GIS: 21st Century Innovation?

The Boston Globe highlights the city of Revere’s GIS and how it enabled a “quick fix” of a water main. Revere is among the less wealthy communities in the Boston area and it now has an internal Web-based GIS from Camp, Dresser & McKee, most likely built on ESRI technology, though the article does not say. What struck me about the article was the intro:

A recent water main break in the Beachmont area was fixed in record time thanks to the combination of 20th-century metal detector technology and $480,000 worth of 21st-century Geographic Information System mapping innovation.

Was the GIS part really 21st century? My sense is that all of the GIS aspects of what went on were 20th century, though the I’m guessing wireless access and perhaps some of the communications tools may have been 21st century:

In a matter of minutes, Public Works employees were able to log on to the GIS system online, retrieve a digital map outlining the city’s 128 miles of water pipes, isolate the break and the valve, use a metal detector to pinpoint the location, and finally dig the spot to fix the problem, said Revere Finance Director George M. Anzuoni.

deCarta - Sitting Nicely with New Venture Funding

I spoke briefly with Kim Fennell, CEO and Marc Prioleau, VP Marketing of deCarta about their market growth during the devCON ‘08 event. They feel good that they took the $20 Million is new venture funding as the venture community may be looking a bit more closely at business plans that project revenues too far into the future given today’s economic climate. The market for map servers is certainly shifting as Prioleau sees less of an emphasis in supporting web apps than other opportunities in the mobile space. He notes that Apple’s App Store now counts 300 applications that are "location-enabled."

Marine Navigation…in the iPhone

Yes, one of the many applications being developed for the iPhone is marine navigation. I spoke to a good friend and colleague, Dana Fenner, ex-of Tele Atlas, now with Navionics that provides vector maps and charts that allow you to plot a course using their marine data. That in itself may not sound terribly exciting because Garmin is a huge competitor in this market. Garmin collects their own data. But Navionices is looking to incorporate real-time tide and depth charts. That is something that would be a distinct differentiator and as we’ve said for a long time, real-time data will become more ubiquitous in many applications.