GISWeekly examines select top news each week, picks out worthwhile reading from around the web, and special interest items you might not find elsewhere. This issue will feature Industry News, Top News of the Week, Acquisitions/Agreements/Alliances, Announcements, People, Awards, New Products, and Events Calendar.
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Susan Smith, Managing Editor
Industry News
Autodesk Topobase and MapGuide Enterprise Updates
by Susan Smith
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Use workflows to streamline data capture and design process, reducing inaccuracy and enforcing company standards |
Autodesk is fond of saying that they build their products in response to their customers’ requirements. But what is particularly unusual about the MapGuide Enterprise 2008 release is that for the first time, Autodesk has begun to see open source participation incorporated into their products. Rather than being limited to beta testers and perhaps the AUGI Top 10 list of “I wants” in the products, customers and other users can download MapGuide Open Source and experiment with it, and thereby participate in future releases of MapGuide. Open source has opened up an entirely new dimension. Whatever becomes a resident part of MapGuide Open Source eventually shows up in the next release of MapGuide Enterprise.
Alan Saunders said that what drives customers in the utility industry revolves around convergence of their design, as-built and management processes, CAD and GIS processes. Other issues center around aging workforce where up to half their workers are retiring over next five years, managing challenges presented by aging assets, and being challenged to do more with less.
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Automatically created cached tiles on the server to improve performance |
Both the Topobase and MapGuide Enterprise releases directly respond to those challenges, according to Saunders. “On the Topobase side, we’ve previously released water and wastewater vertical specific modules. With this release we’re announcing a Gas Industry Module so we’re continuing to roll out industry specific solutions for the utility industries. In addition to the Gas Industry Module, we are web enabling a lot of the functionality that was previously in the client version out to web browser users now. Those might be utility employers or contractors who can update job status and manage the workflow processes available in Topobase.” As utilities outsource more of their design work, the ability to conduct these processes on the web is very important.
Liam Speden described MapGuide Enterprise as the technology Autodesk has to deliver information over the web. “In 2007 there was a complete reengineering of the product architecture to align with Web 2.0 trends, at the same time releasing it as Open Source,” said Speden. “One of the key things around the web and the Autodesk Geospatial Platform is that by geospatially enabling a customer’s data or your data, the information becomes more meaningful. With open data access and ease of distribution and getting it to the end users, users can realize real business benefits for their organizations around competitive advantage, cost savings from increased efficiency, and the ability to leverage innovation to improve their workflow, not only within their organizations but extending that to their customers and external stakeholders in the general public arena.”
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Consume MapGuide maps and layers directly Google Earth |
Saunders said that Autodesk Topobase enables a rules based design environment. Another key challenge for gas utilities is reporting requirements and infrastructure, where preventative maintenance requirements for valves and stations has to be done on a scheduled basis. The new Topobase Gas Module provides an industry specific data module that captures the feature classes in topic areas such as pressure zones, supply zones and gas protection devices are all represented in the standard, out-of-the-box model. “It enables a utility to get up and running with this solution quickly,” said Saunders. “The out-of-the-box business rules for the creation and management of assets allow users to manage the connectivity and manage the tracing both forward and backward to show what houses might be affected by a gas shut off valve or damaged pipe.”
The person who manages operations and manages the preventative maintenance can get a color coded view of the pipeline network and which assets need preventative maintenance applied to them. Another user who is doing a design of the network would look at street data of where the pipeline is relative to centerline.
Today more work is done by contractors and out in the field. Web enabling job management functionality is valuable to the contractor who can make changes to a design, then update the status of the drawing, then send it to a specific person for review and approval.
“From the perspective of web based technologies, the benefit that MapGuide Enterprise delivers to customers is it allows them to maximize the value of their investment in their CAD, geospatial and business data by providing a mechanism for them to cost effectively deliver that information out to the broader audience,” explained Speden. “In terms of getting the right data to the right people at the right time and out of departmental silos and data stores, it’s key that we provide them with the means to not only access the information but also scale to meet future needs.” Improvements include adding better scalability through inbuilt load balancing across different servers, improved connectivity by having the ability to have unmanaged data resources, that are data resources not held in a specific single repository, and also more flexible ways of managing a coordinate system and previewing the way in which information, maps, etc. are going to be displayed on the web.
Autodesk has also made cartographic and user interface enhancements in MapGuide Enterprise, i.e. linestyles, symbolization, as well as simplifying and clarifying the application programming interface so developers who want to customize their systems and want to integrate with other business systems can do so with the least amount of effort. They are aiming to create an API that is consistent within the wider web.
Google Earth support allows a utility to manage their own information internally very consistently but deliver information into a very common, almost ubiquitous user interface that allows a customer service agent to send updates to storm inquiries or power outages (not necessarily over the web), leaks or break information in a mechanism that a lot of people in the public domain are very familiar with.
The source code is actually maintained in MapGuide Open Source. “With Enterprise, we take a cut of the source code, quality assure it, test it, make sure it’s interoperable with the rest of Autodesk’s geospatial platform, and that allows us to provide the support that people purchase through subscription,” explained Speden. “Very much the same way that you have the Red Hat Enterprise Linux or the MySQL support services. It’s the same open source software model as those companies have.”
All the innovation coming through Open Source is then wrapped up and put within Enterprise. Many projects worked on internally as part of the overall program for building products for the geospatial industry are also turned into that Open Source pool.
The Google extrusion support, the 3D polygon support, started as part of an exercise in the Open Source initiative that had multiple people contributing. trialing and playing with it. Once that reached a level of maturity, it was packaged up and incorporated into Enterprise.
Autodesk finds it hard to characterize the entire MapGuide user community. “Certainly a very large proportion of our customers are those seeking to bridge the CAD and Geospatial data divide and geospatial divide,” noted Speden. “That said, this is where the FDO open data access technology comes in. Customers often have other geospatial systems technologies and information systems that they wish to access and expose at the same time. We enable them to build their own information infrastructure to bring those data sources and systems together and support for things like the WMS standards.”
Saunders said that they find new applications and new uses MapGuide Enterprise and Open Source technology outside the traditional customer base of the telecoms, utility and government. “We’re seeing people distribute health care information, or geodemographic and socioeconomic information, particularly from Open Source. As the Open Source project has matured, that user base has broadened significantly. When these people contribute back, they contribute from a different perspective and that can only improve the product.”
In an outage management situation, for example, a user can locate a customer in MapGuide based on information that’s in the customer information systems and be able to visualize the status on the network, where the customer sits on the network and what neighboring customers might be out of service, and what the approximate time for restoration is.
Speden said that Autodesk Location Based Services deliver an interface to their customers that is based on the MapGuide Open Source platform. Some customers use it for marketing, by mashing up their customers and meeting data and putting that into a MapGuide type map so they can see their distribution of events and customers. One partner has been developing commercial real estate applications to help large property companies manage the distribution of their portfolio of real estate. Some customers are already using MapGuide Enterprise as part of their programs inside various national defense organizations.
Topobase incorporates both Map 3D and MapGuide and is built on Oracle Spatial. Map 3D was released a couple of months ago. The relationship between Topobase and MapGuide Enterprise allows you to share data out across your organizations.
“Open source creates a very low barrier for developers and organizations to pick up and use the Autodesk platform,” Speden pointed out. “They get access to a fully functional web based, geospatial product straight off the web that’s supported by a very active community of developers.” Speden suggested that by making open source available to the community and actively supporting the user community, users have easy access to the product rather than having to go through the process of finding, procuring, and selecting software. “It is showing benefits now as those people contribute back to the product.”
MapGuide is several hundred thousand lines of source code, thus the early contributions were related to suggestions and comments around behavior and the API. But that is changing. “Now we’re starting to see active contributions in terms of suggestions to add or improve the source code,” Speden said. “There is a steering committee that manages the product, the suggestions for changes, requests to add things to code, and they are primarily people who have been selected by the community. Its primary role is to ensure that the coherency of the Open Source project is maintained.”
FDO has seen very strong contributions as it is easier for people to understand it.
- As of June 2007, the MapGuide Open Source community numbered over 600 members, and the source code has been downloaded more than 34,000 times.
- FDO source code has been downloaded 9000 times.
Top News of the Week
Rolta, a provider of knowledge-based comprehensive IT solutions and services in GeoSpatial/GeoEngineering, Engineering Design, and advanced Security and Network Management, to clients worldwide, announced the signing of a purchase agreement to acquire Orion Technology Inc., a Canadian software and integration company specializing in enterprise web-GIS solutions.
This is a strategically important acquisition that enables Rolta to own exceptional technologies for taking its GIS offerings to the next level of sophistication. Orion employs innovative technologies that allow users to connect to and integrate complex geospatial and non-spatial data from disparate sources. Rolta therefore will provide a unique capability to its customers for turning their existing GIS investments into true enterprise solutions, in an extremely user-friendly and cost-efficient manner.
Acquisitions/Agreements/Alliances
Tele Atlas announced a joint venture with Systems and Technology Corporation (S&T) to form Tele Atlas Taiwan Co., Ltd., an independent entity focused on delivering a complete digital map of the territory for portable, Internet, in-car and wireless navigation systems and applications. Tele Atlas Taiwan also unveiled its first mobile mapping van in the Asia Pacific region in the heart of downtown Taipei.
Appello, the leading online navigation provider, and Mappy, European leader of location based services (LBS) and geotargeting information, have agreed to partner for online mobile navigation on the Java platform as an extended service for Mappy navigation services on mobile phones. Hereby the first truly complete offering is made available by merging a strong consumer brand, a leading internet mapping web portal and the best of online mobile navigation.
1Spatial is delighted to announce the acquisition of Proteus Solutions Limited and IME UK Limited on the 6th July 2007 to form 1Spatial Ireland and 1Spatial Scotland.
As part of the acquisition Seamus Gilroy, Managing Director of Proteus will become Managing Director of 1Spatial Ireland and Alan Douglas, Managing Director of IME will take on the role of Managing Director for 1Spatial Scotland.
Orion Technology Inc. is pleased to announce a partnership with TOWER Software, one of the world’s leading Enterprise Content Management (ECM) providers to government and regulated industries. TOWER Software will utilize Orion’s out-of-the-box web-GIS software solution, OnPoint™, to expand their solution capabilities within a wide range of business markets.
Announcements
GeoEye, a leading producer of satellite, aerial and geospatial information, announced the inclusion of its Common Stock in the Russell 3000 Index. The Russell 3000 Index tracks the performance of the 3,000 largest U.S. companies based on total market capitalization and is used by investment managers and institutional investors for index funds and as benchmarks for both passive and active investment strategies.
ESRI announced the launching of Mapping Center, a new Web site that helps users learn about cartographic concepts and best practices for mapmaking with ArcGIS.
The site is designed to provide quick answers to mapmaking problems. Site visitors will find information and sample maps displaying a wide variety of cartographic techniques and effects along with tips and instructions on how to reproduce the featured effects on their own maps. For more information, visit
ESRI's Mapping Center Web site.
ESRI announced it has joined the PODS Association, Inc., a nonprofit pipeline trade organization serving members around the world. By becoming a PODS member, ESRI will be able to better serve its users who are members of PODS as well as provide the association with insight from its GIS experience.
The PODS Association’s mandate is to develop and maintain pipeline data standards and data interchange standards for the pipeline industry. These standards primarily include pipeline operations, facilities, integrity management, and regulatory compliance. The association also manages and maintains the PODS data model.
More than 250 persons, including principals, owners, partners and senior executive professionals from more than 75 of the community's leading private geospatial firms, and key officials of government GIS agencies, will gather July 16-20 at the Mount Washington Resort in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire for the 25th Anniversary Summer Conference of MAPPS. For more information on MAPPS, please visit the
MAPPS Website.
New Products
terra IMS announces the release of geoXtract™, a powerful desktop application that provides users with an easy way to integrate existing data in a variety of formats with Google Maps™ and Google Earth™.
geoXtract™ provides an intuitive “wizard” interface that leads users through data selection, data configuration, data processing, and data publishing. All data processing is automated with geoXtract™, so there is no need for users to manually create each data point that will be displayed on the map. Users can easily integrate tens, hundreds, and even thousands of records with Google Maps™ and Google Earth™, and there is absolutely no programming required.
TrafficGauge, the company that launched the first "mobile traffic map" in the U.S., has announced a new way it is helping to make navigating freeway traffic easier. TrafficGauge has made its superior traffic information accessible for free with a simple computer download of any one of four widgets. Downloads include: Windows Vista(TM) Gadget, Mac Dashboard Widget, Google(TM) Homepage Gadget and Yahoo! Widget,
The downloads are the latest addition to TrafficGauge's expanding line of fee and free services designed to help drivers navigate the country's increasingly congested freeways and roadways. The company's product line-up also includes the TrafficGauge hand-held device (fee for service) as well as free download services, TrafficGauge for Cell Phone and TrafficGauge for PC.
The Carbon Project announced a new version of CarbonTools PRO for Microsoft .NET software developers.
The release includes a complete programming interface and controls for OGC Filter Encoding specification (FE) used by Web Feature Services (WFS), enhanced Web Feature Service Transaction tools (WFS-T), added Catalog Services for the Web (CS-W) support, the capability to transform features content into Geography Markup Language 3, new code samples to ‘jump start’ application development and more.
Leica Geosystems Geospatial Imaging Enhances Leica TITAN - Leica TITAN’s Geospatial Instant Messenger is the ideal gateway for sharing, publishing and serving local geospatial data to Google Earth. Using the Geospatial Instant Messenger, images, terrain and feature data shared in Leica TITAN may also be viewed directly in Google Earth.
ESRI is offering software and training grants to botanical gardens, arboreta, and zoological parks that want to incorporate GIS into their operations. The overriding goal of the program is to support the application of GIS technology to plant conservation, management, research, and educational activities.
ESRI recognizes that botanical gardens, arboreta, and zoological parks are at the forefront of biological scientific research and conservation efforts and play an important role in educating the public about the natural world. The grant series is intended to supplement these institutions' efforts by bridging the technology gap where financial resources remain an obstacle to progress.
On January 1, 2007, Germany’s official postal organization implemented changes to approximately 60 postal code areas. Municipalities and county administrations have also redrawn boundaries as a result of amalgamations or new land assignments. The deadline for formal objections having now elapsed, these changes are now binding. GfK GeoMarketing’s recently updated maps of Germany, Austria and Switzerland have been adjusted to reflect these alterations and are now available for distribution.
Upcoming Events
| Diving into GIS and Earth Observation Technologies | |
| Date: | July 11 - 21, 2007 |
| Place: | Santa Cesarea Terme
Italy |
| The International Summer School DIGEO “Diving into GIS and Earth Observation Technologies” will take place during the 11th. - 21st. of July 2007 in the mediterranean locality of Santa Cesarea Terme in Italy. The main objective is to provide participants with the know-how needed to: - create and manage Geographic Information Systems (GIS), - integrate Remote Sensing - Satellite Image interpretation and GIS - collect underwater data while obtaining an International scuba SSI certificate | |
| National Association of Counties (NACo) | |
| Date: | July 13 - 17, 2007 |
| Place: | Richmond, VA USA |
| MARK YOUR CALENDARS! Registration for the 2007 NACo Annual Conference and Exposition will open in mid-February. | |
| The 2007 Wireless & Mobile Expo and Conference | |
| Date: | July 17 - 18, 2007 |
| Place: | Ontario, Canada |
| The 2007 Wireless & Mobile Expo and Conference, being the global meeting place for the wireless industry, attracts key decision-makers to learn and purchase the latest products and solutions, offered by innovative technology vendors and service providers. | |
| GEOBrasil Summit 2007 | |
| Date: | July 17 - 19, 2007 |
| Place: | Imigrantes Exhibiiton Center
S©o Paulo , Brazil |
| Created in 2000, GEOBrasil Summit is, by far, the biggest and most important annual meeting of buyers, specialists and suppliers of solutions connected with geotechnologies of Latin America. | |
| GeoWeb 2007 | |
| Date: | July 23 - 27, 2007 |
| Place: | Vancouver, BC
Canada |
| We encourage the attendance of anyone and everyone working in the public and private sectors that match the following description: You are interested in the development of technology to enable the convergence of Web technologies, XML, Web services, and GIS. You are interested in the multitude of applications associated with the convergence of Web technologies, XML, Web services, and GIS You are interested in the impact of businesses and government policies associated with the convergence of Web technologies, XML, Web services, and GIS. You are interested in the emergence of new business models leveraged by the convergence of Web technologies, XML, Web services, and GIS. | |
| Accela User Conference | |
| Date: | August 6 - 9, 2007 |
| Place: | Hyatt Regency Orange County
11999 Harbor Blvd, Garden Grove, CA 92840 USA |
| It all comes together August 6 - 9 at the Hyatt Regency Orange County, where the Accela community unites to move beyond the boundaries of what we believe is possible. The largest event for users all year, the User Conference is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to connect with the people, products, and trends at the forefront of the government technology industry. Let’s work together to build new opportunities! | |