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Time changes and tech­nol­ogy does as well.  Over time the rea­sons we pur­chased a prod­uct also change. We learn, we grow and we devel­op­ment new thoughts about spa­tial data, maps and how new designs and appli­ca­tions can be cre­ated. Growth leads to new ideas and per­cep­tions, sud­denly what was accept­able appears blurs and becomes re-established at another level and in a dif­fer­ent form. New expec­ta­tions for our geo­graphic infor­ma­tion sys­tems (GIS) arise and we expect our CAD sys­tems to deliver some­thing more.

 

Time changes and tech­nol­ogy does as well.  Over time the rea­sons we pur­chased a prod­uct also change. We learn, we grow and we devel­op­ment new thoughts about spa­tial data, maps and how new designs and appli­ca­tions can be cre­ated. Growth leads to new ideas and per­cep­tions, sud­denly what was accept­able appears blurs and becomes re-established at another level and in a dif­fer­ent form. New expec­ta­tions for our geo­graphic infor­ma­tion sys­tems (GIS) arise and we expect our CAD sys­tems to deliver some­thing more.  Sud­denly print changes to dif­fer­ent types of rep­re­sen­ta­tion and visu­al­iza­tion in 2-D seems passe. What’s going on? “What Do We Expect from GIS,  CAD, Sur­vey­ing and Visu­al­iza­tion Today?

Our expec­ta­tions about GIS, CAD, print and visu­al­iza­tion have changed greatly — they have increased. The rate and amount of change tak­ing place in terms of hard­ware and soft­ware areas is fast paced. These changes are sup­ple­mented by rapidly chang­ing vast amounts of spa­tial data gen­er­ated world­wide, often in auto­mated fashion.

The cycle for new data to arrive is short­ened to daily peri­ods and some­times up to the minute for par­tic­u­lar kinds of geo­data. Both  gov­er­nance and leg­isla­tive issues are also involved.

Value

In think­ing about these changes from a strate­gic per­spec­tive, it appears few key drivers:

• Added value – peo­ple want value — nat­u­rally. It  must be artic­u­lated. Good price, ser­vice, qual­ity and fea­tures are all expected, just as before. The harder part to answer about value lies in answer­ing ques­tions what a prod­uct or ser­vice can do inter­nally and exter­nally for an indi­vid­ual or organ­i­sa­tion. How will that sur­vey total sta­tion make a dif­fer­ence to some of the CAD design projects I expect to be involved in? Can that GIS analyse data in 2D, 3D and 4D? Most LIDAR and remote sensed images are large, how will that work with the rest of my organisation’s equip­ment and tech­nol­ogy? Can we push those visu­al­iza­tions to the inter­net at tur­tle or F1 speed?

• Ease of Use –  while many peo­ple talk about reduc­ing the com­plex­ity of soft­ware and hard­ware today, I would sug­gest most ven­dors have done a pretty good job at deal­ing with this. There are robotic total sta­tions out there, auto­mated image analy­sis. Laser scan­ning is largely pro­gram­ma­ble and GIS analy­sis is eas­ier to use through servers.  A more dif­fi­cult aspect to address in terms of ease of use is train­ing and edu­ca­tion. Most organ­i­sa­tions need to get peo­ple up to speed and keep them there. Most wish to avoid  dras­tic re-training pro­grams. Have you ever won­dered why you don;t see major changes in util­ity com­pa­nies and the soft­ware they use? Cost and time of imple­ment­ing whole new systems.

• Mobil­ity — I was going to list this one in my Top 10 ear­lier this year. Data must be mov­able, tech­nol­ogy should be mobile and the deliv­ery of spa­tial data and visu­al­i­sa­tion ought to be ori­ented toward where indi­vid­u­als are. Mobile phones, tablet com­put­ers, smart devices and so on are all part of delivery.

• Inter­op­er­abil­ity — still rates high up the scale of expec­ta­tions. No one wants to be left stranded with data types, aging hard­ware or soft­ware that can­not con­nect to what the rest of the world is doing.  While cloud ser­vices may be good, what if those ser­vices stop for some rea­son? Are you pre­pared? In server work­flows, much of the inter­op­er­abil­ity is out­side your con­trol, thus plan­ning and ask­ing the right ques­tions is important.

But there are other issues to be con­sid­ered. A num­ber of trends are emerg­ing that we can see on the hori­zon. And it is not unrea­son­able to think that many peo­ple are pick­ing up on the reverberations.

Tech­nol­ogy reach
LIDAR is a hot topic today. It is seen as a tech­nol­ogy that is finally reach­ing it’s full stride and mov­ing into work­flows more deeply and fully. In part, this shift is sup­ported through the rise in 3D devel­op­ments. ESRI is about to announce a true 3D topol­ogy and ORACLE has had a 3D data­base for a lit­tle while now. What trig­gers the shift in this case, seem­ingly, is the fact that indi­vid­ual LIDAR points are inher­ently 3D — they can be stored and used more fully that way, again adding value. Where?

It makes great sense at the present time that a prod­uct like LizardTech’s LIDAR tech­nol­ogy will grow in need. Con­sider the idea of analysing 3D LIDAR in a GIS with spa­tial analy­sis tools. This is com­ing very soon and will prob­a­bly be the most pow­er­ful change in GIS we have seen in some years. GIS will be able to ana­lyze every one of those LIDAR points collected.

Sur­vey tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies have been talk­ing about dig­i­tal sur­vey data for some time now, this is not new. But it takes on new mean­ing when we have 3D dis­plays. James Cameron, AVATAR movie direc­tor thinks so, but geospa­tial data users can expect to see all those visu­al­i­sa­tions they have been try­ing to defend bud­get wise over the years, now become real­ity and their super­vi­sors eyes widen in delight as they sign off on new graphic cards — pre­vi­ously a hard fought bud­get item.

Sur­vey tech­nol­ogy has a long reach through work flows. From basic mea­sure­ments through to design and build, dig­i­tal data may be reused over and over many times. Where the sur­veyor ends, the archi­tect and struc­tural spe­cial­ist begins. The energy ana­lyst fol­lows, all build­ing upon the ini­tal sur­vey data.

The CAD ven­dors today have embraced design through effi­ciency. Energy is dri­ving the change as CAD design tech­nolo­gies are increas­ingly incor­po­rat­ing effi­ciency analy­sis, weather and mate­r­ial vari­ables. In addi­tion the energy grid itself is being redesigned to sup­port renew­able ener­gies and to enable ser­vices to the home and busi­ness in a two-way manner.

Visu­al­i­sa­tion expands
Visu­al­i­sa­tion is not what it used to be. Graph­ics cards have been updated to sup­port high-end graph­ics that are emerg­ing from bet­ter design soft­ware. While CAD designs have become near near photo-realistic, GIS visu­al­i­sa­tions are now sup­port­ing large data files that cir­cu­late through time and space, mod­eled by health, envi­ron­ment, mil­i­tary, trans­port and other applications.

There are higher demands to move visu­al­i­sa­tions to mobile devices, and the emer­gence of aug­mented real­ity in new forms means greater con­ver­gence of graphics.

Of all the tech­nolo­gies it seems to me that print is the one under most change. HP, for exam­ple, no longer con­sid­ers itself as print­ing, but com­mu­ni­cat­ing. It’s mis­sion is to enable design work­flows at the sharing-collaboration edge. To do that paper is part of the solu­tion, but recog­nis­ing that design itself involves many pro­fes­sion­als, HP has been aim­ing toward the best way to inte­grate these indi­vid­u­als together. Part of that solu­tion involves mov­ing CAD across net­works and will likely include mobile devices.

Our demands for more photo-realistic expe­ri­ences par­tially emanate from the con­stant increases in new imagery avail­able from Bing and Google. Another part of the demand is dri­ven by CAD soft­ware design. Yet another aspect involves immer­sive envi­ron­ments, like CAVEs. These envi­ron­ments have been around a long time. Fif­teen years ago we were cre­at­ing files suit­able for CAVE-like expe­ri­ences, but get­ting them into the envi­ron­ments was dif­fi­cult and demanded facil­i­ties avail­able only at uni­ver­si­ties — super com­put­ing.  That;s changed. The Cloud itself lever­aged against high qual­ity 3D GIS out­put and Geo­De­sign could har­ness com­plex visu­al­i­sa­tions at local levels.

I think peo­ple expect man­u­fac­tur­ers to have some wis­dom today. They not only want tech­nol­ogy, but they want some­one with enlight­en­ment to help them realise some of their cre­ative ideas. They expect to try things out, to engage things they wish to work with and pur­chase, before they decide.

We expect a lot because we have a lot. So much research has pro­duced a sea of new geospa­tial prod­ucts and ser­vices that are far supe­rior to those before. Many of these have been aimed at con­sumers, rais­ing the expec­ta­tions of reg­u­lar folks. Com­pe­ti­tion between company’s has caused this to hap­pen also.

Keep your eye on 3D spa­tial analy­sis, my sense is that is going to the hot spot.