Should the geospatial industry improve their location privacy self-policing?
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- 18 June 2013 | By Matt Ball | 245
Our collective notion of privacy, whether via mobile or online interactions, took a giant hit a few weeks ago with the revelation of the lengths that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has gone to collect and analyze personal communications. The daily reports of user location that the NSA has collected from our telephone providers, among other records from other services, has caused grave global concern. While there’s some defensible aspects to these actions, the far reach of this surveillance-state policy has the potential to dramatically alter mobile and online interactions.
Must map monetization mean guiding rather than enabling exploration?
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- 03 June 2013 | By Matt Ball | 388
The latest reveal of Google Maps takes a more proactive approach to creating maps around customer queries for a ‘personalized’ view. This shift meets with the company’s goal to organize all of the world’s information, yet it also is a much tighter tie to the company’s core business of advertising. The custom maps are complete with preference based on our social networking friends, places we mention in e-mails, and other sites we’ve looked at online. With this level of automated tailoring, the map takes on a whole different meaning.
What role does modeling and simulation play in disaster response?
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- 28 May 2013 | By Matt Ball | 545
GIS has proven itself time and again as an integral tool in planning and responding to disasters, and we’ve come a long way in our capabilities to communicate and incorporate up-to-date details about unfolding events. The trend is for more frequent and intense natural disasters worldwide due to increased populations in vulnerable areas, and heightened global change. While GIS continues to advance to address the issue of planning and response, there are some key areas in need of further development.
What does Google’s Timelapse effort say about the geospatial big data challenge?
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- 10 May 2013 | By Matt Ball | 5400
Google gave the world a gift yesterday with the release of the global timelapse viewer that aggregates Landsat imagery from 1984 through 2012. While this effort isn’t unique, it is high-profile with its exclusive media alliance with TIME magazine, and it simultaneously illustrates the impact of humans while also showing the difficulty of aggregating our knowledge about global change.
What are some of the disruptions of digital photogrammetry, and their implications?
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- 30 April 2013 | By Matt Ball | 711
The legacy of film imagery spans just 150 years, although it still continues to some degree today, from its start at the dawn of photography in the mid-1800s to its continued use on Russian reconnaissance satellites. With the advent of commercial large-format digital aerial cameras in the early 2000’s, in a very short time film has been replaced by digital sensors for mapping applications, and with it many barriers to wider use of aerial and satellite imaging and monitoring have fallen away.