Merging technologies unleashes the true power of each technology.
A couple of months ago I was lucky enough to take a paddle on a pristine lake on the far south coast of New South Wales, and while it didn't look like it, I was hard at work.
You see my kayak was not only spatially enabled, it was linked to the net. It was a new wireless web-technology kayak.
In-between paddles I was on-line booking my flight from Canberra to Wellington, checking my emails and buying and selling some shares (although I'm not sure if I should be buying or selling these days).
The web-kayak was also monitoring the tides and lake current patterns and linked to a GPS which indicated how many paddles in what direction would give me the optimum course to get across the lake to the river we were about to explore.
The system was also taking into account underlying 3D topographical maps of the lake to highlight water depths, submerged rocks, sandbars, etc.
This high tech unit also featured a fin-mounted fish finder sensor that would alert a web kayaker of any approaching sharks if it were out in the ocean rather than this peaceful lake.
In that circumstance, if the shark came too close, the kayaker might decide to check his life insurance and ensure his blood type and organ donor information is updated to his access card in case he couldn't make it to shore.
Sounds all science fiction? While I was actually only experiencing the solitude of the pristine lake conditions all the above is in fact absolutely feasible with today's technology.
I tell you this story because it is a good way to highlight the opportunities for the spatial information industry.
However to maximize the use of the technology available today and in the future, we need to be fully spatially enabled. Merging technologies unleashes the true power of each technology.
Take for example merging Google Earth with both the built and natural environment data.
The applications such a marriage will create include areas such as environmental monitoring, emergency response, infrastructure planning, social services planning, taxation assessment, and the list goes on - international and domestic terrorism, climate change, drought, carbon trading, water rights. And some real basics, taxation, health, education, immigration. These are all issues where spatial data and technologies will play an important role.
Companies within and traditionally outside the spatial information industry have grown, and are diversifying and merging
Why has Microsoft recently bought the U.K.'s MultiMap? Why is the GoogleMaps service so popular.
But in order to develop further the industry needs to have government fully onside and that means convincing the decision makers that there is a benefit in terms of better service delivery and monetary savings.
In that regard the CRC -SI recently commissioned a study into the spatial information industry by economic consultants ACIL Tasman and their report Spatially Enabling Australia estimates that spatial information and technology have increased the nation's GDP by somewhere between $6 and $12 billion.
In a clear understanding of the need to be spatially enabled, ACIL says there are substantial losses in GDP caused by the delay in implementing an Australian Spatial Data Infrastructure (ASDI) and recommends the Federal Government provide funding of $200 million over ten years to the ASDI.
When you add the many non-traditional applications of spatial information, it adds up to an exciting future for everyone involved as there will be an increasing appetite for spatial information.
That means the capturers of data, the manipulators of data, the analysts of data, the custodians of data, and the educators, researchers and the technology suppliers, have bright, powerful and strategic futures ahead.
The initial steps within Government to enable it to be truly spatially enabled must be built on at a greater pace. The challenge for the present Australian Government is to understand what spatially enabled fully means and provide the resources to achieve it.
The broader Spatial Information Community is anxious to develop such things as a National Information Portal, the GNSS Infrastructure and Coastal Vulnerability and Water Management, to list a few.
That same Community has demonstrated how serious it is in progressing these initiatives through the establishment of the Australian Spatial Consortium (ASC) made up of the CRC for Spatial Information, ANZLIC, PSMA Australia Ltd and the Australian Spatial Information Business Association (ASIBA).
In conclusion, there are many wonderful initiatives underway that help secure that bright future, whether or not you're interested in disrupting an enjoyable paddle by logging on to check your email.
I'm confident the Spatial Information Industry has got its collective act together and all stakeholders now need to get behind these initiatives to ultimately contribute to a more efficient and sustainable world.
After a 25 year career as a Surveyor, including 13 years in his own surveying and mapping business, the Hon. Gary Nairn served as the Member for Eden-Monaro in the Australian Parliament from 1996 till 2007 including as Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and as Special Minister of State. He now operates his own consultancy business.
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Spatial Information has a very bright future
Gary Nairn, as a Surveyor and a former federal Minister with a passion for Spatial Information (SI), is well placed to make the observations about the future of SI. There is no object on, above or beneath the Earth's surface that does not have, or could not be contained and referenced within a static or dynamic set of coordinates that enable all objects to be spatially placed and identified in relation to each other.
SI has come of age in recent years as people from a range of different disciplines and walks of life in the public and private sectors, academic institutions and the community generally have embraced the power and importance of SI to inform and achieve the social, economic and environmental outcomes sought by society.
At a time when the world is increasingly faced with a range of complex and interrelated challenges ranging from the use and management of natural resources, defence and sovereignty, communication, infrastructure planning and maintenance, counter terrorism and emergency services and the underlining cadastral and property rights, so critical to a functioning society, the challenge remains - how to accelerate the understanding, application and adoption of SI at all stages of ideas generation from policy and planning through to project implementation and monitoring.
We need a greater pace of adoption of known data sets and pathways for their interaction and adoption.
We need to increasingly distance the singular thought that SI is just an Information technology issue - SI is an information management issue and the information technology, a pathway to adoption and tool of transformational change. We need to simplify the pathways to adoption so the end users gain the benefits of adopting SI without having to understand, the fundamentally important technology, science and related disciplines which underpin the performance of SI.
As a result, one of the greatest challengers is to address the "institutional" barriers and structural failures that have hampered the wider understanding and adoption of SI across the public and private sectors. The advancement of the work by bodies such as ANZLIC, ASIBA, PSMA, CRCSI and SSI as individual structural bodies for SI, addressing issues from government policy and strategy, industry, research, development and commercialisation and the individual professionals, together with the work of academic institutions is to be applauded. However, the collaboration between these groups to achieve a tighter and more clearly focussed agenda for SI is needed if we are to collectively meet the broad based challenges described previously.
The advent of the Australian Spatial Consortium (ASC) provides a framework and "meeting place" where these key bodies can collectively accelerate the necessary dialogue, scoping of ideas and the formulation of clear directions for the advancement of societies goals, underpinned by the dynamic power of SI. By itself, ASC will not singularly meet the challenge. However with the contribution of these established pillars within the "spatial church of different denominations" listed above it can harness their collective skills and knowledge without affecting their individual goals, so as to accelerate the understanding and adoption of SI.