Democratising Spatial Data Access and Understanding for Planning Visualisation with GIality
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| License | CC Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike 3.0 Unported: You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal and non-commercial purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor and the work or content is shared also in adapted form only under the conditions of this | |
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FreewareProduct (business)Digital signalPlanningService (economics)Open sourceLocal ringDigital rights managementOffice suiteSystem programmingInformationPointer (computer programming)Asynchronous Transfer ModeElectronic program guideMappingGeometryScale (map)Axonometric projectionClient (computing)Integrated development environmentWeightJava appletSoftwareBuildingTelecommunicationBitEmailEmulationMereologyMathematical analysisVisual systemMathematicsView (database)TheoryTime zoneDigital photographyDiagramLine (geometry)AudiovisualisierungSheaf (mathematics)Component-based software engineeringDisintegrationAugmented realityOrientation (vector space)Euler anglesMaxima and minimaConvex hullEmpirical distribution functionVector potentialFood energyField (computer science)Probability density functionOpen setFormal languageObservational studyOffice suiteINTEGRALVisualization (computer graphics)Range (statistics)PlanningLocal ringInformationMultiplication signProbability density functionVapor barrierOpen sourceProjective planeAugmented realityShape (magazine)Computer fileServer (computing)Software maintenanceArithmetic meanWindowTelecommunicationSoftwareAuthorizationCartesian coordinate systemLevel (video gaming)MereologyBitStreaming mediaCross-sectional studySoftware developerIntegrated development environmentDot productDesign by contractZoom lensService (economics)BuildingCuboidCycle (graph theory)TwitterExistenceDigitizingEndliche ModelltheorieState observerPersonal area networkOverlay-NetzStatement (computer science)MathematicsFreewareDigital photographyContext awarenessTexture mappingWorkstation <Musikinstrument>Duality (mathematics)Physical systemCircleTopological vector spaceElectronic program guideProduct (business)OntologyModemInsertion lossCASE <Informatik>Mathematical analysisSequelInformation systemsWeightWeb applicationDigital Equipment CorporationData modelScripting languageProcess (computing)Patch (Unix)Data structureHill differential equationFilm editingCapability Maturity ModelComputer animation
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View (database)AudiovisualisierungFlash memoryLaptopVirtual realityInformation securityAudiovisualisierungShared memoryNatural numberIncidence algebraComputer animation
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AudiovisualisierungOpen sourceCartesian coordinate systemEndliche ModelltheorieTablet computerPosition operatorComputer animation
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GoogolAndroid (robot)Formal languageTouch typingGame theorySoftware testingIntegrated development environmentService (economics)MappingVector spaceWebsiteOpen setPoint cloudQuery languageData storage deviceTexture mappingGeometryServer (computing)Web serviceOverlay-NetzOpen sourceElectronic program guideSinguläres IntegralCoordinate systemPhysical systemAsynchronous Transfer ModeProduct (business)Level (video gaming)Vapor barrierImplementationMoment (mathematics)MetreConnectivity (graph theory)Multiplication signCore dumpAugmented realityOpen sourceOpen setFraction (mathematics)TelecommunicationMereologyAudiovisualisierungSoftwareWeb 2.0Continuous integrationComputing platformCartesian coordinate systemInformationMathematicsArchaeological field surveyService (economics)Game theoryScaling (geometry)Product (business)Level of measurementParticle systemDisk read-and-write headEndliche ModelltheorieElectronic program guideComputer hardwareTerm (mathematics)Computer animation
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Product (business)InformationPoint (geometry)Right angleCartesian coordinate systemMultiplication signFitness functionAudiovisualisierungLaptopTablet computerAugmented realityMobile WebComputer animation
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:00
and free as in essential care. And that's what we still have to pay for hosting or servers or support or maintenance. And so when we talk about free, we should not just think of monetary free, not just think of freedom of licenses, but free as in kind of cheap.
00:22
And so digital disruption and part of the whole project lifestyle helps us to understand that. OK, so actual example. What did we do in Scotland? So in about 2006, 2007, the Scottish government decided they needed to kick all the local authorities up
00:42
the butt and create some standardized ways to force them to provide greater levels of access to geospatial information, planning information. And they devised four work streams to enable this. They are called Online Applications and Appeals,
01:01
Online Planning Information, Online Local Development Plans. But essentially, they were central government funded ways to provide greater access to information. Something I worked for at the time when the first contract were then merged with another to win the next two.
01:22
And part of the key strength to us winning was that it was built on free and open source software. OK? This is a kind of a bit of a success story. No one, I don't think anyone in the UK realizes how big this is. We've got this free and open source software in at least,
01:42
I asked the office to account this morning, at least 214 local authorities in England and Wales delivering planning information services every day. OK? That's a, it's about a 50% penetration. They don't use it for anything else, and that's a massive lost opportunity.
02:01
But it's out there, it's being used. Open source is working in government. OK. So the project we used is that one, MapGuide. It's not GIS server, it's not MapServer, it's not Node.js.
02:21
We picked it because of the following reasons. It was mature at the time, and it still is. First of all, it's data agnostic. That means that when we went and talked to 214 planning authorities, they don't care whether they've got shape files or PostGIS or Oracle or SQL Server
02:40
Spatial or GGP. The same solution works for all those partners. OK? Done. Easy. OK. Means we can do coordinate projections for our partner who we're dealing with, it means they've got a really easy deployment. OK? It just works.
03:01
They press next, next, next. Most local authorities, most local government in the UK is still based on a Windows environment. It makes it easy for them. Development languages. Building a business. We can build it on Java, PHP, Word, .NET, even
03:22
JavaScript these days. So that was a quick example of how we can build, or we have built a business on open source software, about how we use MapGuide to lower the cost for entry to increase the range at which we could,
03:44
or the range of partners that we could deliver the same solution to without having to reinvent the wheel every time. It's not. It's the barriers to entry for us learning the software and deploying the software meant
04:00
that it was a preferred solution and it's a success story. Big tick in the box. Well done, OSGO, FOSS, et cetera. So that exists. That's in place. What we're doing now is starting to look at exploiting open data as well as open software to build new business.
04:22
So if we go back to what this digital disruption stuff says and where we look at where the emerging technology cycles are, and we look at all these great ways to drive digital business, we start
04:41
to do this thing called adjacency. It means if you're in one business, look at what's similar to what you're doing and expand into that. It's easier to find ways into other business than it is to invent new problems to solve. Observe technology trends. And our trends in business is this communication in planning.
05:05
So that's changing the way that we communicate data based on the availability of data. We're trying to move away from top down, plan-based, map-based, a bit kind of old school because we're all GIS people and we like maps,
05:21
into different ways of communicating information. And the problem that we're trying to solve now with open data is this problem of visual impact assessment or visual impact analysis, which is part of environment impact assessments. And it basically says, if I stick a great big wind
05:42
turbine or a new building development or a new shed or a house conservatory, whatever, in the landscape, how's that gonna change the visual perception to me? That's our problem statement. What does development do? How does that change my visual assessment?
06:05
Okay, and GIS people have been doing this for ages. We do ZTVs and cross-sectional analysis and photo montages. And then we present it as a PDF or in a room in a village hall that you have to visit
06:22
between two o'clock and half past four on a Sunday afternoon. And all this really great stuff we've done on analyzing and providing information has got lost at the communication level. So we've had to start to look at ways that we can provide better ways of communicating this data.
06:45
Based on this adjacency, based on this technology cycle, we started to develop augmented reality projects that start to provide new ways to communicate data, okay? Augmented reality is taking a,
07:01
I'm sure you all know, taking a live video feed and being able to insert into that information about your context, about your environment. And there are things like navigation systems, tourism applications, marketing, advertising,
07:22
information systems, that, that. What they don't really do is really bring geographic information into their core. And that's what we do. So we invented this stuff. Instead of calling it augmented reality, we call it geality. It's about the integration of geostation data
07:41
into augmented reality to build new applications, to build new ways of interpreting the world. Okay, I'll give you a quick study of this and then talk about the data, how open source data has helped us in this. So a typical way that we represent data in a planning application is PDF with a map, okay?
08:04
It's a bit dull, to be honest. If you're really lucky, you get a PDF with a map with some dots on it, okay? But to the end user, to me living in this rural environment, I'm still not getting information about how this,
08:20
how the data's affecting me, how the new development's affecting me. Is that going to animate? No. But what we can do now, using mobile devices, using open source software, and key,
08:40
nearly all the data you see here is open source data, is to provide new ways of visualizing that within a mobile environment to give you better context. So this is where our office is based in central Scotland. Where is Sterling? Just here. Okay.
09:00
We've got 3D zoom pan navigation tools within this, and we've got open data models, and we've got open data for the terrain model and for the overlays to give us this contextual information.
09:24
That's not gonna play. And that was why I was gonna do it on my laptop. And if we didn't have a shortwave flash player, which is gonna say it's a security risk, I'd be able to show you an actual virtual reality visualization of that.
09:43
And so this is an actual solution. These windmills that you see that we saw earlier, these haven't been built yet. This is our tablet application using augmented reality, integrating open source terrain models, freely downloadable geographic data positions,
10:03
3D models to create these visualizations that we see here. So we have to rely on some hardware, which doesn't really fall into the scope of this conference.
10:22
But then on top of that, we write our own applications. We use things called mono, mono touch, mono game, which have open source components. We use continuous integration. We use hosted services. We use a whole bunch of open source components
10:40
to build the actual application. But essentially the thing that enabled us to build this business was the provision of this Ordnance Survey open data. If it wasn't for the Terrain 50 dataset, which is the Ordnance Survey providing
11:00
a national coverage of a 50 meter terrain model, used to be called Panorama, just been renamed, or sorry, relaunched as a completely new product, not just a rebranding called Terrain 50, we wouldn't have been able to build this new business. We then build a whole bunch of stuff based on this nearly free, this McAvoy definition.
11:24
We still have to use hosted services, but they don't cost us very much. We can then implement open source software. Again, we use MapGuide to do our map delivery because it's what we understand. And this all comes together, take some clever people,
11:42
put them in a room for about 18 months, and they come out with some solutions that really aren't possible due to the barriers of entry of commercial software and commercial data. So to finish, part of our core fraction is really about providing better ways
12:02
to enable that communication platform to go from the web to these devices. It's about mobilizing our access to geographic information. Our citizen consumer isn't a map expert. They're just a guy who wants to see
12:21
what's relevant to them. So it's not always about the map. You can go, you can have a dramatic change in the way people understand information from going from a top-down map visualization to a heads-up augmented reality visualization using exactly the same GI tools
12:41
and techniques we use at the moment. And I think that is me, which is pretty much one time. Thank you very much. I think we've got time for a couple of questions
13:02
if anyone has one. Sorry, I just blasted you with information there. Well, I've got a quick one then. Was there a big take-up and a lot of involvement in the augmented reality acting in the wild?
13:21
Scotland is a lot of people with laptops and things ready to go. So where are we? The product that I showed you the visualization from there launched in July this year. It started to be used on its first commercial applications.
13:41
So there aren't, yes, Scotland isn't full of klansmen with mobile tablets yet. But when I say AR is this, it's a problem waiting for, sorry, it's a technology waiting for a problem to solve. We think visualization and geospatial visualization specifically is one of these problems.
14:01
I think it's a really good fit. And so for us, yeah, the challenge was to use the right tools to solve that problem. Anyone else? Okay, well, thank Kristen again. Thank you all. Thank you.