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Between Two Worlds: GIS and Knowledge
Management
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| March 21 - 25,
2005 By Susan Smith |
| A weekly news
magazine featuring important industry news
profiles, a summary of recently published GIS
product and company news, customer wins, and
coming events. Brought to you by GISCafe.
| |
| Message from the Editor
-
Welcome to GISWeekly! This
month, MetaCarta won a one-year contract with the
Department of Homeland Security's (DHS)
Directorate of Information Analysis and
Infrastructure Protection (IAIP) to provide their
Knowledge Management tool for managing
unstructured text for geographic intelligence.
Founded by a team of researchers from MIT in 1999,
MetaCarta has developed a geoparsing software that
finds documents related to geography and in
essence, combines keyword search with mapbased
search. Read about it in this week's Industry
News.
GISWeekly examines select top
news each week, picks out worthwhile reading from
around the web, and special interest items you
might not find elsewhere. This issue will feature
Industry News, Acquisitions/Alliances/Agreements,
Announcements, Appointments, New Products, Around
the Web and Upcoming Events.
GISWeekly welcomes letters
and feedback from readers, so let us know what you
think. Send your comments to me at Managing Editor
Best
wishes,
Susan Smith, Managing Editor
Industry
News
Between Two Worlds: GIS and
Knowledge Management
By Susan
Smith
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| CLICK TO
ENLARGE
| This month, MetaCarta
won a one-year contract with the Department of
Homeland Security's 9 (DHS) Directorate of
Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection
(IAIP) to provide their Knowledge Management tool
for managing unstructured text for geographic
intelligence.
MetaCarta's tool is valuable
to the DHS because the IAIP “identifies and
assesses current and future threats to the
homeland, maps those threats against the nation's
vulnerabilities, issues timely warnings and takes
preventative and protective action.”
When I
spoke with Randy Ridley, Vice President and
General Manager of the MetaCarta Public Sector
Systems about a month ago, this contract was not
yet a topic for discussion. However, MetaCarta has
already among its customers, the Department of
Defense, National Intelligence Security Framework,
EPA, federal and civilian sectors, plus the energy
and oil and gas markets, agencies and industries
that have a lot of unstructured documents and also
a lot of geography. Founded by a team of
researchers from MIT in 1999, MetaCarta has
developed a geoparsing software that finds
documents related to geography and in essence,
combines keyword search with mapbased
search.
 |
| CLICK TO
ENLARGE
| “We put documents on
maps,” explained Ridley. “Underneath it has to do
with understanding the human language that people
write naturally, i.e., if you write an email,
report, or message, you usually write it in a
language like English and not in lat/long. You
might say I went to Baghdad over the weekend. We
would go to the unstructured text and in a fully
automated fashion, extract all the geographic
names in that document and plot them worldwide
instantly. You take 50 million documents with our
technology and folks in a small village in
Afghanistan can find every document that's ever
been written about that village in any way, shape
or form, or even surrounding countryside or
individual blocks.”
 |
| CLICK TO
ENLARGE
| This information,
although similar to doing a Google search, brings
up all the topics on a certain subject related to
a particular geographic area so that you don't
have to sift through volumes of extraneous
unstructured text. When you go to the MetaCarta website, you can do a live
demo and find your location and what is available
in the area. The product automatically identifies
geographic references, using advanced natural
processing (NLP) from any type of unstructured
content such as email, newswires, reports, web
pages or cables. It assigns a latitude and
longitude to each of these references so that
users can analyze the text using geographic maps,
keywords and time as filters. On a map, the
results of a query are shown with icons
representing the locations found in the natural
language text of the documents and as a text
results list (below the map). Both the icons and
the text summaries are hyperlinked to the
documents they represent.
“Where this
technology has been used extensively is in
intelligence, defense, and law enforcement because
it demonstrates patterns and because the automatic
feature sifts so quickly through this information
using knowledge and the natural language
processing,” Ridley noted. Also, “Everything the
government does is tied to geography. These are
all agencies that are concerned about things
moving on the ground, the enemy or toxic spill,
etc. Our technology has the ability to track and
understand those things whether they are
activities, events, or people. We can analyze
those things instantly and give a picture to our
customers.”
Law
Enforcement
MetaCarta is doing a pilot
project with the state of Arizona on law
enforcement. They have the ability to take all
their case files, focus on those geographic
patterns and decide where to put the police and
answer other questions such as: How are homeland
security issues important at the state level? In
what areas is there a lot of activity? “All this
raw information comes in in basic natural
language, like email,” Ridley explained. “We link
directly into ESRI products, ESRI's ArcGIS
products mainly, so when we get deployed all the
ESRI users in the enterprise can see all these
documents on top of the GIS system.. Our main fit
is to look at unstructured text and bring that in
to focus geographically.”
Geographic Text
Search is a very geospatially oriented activity,
according to Ridley, “we exist between two worlds,
on one side is GIS (MapInfo and ESRI) and on the
other side we have knowledge management: text
search, content management, document management.
We're sort of the glue that holds the two areas
together.”
MetaCarta's product can go
through criminal reports and find out where the
hot spots are, for example, why did we pick up
someone five times in a row in the same block? Why
are 3 different surveillance teams watching the
same building? Users to not have to spend time
putting metadata into documents because it is
automated in the geographic text
search.
“We create metadata -- we don't
require metadata,” confirmed Ridley. “We created
our indexing system, the GeoTagger product that
pushes out XML tags.”
How It
Works
MetaCarta sells an
appliance-based software product that fits in a
rack with server and uses a Web Service to provide
turnkey functionality. It can be up and running
within hours. The customer decides how much
license they want and where they want it deployed,
then MetaCarta comes in and makes it work for
them. The appliance delivers a thin client web
browser GUI. “With this one client we probably
have 15,000 people using the software and they're
using it through our provided browser GUI that
they can access directly deployed across the
enterprise. It's very quick and understood by
everyone since everyone can understand a browser.
It comes with worldwide maps. We can do a lot of
integration with GIS but we have good turnkey
start up capability,” said Ridley.
How does
the text search capability differ from what we're
accustomed to with a regular browser, or rather,
how do you search for text with the
technology?
“We deploy this in government
agency X. bring in the appliance, put it in a
rackmount server rack, then we would tell it where
the documents are in the enterprise. We would then
go through a process called “ingestion”- that
means we create copies of the documents on the
appliance, we don't manage it, we just create
copies for our own purposes, and then we go
through each document at a time. It's very fast,
we can do a million or so a day, depending upon
the size of the documents, then we display those
results to anyone that the system administrator
grants access to by web browser. So they could
type in “restaurant” or “terrorist organization”
as a key phrase and find out what that
organization is doing across that enterprise. They
can search every document and have every document
be an intersection between the geographic area of
interest - for example, “Iraq,” and that word,
“terrorist organization.” We find that subset of
documents that are both in Iraq and talk about
that topic. We can zoom in and down as far as the
customer wants.”
The government has various
fields they are using for experimentation with
different types of corn. With the Geographic Text
Search users can point at the field where research
is taking place and retrieve every experiment that
has taken place there, so researchers can then
begin where the previous study left
off.
Summary
The
basic end user of MetaCarta technology is someone
who may or not be a GIS expert. The product offers
straightforward GIS functionality by bringing the
fusion of knowledge and unstructured documents
with digital mapping into one platform, right on
the
desktop.
Acquisitions/Alliances/Agreements
Intergraph
Mapping and Geospatial Solutions, in
partnership with the Association of Geographic
Information Laboratories for Europe (AGILE),
announced its annual Intergraph research grant
opportunity open to any AGILE member using or
intending to use Intergraph's GeoMedia(R),
IntelliWhere(R) or Z/I Imaging(R) technology. The
Intergraph Research Grant Program will award
$5,000 (U.S.) funding and a $50,000 software
donation in recognition of an outstanding and
innovative applied research proposal submitted by
an AGILE member. This program reaffirms the
organization's continued commitment to progressing
the implementation and advancement of geographic
information science.
Roaming
Messenger(TM), the provider of mobile
messaging technology, has been certified as a FEMA
(Federal Emergency Management Agency) Disaster
Management Information System (DMIS) collaboration
partner.
Sanborn CEO John Copple
announced that the company has combined technical
services with American Forests to jointly market
Urban Ecosystem Analysis (UEA). The partnership
allows Sanborn and American Forests to work
together to provide communities with data and
tools that improve their environmental conditions
while lowering the cost of managing air and water
issues.
gate5, Socket Communications
and Tele Atlas announced a partnership to
provide a complete mobile navigation solution to
US consumers. The partnership is key to gate5's
launch of smart2go(TM) Mobile Navigator, an
affordable, high performance GPS-driven navigation
system for smartphones and PDAs that separates
itself from the competition by providing
functionality inside and outside of the car. The
partnership will also bring useful city content to
help consumers choose where they want to
go.
ESRI announced that Binspy
Systems, a business solutions company focused
on enterprise location-based services, has
licensed ArcWeb Services for the mapping data
and geoservices behind their Fleetspy3 mobile
resource management platform.
Binspy's Fleetspy3 allows businesses
and organizations of all sizes to manage their
mobile workforces and fleets with an easy-to-use
online software
application.
Announcements
Intergraph
Mapping and Geospatial Solutions, in
partnership with the Association of Geographic
Information Laboratories for Europe (AGILE),
announced its annual Intergraph research grant
opportunity open to any AGILE member using or
intending to use Intergraph's GeoMedia(R),
IntelliWhere(R) or Z/I Imaging(R) technology. The
Intergraph Research Grant Program will award
$5,000 (U.S.) funding and a $50,000 software
donation in recognition of an outstanding and
innovative applied research proposal submitted by
an AGILE member. This program reaffirms the
organization's continued commitment to progressing
the implementation and advancement of geographic
information science.
The new ESRI Virtual
Campus live training seminar, Editing in ArcGIS 9: Tips and Tricks,
is designed for experienced ArcGIS software users who want to
better understand ArcMap editing tools as well as
tools available on the Advanced Editing and
Spatial Adjustment toolbars. This seminar will
take place on March 24, 2005, at 9:00 a.m., 11:00
a.m., and 3:00 p.m. Pacific
time.
Navigation solutions will drive
growth for telematics in the premium car segment
and EU safety regulations could open the volume
market for embedded telematics solutions after
2009, according to a new report from Berg
Insight.
The report reviews the status
of the European market for telematics solutions
for the premium car segment. Car navigation and
routing solutions have reached maturity and are
becoming increasingly common in the premium car
segment. Owners of exclusive high-end cars are
more and more frequently installing GPS-aided
security solutions that enable tracking of stolen
vehicles. Safety related services such as
automatic emergency calls have however failed to
attract customers and as a result previous service
offerings from some car manufacturers have either
been reduced or withdrawn. Remote diagnostics and
maintenance services are only being introduced
slowly and have a far way to go before they enable
continuous remote monitoring of
vehicles.
Intergraph Mapping and
Geospatial Solutions announced Serco
Integrated Transport (Stockton-on-Tees, UK), a
world-leading developer of Intelligent Traffic
Management Systems, has selected Intergraph's
transportation solutions to develop a new Web
portal, called Electronic Service Delivery for
Abnormal Loads (ESDAL), for the Highways Agency
(HA) in Great Britain. The ESDAL will be a
one-stop, Web-based portal for assisted route
planning and automated notification of abnormal
load movements.
The URISA
Board of Directors recently approved the slate of
candidates for its Spring election.
The
Dynatel cable/pipe/fault locators 1420,
2250M-iD and 2273M-iD from 3M now are compatible
with select GPS/GIS field mapping instruments for
real-time mapping of underground facilities. This
integrated solution from Dynatel simplifies the
mapping process and allows a generalist field
technician to perform real-time mapping with
submeter accuracy.
Contests
ESRI
announced that it is conducting an ArcWeb Services Challenge. To
participate in this challenge, developers are
asked to create a Web application that uses ArcWeb Services.
To learn
more about the ArcWeb Services Challenge, visit http://www10.giscafe.com/goto.php?http://www.esri.com/software/arcwebservices/aws-challenge.html.
To learn more about ArcWeb Services and try a free
evaluation, visit http://www10.giscafe.com/goto.php?http://www.esri.com/software/arcwebservices/index.html
ESRI
congratulates Bones in Motion for receiving the
grand prize award in the NAVTEQ Global LBS
Challenge. ESRI also congratulates LOC-AID
Technologies LLC for receiving the
Peer-to-Peer/Find Me application category award in
the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge. The LBS Challenge
was a location-based services (LBS) application
development contest held in conjunction with the
CTIA (Cellular Telecommunications and Internet
Association).
Appointments
In a
ceremony held last week during its annual
conference, the ASPRS installed Ms. Karen
Schuckman as its 2005 president. ASPRS is the
mapping and remote sensing industry's largest
association, with membership of over 7,000
professionals from government, academia, and
private sectors.
New
Products
Intergraph Mapping and
Geospatial Solutions announced GeoMedia(R)
Grid 5.2, an advanced, fully integrated grid
analysis toolkit for GeoMedia, is now shipping
worldwide. GeoMedia Grid provides seamless
integration of vector and grid data formats for
viewing and analysis and is ideally suited for
carrying out complex spatial analysis, such as
site location in urban planning, corridor planning
for designing highway improvements and hot spot
detection for environmental management and public
safety.
Microsoft Corp.'s MapPoint
Business Unit released Microsoft® MapPoint® Fleet
Edition 2004, providing new licensing options for
customers who locate, track and manage their
fleets with MapPoint 2004. Customers are only
required to purchase a MapPoint Fleet license for
each desktop and or laptop that is used to
directly locate, evaluate or modify data from
vehicles that are being tracked. Fleet Edition
licensing was created so Microsoft development
partners and customers could cost-effectively
incorporate MapPoint 2004 location acquisition,
visualization and data analysis capabilities into
their fleet solutions and business processes. The
end result is a more effective fleet management
solution that helps companies improve
decision-making, increase efficiency, and reduce
risk and cost.
Avenza Systems Inc.,
producer of MAPublisher cartographic software, is
pleased to announce that the new MAPublisher
online knowledge base is now active on the Avenza
website. The MAPublisher Knowledge Base is an
initiative of Avenza and Dutch reseller, eXQte,
who started the compilation and construction of
the knowledge base in 2003. The goal was to create
a central location where relevant information on
MAPublisher can be gathered and stored in a format
that users can query and search over the Internet.
A knowledge base like this offers numerous
advantages to resellers and users
alike:
Avenza Systems also announced the
release of MAPdata World, a 3 part set of
royalty-free GIS map data covering the world at
1:15 million scale.
Splinex™ Technology
Inc., a provider of visual communication
software and technology, has announced the
immediate availability of nVizx for Mathematica.
The software delivers integrated and affordable
high-end dynamic visualization and simulation
capabilities, to users of Wolfram Research's
pioneering technical computing product
Mathematica. nVizx, which can also be used with
data from spreadsheet products like Microsoft's
Excel®, is available for free trial or purchase
from http://www.splinex.com/.
ESRI
announced that Trimble (NASDAQ:TRMB) has deployed
ESRI ArcWeb Services to supply mapping and
geographic data for its Trimble Outdoors software
applications for PCs and global positioning system
(GPS)-enabled mobile phones. The Trimble Outdoors
service is an innovative trip planning,
photomarking, and location-based blogging
application that serves the outdoor enthusiast
community.
Tele Atlas, a worldwide
leading provider of digital map data and location
content, has established a close co-operation with
the Roskartographia agency, which is supervised by
the Ministry of Transport in Russia. The result is
that Tele Atlas is uniquely able to provide
navigation maps for driving in Russia in a joint
project under the supervision of the Ministry, an
essential factor in map making of Russia. The
first map, to be available in April 2005, is of
the city of Moscow.
ACD Systems
International Inc., makers of Canvas(TM)
technical illustration software and ACDSee(TM)
photo management software announced the immediate
availability of Canvas X. Known as the only
cross-platform, fully integrated graphics
application, Canvas X provides an optimized
workflow for the cost- effective creation,
enhancement, presentation, and distribution of
technical illustrations and graphics across a
broad range of industries.
Around the Web
Google courts open-source developers
by David Becker, March 17, 2005, CNET News.com -
Google has launched a new site intended to serve
as a central resource for developers working on
applications related to the popular search
engine.
Homeland Security Officials Refute RFID
Reports, by Jacqueline Emigh, March 17, 2005 ,
CIO Insight-- U.S. Department of Homeland
Security officials have hotly denied reports by
some other publications that the agency's upcoming
ID cards will use radio-frequency identification.
Instead, the DHS will deploy another type of RF
technology known as "ISO/IEC 14443," which is soon
to be required for all federal employee ID
cards-and which carries a far shorter coverage
range.
GPS Phone to Take the Stage at CTIA
by Carol Ellison, Eweek, March 10, 2005
-Moments after the tsunami struck the shores of
Sri Lanka in December, the Tidal Wave Rescue
Center launched an effort to locate as many
victims as possible through its cell phones. This
was not very successful. At the CTIA show in New
Orleans, Siemens Communications and Wherify
Wireless showed a phone that eases the task-so
much that even home users will be able to track
the whereabouts of the phone by accessing a
protected Web page on the Internet.
The Road Trip Effect 1.2.7 Free
download on USA Today site allows you to
create video travel logs of all the places you
visit and then turn them into movies that other
movie editors will recognize (QuickTime format).
Comes with 16 quality maps from all over the world
that you can use as is, or customize for your
specific needs. You can also use your own maps.
Configure and customize to your heart's content,
as you have full control over: how many stops,
trail color, vehicle icon (choose from our stock
or use a custom icon), trail width, fade length
(or no fade), opacity, and effect duration.
Supports both NTSC and PAL.
Upcoming Events
The 2005 Annual Meeting of the
AAG
Date: April 5 - 9, 2005
Place:
Denver, CO USA
The Annual Meeting of the
Association of American Geographers is a
Professional and Scholarly meeting of over 4000
attendees. Nearly 3000 attendees present their
research in over 700 sessions scheduled throughout
the meeting.
COFES
Date: April 14 - 17,
2005
Place: Scottsdale, AZ USA
COFES is the
engineering software industry's only annual think
tank event which brings executives from design,
engineering, architectural, development and
technology companies together to understand the
role engineering technology will play in the
future survival and success of your business.
FIG Working Week 2005 & 8th Global
Spatial Data Infrastructure
Conference(GSDI-8)
Date: April 16 - 21,
2005
Place: Intercontinental Semiramis Cairo,
Egypt
From Pharaohs to Geoinformatics The
Global Spatial Data Infrastructure supports ready
global access to geographic information. This is
achieved through the coordinated actions of
nations and organizations that promote awareness
and implementation of complimentary policies,
common standards and effective mechanisms for the
development and availability of interoperable
digital geographic data and technologies to
support decision making at all scales for multiple
purposes. These actions encompass the policies,
organizational remits, data, technologies,
standards, delivery mechanisms, and financial and
human resources necessary to ensure that those
working at the global and regional scale are not
impeded in meeting their objectives. Call for
papers - deadline 20 November 2004 http://www.fig.net/cairo/call.htm
8th GSDI Conference
Date:
April 16 - 21, 2005
Place: Cairo,
Egypt
"From Pharoahs to Geoinformatics" --"The
role of spatial data and spatial data
infrastructures in an information society" is a
major theme. The GSDI Association (Global Spatial
Data Infrastructure) will hold this conference in
conjunction with the Federation of International
Surveyors (FIG).
2005 ESRI Business GeoInfo
Summit
Date: April 18 - 19,
2005
Place: Chicago, IL USA
Learn how to
integrate consumer data with GIS to make better
business decisions.
21ST Annual Louisiana Remote Sensing
& GIS Workshop
Date: April 19 - 21,
2005
Place: Lindy C. Boggs Conference Center
University of New Orleans, LA USA
The annual
Louisiana Remote Sensing & GIS Workshop (LA
RSGIS) is the State's premier event for
professionals using geospatial information
technologies, including automated
mapping/facilities management, cartography, land
use and land management, geographic information
systems, remote sensing and photogrammetry, and
other related geospatial technologies.
15th ANNUAL NEVADA STATE GIS
CONFERENCE
Date: April 20 - 22,
2005
Place: John Asuxaga's Nugget Sparks, NV
USA
"GIS Makes Nevada Spatial"
2005 Delaware GIS
Conference
Date: April 21,
2005
Place: The Atlantic Sands Hotel &
Conference Center Rehoboth Beach, DE USA
2005 Symposium and Exhibition on Best
Practices in Mass Appraisal
Date: April
21 - 22, 2005
Place: Bangkok, Thailand
The
symposium is designed to provide a forum for
investors, professionals, academics, and other
professionals who use CAMA and GIS tools in their
real estate appraisal work to come together and
share experiences from around the world. The event
will feature presentations, panel discussions, a
product exhibition, and a study trip. We are
currently accepting papers for the conference (see
website for more details).
The International Lidar Mapping
Forum
Date: April 25 - 26,
2005
Place: Astor Crowne Plaza New Orleans, LA
USA
The International LIDAR Forum (ILMF) is an
industry group whose goal is to advance the
education and knowledge of LIDAR mapping
technology and applications. To further this
objective, the ILMF holds an annual meeting that
brings together LIDAR professionals from around
the world to network and hear about the latest
technologies and issues affecting LIDAR mapping.
GeoSpatial World 2005
Date:
April 26 - 28, 2005
Place: Hilton San Francisco
San Francisco, CA USA
Sponsored by Intergraph
Mapping and Geospatial Solutions and the
Intergraph GeoSpatial Users Community, GeoSpatial
World is the annual international training and
management conference for Intergraph customers and
individuals who are interested in learning more
about managing and applying geospatial technology,
information, and solutions.
-- Susan Smith, Managing Editor.
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