Podcast: Why is the Geospatial Marketplace so Difficult to Measure?
By Joe Francica and Adena Schutzberg
January 15, 2008
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Take advantage of a special year-end sale on SPOTMaps, the 2.5 meter, seamless, color mosaic made to fit your area of interest. Save 25% off all SPOTMaps through November 10th, when you mention this ad! Click here for detailsThis week editors Adena Schutzberg and Joe Francica tackle a question that is difficult to answer (or, rarely has a clear answer). The question is: How big is the geospatial market or a part of it? That's often followed by: Who has the definitive numbers on how much money is to made and how many users and potential users are out there? They take a look at some resources and tease out why firm numbers are so difficult to acquire.
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Show Notes
- Daratech GIS Reports
- URISA Salary Survey (press release)
- GITA Geospatial Technology Report
- USGS Funding 2007 (pdf)
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| In your podcast today about why the geospatial marketplace is so difficult to measure, I was dissappointed to note that you did not mention the economic study that was recently completed by ACIS Tasman for the spatial business associaiton in Australia. While that was a first effort, it is a start in the measurement process. We have also been attempting to do a more statistically rigorous survey of the industry but have so far been unable to raise the resources to carry it out despite doing a lot of work with government statitical agencies to develop a methodology for the survey. It seems to us that it is too difficult for organisations like federal and state statistical bureaus to comprehend a marketplace that is so all pervasive as the spatial information industry and therefore they leave it alone. In our view, the first to get any realistic measurement will have a policy resource that has incalculable value. It is certainly our intention to build on the work done in 2007 to fine tune and expand the coverage of the economic study done so far. What we desperately need is some partners with the same need for data and the same desire to establish a benchmark and procedure for measuring growth. |
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| I would like to bring your attention to a Statistics Canada "Geomatics Industry Survey" released in 2006. The Geomatics Industry Survey was a census of all known firms engaged in geomatics activities in Canada (over 2,200 firms) and was sponsored by Natural Resources Canada. This release provides detailed information on all geomatics activities in Canada. It covers firms that provide geomatics products or services from the two primary geomatics NAICS codes (541360 and 541370) as well as 11 other NAICS codes which also provide geomatics products and services. Overview of the results: http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/statistics/geomatics/default.html Statistics Canada: http://www.statcan.ca/cgi-bin/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getSurvey&SDDS=5092&lang=en&db=imdb&dbg=f&adm=8&dis=2 |
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| Thanks to Jack de Lange for pointing out our omission of the ACIL Tasman report from Australia...readers can find a snapshot of the erport that we published at: http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=2608 |
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