Cloud Computing in Geospatial

The Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was an opportunity for a small group of geospatial activists promoting crowd-sourced information to apply low-cost mapping techniques. By taking a neogeographic approach to aerial imaging with consumer-off-the-shelf hardware and software, open source GIS, and crowd-sourced field mapping techniques, they regularly produced maps of a variety of oil-affected sites without great cost. They collected data using balloons and kites and small digital cameras, and mapped and shared the information with local organizations. You’ll find the author’s approach well suited to crisis mapping.

A reader posed the question that we articulate this way: "Why are data taken for granted in LBS hype? What happens when you remove the map?" Our editors think that is a great question and explore it in the context of navigation apps, weather and traffic apps, social apps and augmented reality.

Tile server technologies and new alliances work to blur the lines between Web and desktop applications, which PBBI's Jon Winslow believes is good news for everyone. "Now GIS professionals can continue to perform [their] advanced data-driven analysis while seamlessly presenting this information using visual tools that are familiar to the broader business community." Winslow backs up his optimistic point of view in this article.

In part one of this article, Steve Jones, independent GIS logistics consultant, focuses on the core map data used for routing, something more and more organizations are doing in-house. This installment covers road network accuracy, network connectivity and road speeds, hierarchical routing, and road classification.

This month's State of the Map US, an OpenStreetMap event in Atlanta, teamed with mappers, but not so many GIS professionals. A webinar on Esri's Community Maps program hosted by Directions drew 800+ "live" attendees just last week. Why are mappers and GIS pros choosing to give their data to one project or the other and what are the implications?

Last weekend Atlanta, Georgia hosted the State of the Map US conference, which focused on OpenStreetMap in the 50 states. Learon Dalby, GIS program manager for the Arkansas Geographic Information Office (AGIO), attended and shared this report. Among his observations: “The participants were from across the U.S., but typical GIS users were not in the majority.”

What if your IT manager walked into your office and let you know it was time to move your geospatial operation into the cloud? What would you do? Where would you start? Do you even know what questions to ask? Our editors assess the state of the geocloud and offer some advice on how to prepare for what may be that inevitable knock on the door.