Understanding the Value of Geographic Information in a Turbulent World

I was invited to give a keynote this morning at the Cambridge Conference: Exchange which is a conference of delegates from National Mapping agencies from developing, transitional and developed world.

My talk was about the two big changes that NMA's were facing:

• The need to deliver better return on investment to their customers
• Switching from being producer centric to customer responsive and understanding that the value of geospatial data was determined by customers and their choices not by how much it cost to produce
  

I thought that it would be more relevant to the people from the developed countries who were facing the problems of funding, business models, relationships with the private sector and wrestling with free data and the pace of innovation in the geoweb.

But as I got to the bit about why I thought NMA's should stick to what they were good at, namely cadastral type data, and not try and compete with the commercial and open data models at street and POI level I realised that there was a possible tip here for the people from the less advanced economies who are struggling to fund their GI capabilities and who had been hoping that the now stressed business models of the larger NMA's would provide a solution. I showed them what was being done by the OpenStreetMap community in Egypt and suggested to them that crowd sourcing might be a model that they could use to supplement their cadastre.

I was surprised at what a good reception the ideas got from both representatives from the third world and some of the Europeans. Don't expect a sudden conversion but perhaps one or two people will at least go back to their offices and have a more serious look at alternatives.

Incidentally on the business model front, the people who worked in cadastre's that charged people in the property transaction chain were experiencing severe downturns in revenue with the currrent state of the property market throughout Europe. Some are having to consider increasing charges by 25% to cover costs. Not sure this is much better than the current model in the UK. Oh and they still don't give their data away to other interested parties for free!

The slides are here. No notes but some pretty images with a few bullet points which may give you an idea of what I was talking about.

Understanding The Value Of Geoographic Information in a Turbullent World

View more presentations from Steven Feldman.

State of the Map slide notes

If you couldn't find the notes that accompanied my slides it is because for some reason Slideshare cut them off. Don't ask...

So I have dropped them here

Becoming a GeoVator

GeoVation is a new innovation network sponsored by Ordnance Survey that will help individuals and startups to turn ideas for using geography into reality.

Come along to one of the GeoVation launch briefings, at each location we will be running a breakfast briefing with coffee and croissants and an early evening briefing with pizza and beer.

The registration pages for the briefings are now open, please select the location and time that you would prefer and register (no charge) using one of these links

http://geovationcoffeemanchester.eventbrite.com

Manchester: 08:00 - 09:30

http://geovationdrinksmanchester.eventbrite.com

Manchester: 18:00 - 20:00

http://geovationcofeelondon.eventbrite.com

London: 08:00 - 09:30

http://geovationdrinkslondon.eventbrite.com

London: 18:00 - 20:00

They will be fun interactive events that will give you a flavour of the program and you will meet some other GeoVators who you might want to team up with. Come along and learn more about the GeoVation program and help us to make someone’s idea come to life with geography

Maps for the blind

OpenStreetMappers are passionate about maps and are coming up with some great ideas for using maps in new ways. During State of the Map we saw several great new ideas including augmented reality from Layar and transport maps from Ito but the one that most impressed me was a tactile map for the blind.

Why didn't someone think of this ages ago? Could it be that open data really does encourage innovation?

State of the Map

I am in Amsterdam for State of the Map, the OpenStreetMap conference. This has been an amazing event, well organised, full of energy and riding the crest of a wave.

No one who attends this event from within the mainstream of the geobusiness could go away thinking that crowdsourcing cannot produce a detailed, accurate and richly attributed and themed map. The OSM community are getting their act together on coverage, quality and tag structures, the resemblance to the processes and standards of major map producers is very evident but is leveraged by the scale that a volunteer community of approaching 130,000 can bring (even if only 10-11% are currently active)

Whilst OSM may have started as a reaction to the licensing of our national mapping agency, I think it is not OS who have the most to fear, after all we will need accurate large scale cadastral data which is not what OSM is focused upon or able to capture and maintain.

What, however will happen to the producers of street level data products with their high costs of collection and maintenance? Willl they be able to differentiate themselves sufficiently?

The solutions space where data traditionally has been 75-90% of the value of a project is going to be turned upside down. It is not just the cost of data licenses that is being stripped from the cost of a project it is also all of the wasted and frustrating effort associated in negotiating use terms and licenses with data vendors who seem to be incapable of making anything simple and I am not just referring to OS because the other data providers and their resellers make life almost as difficult.

OSM already provides a viable street product if your requirements are for a high level of population coverage in the UK rather than geographic completeness. Within 12-18 months it will as good as complete in a number of European countries and the US. Now would be a good time for some of the established players in data production to wake up and smell the coffee.

I presented on the subject "Is Volunteered Geograhic Information sustainable?" I am sure you can guess my conclusion. The presentation is here:

Is Volunteered Gi Sustainable

View more presentations from Steven Feldman.

Redaction, what's it all about?

Redaction is one of those words that I always thought that I "sort of" understood but since it didn't come up in daily conversation that frequently perhaps I didn't.

Now you might have thought it meant the use of a thick black marker pen on MP's expenses or even studies on the economics of national mapping agencies (yes including the land mass of the US) but maybe not.

Wiki says

redaction is a form of editing in which multiple source texts are combined (redacted) and subjected to minor alteration to make them into a single work.

No mention of black pens or scissors there, the wiki goes on to talk about redactional fatigue

Redactional fatigue is an important related concept: when making changes to a large text, a redactor may occasionally overlook a piece of text that conflicts with the redactional goals. The nature of the conflict between the bulk of a redacted text and the contradictory windows can suggest what the goals of the redactor might have been

Got to have some sympathy for those redactors, haven't you?

Of course if you are like me you might prefer this definition of redaction at http://www.redaction.org.uk

Come on you Red Actors!

Free or Privatise Our Data

Michael Cross writes a very sensible piece on the Tories new "free" data plans.

It sounds like a variation of an old Who song "Meet the new government same as the old government" except that one would have to be wary of the Tories penchant to privatise anything that they can.

To judge by Cameron's speech, which makes no mention of the government's single largest data business, the Conservatives share this aversion to reform. The suspicion must be that the Tory solution is to try and sell off the mapping agency lock stock and barrel. Yet locational information is an essential component of nearly every public data set. To commercialise its supply would be to move in the very opposite direction of setting our data free.

Not for the first time I find myself strongly agreeing with Michael Cross. My one question is if the treasury are unable or unwilling to go down the centrally funded route what would you prefer - privatisation or trying to get the best out of the current model. I know which one I would choose.

A poll Michael?