
a dirt road is passable or too rough, or if a
footpath is clear and suitable for family
walking or not. We often say to our cus-
tomers that no matter where they may want
to go, we have been there before them. We
identify with the users of our maps, and we
strive to make our maps the best and the
most convenient to use.
Data collecting and technologies
used
The software that TERRAIN uses in its work
comes from Esri. ArcPad has been installed
in the companys Ashtech GPS receivers,
and ArcInfo is used in the desktops back in
the ofce. Reppas: These two software pro-
grams cover our needs successfully. TERRAIN,
from day one, has established strict proto-
cols for our work. These include manuals
with detailed instructions about how we
work, whether out in the eld or in the ofce.
It is absolutely vital for us all to keep to these
protocols so as to ensure consistency in the
end product. Since there are several differ-
ent people involved in each project, it is
essential that everyone speak the same lan-
guage so as to understand each other per-
fectly, and this is achieved by strictly follow-
ing the companys manual. For eld work
during the rst three years (2008 to 2010)
they used MobileMapper CX, the best GPS
device available at the time.
July/August 2011
I n t e r v i e w
By Joc Triglav
Field work
Corfu coastal mapping
18
Reppas: Now we use the new Mobile -
Mapper 100, a GNSS device that meets or
exceeds our demands. It gives us sub-meter
accuracy (one meter accuracy is enough for
our scales) in real-time mapping and with
better reception than the previous model
thanks to the embedded GPS+GLONASS
capabilities. The most important thing is that
what you see on our maps isnt just checked
by TERRAIN, it is recorded by TERRAIN.
When a cartographer sees a chapel, he gets
off his bike, goes to the front door and sets
a Point feature. Then he opens the door of
the chapel, goes inside and writes down
which saint this chapel is dedicated to. Now
imagine this multiplied by hundreds of
chapels, springs, caves etc. This is how all
data is recorded: by virtually "touching" it.
More field work
TERRAINs eld workers actually go every-
where. This requires a lot of time and a con-
siderable amount of money, but according
to Reppas there is no other way to produce
100% reliable results: To collect our data,
we go everywhere as a team of two to nine
cartographers with our off-road vehicles
(4x4 or off-road motorcycles) specially mod-
ied with GPS mounts for our Mobile -
Mapper 100, and drive all day long (dawn
to dusk) recording every feature we nd on
the way. When it comes to footpaths, we
walk them. All the data is collected in 1:1
scale. Some time ago we published our rst
general map of the Peloponnese in
1:200,000, and soon Western Crete in
1:100,000 will be published as well.
These maps require experience and good
judgment to know what information is essen-
tial and has to be shown. A map is an
abstract of reality and the less space you
have, the more meticulous and careful you
have to be with your choices. TERRAIN has a
very big list of the attributes and sub-cate-
gories they record. Reppas: For the line fea-
tures we have about 15 types and for the
point features over 90. Sometimes a cartog-
rapher may come up against something new
or something special that exists only in the
area where he works. Every place has its
own particularities. We always record
everything, even if there is no pre-arranged
category for something: ArcPad is very ex-
ible. Back in the ofce, we decide if a spe-
cial or unique feature should go into the
map.
Cartographic work at the coast
and on islands
Asked how the measurement procedure is
done on the numerous islands and their
coasts, Reppas answers that the company
executes cartographic eldwork on islands
the same way as in any other land area.
Reppas: The extra issue here is the coast-
line, which was another challenge for car-
tographers. TERRAIN was the rst cartograph-
ic company to record every mile of the
coastline of Greek islands, using a specially
modied inatable boat named Glaros,
which means seagull in Greek.
Over the last three years the crew of Glaros
circumnavigated more than 50 Greek
islands and all the small islets around them,
and recorded in detail all the beaches, even
the smallest ones, with their special features:
whether they are sandy or pebbly, if there
are trees that give natural shade, fresh water
or any other facilities such as beach bars,
dive centers, sea sports et cetera. Infor ma -
tion on the sea bottom in front of the beach
is also recorded, whether it is sandy or rocky
-- useful information for someone who
intends to drop anchor and spend the night.
In addition to the fact that TERRAIN maps are
printed on waterproof Polyart "paper", so
one can drop them in the sea or even use
them underwater without destroying them,
the companys maps are ideal for those who
sail around the Greek islands, states
Reppas.
Polyart is expensive, twenty times more
expensive than plain paper. When asked
why the company chose to use this materi-
al, Reppas points out that a map is a valu-
able tool and they wanted the ultimate out-
come: the best maps on the best material.
Reppas: Polyart is a revolution in printed
maps. It isnt just a water-resistant paper, it
is 100% waterproof. Another advantage is
its tear resistance. The map might deform
under pressure but it wouldnt be torn. We
nd these characteristics as important as our
standards for collecting data, and the com-
bination results in a product that will never
let you down.
I n t e r v i e w
19
Mt. Parnitha map
Satellite and aerial images
When asked to what extent and for which pur-
poses satellite and aerial images are used by
the company, Reppas answers that satellite
imagery is used mostly for aesthetic purposes.
Sometimes recordings from the eld need some
rening to follow the smooth curves of the
road, and this is where satellite or aerial
images help to achieve the best possible result.
Reppas: No matter how good a cartographer
may be at interpreting images, satellites always
give just part of the information. It is extremely
difcult for an analyst to make out the type of
road, for instance dirt or asphalt, or if a par-
ticular road is passable or not. And speaking
of footpaths, I have used maps in the past
where I have seen serious mistakes such as a
creek digitized as a footpath or as a road!
Another issue is when the road continues
under foliage: I know that GPS devices can
have some problems, too, but the fact that the
cartographer is on the spot and sees with his
own eyes what the site is like gives us the
unique advantage of accurate information.
Map scales and e-shop
Speaking of map scales, TERRAIN has chosen
not to be constrained by the scales but by the
available space on its maps. Reppas: We try
to depict as much area of interest as ts in a
paper size of 100 x 70 cm. Thus, since
Greece has various sizes of islands, the scales
of our island maps vary between 1:15,000
and 1:75,000. All our mountain maps are in
the scale of 1:25,000, which is a typical scale
for hiking maps.
Recently the rst titles in two new map series
were presented: regional maps of mainland
Greece in the scale of 1:200,000, and area
maps in the scale of 1:100,000. During the
past three years, under the direction of
Stephanos Psimenos, the company has estab-
lished a sales network of more than 400 sell-
ing points. Stephanos visited these outlets in per-
son and explained in detail how the maps were
created and their high standards as well.
Travelers in Greece can now nd TERRAIN maps
on sale in all the Greek islands (in tourist shops,
bookshops, foreign press shops, supermarkets
etc.). There is also a well-designed e-shop
where you can order maps online and have
them mailed to your home, with delivery within
a few days.
Natural area covered with maps
To date, the company has mapped 45 islands,
two mountains and two larger areas, namely
the Peloponnese and Crete. They started with
the islands, which are popular destinations with
plenty of attractions for everyone. Maps for
places no one had published anything on
before, like the island of Symi, were issued. The
two mountains, Mt. Parnitha, which is near
Athens, and Mt. Pelio are very popular and
beautiful as well.
This year TERRAIN launched a new series of small-
er maps 50 x 70 cm, on plain paper, with the
same accuracy as the big maps but with less
information (because of the new scale), and less
than half the price of the Polyart maps. These
maps are suitable for those who do not want to
explore every corner of the island they are visit-
ing and are satised with the basic information.
Reppas: We believe that everyone has the right
to a good map and thats why we named this
series Maps For All! Our publishing schedule
is to nish the project that covers the mainland
of Greece and the Ionian islands. Our goals are
dictated by special circumstances and by peo-
ples needs. We are moving forward with steady
steps and we believe that people have learned
how to distinguish a good map: they ask for it
and they prefer it to a poor-quality map. People
now understand that a good map is an essen-
tial tool for helping them get the most out of their
visit to a particular area.
The companys products and services cover a
wide range of clients and applications, states
Reppas. In addition to our printed maps we
offer our services to anyone who wants to high-
light a specic area or create a custom-made
thematic map, like maps for travel guides, hotels,
car rental agencies and other private compa-
nies. We also undertake footpath maintenance
and signposting on behalf of public and private
organizations. At TERRAIN, we have the know-
how, the experience and the willpower to cre-
ate any cartographic product from scratch.
More info about TERRAIN visit www.terrainmaps.gr
JGC Company -Ashtech Dealer in Greece : www.JGC.gr
More info about the Ashtech: www.ashtech.com
Thanks to Claire Geffroy, Ashtech Senior MarCom Manager.
I n t e r v i e w
20
July/August 2011
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A First Assessment
Is Europe getting INSPIREd?
The INSPIRE Directive went into force in May 2007. While some derived legislation is still under devel-
opment, the basic building blocks of the INSPIRE infrastructure are taking shape. Member States and
the European Commission have been working hard over the last year: groups of experts from the
Member States coordinated by the Commission have prepared the technical basis for the derived legis-
lation and Member States have taken measures to implement INSPIRE at their level. As from 2010, the
first results of the Member States monitoring and reporting activities on the implementation of INSPIRE
became available, and it is now possible to make a first assessment.
Introduction
The INSPIRE Directive (Directive
2007/2/EC) establishes an
INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation
in Europe in order to improve the
sharing of spatial information
between public administrations for
policies related to the environment,
and to facilitate public access to this
information across Europe. While the
Directive sets out the framework of
this infrastructure, it is the derived legislation that denes how this
infrastructure has to be implemented in practice, addressing meta-
data, the harmonisation of spatial data sets and services, and the
network services infrastructure. Furthermore, it covers harmonised
access to data and services of the Member States for the Community
institutions and bodies. This derived legislation has already been
developed to a great extent: currently only a part of the legislation
referring to the harmonisation of spatial data sets and services and
to the required network infrastructure is still under development.
As from 2010 Member States have to submit yearly the results of
the monitoring of their legal obligations through quantitative indi-
cators, while a qualitative report on the implementation of INSPIRE
has to be provided every three years. In order to get a more com-
prehensive picture, beyond these legal requirements, and to assess
the overall progress of National Spatial Data Infrastructures (NSDI)
the "INSPIRE and NSDI: State of Play" study was launched by the
European Commission Eurostat. The study evaluates the develop-
ment of the NSDI in 34 countries: 27 European Union Member
States, candidate countries (TR, MK,
HR, IS), and EFTA countries (NO,
CH, LI, IS). The study is based on
different sources of information: a
desktop study, a specific survey
focusing on organisational aspects
and the first results from official
INSPIRE Monitoring mentioned
above. Direct visits to three coun-
tries complete the overall analysis.
The results are summarised in a
report that also includes compara-
tive tables illustrating the progress
from 2007 onwards. The study pre-
sented here is therefore based on the
situation at the beginning of 2010,
unless stated differently.
The analysis is divided according
to the components of a Spatial Data
Infrastructure (SDI) in technical
(data, metadata, services) and non-
technical aspects (organisational, legal issues and funding).
Legal aspects and funding
With INSPIRE being a European Directive, its provisions have to be
transposed into Member State legislation. By the end of May 2011
all Member States but one had completed their transposition. As
reported by Member States, the topics that created the most difcul-
ties during the transposition concerned mainly the establishment of
coordination structures of relevant stakeholders in the country and
the measures for sharing spatial data sets and services among the
public administrations. Some countries not belonging to the EU are
also implementing INSPIRE or equivalent legislation on a voluntary
basis. In fact several of these countries have been and are still active-
ly involved in the INSPIRE process with the presence of experts in
the technical working groups.
Besides the legal requirements, strategic initiatives, such as a vision
for a GI strategy, the denition of implementation plans and funding
policies are all necessary to support long-term developments in the
countries. For example, the place-
ment of the NSDI within the overall
context of a national information
strategy, the identication of the arte-
facts of the spatial data infrastructure,
the responsibilities, the task alloca-
tions, the key milestones, and a prop-
er timeframe are seen as necessary.
However, there are few such plans
(e.g. DE, UK, NL) and it seems that
many countries are implementing
22
July/August 2011
Ar t i c l e
By Beatrice Eiselt
Figure 1: Existence of strategic documents and implementation plans (30 countries)
Figure 2: Levels of public authorities involved in INSPIRE implementation (30 countries)
INSPIRE Directive without specic guidance (Figure 1).
A clear funding policy for the NSDI is also still missing in many coun-
tries. This might partly be because the "INSPIRE" activities are part
of the regular activities of an institution and therefore not covered
by a specic INSPIRE or NSDI budget line. Sometimes specic pro-
ject funding covers some of the tasks, mainly coordination activities
and monitoring and reporting activities. There is no Community bud-
get directly associated with the INSPIRE Directive, that is no budget
directly allocated for supporting INSPIRE implementation in Member
States. However, several EU programmes (e.g. Interreg, FP7, e-
Content- ICT PSP) are providing important contributions and might
be further exploited in the future. As an example, several EU-funded
projects currently support the development of harmonised data sets.
Funding opportunities can be found on the INSPIRE Forum web site
in the "Funding opportunities and funded projects" group.
Organisational aspects
The INSPIRE Directive explicitly requires Member States to dene a
structure for coordinating across the different levels of government,
the contributions of all those with an interest in their infrastructure
for spatial information. This coordination structure may take different
forms depending on the specic governmental structure within each
Member State (e.g. a federal state will probably have different stake-
holders compared to a more centralised country).
The organisational structures in the countries have shown a clear
shift over the last few years, from National Mapping Agencies
(NMAs), that is data producers, towards Environmental Ministries or
Agencies, to data users. While the NMAs often keep the role of the
main executive body, users are more and more involved in the pro-
cess. Countries are putting huge efforts into the creation of function-
al coordination structures, however not all the countries have such
detailed structures yet in place (Figure 2). This is especially true in
view of the development of implementing rules for harmonised data
sets falling under the spatial data themes listed in Annex III of the
INSPIRE Directive, which covers a very broad eld of mainly envi-
ronmentally-related topics. The involvement of all relevant stakehold-
ers is important in order to get all the user requirements duly taken
into account. The involvement of local governments seems to be par-
ticularly difcult and for the time being they are not very visible.
However, their role is gaining more and more importance. This is
certainly true for France, and to a certain extent for Spain, Italy and
Denmark.
Denmark is a good example for involving the local level through
FOTdanmark, an association between the Danish State (Danish
National Survey and Cadastre) and the municipalities. It has a
goal to establish unied public topographic maps as well as to
provide related, spatially enabled applications for citizens and
private companies. In July 2009, 88 municipalities out of 98 were
members of FOTdanmark.
As INSPIRE and NSDIs have moved from an unofcial to an ofcial
status, the role of the GI associations (e.g. AGI in UK) has changed.
They are still in a third of the countries but are less involved as the
driving coordinator, and more in a facilitating and supporting role.
Furthermore, the involvement of universities, third parties and other
stakeholders is limited. Countries where these stakeholders are
involved are for example: Switzerland, the Czech Republic and
Spain. Even if the stakeholders not all equal partners, a broad stake-
holder involvement is certainly important to grasp different require-
ments and needs.
Data and service sharing
An important activity of a coordinative-legal nature is the develop-
ment of sharing arrangements through harmonised licences, in order
to improve access to data and services, and to facilitate its use. The
value lies in the fact that a good licence clearly spells out rights and
obligations and avoids situations where the user does not really
know what is allowed regarding the use of the data. Harmonisation
is important in order to facilitate the combined use of different data
sets. When combining data sets from different sources it is impor-
Ar t i c l e
23
Figure 3: Existence of
metadata for spatial data
sets and services
tant to determine use conditions for the combined product. If licences
express the same concepts in different ways, it can be very difcult
to assess their similarity. Moreover, if each licence species different
use conditions and different restrictions, then the combined use of
data coming from different sources will be difcult. This is because
all the conditions and restrictions of each data set contained in the
combined results will have to be respected. This problem could be
avoided or reduced if a limited number of use conditions are speci-
ed.
Licensing is a eld where efforts in harmonising the national
approaches are ongoing and concrete results are starting to emerge.
In order to promote access to spatial data, many countries set up
standard agreements/licenses for the different groups of stakehold-
ers. Currently, 15 countries have a harmonised framework for pub-
lic administration access and use (e.g. NL, DK, NO), 6 countries
have developed standard licences for personal use and 7 for com-
mercial use. In other words sharing policies are just emerging but
developments continue quickly. Of particular interest for use at the
European level are the initiatives that approach this topic across
Member States. Examples of good practices for data and service
sharing can also be found in the "INSPIRE Good practice for data
and service sharing document" available on the INSPIRE Website.
Since January 2011, the French mapping agency IGN has been
distributing its large scale reference data RGE, asking only that
its reproduction and distribution costs be covered if the data is
used strictly for public tasks without commercial interests.
Some issues related to access restrictions and condentiality, have
become apparent and will have to be investigated further. On the
one hand some basic data sets have access restrictions (e.g.
bathymetry in some of the Nordic countries) and it is important to
better understand the reasons for these restrictions. On the other
hand issues on privacy have been raised with an increased aware-
ness that the combination of multiple datasets, each on its own
respecting the privacy protection rules, might lead to the disclosure
of condential information.
Metadata
Metadata are an essential component of
an SDI because they are the primary tool
for discovering spatial resources. Imple -
men tation rules for metadata were the
rst derived legislation to be published.
Metadata is a rapidly progressing
domain even if it is happening less quick-
ly than expected, given the legal obliga-
tion to create INSPIRE-conformant meta-
data for Annex I and II data sets by
December 2010. At the end of 2009
more than one third of the countries that
provided the indicators had metadata for
less than 50% of their data sets and ser-
vices (Figure 3), and when it came to con-
formant metadata, only three countries
where above or equal to the 50% mark
(Figure 4). For Annex I data sets the situ-
ation is a little bit better, ve countries
score 50% or more.
Also concerning the availability of meta-
data through discovery services, it is clear that some improvements
are still needed: in just seven countries more then 50% of the datasets
and services have metadata and can be found through at least one
discovery service (Figure 5).
Spatial data sets
In order to combine data sets from different sources, for example from
different data providers from the same or different countries, interoper-
able data are necessary. The INSPIRE Directive lists 34 spatial data
themes, divided into three annexes, for which harmonised data speci-
cations have to be developed. The rst annex covers mainly basic
reference data, such as administrative units, transport or hydrography.
The remaining annexes cover mainly environmentally-related topics.
Activities on harmonising available data sets falling under Annex I
are just starting as the relevant implementing rules were only pub-
lished in December 2010. An important topic for Member States is
now the strategy to be used for this harmonisation. Several activities
focusing on interoperability and harmonisation of spatial data sets
are supported through EU projects, e.g. OneGeology, GIS4EU,
Humboldt, ESDIN, and Nature-SDIplus. Several of these projects
have already contributed to the development of data specications.
Network services
INSPIRE is based on networks of services that allow improved access
to geographic information. These services build the technological
backbone of the infrastructure and allow users to discover what is
available, to view, possibly download, and even transform.
The current assessment is based on a partial view of the services as
several countries did not provide information on the availability of
services. This may be an indication that the situation is evolving
rapidly and that it was not possible to provide a stable picture.
View services in particular are now developing very quickly, and
actually some countries are thinking to better bundle their view ser-
vices in order to avoid an excessive scattering of resources.
Download services are also starting to emerge and discovery ser-
vices are becoming more available with 21 out of the 34 countries
Ar t i c l e
24
July/August 2011
Figure 4: Existence of conformant data for spatial data sets and services
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having at least some discovery services in place. However, as
already mentioned, when looking at the amount of metadata avail-
able through discovery services, the picture is less optimistic.
Despite an overall deployment of services still needing to be com-
pleted, developments are ongoing and national geoportals are
receiving growing interest. Even if national portals are not an
INSPIRE obligation 18 countries have one or at least a proto-
type.
Spain is implementing one of the most developed service infras-
tructures. IDEE, the Spanish National Spatial Infrastructure covers
7 Ministries, 16 Regions and 400 municipalities and offers 833
WMS services, 205 WFS services, 18 WCS and 9 CSW.
The French Geoportal (www.geoportail.fr) provides access to ref-
erence data produced by IGN France (National Geographic
Institute) and other producers. The public can access a large num-
ber of data sets online, while direct access to the view services
through direct calls to their URLs makes it possible to embed them
in other web and desktop applications. Access is granted based
on an open source license. Open and conformant tools support-
ing the work of the data producers, such as a template with an
ISO 19115 XM export facility and a Wiki dedicated to "How to
ll metadata elds", are also made available.
The Lithuanian Geographic Information Infrastructure connects
major public sector information sources through a single internet
portal (www.geoportal.lt). The system has been designed as a
national, open and shared spatial data infrastructure giving access
to products and related services.
As of May 9th, 2011, discovery and view services had to be avail-
able with initial operating capabilities in the EU Member States. In
addition, activities were started aimed at testing connections
between the Member State Services and the European Geoportal.
Through these activities the European Geoportal Member State net-
work services will gain wide visibility, stimulating the use of the infras-
tructure and further developments.
An SDI can only work if a certain quality
level is achieved and the different techni-
cal components conform to the stan-
dards. Conformance testing is a chal-
lenge that is coming up for all the
countries and actually does not only con-
cern network services but also metadata
and spatial data sets. It will be worth-
while to bundle the efforts of Member
States in this eld and foster the
exchange of information. Germany is an
interesting case for the provision of tools
developed centrally in support of the
implementation of INSPIRE by the differ-
ent participants concerned. Conformance
testing tools have been made available
to its data providers for verifying the con-
formity of data sets, metadata and ser-
vices with the respective implementing
rules; the results of the validation are
used to feed the INSPIRE monitoring obli-
gations. The Netherlands is working
along the same lines. A national valida-
tion service tests digital plans at four levels: GML data encoding
according to schemas and business rules of the standards, interop-
erability of the geometry with respect to national specications, le
names, and digital signature ensuring the integrity and complete-
ness of the plan.
Conclusions
The framework set out by INSPIRE Directive has allowed each coun-
try to start implementing a national infrastructure taking into account
its specicities while creating a European interoperable system.
The strengths and weaknesses of the currently available components
of the infrastructure have been pointed out in this article. The rst
opportunity to measure the progress in a quantitative way will be
provided by the new monitoring information from Member States
referring to the year 2010. If some of the weaknesses persist, coor-
dinative and supportive activities at EU level, such as platforms for
exchange of information or documenting good practices, might need
to be strengthened.
Overall, clear progress is becoming evident and many elements of
the infrastructure are taking shape. While the last implementing rules
are currently under development, the network services infrastructure
has really started to emerge. With more and more metadata avail-
able and related discovery and view services accessible through
national geoportals, an important rst step for the improvement of
spatial data and service sharing across Europe has already been
achieved.
Beatrice Eiselt, Beatrice.eiselt@ec.europa.eu, works at Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Union.
Eurostat, together with two other Commission services - Directorate-General for the Environment and the
Joint Research Centre - are responsible for the development of the INSPIRE initiative.
Figures 1 5:
Vandenbroucke, D., Billiouris, D., Crompvoets, J. and Janssen, K. (2006). Spatial Data Infrastructures in
Europe. D4.1 - Summary report regarding the results of the European Assessment of 34 NSDI (2010) , of a
study commissioned by the European Commission, Eurostat within the framework of the INSPIRE initiative.
http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.cfm/pageid/6/list/4 [accessed June 2010], pp72 + 34 annexed
country reports.
An annotated version of this article can be found at www.geoinformatics.com.
Ar t i c l e
26
July/August 2011
Figure 5: Discoverable metadata for spatial data sets and services
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DMCii and Emergency Response
International Rescue
DMCii has recently taken over the day-to-day running of the International Charter Space and Major
Disasters, a global agreement to acquire satellite images of disaster zones for emergency response.
How did this Surrey-based company become the only non-space agency in the Charter to hold such a
significant leadership role?
T
here are certain closely guarded phone
numbers that, once called, put events in
motion. So it goes with the International
Charter Space and Major Disasters.
When a major catastrophe occurs upwards
of once per fortnight is the current average
the phone call is made and requests swiftly put
through to many of the worlds Earth observa-
tion (EO) satellites to target the affected region,
providing rapid access to space-based images
to help guide response efforts and save lives.
Now into its second decade of life, The
Charter was born out of disaster. When
Hurricane Mitch claimed thousands of lives
while tearing through Central America in
October 1998, the European Space Agency
(ESA) and French space agency CNES rushed
to get accurate damage maps into the hands
of emergency response teams.
The experience inspired the two agencies to
formalise their future cooperation. The result-
ing Charter entered force in October 2000,
when ESA and CNES were joined by the
Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The
Charters rst activation occurred the follow-
ing month, in response to landslides in
Slovenia.
More than 300 activations later, today the
Charter has 10 members with 3 new agencies
in the process of completing the integration
process, and has become an established part
of the disaster response landscape. This year
is already proving busy, with a total of 11
Charter activations so far, triggered by a wide
variety of disasters including wildres in
Mexico, ooding in Australia, Brazil and
Namibia, landslides in Turkey, earthquakes in
Pakistan and New Zealand and the earth-
quake and tsunami in Japan.
Taking charge
The Charter is managed on a rotating basis,
with each member agency taking charge for
six months at a time. In May 2011 its day-to-
day running passed from the US Geological
Survey in Sioux Falls, USA to a leafy business
park on the edge of Guildford, UK.
This is the headquarters of remote sensing ser-
vice provider DMC International Imaging
(DMCii), the sole private company to partici-
pate in managing the Charter. DMCii owes
this distinction to the unique public-private
basis of the UKs Charter membership.
The Charter is open to all space agencies with
space assets able to contribute satellite
images. So in November 2005 DMCii and
the UK Space Agency (UKSA) teamed up to
join as partners, each one possessing what
the other lacks: while UKSA enjoys national
space agency status, it has no EO satellites of
its own, but DMCii brings with it the control
of the Disaster Monitoring Constellation
(DMC), a currently ve-strong commercial
satellite constellation.
DMCii additionally holds a place on the
Charters Executive Secretariat, which imple-
ments the day-to-day Charter process. The
UKSA, meanwhile, supports the DMCiis
28
July/August 2011
Ar t i c l e
By Adina Gillespie
Colombia flooding UK-DMC2 Image (C) DMCii, 2011. All rights reserved.
Sendai Oil Refinery Fire Japan high-res UK-DMC2 Image (C) DMCii, 2011. All rights reserved.
Charter work as well as occupying its own
seat on the Charter Board, which performs an
oversight role and considers ways to improve
Charter performance in future.
Along with putting the DMC at the disposal
of the Charter, DMCii also contributes a regu-
lar rota of Emergency On-call Ofcers (ECOs).
ECOs from the different member agencies are
at the heart of Charter activities, standing
ready for action 24 hours a day for seven day
duty periods.
Once a call requesting an activation is made
by an Authorised User, on-duty operators
pass the information to an ECO who analy-
ses the request and the scope of the disaster,
identies useful satellites and then makes
imaging requests to their operators. Once this
tasking process is complete, the ECO then
passes the details through to a separate pro-
ject manager (often part of the civil protection
organisation tackling the disaster response in
question) charged with overseeing the subse-
quent data acquisition, processing and nal
delivery to end-users.
The Charters space fleet
One of the Charters strengths is the diversity of
space assets it can call upon, each one possess-
ing distinct advantages. Meteorolo-gical satel-
lites such as the US GOES and POES series
can provide wide-area weather snapshots all
across the stricken region, while very high-reso-
lution imagers like CNESs SPOT series or the
commercial GeoEye-1 or QuickBird satellites
can map damage to individual buildings and
structures in key areas. Making an important
contribution during hurricanes, oods and other
extreme weather events are Synthetic Aperture
Radar missions including ESAs Envisat,
Canadas twin Radarsats and Germanys
TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X which can pierce
through cloud cover to highlight inundated terri-
tory.
DMCiis DMC has proven to be a valued, ver-
satile addition to Charter resources. As its name
suggests, the constellation was conceived from
the start with the needs of the disaster relief com-
munity in mind.
Each individual DMC satellite is only the size
of a dishwasher but possesses a viewing swath
of 660 km wider than any comparable EO
satellite. They observe the Earths land surface
in red, green and near-infrared bands (chosen
to be fully compatible with the 28-year Landsat
dataset that has become the EO standard),
imaging in Landsat-class medium resolution: the
rst generation of DMC satellites had a ground
sampling distance of 32 m, with the two latest
additions to the constellation UK-DMC2 and
Deimos-1 sharpening this to 22 m. This com-
bination is especially suited for vegetation mon-
itoring, capable of tracking the maturity and
health of crops for precision agriculture or sur-
veying forests for various applications. Built-up
areas, roads and other major man-made fea-
tures can also be clearly seen.
In addition, while each DMC satellite is owned
by a different national government, they are
operated by DMC as a constellation. Their
unique combination of wide swath and collec-
tive operation means they can revisit a given
location on the globe every single day which
would take a single satellite several weeks
depending on its orbit, longer still if clouds get
in the way. And DMC capability will soon be
bolstered by extra satellites: NigeriaSat-2 and
NigeriaSat-X are due to launch in July this year.
DMC in action
The DMC was contributing to Charter activa-
tions even before the UK ofcially became a
member. The constellation was four in number
on 26 December 2004, when an earthquake
off the coast of Indonesia triggered a series
of tsunami that fanned out across the Indian
Ocean to devastating effect.
DMCii responded immediately by acquiring
new images of all the coastlines affected while
also retrieving previous images from the DMC
archive. The combination could then serve as
the basis of detailed damage maps across the
region. With green leaf cover appearing red
in the near-infrared band, ooded or washed-
away vegetation cover were clearly highlight-
ed. DMC detection of stressed plant growth
Ar t i c l e
29
July/August 2011
Flood impact map over the New Orleans to Mobile area using NigeriaSAT,
DMC International data from 02 September 2005 (1/350 000). This
map was optimized for DinA0 printing.
The International Charter Space and Major Disasters
Entering force in October 2000, the International Charter Space and Major Disasters is
devoted to assisting responses to natural or technological disasters, with activities proceeding
on a best effort basis.
Partly to keep its work manageable, it concentrates solely on immediate disaster response
activities rather than the other elements of the risk management cycle such as rehabilitation,
reconstruction, prevention or preparedness Charter images typically apply to operations
performed within the rst month immediately post-disaster.
The Charter aims to get usable data products to key players in the decision making process
as soon as possible, with the emphasis on usable. Rather than end-users having to try and
interpret satellite images directly, the project manager for a given activation has the responsi-
bility of ensuring that satellite images are processed into easily-understandable maps that are
potentially suited for paper printing for use by emergency workers on the ground.
If the organisation managing the activation lacks the in-house capability to perform such pro-
cessing duties, then the Charter has links with a number of specialised value-adding groups.
Latest News? Visit www.geoinformatics.com
also helped highlight saline soil contamination
further inland.
The following year, DMC satellite NigeriaSat-
1 acquired the rst satellite image of the dam-
age done by Hurricane Katrina on 2
September 2005. Extending across 400 km
by 220 km, all of the Mississippi Delta and
New Orleans and outlying coastal areas were
covered to illustrate the widespread effects of
the disaster ooded areas of New Orleans
appearing darker than surrounding rooftops,
while zones of washed-away vegetation stood
out.
In following years, the DMC has continued to
be employed during ood-based Charter acti-
vations, contributing images when Cyclone
Nargis struck Myanmar (Burma) in 2008, dur-
ing last years oods in Pakistan and the inun-
dation of northeast Australia in January this
year. Back in 2007 the constellation came to
the aid of its homeland, acquiring images of
a ooded York following a Charter activation
by the UK Environment Agency.
The DMC has also played a role during sev-
eral re-based disasters: its near-infrared band
is sensitive to burnt scars (as well as active re
hot spots) in forests or grassland. This infor-
mation is useful for reghters needing to
know the current extent of a blaze, as well as
for follow-up (ecological and economic) dam-
age assessment. The DMC acquired images,
for instance, during grassland res in
Argentinas Paran Delta in 2008 and forest
res in central Paraguay the previous year. In
2007 another multi-satellite mosaic including
a DMC contribution of forest res on Greeces
Peloponesse Peninsula caught an active re
in progress, surrounded by heavy smoke.
Other Charter uses are made of DMC data
as required in 2008 one DMC image of an
ash plume coming from Michimahuida vol-
cano in southern Chile helped determine the
evacuation of thousands of people from a
nearby town.
Next steps for the Charter
Made up of some of the smallest satellites in
the entire Charter portfolio, the DMC never-
theless punches far above its physical weight
to give the UK its membership of the Charter
and, currently, to take its lead. This marks the
second time the UK has led the Charter the
rst was from October 2007 to April 2008
and comes at a point when the organisation
is deciding its future.
The Charter is still being run in more or less
the same way as when it started back in
2000, which in many ways is its strength.
Instead a full-time secretariat, the rotating lead-
ership keeps member agencies directly root-
ed in Charter activities. The focus remains
squarely on operational service provision
and making a difference when needed. But
its growth in membership over the last decade,
along with a steadily increasing activation
rate, throws up practical issues that will need
tackling to keep the Charter running smooth-
ly.
Another issue is increasing access to the
Charter. Until this year, the Charter could only
be activated in the following ways directly
by Authorised Users within Charter member
states, by Authorised Users acting on behalf
of a non-member state, by UN agencies work-
ing in the country concerned, or else follow-
ing a 2009 agreement by the Asian disas-
ter response organisation, Sentinel Asia.
In 2008, responding to a request from the
intergovernmental Group on Earth
Observations (GEO) the Charter Board adopt-
ed the principle of universal access con-
centrating on users in disaster-exposed regions
without direct access to the system.
Since assuming chairmanship this year, the
UK has facilitated discussions and gained
agreement on the provision of universal access
to the Charter. This will eventually enable civil
protection authorities from all countries to
draw upon the data provided by the Charter.
The aforementioned Sentinel Asia agreement
resulted in a signicant increase in access
across the Asia-Pacic region. Now the focus
has moved to Africa the only continent to
lack any Charter member with a two-year
formal user consultation kicking off last year
with GEO support, gathering input from
national agencies. One key nding so far: few
African national disaster centres had any
knowledge of the Charter. The Charter and
GEO are currently working to consider ways
30
July/August 2011
Ar t i c l e
French company SERTIT produced three crisis maps using NigeriaSat-1
data. Showing map extents of spacemap products
(1/500 000). This map was optimized for DinA0 printing.
Charter members
The following national and international space agencies are currently members of the Charter.
Including the different national owners of the DMC satellites, these represent a total of 36 coun-
tries in all and 42 Authorised Users the organisations empowered to request Charter activation.
European Space Agency (ESA) founder member, joined October 2000
Centre national dtudes spatiales (CNES) founder member, joined October 2000
Canadian Space Agency founder member, joined October 2000
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) joined January 2002
United States National Oceanic and Oceanographic Administration (NOAA) joined
September 2001
Argentinas Comisin Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE) joined July 2003
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) joined February 2005
United States Geological Survey (USGS) joined April 2005
DMCii/UK Space Agency joined November 2005
Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA) joined May 2007
German Aerospace Center (DLR) joined October 2010
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of improving the access system and the poten-
tial roles that national, regional and interna-
tional organisations could play to employ
Charter imagery and data.
On the user side, more and more organisa-
tions are expressing interest in accessing the
system. And other space agencies regularly
contribute to Charter activations with a view
to becoming full members in future, including
the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI),
Russian space agency Roscosmos, and
Brazils National Institute for Space Research
(INPE). Private companies also make valuable
contributions through their respective national
agency DigitalGlobe and GlobalEye, for
example, supplying images through the United
States Geological Survey.
By the end of this year the Charters future evo-
lution should be clear, the decision process
steered through the UKs chairmanship. It
remains an open question whether the fre-
quency and severity of disasters are actually
going up, or if society is noticing them more,
and growing more susceptible to them, in our
increasingly interconnected world. Either way,
it is clear that major disasters are not about to
go away but then neither is the Charter.
DMC International Imaging Ltd is not affiliated in any way with
Intergraph Corp., Z/I Imaging Corp., or their registered trade mark DMC
Adina Gillespie, Senior Project Manager, DMC International Imaging.
www.dmcii.com
Ar t i c l e
32
July/August 2011
Afbeelding 5: NigeriaSAT, DMC international crisis natural
colours space map (1/500 000). This map was optimized
for DinA0 printing.
Copyright 2011 Esri. All rights reserved.
Connect to the
INSPIRE Network
With Esri
Technology, you can create a spatial data

infrastructure and services that fulfll European Union (EU)
Member State obligations. Esris ArcGIS
for INSPIRE
provides an open source portal that allows your
geospatial data to be shared across the EU.
Learn more at esri.com/geoinfoinspire

Modernizing an Old Conference Hall
Virtual 3D Urban Design
The Inselhalle in Lindau, Germany, a conference center on an island in Lake Constance, was to be
refurbished and extended to meet modern requirements. Since only incomplete records of the original
building existed, project organizers decided to capture the existing features of this old conference hall
and its surroundings using laser scanning. The acquired data is now available to architectural consul-
tants for their designs and for virtual tours.
C
onsulting engineers Zimmermann &
Meixner Z&M 3D Welt GmbH, from
nearby Amtzell, won the con-tract for
the building inventory documentation and
3D visualization. Their task was to capture
the details of the whole hall (interior and
exterior) and the adjacent features includ-
ing the bank of the lake in the vicinity of the
conference hall.
Survey of Existing Features
Using 3D Laser Scanning
Surveying technician Viola Leibold and grad-
uate engineer Benjamin Sattes arrived on the
island with a Leica ScanStation 2 to produce
as-built recordings of the original buildings
and surrounding features. This versatile 3D
laser scanner captures up to 50,000 points
per second and has a range of up to 300 m.
La-ser scanning provides surveyors with a
way to overcome the hurdle of capturing the
features of existing objects at an adequate
level of detail precisely and cost-effectively,
explains Benjamin Sattes. The 3D laser scan-
ner is linked to a laptop and controlled using
the Leica Cyclone software package, which
con-sists of several different modules. This
arrangement allows the user to dene the
required scan window and point density and
store the captured point data. Targets are set
up and scanned at the same time as the object
to permit subsequent geo-referencing, the link-
ing of all captured point clouds into a single,
con-sistent system. We captured an area of
about 73,000 m from 38 stations in ve
days. The interior, for which we needed about
21 stations over three days, involved a total
area of 5,000 m, says Viola Leibold. The
Lindau re brigade even made a turntable lad-
der available to capture the roofscape.
To edit the point clouds Leica Geosystems
offers modules that can interface with a num-
ber of engineering CAD programs, allowing
users to work in their familiar software envi-
ronment. The expanded and partially auto-
mated functions in Leica CloudWorx for
AutoCAD allowed Benjamin Sattes to gener-
ate a 3D model of the whole object from the
point clouds. Any section or view can be gen-
erated from the model once complete. Two
cross-sections; layout plans of the basement,
ground, and rst oors; as well as four views
were generated for the Inselhalle. The 25
34
July/August 2011
Ar t i c l e
By Konrad Saal
Moving around in a virtual world inside the point cloud to take distance measurements (image source: Z & M 3D Welt).
architectural consultancies selected for the
design competition used the model as the
basis for their designs. With a maximum devi-
ation of one centi-metre from the actual dimen-
sions of the building, the data is considered
equivalent to surveys of the high-est quality.
3D Visualization and Virtual Tours
The particular aim of the exercise was to cap-
ture the features of the Inselhalle at such a level
of detail and precision that the architects
would have access to a robust and compre-
hensive survey of the existing building and
would not have to produce one themselves,
explains Benjamin Sattes. At the same time,
we were able to use Leica Geosystems free
Internet based visualization software TruView
to allow people to take a virtual tour of the
Inselhalle. Leica TruView can be used to ana-
lyze and take measurements within large point
clouds in a CAD or other 3D technology envi-
ronment, even for users without 3D laser scan-
ning experience. The point clouds are pre-
sented as photorealistic images. Architects can
move around in a virtual world inside the point
cloud, measure distances, highlight details,
make annotations, and save the results. The
project participants can also use the pro-
cessed data to communicate effectively over
the Internet. Using 2D layouts and a 3D model
of the existing building, and with TruView as
a substitute for a site visit with the additional
feature of being able to take measurements,
each architect has the optimum basis for
expressing his ideas and designs.
Linking Designs to the Real
World
Thanks to the visualization concept developed
inhouse by Z&M 3D Welt, the architects, civil
engineers, and landscape planners can see
how their proposals and plans would look in
the context of the real situa-tion. The design
results can be delivered to Z&M 3D Welt as
3D models or 2D views. The company will
then develop 3D models from the 2D draw-
ings or directly import the 3D models created
in the customers own choice of software mod-
ule. The data is visualized in three-dimension-
al space with a new road layout, open space
design, landscape architecture, and the exist-
ing real buildings and features. The process
is particularly interesting because of its cost-
effectiveness compared to previous methods:
Z&M 3D Welt is able to visualize the real envi-
ronment from the raw laser scanning results.
The captured point clouds visualize the exist-
ing objects and do not have to undergo fur-
ther processing into 3D models with the cus-
tomary loss of detail and accuracy.
The Sustainability of Using 3D
Models
Users are often faced with the question of
how best to make data available for future
use with minimum cost and effort. The data
obtained from laser scanning can be
accessed immediately to provide measure-
ments from the 3D model and pass them on
to the judging committee. The competitors
particularly appre-ciate the ease of opera-
tion it is so easy that no experience is
needed to move about freely within the
model.
Konrad Saal is a surveying engineer and Marketing Communications
Manager with Leica Geosystems in Heerbrugg, Switzerland.
The future designs and animations for the Inselhalle Lindau project
can be found at: www.zm-3dwelt.de/inselhalle.
Z & M 3D Welt is an innovative organization that has its origin in the
surveying business. A sustainable investment policy and engagement
in scientific research institutes, organizations, allowed the company to
develop a new approach of surveying and visualizing of any construc-
tion work. The core business of Z & M 3D Welt is virtual 3D urban
design, heritage protection, industrial and plant engineering, facility
mana-gement and building surveying for renovation works.
Thanks to Konrad Saal for providing the article and imagery.
Ar t i c l e
35
ERDAS, Intergraph and Leica
It was truly an historic event, Hexagon 2011, held from June 6 through June 9, in Orlando, Florida.
For the first time, all the companies co-owned by the Swedish organization Hexagon (ERDAS, Leica
Geosystems and Metrology) were together in one space, celebrating their unity in a lavish user
conference, unmatched in the geo world.
O
utside of Hexagon, there is no other
vendor that covers complete work-
ows from land surveying, pho-
togrammetry, video, CAD and GIS analysis,
to security, plant, utility, marine and communi-
cations industries.
At rst glance, the attendance of only 2,500
people at Hexagon 2011, might have been
seen as a little disappointing. Admittedly, even
when spread over a huge congress hall, like
the Marriott World Center in Orlando, it is still
a large number of people. Last September,
however, Intergraph alone drew 3,000 visi-
tors to its user conference in Las Vegas. Now,
together with the other three vendors, there
were less people in attendance.
There is some logic behind this. First of all,
many (government) organizations are on a
tight budget. With no big Intergraph release
in sight, they might not have been too keen
on sending two or more colleagues for a ve-
night stay at Disney World. Mind you, this is
only eight months after they had visited Las
Vegas, basically for the same conference.
36
July/August 2011
E v e n t
Hexagon 2011
By Remco Takken
Clarity In Action, a duo presentation by Intergraphs Teresa Smith, Senior Vice President, and Mark Doherty, Chief Technology Officer.
ERDAS users
Out of all the ERDAS users, around 250 of them
showed up at Hexagon 2011. There are a
couple of reasons for this. To start with, the
specialist user group of photogrammetrists is
not particularly big in the rst place. Only fair-
ly recently have photogrammetric tools for
mass use been implemented. Secondly, and
possibly most importantly, only a few months
before the event took place, did ERDAS decide
to join in and send out invitations. There sim-
ply wasnt enough time for many users to re-
schedule their other commitments. Even some
international distributors failed to attend. Add
to this that ERDAS has never organized its own
User Conference meant that there simply is no
tradition in going. Finally, some users might
have felt uncomfortable in the midst of thou-
sands of users of Intergraphs GeoMedia, with
Esris ArcGIS platform the GIS tool of choice.
De-hazer
Among the most surprising news facts was a
de-hazing tool developed by Intergraph
SG&I. Clouds and mist can be removed from
photo and video material, using a new tech-
nology, which will undoubtedly be revealed
in the near future. However, during the event,
the haze remained in place, as rumours went
round about a dedicated algo-rhythm clear-
ing up the pixels.
Live Link
Among the many news announcements, the
streamlined geospatial data revision and
update workows in ERDAS IMAGINE and
GeoMedia were elaborated upon during all
days of the event. ERDAS and Intergraph are
working together to leverage joint strengths in
geospatial innovation.
With a new Live Link, users can now simul-
taneously work within ERDAS IMAGINE and
GeoMedia, to collect and update new infor-
mation about the changing earth.
Within ERDAS IMAGINE, users will have access
to a sophisticated set of assisted feature col-
lection capabilities and quantitative image
processing tools that will support the extrac-
tion of information about the earth, such as
change detection, land cover information,
vegetation health and impervious surfaces.
Within GeoMedia, users will have access to
a rich set of vector collection and editing tools
along with rich symbology and cartographic
production capabilities. Together, the applica-
tions will be linked to support synchronized
data sharing, viewing, editing, update and
analysis.
Change detection presents another opportuni-
ty to integrate the specialties of ERDAS IMAGINE
and Geomedia, to create efcient geospatial
solutions. ERDAS IMAGINE already includes
sophisticated change detection algorithms to
detect change within the same spatial area
but over different time-periods. With the Live
Link, users can leverage Geomedias vector
handling ability to update and reect vector
and attribute change identied by ERDAS IMAG-
INE. This scalable solution is suitable for coun-
ty GIS applications, corridor-mapping, nation-
al defence projects and much more.
Raster and vector
The new spatial modeling framework is based
on the raster analysis capabilities of ERDAS
IMAGINE and the vector analysis capabilities of
Intergraph GeoMedia. ERDAS IMAGINE incorpo-
rates geospatial image processing, analysis
and remote sensing into a convenient pack-
age. The spatial modeling enables users to
graphically model raster image processing
workows to create an automated process that
can be executed by those with less domain
knowledge. Integrating this technology with
Intergraphs vector modeling capabilities in
GeoMedia enables users to create their own
custom workows that are extensible and inter-
operable with other geospatial software sys-
tems.
Integrated within a new graphical user inter-
face and extensible through third-party script-
ing environments, the spatial modeling solu-
tion will support desktop and on-demand
enterprise geo-processing. This technology will
also enable users in a broad variety of disci-
plines, such as agriculture management, dis-
aster recovery, civil engineering, property
assessment etc., to create spatial analysis and
processing programs within a command-line
environment, simultaneously leveraging
GeoMedias vector handling capabilities and
ERDAS IMAGINEs raster prowess. The new solu-
tion-building framework offers the option of
creating models graphically using drag and
drop components or through Python scripting.
A third option offers users the exibility of com-
bining these two capabilities.
Apollo and GeoMedia
Using geospatial and IT interoperability as the
common language, ERDAS and Intergraph were
demonstrating the ability to deploy a joint
data management and spatial data infrastruc-
ture (SDI) solution. ERDAS APOLLO manages and
delivers unstructured geospatial data such as
imagery, terrain, video, GIS and CAD les.
Intergraph GeoMedia SDI solutions are meant
for building and deploying an SDI. In addi-
tion to unstructured data management, ERDAS
APOLLO also provides the ability to deliver vir-
tually any digital object in an enterprise faster
(and with less hardware) than competing serv-
er-based products while meeting European
E v e n t
37
government mandates. It also provides
raster data server capabilities, such as
image streaming (through ECWP and JPIP),
image processing and analysis (WPS), and
a high level of performance under heavy
user demand. Intergraphs GeoMedia SDI
provides users with an easy-to-use portal in
compliance with European INSPIRE stan-
dards.
Geosystems HDS
The Geosystems HDS users showed up,
even if their last independent user confer-
ence was held only six months before. It
seemed that it was communicated ade-
quately as well: numerous parallel tracks
at two Crystal Ballrooms and several adja-
cent rooms were generally packed. The
users were informed of the various devel-
opments taking place in and out of the
Geosystems market. Jrgen Dold, president
of Hexagon Geosystems, showed laser
scanning projects and digital terrain mod-
els of historical phenomena, and made a
swift connection with change detection by
our sister company ERDAS.
Hexagons Geosystems division now con-
sists of Leica, Geomos and Geomax.
According to Jrgen Dold, the digital Z/I
Imaging aerial photo camera, formally pro-
duced by Intergraph, has now been repo-
sitioned under the Geosystems umbrella.
Of course, this has been one of the last
hardware products owned by Intergraph, the
digital photogrammetric aerial camera once
developed by Zeiss/ Ikon. A re-branding of
the unchanged product to Leica can be expect-
ed in the near future.
Denali
Last April Intergraph acquired the public safe-
ty software applications, personnel, and cus-
tomer contracts of Denali Solutions, LLC.
Denali is a vendor of records management
systems (RMS), which has previously part-
nered with Intergraph to deliver integrated
public safety solutions. The acquisition of
Denali assets is designed to advance
Intergraphs ability to provide public safety
and security agencies with an integrated, end-
to-end incident management suite encompass-
ing computer-aided dispatch, records man-
agement, mobile dispatch and incident
analytics capabilities adaptable to jurisdic-
tions anywhere in the world. Intergraph plans
to bring together the existing Intergraph and
Denali product sets in a Web-based RMS solu-
tion suite, including a full-function RMS tightly
integrated with computer-aided and mobile
dispatch capabilities.
InService, which manages outages in (ener-
gy) networks, is, according to Intergraphs
John Graham, moving towards the smart
grid, meaning the intelligent employment of
energy services in greener households.
Key Note
Just before the plenary keynote at 8:00 am
on Tuesday morning, the main hall was lled
with almost all 2500 attendees. They were
there to hear, among many other things, the
latest news on the technology integration
between ERDAS software and the recently
acquired Intergraph geospatial solutions.
During the plenary keynote presentation, it
became clear that Hexagon wishes to be more
than just another investors fund with a couple
of brand names. Intergraph, Geosystems,
ERDAS and Metrology were presented as a unit
with overlapping interests. This was clearly a
rst, because throughout the event, well-known
brand names Leica and Geosystems were
inexplicably interchanged in speeches, pre-
sentations and vertical positioning.
Actionable Information
CEO Ola Rolln dened his mission statement:
actionable information, with a nod to loca-
tion-aware solutions in security-driven environ-
ments. Although with this one-liner, address-
ing a true Intergraph tradition of American
sloganeering and aplomb, a more
European approach still shone through his
speech. He also found some striking
moments of balance, for instance when he
stated that Renewable energy is great, but
it is not enough. We need to rely on oil and
gas for the next thirty to forty years at
least.
By introducing the innocent sounding musi-
cal comedy group, The Water Coolers,
onto the stage, Rolln put an end to the
Intergraph tradition of having well-known
and sometimes controversial guest speak-
ers like Colin Powell, Buzz Aldrin, Lance
Armstrong and oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens.
How different it all was during the press /
analyst lunch now that Hexagon is at the
wheel. There, CEO Rolln freely opened
his heart. Totally at ease, he returned ques-
tions by international journalists with punch
lines like: What would YOU do if you
were in my place? or: No, that would be
a very stupid thing to do, wouldnt it? On
the aforementioned decision to skip the out-
side speaker, Rolln elaborated: We
would never invite a famous Minister of
Defence who might possibly insult our cus-
tomers. We have customers from all over
the world, so theres always the question
of whos defending who. We wont go
there. You see, were Swedish, were neu-
tral.
Natural disasters
John Graham, VP of Intergraphs SG&I divi-
sion, took his listeners back to the astonishing
number of natural disasters that occurred dur-
ing the past year. While constantly bringing
up Intergraph, Leica and ERDAS solutions, in
practice, he still managed to hold the audi-
ences attention. All those colorful methods of
data collection using multiple agency coordi-
nate systems, before and after analysis and
3D centimeter precision, kept reminding the
listeners just how little time there was between
the rain storms in Rio, the earthquake in Japan
and the tornadoes in Alabama. Where,
apparently, Intergraphs servers suffered not a
single moment of outage. In his division
keynote, Graham hastily corrected himself
after welcoming all listeners to Intergraph
2011. He did have a point. In fact, the vast
majority of listeners were from the Intergraph
user group.
GeoMedia Add-Ons
For years, the fairly low-key lectures on
GeoMedia add-ons have been a well-kept
secret for visitors and journalists alike. At these
sessions, speakers, like this years Vincent
Smith, bring neat made-to-measure tools to the
E v e n t
38
July/August 2011
CEO Ola Rolln defined Intergraphs mission statement as actionable information.
attention of specialists and other high end
users. Closely watched by business develop-
ers, one can easily see that important add-
ons made last year, might appear as standard
functionality in the next version of GeoMedia
desktop. The ever-recurring and forward-look-
ing statement, no ofcial future announce-
ments here, but we are looking into ERDAS
now, had a familiar ring to it.
One of the bigger announcements within
Intergraph was in fact a re-naming operation.
Respublica, a WebGIS solution originally
rolled out in Europe, was introduced to the
rest of the world as GeoMedia Smart Client.
Blood groups and Trad Divisions
The vertical divisions from within Intergraph
were rmly in place at Hexagon 2011. While
this is the rst time that a combined user con-
ference was being held on measurement, land
surveying, laser scanning, CAD, GIS, raster
and image analysis, the familiar market verti-
cals, the traditional blood groups if you will,
could easily be discerned. While during the
keynote presentations one of the buzzwords
was integration, more or less traditional user
groups went their separate ways during the
afternoon sessions. Tracks like Process, Power
and Marine, Security, Government and
Infrastructure, Transportation, Utilities and
Telecom, Geosystems, Metrology and High-
Denition surveying were rmly in place. This
was no surprise. Even in the history of
Intergraph, SG&I and PP&M only recently
began to organize joint user conferences.
When asked, Ola Rolln commented that
these blood groups are not being seen as a
potential problem for product integration.
You see, integration and vision are nice mate-
rial for keynotes. But after the speech, all cus-
tomers return to the tracks they are all familiar
with. They recognize the subjects they are
interested in. Hexagon is not going to change
this in the foreseeable future.
What actually happened were industry-spe-
cic sessions highlighting the (possible) syner-
gies within the Hexagon family. While some
screenshots of number one competitor Esri
could be seen in one or two ERDAS presenta-
tions, the majority of them mentioned
Intergraph technology. More often than not,
GeoMedia ran under the hood, with non-
intrusive user interfaces familiar to ERDAS users.
The same matter of factness could be seen on
the Tech Expo. Here, long-time partner
TerraGo, known for its GeoPDF format, boast-
ed of employees formerly with Leica, ERDAS
and Intergraph, as if they had seen it coming.
Remco Takken is editor of GeoInformatics.
For more information, have a look at:
www.intergraph.com
www.erdas.com
www.hexagon.com
E v e n t
Winners of the annual
ICON Awards 2011.
In the disaster response, defense, intelligence, agriculture and security arenas,
efcIent transformatIon of raw data Into actIonable IntellIgence Is crItIcal.
EF0AS |ACNE Incorporates a wIde varIety of remote sensIng data processIng,
terraIn analysIs and CS tools, provIdIng a fusIon of Imagery and geospatIal
analysIs workows.

CollectIng InformatIon from expert users, EF0AS contInually enhances the Imagery
analysIs workows necessary In these hIghdemand elds. EF0AS |ACNE 2011
features a number of new tools and an enhanced Interface desIgned specIcally
to quIckly and easIly create presentatIon products that derIve InformatIon from,
and clearly hIghlIght relevant areas of, Imagery.
For more InformatIon about magery AnalysIs wIthIn EF0AS |ACNE,
vIsIt www.erdas.com, call +1 877 CD EF0AS or emaIl us at Info@erdas.com.
Convert Your Raw Data
Into Actionable Intelligence.
ER0AS lmayery Analyss Workows.
Monetizing Location Based Systems
Location Business Summit 2011
Monetizing location based systems continues to be an interesting and growing market. Not only in
terms of revenues or market approach, but also in the way the underlying data and associated
technology continues to evolve. The Location Business Summit, a two-day conference held during May
24-25 in Amsterdam, provided an update on the broad landscape that makes up the location based
system market. The article below provides a selection of panel discussions and presentations during
the two days.
Introduction
Monetizing location based systems is still an interesting topic for mobile
providers, data providers, marketing agencies and last but not least
the geospatial industry. One year after the last Location Business Summit
in Amsterdam, Where Business created a two-day program with panel
discussions and individual presentations. However, I noticed, compared
to last year, there was a lack of discussion during the panels. However,
the individual presentations were for the most part very interesting and
well delivered, with a number of new companies participating along-
side the big players such as Google, Navteq and Nokia.
The highly diversied market for location based systems (lbs) and mon-
etizing can be roughly divided into two approaches: a technological
approach with a focus on technical infrastructure and data collection,
and a more commercial approach, focused on the question of how to
monetize with the technology. It goes without saying that technology
cant do without monetizing and vice versa, and thats exactly what
makes this conference worth attending, although at times not everyone
is speaking the same language. Where one is more interested in build-
ing a client base rst and then monetizing, another is more interested
in the data infrastructure that underlies the lbs market. These different
approaches are what makes this market so versatile, since client require-
ments force lbs providers to improve their products and systems.
Nokia
Nokias Gary Gale held a presentation entitled Place vs. location vs.
POI: what does it all mean and where is it heading? The biggest point
being made during this presentation was that there will never be a sin-
gle authoritative source of data, exemplied by the fact that big market
players in the eld of location based systems such as Google, Facebook
and location basis systems check-in applications have their own loca-
tion data and applications. This is an indication that the map is now
ubiquitous and democratic and not just there for a happy few as in
the early days of cartography. Although there wont be any single
authoritative source of data, places, points of interests, landmarks and
locations all are used when dening a place and Nokia uses standards
for all four different things.
Google
This semantic discourse was also touched upon by Googles Ed Parsons,
who followed Gale as a speaker. Parsons stated that places are hard,
because of the complex semantic understanding of location. There are
different levels of dening a place, and depending on the person you
are explaining this to, you describe a place differently. The same goes
for places vs. events: are places and events the same thing, such as the
reviewed event here? Apparently, there are big disputes internally at
42
July/August 2011
E v e n t
Panel Session with Jonathan Raper (editor of LBS journal), Dan Appelquist, (Vodafone Group R&D),
Ed Parsons (Google) and Joe Stump (Simple Geo).
By Eric van Rees
Google about these matters. But this is not the only thing that keeps
Google busy. Keeping mapping up-to-date was the main topic of the
presentation and Parsons talked a lot about the most recent technology
Google uses for todays products, making sure he was not reproducing
an old presentation. He briey mentioned the recent release of Google
Earth Builder, a software product designed to help companies publish
and share their geographical data in an easier way.
In terms of mobile, 40% of all mobile searches are related to place,
and when compared to desktop use, mobile map usage is sometimes
greater than desktop use. This is quite different from the situation just
one year ago. It was mentioned during another presentation that many
last-minute hotel bookings, a booking made on the same day as check-
in, are being made on a mobile device. I guess this statement makes
sense in combination with the increase of mobile map use. The things
that dont change are about data, meaning the broad and complex
landscape of information and ranking of it for Google searches. We
are not only talking about location data but all kinds of data that Google
ranks: geospatial as well as imagery, videos and social media. In the
outside world, change happens. For example, 20% of the businesses
change over a one-year period, making updates for Google Maps nec-
essary. Consequently, web indexing becomes a harder task when mak-
ing sure the most relevant information is ranked correctly for a search
on Google.
To answer the question which place is most relevant? crowd sourcing
provides an answer. For this, Google created the Google Places Web
Service API, which is a search service, an autocomplete service, a
report service and a check-in service folded into one. People can use it
for checking into a hotel for example, and the app then passes anony-
mous check-in-data in Google, which returns real-time check-in-data for
your app. These check-ins provide a temporal relevancy ranking, which
over time will decay. Google statistics show that there is no such thing
as check-in fatigue, but skeptics are still hesitant to check-in should the
lbs prove to be wrong. Parsons repeated Gales statement that theres
never going to be just one source of authoritative data, as various data
sources will be used. People are only now starting to understand that it
is people who dene places, and that place ranking can help to dene
which places are most important to visit because these places are the
most visited.
Parsons demoed a nice new application, namely the Google Places
app. He showed how businesses can use this for attracting customers to
their shops, not only by providing their own imagery to Google, but
now also a Street View version of the inside of their shops, and in this
particular case a guitar shop in Nashville. Here you could actually zoom
in to the guitars displayed in the shop and look at them in close detail.
Ogilvy Group UK
Real world connection: get expert analysis on the next stage of lbs
integration by Scott Seaborn (head of mobile technologies) of Ogilvy
Group UK brought some case studies of brands successfully utilizing
GPS and augmented reality to enhance real world connection. These
case studies were basically a series of ashy movies that were explained
in more detail by Seaborn. Although interesting and entertaining, I
doubt that there will be one killer app that yields massive worldwide
success. Although I am aware that people buy more and more things
on mobile devices (such as 100.000 dollar cars, according to
Seaborn), I noticed that all examples given in this presentation were
short-term successes on a small geographical scale and for a selective
audience. For example, an lbs pop-up shop where skaters can access
a virtual store in the outside world is bringing an exclusive product to
an exclusive audience, but for a massive audience this doesnt make
any sense Im afraid, all the more since the store is hidden and people
need to go out and nd it. More valuable and interesting seemed to
be the Wimbledon app, available for all Wimbledon visitors, allowing
them to see and hear whats going on at all the courts during the tennis
tournament. This app came about because there are a lot of people at
the same place at the same time, resulting in long queues, which makes
it impossible to move around quickly when you hear a group of peo-
ple cheering at courts some distance away from you.
As for the future, Seaborn sees a lot of market potential in the eld of
mobile-directed advertising, where devices are connected to each other
and capable of offering you services and products, dependent on your
interests and activities. An example of this is going to a concert of a
music group, and receiving a free mp3 of that group on your mobile
devices afterwards. Seaborn also expects that mobile devices can rec-
ognize the clothing brands of movie stars who are on television, but I
guess this will take some time before it becomes a reality.
Some interesting remarks were made about users of all these lbs, and
those who dont. For users of lbs, the value is conrmed but for those
who dont use them, its value will have to be proven in order to make
them users. This is not an easy task, since people still see lbs as intru-
sive and therefore something to avoid, or something that is only nice
as an add-on but not necessary for everyday life. I didnt hear any
clear answers on how to win over these potential users, and I guess
thats something that needs further research.
Yahoo
Day two of the conference offered a series of interesting presentations
and panels. The focus was more on the technological side of lbs rather
than the commercial side, which was welcome. Michael Metcalf
E v e n t
43
(Yahoo! Social Location Products) opened with a presentation on spa-
tial networking (communication and collaboration in your immediate
proximity). Market potential lies in areas such as gaming and dating,
for instance people can match proles with others in the same venue,
as would happen with an online dating service. A taxi-sharing app can
be useful for people who want to share a taxi when going to the same
hotel from an airport, without knowing beforehand that they have the
same destination and therefore can save money by sharing a cab.
Metcalf noticed four spatial networking challenges: building a critical
mass for spatial networking (the user-base issue also mentioned above),
spatial networking platforms, monetization (how to make money with
it) and privacy. The last issue was discussed a lot during the event last
year. This year it was mentioned, but I counted only one presentation
on the topic. Are people tired of this discussion or is it simply not that
important? I would say not, only by looking at the discussions about
Googles Street View in Germany and the use of consumer data by
TomTom recently.
TripAdvisor
Nathan Clapton from TripAdvisor spoke on how travelers use
TripAdvisor to nd the best local places. TripAdvisor is a website
designed to assist customers in gathering travel information, posting
reviews and opinions of travel-related content and engaging in interac-
tive travel forums (source: Wikipedia). Trip planning goes local is a
ne summary of his talk. This is especially true for the hotel business,
where more and more bookings through mobile are done on the same
day as check-in. TripAdvisor was launched at a good time, namely
when Facebook launched its app layer in 2007, thus proting from its
growth in terms of user base, those who could also use the TripAdvisor
app in Facebook. Right after that an app store was launched, and cur-
rently the service counts 20 million registered members and 45 million
reviews and opinions, making it the worlds most popular travel site.
These impressive gures seemed to hide the main topics a little as
announced beforehand, namely, how TripAdvisor serves its different
types of clients. Clapton seemed hesitant to give away too much inside
information about TripAdvisors latest market initiatives to the audience,
which is understandable from a business point of view, but for the audi-
ence it was a little disappointing.
Clapton also joined the following panel discussion about niche vs. local
content vs. mainstream and whether this will prove to be the real money-
spinner for lbs. Gaming, dating and traveling are currently the niche
environments of interest. An interesting question from Ed Parsons at the
end of the panel discussion was this one: how can companies that are
small and operate locally, and may not even have a website, make use
of lbs in order to enlarge their customer base? A company like Google
has the capacity to go out and map or take pictures of a whole neigh-
borhood of similar small shops (which they actually did), but this type
of action doesnt always apply to every lbs provider. An answer from
the panel was that a medium such as Yellow Pages is still a viable way
to make oneself known to the outside world, so we havent seen the
end of that medium I guess.
Panel on Indoor and Pedestrian Mapping
Finally, the panel session The future of mapping: how indoor and
pedestrian mapping will open up the door to a new wave of location
applications shed a light on the possibilities of indoor mapping. Henk
Hoff (Open Street Map), Frank Pauli (Navteq) and Gary Gale (Nokia)
were the panel. To start with, Hoff mentioned that theres already some
mapping done for OSM indoors, namely in stations and other public
spaces. The problem with this is that although these are public spaces,
there are legal issues with gathering this information and using it for
OSM, which has to do with the slow change of the data license policy
of OSM data. Navteq uses a different strategy for gathering data: for
their recent product Destinations, which offers pedestrian navigation
(sidewalk networks, plus intelligence such as walking directions),
indoor data is collected for shopping malls, stations and airports, by
approaching the shop owners and using their (paper) map data and
using that data as the base for digital maps. Pauli mentioned that the
pedestrian mapping business could be as large as the automotive
industry in terms of client numbers. Although it is only available for a
limited number of cities in North America at the moment, more cities
are expected to be added so that the potential market for pedestrian
mapping will surely grow. For this event, it will no doubt create more
interesting user cases in the future.
For more information, have a look at www.thewherebusiness.com/locationsummit
www.tripadvisor.com
44
July/August 2011
E v e n t
GIS for Hydrogeology
ArcHydro Groundwater
A few years ago Esri presented us with the Arc Hydro data model as a standardized way to store
(and analyze) surface water networks. Now the time has come to add groundwater to ArcGIS.
T
he book describes the groundwater
extension of the Arc Hydro data model
for surface water. The data model itself
can be downloaded from the Esri site; the
book provides a background description of
the model and offers examples of its imple-
mentation and relation to the real world.
Examples are given for the Edwards Aquifer
and other locations in Texas.
General contents
The model was developed by Aquaveo,
which also develops and sells tools for
groundwater analysis. The main author, Gil
Strassberg, is also the primary developer of
the model. The advantage of this is that the
book gives rst-hand information about the
original objectives of the model and the
envisioned way of implementing it. The two
co-authors (Norman L. Jones, David R.
Maidment) are both experts in environmen-
tal modeling and groundwater research.
The book covers the various aspects of the
groundwater model (and groundwater mod-
eling), ranging from 3D subsurface repre-
sentation through time series towards mod-
els including (hydro)geology, aquifers, wells
and boreholes. Also included is a short
description on how to connect the Arc Hydro
groundwater model to other model environ-
ments such as Modow. The idea being that
Arc Hydro, in this situation, operates as the
main data source for groundwater informa-
tion and that other models can build on this
information.
Structure of the book
The book is very easy to read for both
those involved in groundwater research
and those involved in data modeling.
Although it gives no thorough background
on either field, there is enough informa-
tion to make communication on these
issues easily possible. The information
architect / GIS specialist will learn
enough about groundwater research to
allow the correct implementation and
extension of the model. Likewise, the
groundwater specialist will appreciate the
conversion of the real world into
database tables.
The book is liberally laced with examples
from practical situations, including the
way they are implemented in the Arc
Hydro data model. Even without having a
computer with the model running nearby
you can gain a good grasp of the (im)pos-
sibilities of the model.
46
July/August 2011
B o o k r e v i e w
By Huibert-Jan Lekkerkerk
Overview of the ArcHydro datamodel
2D, 3D or 4D?
Although not specically a feature of the
book, it is interesting to see how the devel-
opers of the model have struggled to han-
dle both the third and fourth component in
ArcGIS. These components are crucial to
groundwater modeling as the waterbearing
layers in the subsoil (aquifers) are 3D
objects. ArcGIS, which was developed as a
2D package and recently extended to han-
dle the third and fourth dimensions, cannot
in this respect compare to true modeling
environments.
For those not familiar with the ArcGIS envi-
ronment, this results in some strange
choices at times, such as having to draw
prole lines exactly through borehole
locations, whereas in a true 3D package
this would be done differently.
The same is true for the time component.
However, because the book / model is writ-
ten around ArcGIS 10, which has some tem-
poral analysis options available, this is less
signicant. Still, those having experience
with modeling software will wonder at times
why certain solutions offered are the way
they are.
Complexity of the model
A major disadvantage of the model repre-
sented in the book is that it will require spe-
cial tools in order to be of value to the
groundwater specialist. Not much attention
is paid to this issue, even though the data
model given is quite complex compared to
the often-straightforward geodatabase
implementations used in ArcGIS. Do not mis-
take this for a complaint. With the limitations
posed on modeling in ArcGIS, this is a well-
developed model.
The problem is more in ArcGIS where for
example querying across tables is not some-
thing easily accomplished. The data model
presented will require this however as there
are numerous 1:n relations dened. So, if
reading the book has made the reader
enthusiastic about the model, it is well worth
remembering that the (very nice) examples
given in the book will require additional tool-
ing from either a market supplier such as
Aquaveo (Groundwater Analyst, Modow
Analyst and Sub Surface Analyst) or custom
built ArcGIS models and / or toolboxes.
Implementation and extension
The book stresses throughout that the model
described is a core model and will need
specic extensions and implementations for
specic purposes. This is reected in the
examples given which at times go further
than the basic capabilities of the model.
Where more solutions are possible, this is
clearly indicated in the book.
However, the book does not give very
detailed instructions on when to choose a
certain implementation or how to extend the
current model, this is left to the person imple-
menting the model. This would not be a big
problem if the description of the model was
more extensive. For those interested in the
model a more detailed description (though
without the examples given in the book) is
available on the Wiki pages (www.archy-
drogw.com).
Conclusion
Books describing data models are very com-
plicated to write, as on the one hand they
need to give enough detail to understand
the model, and on the other hand need to
be readable to a wide audience.
The authors have successfully achieved this
by creating a book that is both comprehen-
sive and very readable without being over-
ly long. It is informative to both information
architects as well as groundwater special-
ists. It does not serve as a full documenta-
tion of the model but functions as a good
primer for its capabilities.
Together with the Wiki pages a more
detailed insight into the model is created,
however it will still require an expert to
ensure correct implementation (and exten-
sion) of the model.
Huibert-Jan Lekkerkerk, hlekkerkerk@geoinformatics.com,
is manager standards at IHW and freelance writer and trainer.
This article reflects his personal opinion.
47
B o o k r e v i e w
Title: Arc Hydro Groundwater
GIS for Hydrogeology
Authors: Gil Strassberg,
Norman L. Jones,
David R. Maidment
Publisher: Esri press
ISBN: 978-1-58948-198-5
Nr of pages: 160
C
O
L
U
M
N
Commerce has consistently demanded More for less and yet, just at the point
this is becoming reality, the explosion in data volumes is creating a demand for
solutions which simplify complexity. Increasingly the mantra is becoming, Less
is more. This is a challenge for our industry. However, recent developments in
genetics, theoretical physics and statistical mechanics all offer insights to improve
the use of location-based data which could help to resolve this conundrum.
T
he combination of technological developments and
price led competition are generating huge quanti-
ties of location based data from the internet, mobile
and GPS enabled devices. All the indications are that
these trends will continue for at least the next 20 years.
Making sense of large volumes of data is not a new chal-
lenge. A century ago a new branch of mathematics
emerged known as Dynamics Systems Theory which
focused on applying maths to study systems in an attempt
to formulate models to explain underlying processes.
Over time this work has evolved to embrace articial
intelligence, non-linear dynamics and disciplines such as
chaos theory. In each case the aim has been to make
sense of patterns in large volumes of data.
Understanding the data
Today the challenges involved in processing and man-
aging huge amounts of data is epitomised by the growth
of the internet. The process of creating and rening
search algorithms has been critical. Indeed as one of
the founders of Google, Larry Page, puts it, If you can
solve search that means you can answer any question.
Which means you can do basically anything (1). Yet
despite signicant advances we all have experienced
instances where a Google search yields over 500,000
results and all but the rst 12 dont appear to meet our
needs. Improvements will happen as rened methods
are used to build user proles and to identify search pat-
terns but the reality is that these techniques alone are
unlikely to deliver material improvements, particularly
with ever increasing data volumes.
One of the main ways in which this problem is being
addressed is by the renement of search processes using
spatial context as a method of rening the selection and
provision of information to end users. The emergence of
the geo-spatial web will deliver data management bene-
ts and the world of ubiquitous location where the
location of everything is known is tantalising close. But,
as all the main players in the informatics sector recog-
nise, in the commercial world whilst the need for preci-
sion and certainty is important, ease of use is paramount.
In order to achieve the breakthrough which commercial
markets are demanding we need to start looking at the
problem differently. Instead of viewing the process of
data production and data management as a production
line or pipeline which creates an ever accumulating pile
of information we need to look at ways in which the
data itself provides us with clues about how to structure
and organise information. In other words we need to
use a deep understanding of the data to design busi-
nesses.
Rules for configuring data
Jack Dangermond, the CEO of Esri, talks about
GeoDesign, A method of designing things and making
decisions based on an understanding of the geographic
dimension maps, spatial analysis and modelling as
well as processes, relationships events and forecasts
(2) as being fundamental to improve core business pro-
cesses, data integration and to understand the environ-
mental impact of decisions. The management of a com-
bination of internal and external factors which affect
businesses and their customers is likely to become criti-
cal as the requirement for sustainable business models
becomes the focus of legislation.
Expressed in these terms what was originally just a
data management problem for the Informatics industry
assumes a different shape. Scientists involved in the study
of genetics, uid mechanics and theoretical physics
would all recognise terms such as constraints, impacts,
modelling and forecasts when applied to large data sets.
In all of these disciplines vast numbers of incremental
iterations of calculations using massive data sets have
been carried out in an attempt to discover patterns in
the data. However, what is truly remarkable is that work
carried by large scale data management pioneers, such
as Stephen Wolfram, demonstrates that, regardless of
the scientic discipline involved, there are underlying
rules which govern and structure the way in which data
is congured.
The key unifying idea postulated by Stephen Wolfram is
that all processes, whether they are produced by human
effort or occur spontaneously in nature can be regarded
as computations.(3) Indeed the assertion is that There
is a fundamental equivalence between many different
kinds of processes(4) and that the results of extensive
computer based iterative analysis can always be traced
back to a number of rules which govern the behaviour
of large data sets to generate predictable outcomes.
Predictable patterns in large data sets
The implications of these ndings are signicant.
Historically pioneers from a range of disciplines have
used data to create patterns as an aid to understand-
ing process. We may now be at the point where it is
possible to use rules derived from analysing large data
By Graham Wallace
Graham Wallace is
Senior Business Strategist
for Esri UK
There is a paradox at the heart of
C o l u mn
48
July/August 2011
the location-based informatics revolution
sets from multiple disciplines to understand the potential impact of con-
straints, rules and processes on the overall performance of the system. In
other words we are beginning to see that predictable patterns in large
data sets can be used to develop and structure process improvements.
In the commercial environment workows, pricing models, the cost of
technology and technical standards currently all act as constraints,
inhibiting growth. The contention is that as Cloud computing becomes
a reality some of these constraints will diminish in importance and as
large scale data management becomes commonplace in the Informatics
industry we will see the emergence of a new breed of information man-
agement experts who will apply these universal rules of data manage-
ment to information gathered from end users and clients alike to design
business processes rather than visa versa.
Simplifying complexity
In the future we can expect to see rule based systems handling huge
arrays of fully automated parallel business processes each designed to
deliver specic business benets to specic target audiences within mul-
tiple recognised constraints which might include budgets, pricing mod-
els, emissions targets and market growth plans. These solutions will be
driven by rule based systems with rules developed from an understand-
ing of how large data sets behave. The challenge ahead will be to sim-
plify complexity for each audience or commercial customer, and to
drive down costs wherever possible by using shared data management
infrastructures.
The huge growth in dynamic data generation has reached the point
where solutions are cost effective, achieving the requirement to deliver
more for less. Over the next decade the focus will shift to improving
the automation of core business processes taking into account spatial
context, internal and external constraints and rules governing the per-
formance of large datasets to deliver even more cost effective but sim-
plied client solutions, based on shared data management infrastruc-
tures.
Simplifying complexity cost effectively will become the real challenge
for the industry in a world where a comprehensive understanding of
the terms More for less and Less is more is going to be required
just to survive.
(1) Ken Auretta Googled (Pg 322 -2009)
(2) Jack Dangermond GIS in action (Issue 3 -2010)
(3) Stephen Wolfram A new kind of science (pg 715 -2002)
(4) Stephen Wolfram A new kind of science (pg 717 -2002)
C o l u mn
49
Europes largest remote
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08-09 November Be Inspired: Thought Leadership
in Infrastructure event
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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