The Future of GIS

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The Future of GIS
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2005 and 2025

• What is the state of geospatial computing today?
• What are the issues today?
• What will geospatial computing be like in 2025?
• What issues will be of concern then?

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Computing issues in 2005

• Building the cyberinfrastructure
• The digital divide
• The where of computing
• User interfaces The end of GUIs, WIMPs, and the
  desktop
• Wireless internet
• Who owns software
• Too much data

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Geographic information technology in 2005

• Countering industry trends, LBS
• GPS mature, GLONASS, Galileo, GPS II, indoor?
• Geobrowser era, and VGI
• Mobile GIS
• Cellular phones and location technology
• New generation of space imaging
• Interoperability and standards
• The data fire hose

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What will the issues be in 2025?
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Cyberinfrastructure

• aka Grid computing
• NSF Vision for next era of computing
• integrated suite of computational engines,
  mass storage, networks, digital libraries and
  databases, sensors, software and services (NSF,
  2003).
• Can include human users and the user interface
• NSF (2003) Revolutionizing Science and
  Engineering Through Cyberinfrastructure Report
  of the National Science Foundation Blue-Ribbon
  Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure Atkins
  report.

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Forecast Cyberinfrastructure vision

• Services available on demand
• Independence of source
• The computer is the network

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Geospatial elements of the GRID 1. GPS
Source U. Minnesota IVS Lab
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Geospatial elements of the GRID 1. Portability
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Geospatial elements of the GRID Sensor webs
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Forecast Wearable GIS

• We will wear our computers, not sit in front of
  them

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Wearable GIS
http//www.itmedia.co.jp/broadband/0309/18
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UCSB Battuta project
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Field Test Prototype YAH, Map view, text off,
perspective on
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Field Test Prototype YAH, Image view, text off,
perspective on
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Forecast No more data problems

• Digital earth will exist
• It will be achieved by VGI, not top-down
• There will be many and specialized geobrowsers
• Open standards rule

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Digital Earth

• Visionary concept Holistic perspective
• Popularized by former US VP Al Gore
• Virtual and 3-D representation of the Earth
• Spatially referenced
• Connected with digital knowledge archives
• Vast amounts of scientific, natural, and cultural
  information
• to describe and understand the Earth, its
  systems, and human activities.

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Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of
Humanity 1935
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Geoscope

• This giant, 200-foot diameter sphere will be a
  miniature earth -- the most accurate global
  representation of our planet ever to be
  realized." "ThisGeoscope would make it possible
  for humans to identify the true scale of
  themselves and their activities on this planet.
  Humans could thus comprehend much more readily
  that their personal survival problems related
  intimately to all humanity's survival." R.
  Buckminster Fuller, 1962

Figure The Geoscope, as drawn by Tom Shannon,
for the Buckminster Fuller Institute
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Gores Earth in the Balance (1992)
A multi-resolution, three dimensional representat
ion of the planet, into which we can embed vast
quantities of geo-referenced data.
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Consensus definition 1999

• Digital Earth will be a virtual representation of
  our planet that enables a person to explore and
  interact with the vast amounts of natural and
  cultural information gathered about the
  Earth.(Consensus definition adopted at 2nd
  interagency workshop, 1999 Sept 23)

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World wide participation
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The NASA web site
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Is DE Google Earth?

• Keyhole Earthviewer. In-Q-tel funding, Dual use
• Google Maps
• Google buys Keyhole (Oct. 2004)
• Google Earth (June 2005)
• Google Earth Community added
• Partnership with National Geographic

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NO, beacuse

• DE Geobrowser(s) Global data
• DE covers all time scales
• Possibly several browsers
• NASA Worldwind (2003)
• GeoFusion GeoPlayer (2001)
• ESRI ArcGlobe

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NASA Worldwind
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So what about data? Global maps

• Crosses boundary between
• MAPS
• IMAGERY
• TOPONYMY

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Weve been there before Global Maps

• International Millionth Map of the World
• VMAP0 (DCW)
• GlobalMap

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Millionth Map of the World Project

• German Geographer Albrecht Penck (1858-1945)
  proponent of consistent and accurate maps of all
  earth, including its natural and human features.
• Penck proposed a worldwide system of maps at the
  Fifth International Geographical Conference in
  1891.
• International Map of the World, would consist of
  2500 individual maps, each at a scale of
  11,000,000
• Each four degrees of latitude and six degrees of
  longitude.
• 1913, Penck's idea came to fruition,
  international conference established standards
  for the maps, aka Millionth Map of the World
• The 1913 standards established that maps would
  use the local form of each place name in the
  Roman alphabet

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Australia Series (Part)
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International Map of the World

• Legend to be printed in English and French ,
  title of the maps in French, Carte Internationale
  du Monde au 1 000 000
• "Central Bureau of the Map of the World" was
  established in Great Britain's Ordnance Survey.
• 36 countries involved, but by World War I only
  eight maps produced.
• 1921, American Geographic Society took on Central
  and South America.
• 1921 to 1946 to produce 107 maps
• 1930s, 405 maps but only half adhered to
  standards
• World War II, Bureau offices, archives and data
  destroyed by bombing.
• 1953 United Nations took control
• By the 1980s, only about 800 to 1000 total maps
  had been created
• Project terminated incomplete

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Global Map VMAP0 plus
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Massive amounts of data LU
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Digital Earth Issues Today

• Linking text, maps and imagery Fusion
• Making maps and images text searchable
• Data structures
• Global grids

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Colorado State system
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New global/spatial grids QTM
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Go2 Grids
385322.08N 0770206.86W US.DC.WAS.54.18.28.83.1
1 US.CA.SBA.UCSB.UCEN
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(No Transcript)
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Forecast Interfaces

• GUI and WIMP will be dead
• Long live perceptual and multimodal interfaces

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Gesture recognition and AR
Images/Movies courtesy of Mathias Kolsh, UCSB
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Computing issues in 2025

• Network monitors itself, who sees?
• Spyware and security vs Personal privacy
• Who pays for services?
• Who are the digit police?
• Competing solutions and liability
• The limits of accuracy
• Tractability envelope New methods
• Simulation is everywhere, for everything

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Geospatial issues in 2025

• Who owns your lifeline? (Huisman and Forer, 1998
  students in Auckland)

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Forecast Geospatial privacy

• You are where you are!
• Your geospatial data rights will be under threat

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The threat from commerce

• I dread the day when I am woken from a sound
  sleep by a noisy, flashing advertisement
  projected on my retina urging me to download a
  new free Web-browser, one that I cannot turn off
  without mentally focusing on a dark grey
  Decline button hovering at the far range of my
  peripheral vision. (Clarke, 1999).

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Loss of anonymity
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The threat from government

• FOIA vs. Mapping the Risks
• Geoslavery
• Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems "You have no
  privacy - get over it."