I've been moderating sessions today at the Location Intelligence Conference. I'm very pleased all my speakers have stayed within their time; it makes my life so much easier. It also means we have time for a good number of questions. The session on Embedded Geospatial Capabilities in Enterprise Computing and BI Solutions included presentations on how the FCC implemented its enterprise solution, how the Dept of Defenses is working with open source geospatial in the imagery arena, a new international geocoding offering and well, one speaker who simply wrapped up what the others said. When we got to the Q & A part of the session I could not imagine where things might go... but go they did!
We talked about the challeges of geocoding in Turkey - which renamed all of its streets and hence has two different geocoding data sets.
We talked about the challenges of geocoding in Russia - where municipalities and regions use different coordinate systems.
We talked about if its possible to provide a confidence level for geocoding in different parts of the world.
We talked about what happens when open source software gives you the "wrong" answer.
We talked about if you should start with open source or non-open source software if you expect to have a hybrid solution in the end.
We talked about the open source sofware in the iPhone (look it up if you don't know)
Two things stood out for me when the questions started popping:
Several were from our student volunteers (go students!!!)
Presenters who focused on other topics in their presentations, took up and addressed questions outside their realms and added greatly to the conversation.
Sometimes the presentations do not forshadow the fun and excitement to be had in the interactive part of the session.
by Adena Schutzberg on 05/22 at 10:42 AM |
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Michael Byrne, Geographic Information Officer (GIO) of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), started with this idea: The FCC doesn’t make paper maps. Why not? Because people want interactive maps. Which led to the title of his talk: "I believe in URLs."
Byrne and his team have two key tasks:
make sure the policy team has data it can visualize for decision making
make those data transparent to public
The substance of his presentation was a list of 10 memes that enable his vision of data sharing/geo implementation at the Commission:
one click to data - three clicks for Mike Byrne, but one on a dedicated URL for the requesting official
if you don’t own URL, you don’t own squat - the URL must mean something, humanly readable, humanly editable to say a different state
know the resource you have - you can publish all the data and folks will use it
unintended consequences are good - data used in weird ways is good
think about geography first - spatial not special, it’s just column in database (much applause)
domain is the worldwide web - no platform needed, just use the standards of the Web
enterprise is any device - low barrier to publish, low barrier to consume
know your [Web page] real estate - numbers can be more important that a giant map on a Web page
publish multiple instances of the data - the marginal cost of offering WMS, downloadable shapefiles and a Mapbox tile set is negligible
the issues is the issue - it’s not about geography, but geography is part of the issue
Josh Berkus, CEO, PostgreSQL Experts Inc. gave the second plenary of the day. It focused on the practical and technical issues related to the “firehose” of data. That firehose is defined by a high volume of data from automated devices and the need for its continuous processing and aggregation to be useful.
In short, developers and implementation professional need to solve four problems to build valuable apps for the firehose:
volume - that grows over time, it must be managed now and for the future
flow is 24/7 - must continue operating, outages must be short (ETL does not work) and the data coming in can’t be out of order
database size
components fail - and yet the data must still come in and processing must pick up where it left off
GOP Rep. Alan Nunnelee (Miss.) urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to not block wireless startup LightSquared's planned 4G network in a filing with the agency [in a Feb 28 letter to the FCC].
In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) International Bureau, the American Soybean Association (ASA) and other organizations representing farmers and agribusinesses in all 50 states declared that “high-precision GPS technology is vitally important to American agriculture, and would be gravely harmed by LightSquared’s plans.”
- Delta Farm Press (The folks at the Save Our GPS Coalition distributed the ASA press release.)
LightSquared hired Ted Olsen, Bush's lawyer in Bush v. Gore, for its legal counsel going forward.
The FCC has released data for "potentially eligible areas for the Mobility Fund Phase I of the Connect America Fund" in three ways for better use: shapefiles, WMS and MapBox tiles. It's pretty impressive how fast MapBox tiles have become a valuable, de joure standard for data.
LightSquared requested and recieved an extension for comments on the matter. The Coalition to Save our GPS was of course against a long extesion, but it was ok with a short one. This one is "in between."
The comment period was extended from March 1 until March 16; additional reply comments may be filed by March 30.
The FCC released its final decision stating LightSquared's current foray into 4G should be shelved as there is no way to mitigate interference with GPS. The FCC basically rescinded its conditional approval of LightSquared's plan. The FCC relied on the NTIA's conclusions, sent to the FCC in a letter Tueday afternoon. The FCC ruled late Tuesday.
The next step per the FCC is for it to propose barring near-term deployment of the LightSquared system. The FCC is expected issue a request for public comment on the proposed action on Wednesday.
LightSquared continues to argue the testing was flawed and released a press release stating it intention to work out a solution. The Coalitiion to Save Our GPS stated its support for the NTIA's evaluation in a press release.
