Coalition of Geospatial Organizations Becomes Official

The Coalition of Geospatial Organizations (COGO) came into official being during a regularly scheduled meeting on August 4, 2008, at the ESRI User's Conference in San Diego. Representatives of several organizations attended via conference call and WebEx.

The following founding member organizations voted unanimously to approve a set of Rules of Operation and Procedure that brought COGO into existence:

• American Congress on Surveying and Mapping (ACSM)
• American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS)
• Association of American Geographers (AAG)
• Cartography and Geographic Information Society (CAGIS)
• Geospatial Information Technology Association (GITA)
• GIS Certification Institute (GISCI)
• International Association of Assessing Officers (IAAO)
• Management Association for Private Photogrammetric Surveyors (MAPPS)
• National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC)
• University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS)
• Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA)

The group also elected its first group of officers:

• Chair: Cyril R. Smith (NSGIC)
  
• Chair-Elect: Curtis W. Sumner (ACSM)
  
• Secretary: George Donatello (IAAO)

The next meeting of COGO is expected to be held in conjunction with the next meeting of the Federal Geographic Data Committee, in October.

How Remote is Your Sensed Data?

Researchers Fabien Girardin and Josep Blat of Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona are doing some interesting geospatial analysis using what is essentially "found" geodata.

In Tracing the Visitor's Eye, Girardin and Blat are using the geotagging of photo locations by tourists in the photo-sharing website flickr to populate spatial analysis models and examine how tourists interact with several major cities.

Flickr allows users to "place" their photos on maps, creating simple geodata that can be viewed and used by other applications (assuming a user has set permissions to "public," as many do). Blat and Girardin are working on several research goals with these data:

• Evaluating the potential of using people-generated geotagged information to contribute urban understanding.
• Studying how people explicitly position and disclose spatio-temporal information in order to understand their use and need of quality of location information in a urban space.

That is, can we use tourist-generated geodata to study cities? And, if so, what are the effects of variation in their dependability as geo-locators?

It is the case that flickr users vary widely in their attention to exactness when mapping their photos. The researchers are working on whether or not that variation in data quality can be overcome in analysis.

If so, there are some interesting possible applications. Urban planners might be able to determine which are the most important view-sheds in an area and which need the most protection. State and national parks managers can study what is most interesting to visitors.

Aside from heat-maps of raw tourist interest, the project includes traces based on temporal data included in the photo metadata. These allow researchers to track where and when visitors are going. That led to an interesting insight into the different approaches taken by foreign and domestic visitors to Italy, as reported in a one-page PDF summary prepared by the researchers:

For instance ... Americans follow a specific graph constituted by the nodes of Florence, Siena, Pisa, Genova and Perugia. By contrast, Italians ... are more adventurous in their exploration of the area (including reporting on visits of the Island of Elba).

If nothing else, this research illustrates the expansion of new and public sources of data and information possible with the spread of open-source tools and applications on-line. And it re-enforces the value that professional GIS folks can bring to the analysis and use of that data.

New York Times Looks at Citizen Web-Mapping

The New York Times has a look at citizen web-mapping (With Tools on Web, Amateurs Reshape Mapmaking) today. The article, which reviews the tools provided by Google, Microsoft and others, predicts some changes in the way geospatial data will be created and shared as more and more 'regular folks" create geo-content on-line.

In the process, they are reshaping the world of mapmaking and collectively creating a new kind of atlas that is likely to be both richer and messier than any other.

They are also turning the Web into a medium where maps will play a more central role in how information is organized and found.

The challenge for state and local GIS coordinators, it appears, will be finding ways to integrate government-created geospatial data into this larger "geo-web" in a way that supports citizen-creation of content and ensures an accurate, up-to-date basic geospatial infrastructure needed for a wide range of governmental services.

And, while we can celebrate the blossoming of data creation that seems to be taking place, we shouldn't forget to take the new data with a pinch of salt, as one NSGIC-friend is quoted in the article.

“Some people are potentially going to do really stupid things with these tools,” said Donald Cooke, chief scientist at Tele Atlas North America, a leading supplier of digital street maps. “But you can also go hiking with your G.P.S. unit, and you can create a more accurate depiction of a trail than on a U.S.G.S. map,” Mr. Cooke said, referring to the United States Geological Survey.

Moving Forward on the Geospatial Line Of Business

Federal Computer Week reports today on reviews under way at USGS of proposals for management support services and more under the Geospatial Line of Business (LOB).

According to the story, Interior reviewing Geospatial LOB proposals, vendors responded to a Request for Quotes earlier this month.

Under the request for quotes, USGS wants vendors to provide 16 program management support services including project management office support, quarterly and ad hoc reports for the Office of Management and Budget, fiscal 2008 business case and funding strategy, performance management plan, and business requirements strategy and plan.

The RFQ also asks the vendor to develop a geospatial business architecture, which will help agencies understand and implement a standard geospatial business model, value chains for data and services, and other geospatial components.

The federal government released its LOB and asked for comments in 2006. NSGIC was among a number of geospatial groups that provided feedback (PDF).