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The Automobile Club of Southern California, the fourth largest provider of auto insurance in the state is moving to a model that does use where one parks one’s car to determine the rate, but rather how one drives. National Public Radio covered the story this morning and raises questions about fairness, race and if the idea will spread. Could auto insurance soon be a commodity where geography doesn’t matter?
It’s a regular old, “GIS is helping in agriculture article (GCN)” focusing on a USDA website to help both farmers and researchers tackle soybean rust. Then it gets interesting:
The soybean rust system is an open-source, Linux system. Other than the open-source code and the MapServer GIS mapping applications, ZedX has written the code, [Joe] Russo [ZedX company president and senior scientist] said.
“Open source links us to a larger community of developers. It saves the government and removes any issue of licensing,” he said.
Other government organizations, such as the National Weather Service, are using open source or leaning that way because of the the potential cost savings.
