Cambridge, MA, August 28, 2006 -- Daratech's research shows that a GIS or Geospatial system relies on several enabling technologies, most importantly database technology, spatial analysis/topological modeling techniques, and graphics display.
Some key technical areas on which think tanks as well as vendors' R&D organizations are focusing include the following:
Internet/Web technologies-The explosion of the World Wide Web and the proliferation of web-technology-based organizational intranets are having a profound impact on GIS/Geospatial technologies and GIS/Geospatial data sets. Far beyond using the Internet as a vehicle for marketing, sales and support activities, solution providers scrambled to Internet-enable their products in order to benefit from this trend. The success of Google Earth, Mapquest, Yahoo maps and other sites is both raising the stakes on what users expect and creating some confusion about data accuracy and consistency.
Distributed technologies-As the size and number of databases in large user organizations grows, tools for distributed database management are becoming increasingly critical to the GIS/Geospatial industry. Standards for ensuring concurrency, security and integrity of data are receiving high priority. Major commercial database vendors are actively working with GIS/Geospatial software developers to improve performance and flexibility in the management and use of distributed spatial data. Digital Rights Management (DRM)-As digital Geospatial data becomes more widely available over the Internet, protection of Intellectual Property rights becomes a major issue to Geospatial data providers as they continue to look for various ways to control access to their data. In order to address this issue, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has formed a working group called the Geo Digital Rights Management (GeoDRM) group. This group aims to develop specifications for Geospatial DRM that can be used to build an infrastructure for purchasing and protecting rights to digital content.
Enterprise GIS/Geospatial system-There is an increasing trend among large organizations (both private and public) to move from a stand-alone GIS or Geospatial system to a more integrated, enterprise-wide Geospatial system where the location information is integrated into enterprise data stored in enterprise-specific systems such as in billing, ERP, CRM, etc. Such an integrated system can potentially provide more efficient usage and sharing of data and resources, and also increase productivity, while simultaneously lowering maintenance and support costs. Leading Geospatial vendors are taking charge in this initiative, and major enterprise platform vendors are offering extensive spatial data handling capabilities in their integration platforms. Raster/vector integration-Initially, this problem was framed as one of raster-to-vector conversion. Remotely-sensed data from satellites and from processed aerial photographs is almost always collected in raster format, while vector format has been the most common way of storing GIS and Geospatial data. Now, coexistence rather than conversion is widely accepted as the optimal route. Topological data is stored more efficiently in vector than in raster formats, making vector data easier to work with in networked systems, and vector-format data is more efficient for map creation. Raster files are larger and therefore more difficult to manage. However, raster technology excels at managing highly variable data, and is effective for analyzing changes over time. As more off-the-shelf satellite data becomes available, the demand for raster handling can only increase. Virtually all full-function providers are moving to integrate raster and vector data. However, work is ongoing to make these processes more transparent.
At the most basic level, questions of user adaptation to GIS/Geospatial technology revolve around individual cognition-how people best understand spatial phenomena, how humans actually perceive and process spatial information, and how this varies among individuals and across cultures. While vendors are now integrating non-geographic documents and images into their GIS/Geospatial display capabilities, and are working on multimedia systems, this is an area likely to keep those think tanks busy for years to come.
Daratech's report, GIS/Geospatial Markets & Opportunities 2006, is available as an annual online subscription for $6997. For more information, visit http://www.daratech.com/research/gis/2006.
About Daratech
Daratech, Inc. is a leading provider of information technology market research and technology assessment, advisory and strategic consulting services, and executive-level conferences for manufacturing, engineering, construction and plant operations. Established in 1979, Daratech specializes in PLM, CAD/CAM, digital product simulation (CAE), PDM/EDM, AECO PLM (architecture, engineering, construction, operations, plant lifecycle management), document/enterprise content management, GIS and related areas.
