Friday, January 16. 2009

China TransInfo Hopes to Beat NAVTEQ at its own Game

"The successful model of Navteq, the global leader in digital map data provision, can be replicated in China and we hope CTFO will be more successful than Navteq in China."

Troy Mao, CFO China TransInfo Technology Corp. in a recent interview with Interfax. CTFO, as the company is known was in the business of providing GIS to the government, but in the middle of 2007 shifted focus to transportation information.

Natural Resources Defense Council's Picturing Smart Growth

US leadership is thinking about investing in infrastructure. In doing so, says Kaid Benfield
Director, Smart Growth Program, Washington, DC we need to think about in what to invest. As he puts it on the Natural Resources Defense Council Blog: "we can't rebuild America without thinking about how we build our streets, cities and neighborhoods." One answer: smart growth. To explain it and illustrate where it might be done, the NRDC offers a terrific app called Picturing Smart Growth.

It shows x place on a US map that need such treatment allows visitors to explore each - down to what specific changes might be made. Some of these will look familiar to anyone who's thought about planning, urban design and geography, but may really be a "smack on the side of the head" to those who don't think about what "could be."

Frankly, this is a great demonstration of how visualization technology can help us invest intelligently in infrastructure. Do we have such an effective argument for geospatial technology investment for the effort?