I recently had the good fortune to attend a GeoDesign workshop presented by Bill Miller, who is the Director of GeoDesign Services at Esri, and one of the people credited with coining the term. It was a fascinating morning, and it was a reflection of how important this topic is becoming that Alex Miller, president of ESRI Canada (and no relation to Bill), attended. I had been hearing more and more about GeoDesign, but only had a vague notion of what it was, and wondered if it was just the latest buzzword.
Written by Martin Isenburg Wednesday, 19 October 2011 16:45
The LAS format - introduced in 2004 by the ASPRS - has become the de-facto international standard for storing and exchanging point data acquired by airborne LIDAR scanners. It has wide acceptance and can be read and written by almost any LIDAR processing software. There now exist Exabytes of LIDAR that can easily be exchanged via the LAS format thanks to the foresight of the ASPRS in creating this standard. However, these accomplishments will be blemished by a broken LAS 1.4 specification that - if ratified - will crash software and corrupt data.
Read more: The Proposed LAS 1.4 Specification Crashes Software and Corrupts Data
GIS has its roots in what a geographer or cartographer might call “small-scale” information, information primarily related to issues of land management and the environment. In the early days, there were many competing acronyms for what is now known as GIS, such as Land Information Systems (LIS), and Facility Information or Facility Management Systems (FMS). As people began to realize that all of these different concepts were based on a common set of underlying capabilities (e.g. the ability to represent, manage, and visualize 2D geometry), these other terms came to describe various types of GIS applications, a situation which continues today.
The concept of geolocation privacy is now receiving a good deal of attention in the United States. For example, nine bills are being considered on Capitol Hill that would would regulate the collection, use and/or transfer of geolocation information. Many of the bills include geolocation as part of larger privacy bills and treat an individual's geolocation information the same as an individual's social security number or financial records. While protecting geolocation privacy is certainly an important issue, any legislation should take into account some important aspects of geolocation information that makes it different than other types of ‘sensitive information’ that is generally protected for privacy reasons.