India needs geospatial revolution

HYDERABAD: "With Hyderabad and Andhra Pradesh having contributed a great deal to IT revolution, we now need to think of a geospatial revolution. Geospatial is a technology that permeates into all fields and helps them to work more profitably," said M Shashidhar Reddy, vice-chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority.

Speaking at the valedictory session of the 'World Geospatial Forum 2011', Shashidhar Reddy said that 58.6 percent landmass of the country is vulnerable to earthquakes while 40 million hectares of land is vulnerable to floods and another 5700 kms of coastline is vulnerable to cyclones. The climate change also adds another dimension to the vulnerability.

"Apart from the natural and man-made disasters, one of the biggest challenges that lies ahead of us is the swelling urban population. This is an area where the use of geospatial technology can be of immense help," Reddy said.  While the Survey of India is planning to have a 1: 10,000 mapping of urban areas in the next ten years to tackle urban flooding, NDMA is striving to map 1: 2,000 and 1: 1,000 in GIS platform in the next five years.

Referring to the announcement by the Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi about the setting up of the country's first Geospatial Technology Park, he assured the stakeholders of the geospatial industry that more such parks will be set up elsewhere in the country.
source :Geospatial world

Ghana produces flood risk maps

Ghana: CARE International has produced flood risk maps for the western region of Ghana that would be useful for the government and other agencies during disaster. In a statement, CARE mentioned that the region was one of the areas affected by the floods with more than 20,000 people feeling the impact.

The maps were produced from data collected by CARE in July and November 2010, National Disaster Management Organisation’s (NADMO) historical flooding data, a digital elevation model, and satellite images showing the extent to which towns are likely to be flooded when water level in rivers rises.

CARE said, “The data collected was fed into a GIS computer programme, which provided accurate calculations and precise mapping of flood prone areas. With the support of a GIS Volunteer from Denmark (Thomas Kristian Andersen), CARE has produced a map which identifies flood prone areas and provides information on towns likely to be affected in the wake of a flood.”

"It is expected that the map would be used by government agencies such as NDMO, district assemblies and other institutions with a stake in disaster management to provide emergency response plans, warning systems and flood protection mechanisms to minimise the high level of damage as a result of flooding in Ghana."

The Senior Programme Co-ordinator for CARE Ghana's Agriculture and Natural Resources Portfolio, Godfrey Mitti, observed that flooding had affected the output of CARE's work in some communities such as Enchi in the Western Region by eroding most of the gains in development people had made.

"The Flood Risk Map will enable us take precaution when implementing a development programme and teach people how to respond during flooding.  The map for Western Region is the first step as part of plans to map out flood prone areas in the entire Ghana."

source:Geospatial world 

Rwanda:Cabinet approves land use master plan

The Cabinet meeting chaired by President Paul Kagame, Wednesday approved the National Land Use and Development Master Plan, which will guide landowners to appropriately use their land.

The master plan displays various features such as ecosystems management, population distribution and development of networks for rural and urban settlements, social services and infrastructure, and protected areas such as wetlands.

The master plan was initiated by the government and SwedeSurvey, a Swedish consultant firm, was hired to carry out the architectural design.
The plan provides planning standards and guidelines that will be used by all the implementing parties and will form the basis for decision making in this regard.

It also reflects a move from old methods of conventional planning that were more product-oriented with limited stakeholder interaction to contemporary planning methods that are continuous and more action oriented, with maximum stakeholder participation.

Speaking to The New Times, the Director General of the National Land Centre, Dr. Emmanuel Nkurunziza said that having the National Land Use and Development Master Plan and the land registration will effectively help in the implementation of the land policy.

“The National Land Use and Development Master Plan will be implemented in three phases, the first one will be merging the district land usage policy together with the District development plan to form an Integrated Development Plan for the district,” said Nkurunziza.

He hastened to add that; “the second phase will be the urban development plan while the third will be the area action plan.”

Meanwhile, the Minister of Land and Environment, Stanislas Kamanzi, said that the land use and development master plan is a national tool that aims at ensuring rational, efficient, equitable and sustainable use of the country’s limited land resource.  

“It is meant to facilitate availing land to various important economic activities that involve inherently competing land uses. It assures guided and clear cut mediation,” he said.

Kamanzi added that: “The general public certainly will benefit from the existence of this planning tool. Rational land use implies optimisation of production and efficiency in all sectors, including agriculture, infrastructure development, rural and urban settlements, and environment management.”

Meanwhile, the cabinet meeting also approved the draft law relating to land usage and development in Rwanda, and the National Meteorology Policy.
The meeting also appointed Nathan Gashayija as the Director of Policy and Programs Coordination in the Ministry of East African Affairs.

Christine Mukakiramba was appointed Director of Cooperatives Supervision the Rwanda Cooperative Agency with Joseph Nzakunda and Beera Rutaremara named directors of Registration and Legal Affairs, and Planning and Capacity Building respectively.

The Minister of Local Government, James Musoni, presented before the cabinet meeting the current situation of thatched houses in the country indicating that, there are 61,134 thatched houses that will be replaced by May 31.
Source:Newtimes

OHB-System Disclaims Wikileaks Report of CEO Comments on Galileo

OHB-System AG, builder of Galileo navigation satellites, has issued a statement from its chairman denying a WikiLeaks report that the German company’s CEO had told U.S. embassy officials that the European GNSS program was a “stupid idea” and “a waste of EU tax payers money.”

The January 14 posting on OHB-System’s website quotes Manfred Fuchs, chairman of the Bremen-headquartered company’s supervisory board: “The OHB Group expressly repudiates all the statements attributed to Mr. [Berry] Smutny in the WikiLeaks documents and affirms its full and complete commitment to ‘Galileo’ as the European Union’s first major space technology infrastructure product. The OHB Group will be devoting its entire resources and all its skills and abilities to ensuring the success of this project.”

On November 28, 2010, Wikileaks began publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables of classified documents from U.S. embassies around the world.

The subject of the OHB statement was an October 22, 2009 diplomatic cable purportedly recounting a meeting on October 2 between Smutny and economic officials at the U.S. embassy in Berlin. On Thursday (January 13, 2011) the Norwegian daily “Aftenposten,” which has gained access to the WikiLeaks documents and is reviewing and posting a selection of them, published the embassy wire on its website. Smutney joined OHB-System on July 1, 2009.

Despite Smutney’s negative assessment of the Galileo program, which he reportedly characterized as being “championed by French interests,” the embassy officials reported that “Smutny said his company would gladly accept contracts to build the satellites,” adding that “Smutny anticipates the EU Commission (EC) will award his company a contract . . . to build a significant portion of the Galileo satellites.”

Indeed, in December 2009, OHB-System won the bid for the full operational capability (FOC) Galileo spacecraft in a reversal of fortunes for EADS Astrium, which had the contract to build the in-orbit validation (IOV) version. On January 26, 2010, Smutny signed the first work order covering the manufacture of 14 satellites, with delivery of the first satellite set for July 2012, followed by two satellites every three months.

According to Fuchs’ statement on the OHB-System website, the Galileo satellite contract “is proceeding according to schedule and will be completed in time and on budget.”

In their October 22 communication, the Berlin embassy officials reportedly wrote that Smutny believed that “the EU has grossly underestimated the complexity of the complete Galileo system, and additional cost overruns and schedule slips are likely. He said industry experts estimate the final Galileo cost to be about 6.5 billion euros (assuming the previously desired 32 satellite constellation), but in his opinion the final cost will balloon to around 10 billion euro.”

The dispatch was identified as coming from “Murphy,” presumably U.S. Ambassador Philip Murphy, who in December was criticized for his alleged comments in WikiLeaks documents by parliamentary representatives of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), the junior party in Germany’s ruling coalition.

The cable was classified as “confidential” by Acting Global Affairs Unit Chief David L. Fisher for reasons 1.4 (b) and 1.4 (d). These, according to the agency’s Foreign Affairs Handbook on State Department terms, concerns “foreign government information” and “foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources,” respectively.

Under the most recent policy statement on classified national security information (Executive Order 13526, issued December 29, 2009), “‘Confidential’ shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security that the original classification authority is able to identify or describe.”

Among State Department officials copied on the Berlin embassy message was David Turner, deputy director of the Office Space and Advanced Technology, who is well-known in the GNSS community.

According to the embassy note, Smutny criticized French interests for aggressively corralling EU support for Galileo, adding, “Smutny said no matter how much the French would like Galileo to be built International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR)-free, this is highly unlikely given that there are not sufficient replacements for some radiation-hardened US ITAR-controlled components that Galileo will need.

“Smutny pointed out that the EU already strayed from the concept of a completely indigenous EU system when they procured the Galileo clock — the heart and soul of the system — from the Swiss. Smutny said he recommended early on that Galileo try an[d] procure a US-origin clock, but this idea was immediately rejected by Galileo decision makers.”

On January 4, Aftenposten published a WikiLeaks document, purportedly a November 20, 2009 report from the embassy in Berlin also citing the October 2, 2009 meeting with Smutny, in which the U.S. economic officers said that the OHB official “spent a great deal of time accusing the French of economic espionage.”

In Fuchs’ statement on the OHB-System website, the company’s chairman said, “I wish to stress that we maintain excellent relations with all French institutions and companies in the French aerospace industry out of conviction. I personally have numerous close friendships with representatives of the French space sector. In addition, I would like to expressly emphasize that the OHB Group and the Fuchs family have always unreservedly been proponents of the “Galileo” project initiated by the EU.

Immediately after the Wikileaks documents were published, I therefore asked Mr. Smutny on the basis of the provisions of his service contract if there was any truth in the statements attributed to him. Mr. Smutny declared in a statutory oath that he did not make the statements attributed to him. I have no knowledge causing me to question this declaration.”

In fact, OHB's success in the GNSS field was undoubtedly aided by the presence of Paris-based Alain Bories, OHB Technology senior vice-president for strategy and business developmen, who joined the company in 2006 from France's Thales Group where he was a vice-president deeply involved with that company's Galileo activities.

Source : insidegnss

2011 'year of rockets' for Europe

Twenty-eleven will be the "year of launchers", says European Space Agency director-general Jean-Jacques Dordain.

Europe expects to have three different rockets operating from its French Guiana spaceport in the coming months.

The workhorse Ariane 5 will be joined by the Russian Soyuz vehicle and a new small launcher called Vega.

At his annual Paris press conference to preview the year ahead, Mr Dordain said this represented a major change in the way Esa conducted its space activities.

And he told the BBC everyone might be surprised at how complex an undertaking this would be.

"For 30 years we have exploited one launcher, the best launcher in the world, Ariane - but it was one launcher," he explained.

"From this year, we will exploit three launchers in parallel - Ariane, Soyuz and Vega. It will introduce some constraints because the traffic will be much heavier from [the spaceport], and I'm not so sure we've yet totally understood the constraints which are linked to the exploitation of three launchers instead of one."

A completely new launch facility has been constructed for Soyuz in French Guiana, allowing the Russian-built vehicle to shift some of its operations to the European spaceport from its traditional home of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The launch complex will have its qualification review in April with the expectation that the first Soyuz lift-off occur sometime between 15 August and 15 September. The rocket will carry into orbit two spacecraft for Europe's Galileo satellite-navigation system.

Vega will use the old Ariane 1, 2 and 3 pad, which has been renovated for the purpose.

Both the pad and the rocket system itself will have to get through a review process before being cleared to launch. Only when that process is complete will a maiden flight date be set, but it should be in the second half of the year.

Because Vega is a brand new design, the payload opportunity has been given to some small, inexpensive scientific spacecraft rather than to high-value institutional or commercial ventures.

With three different rockets in its stable, the South American spaceport is going to be extremely busy. Launches could be occurring at the rate of about one a month in future.

Soyuz has had a near-copy of its Baikonur facility built in the South American jungle

The performance of the company operating these systems is a matter to be addressed by Esa member-states in the coming weeks.

Arianespace, based at Evry near Paris, sells Europe's rocket services. It is currently losing money and is looking for a cash injection from European governments.

Mr Dordain said Esa member-states wanted more information first on the financial status of the company and a clearer understanding of the costs of building the Ariane 5 before committing to an aid package.

"If needed, if needed," the director-general stressed. "The member-states are ready to make the exploitation sustainable, not because this is a commercial market. This is not the objective.

"The objective is to make sure the Ariane 5 is there for their own government needs. That should not be misunderstood. This is not a contribution of the member-states to a commercial business; this is a contribution of the member-states to the guarantee of access to space," he told BBC News.

The matter will come up at the March Council Meeting of Esa. This same meeting will also have to resolve European funding for the International Space Station (ISS).

Although philosophically committed to the extension of ISS operations from 2015 to 2020, Esa member-states have yet to put a financial framework in place to make it happen.

Source:BBC

NASA must study sex in space: Experts

NASA must study the topic of sex in space, experts have suggested. According to them, the US space agency has always been silent on the subject of sex in space -- how would it work? Or can a child be conceived in zero gravity? In a chapter, titled Sex on Mars, published in the Journal 


of Cosmology, Dr Rhawn Joseph from Brain Research Laboratory in California has discussed everything from social conditions which would push astronauts to make love to the possibility of the first child being born on another planet.

"Human beings are sexual. They think about it a lot. So if you're on a trip to Mars, it's going to be dark out, you will be in a long period of isolation, and there's not going to be a lot to do. There's a definite possibility that it could happen," he was quoted by the Fox News as saying.

According to Dr Joseph, during a long space trip, undertaken by NASA, emotional bonds between the astronauts are likely to form -- and it would be unwise not to anticipate them acting on those bonds.

"The Antarctic is comparable to space: It's extremely cold down there and you spend a lot of time indoors. So NASA and lot of organisations think that's a great analog to what it'll be like on Mars.

"And we see that researchers will go down there for extended periods of time in these extremely hostile conditions, and women will get pregnant. It's just part of normal behaviour.

"So if you put an infant on Mars, they would adapt to varying degrees of the new environment. And after several generations, you'd have a new species," he said.

NASA doesn't take a position on sex in space.

According to the "Astronaut Code of Professional Responsibility", astronauts are expected to adhere to "a constant commitment to honourable behaviour", but NASA won’t go much further than that.

Michael Finneran, a spokesman for NASA Langley Research Center, said: "NASA is not currently engaged in any initiatives to colonise Mars, and NASA's not conducting any research on sex or reproduction in space or on Mars, we are unable to provide a comment on the matter."

But Dr Joseph said: "Send husbands and wives into space to have sex and do studies on it. It's got to be done if the long range goal is to go to other planets. Science marches on."
Source:Hindustime

Rwanda:Turning a dangerous lake Kivu into power source

Lake Kivu in East Africa is one of a handful of lakes on Earth with the power to unleash a peculiar and deadly phenomenon. Rwandans are in a race against time to defuse it, and are putting its energy to use.
As the little motor boat slowly chugs out into the sprawling expanse of Lake Kivu, there is no missing the volcanoes rising above the northern shoreline.

Cloud and smoke hang low above their craters, and their slopes are caked in dried lava, betraying a long history of periodic eruption.

Alex Kabuto leans over the side of his boat and points towards what looks like an oil rig floating on the surface of the water. It is actually a pumping station to which the engineer attaches the boat before climbing aboard.

From here, scientists are able to retrieve a small amount of the dissolved methane recently discovered hundreds of meters below the water's surface.

Although the find, which scientists believe is the result of nearby volcanic activity, is hugely valuable in energy terms, it also has the potential to be extremely dangerous.

Scientists refer to what is known as the champagne effect, in which a loss of pressure would trigger a massive eruption from inside the lake, as if it were a bottle of over-shaken bubbly.

"The gasses keep on increasing which means there is the potential that maybe after 100,200 or 500 years, the lake will become saturated and at that time it can be very dangerous," Kabuto said.

"This may become like Nyos in Cameroon and kill a lot of people."

Precautionary tale 

In 1986, a similar phenomenon killed an estimated 1,700 people when gas erupted from Lake Nyos in Cameroon, suffocating almost everyone within 25 kilometers of the lake.

Scientists believe a similar process occurs at Lake Kivu roughly every 1000 years, devastating life in the area. If it were to occur today, some two million people living around the lake could be killed.

In order to prevent this, the Rwandan government is trying to pump the methane out of Lake Kivu, and put it to good use.

A straw-like construction leads from the platform into the depths below. It captures the gas as it fizzes to the surface. It is then pumped through a pipeline to three generators in a warehouse on shore.

At the moment, the facility generates 3.6 megawatts of electricity. But Kabuto says that output could easily be increased.

"The gas in the lake has the potential to produce a total of 700 megawatts of electricity," he said, adding that it is much more than Rwanda needs. "It is our aim to generate enough energy to be able to export electricity."

But that is currently far from reality.

As things stand only ten percent of homes are connected to the grid. About 11 megawatts are generated by hydroelectric power, but most of Rwanda's energy comes from diesel generators.

Energy alternatives 

As Rwanda has to import every drop of diesel it uses, supply is a costly and environmentally unfriendly business. What the country needs is alternatives.

German environmental technician Anthony Simm is involved in one such project.

He climbs one of the highest mountains in the country to check that everything is running smoothly.

The four thousand solar panels are capable of producing 250 kilowatts. It is not much in the grand scheme of Rwandan power needs, but as Simm explains, it is only the beginning.

The solar field was built by the German utility company Stadtwerke Mainz, as the result of a long-standing close partnership with Rwanda.

Simm recalls how the 2004 drought first gave rise to the idea for the project.

"The rivers and the power station dams were all but empty. There was very little energy, and back then there was only one fossil fuel power station," he said

Solar energy seemed like a safe bet, and long-term the Mainz utility company hopes to generate one megawatt through the solar project.

That will require an investment of three million euros ($3.87 million) on top of the one million already spent. Even then, Simm says, it would not turn a profit. Solar power is too expensive for that. But it is likely the most plentiful of all of Africa's resources.
Source:RNA

GeoSpatial Experts launches new GPS camera bundles

GeoSpatial Experts has launched three new GPS camera bundles designed especially for geotagging and mapping digital photographs.

It is now possible to buy the company’s popular GPS-Photo Link 5.0 photo-mapping software with the Sony A55, Ricoh G700SE, and Casio EX-H20G GPS cameras.

Rick Bobbitt, president of GeoSpatial Experts explained: “The introduction of high-quality GPS cameras from some the best known names in digital photography highlights the growing role that photo mapping is playing in mainstream business applications.” 

Each of the GPS cameras mentioned has a variety of features helpful in geotagging and photo-mapping applications. For example, the Sony A55 is one of Sony’s first Single Lens Translucent digital cameras with built-in GPS but it also has full-time DSLR style phase-detection autofocus. In 2007, Ricoh introduced its 500SE model as the first GPS-equipped SLR designed for GIS data collection.

Mr Bobbitt said: “Used with GPS-Photo Link software, these new GPS cameras are so easy to operate that you don’t have to be an expert in mapping or photography to accurately pinpoint your photo locations on a map.”

It was in 2001 that GeoSpatial Experts first developed GPS-Photo Link, and it has now become the industry standard software for digital photo mapping.


Source:Surveyequipment

Assessing the maturity level of geospatial business intelligence

Search giant Google says the advent of Google Maps familiarised people with the concept of data points on a map, and progressively more and more BI customers are expecting fully integrated maps and spatial analytics with their tools of choice. Seeing data in the context of its location often exposes information previously hidden in the raw data.Google has already highlighted that, at the click of a button, the analytics currently being viewed by a user can be interactively viewed on Google Earth. All the information and data relationship layers are dynamically available so that as filters are applied in the BI environment they are automatically applied to the view in Google Earth.Assessing the contribution, Jean-Sebastien Turcotte, executive vice president/CTO, Korem, said that Google has helped in democratising mapping.  BI has traditionally excelled at who, when and what, but not the “where” component. But Geospatial Business Intelligence is more than just points on a map. While Google helps provide some context to point data, there are a lot of other pieces to this puzzle to deliver a strong analytical platform. In most cases, points are not sufficient as is business data. It needs to be augmented with third party data or analysis tools to provide a complete picture,” said Turcotte, who is scheduled to speak at the Enterprise Strategies for Location Intelligence USA 2011 conference to be held in Chicago on March 30th – 31st this year. 

 
Acknowledging the contribution made by Google Maps APIs mash-ups on the web, Luc Vaillancourt, CEO, Spatialytics, said Google Maps API provides effective and affordable mapping context, geocoding and routing capabilities, all the generic and common aspect of what location intelligence needs to provides other information systems.
 
“Pushpins on a map are not that different from dates on a calendar. It is very useful but it does not mean that you then master time, timing, tempo, rhythm, synchronisation, prioritisation and history. It’s the same with data on maps. BI is about analytics; geospatial business intelligence is supposed to provide spatial analytics,” Vaillancourt told TheWhereBusiness correspondent Ritesh Gupta. “It’s in the business logic and its data that the opportunity for innovation and growth lies for the industry players. Location data is flooding from mobility devices and social media but the OLAP nature of BI is about aggregation to allow drill-down navigation and discovery ... points (pushpins) are not appropriate for that and we see more and more options to handle lines and polygons with the Web-giant APIs.”
 
Progress
 
Overall, Turcotte said that while the technologies and data have been available for years, there have been no major developments specifically in the geospatial business intelligence arena. 
 
“What we are seeing, though, is a lot of new companies showing interest in geospatial business intelligence, especially in the form of geospatial dashboards. These tools are deployed through web-based interfaces and made available to a large internal audience,” said Turcotte.
 
“We (now) see more location intelligence in business intelligence,” said Vaillancourt.
 
Vaillancourt added: “What makes Spatialytics unique in the LI space is the depth of our integration, in all the data value-chain of a full BI system. Spatialytics integrates the geographic representation of information (geometry of facts and aggregations) at the core of the OLAP data warehouse and analysis server. Our Open Source Spatial ETL GeoKettle is capable of feeding in the proper way our SOLAP (Spatial OLAP) Server GeoMondrian. End-users can then interact with the multi-dimensional data via dashboards made of charts, graphs and maps making bi-directional MDX queries to GeoMondrian.” 
 
He added: “The same reasons we see geometry in a Spatial RDBMS like Oracle Spatial or PostGIS, apply here with Spatial OLAP. If maintaining one system and data warehouse, using the power of Spatial SQL and benefiting from the intrinsic integration of the geographic dimension with the other dimensions stored as alphanumeric data and its geographic location and representation bring advantages, serious BI project with a good use of geography in the data logic should consider a GeoBI deployment based on a SOLAP infrastructure like the one Spatialytics can provide.”
 
“Spatialytics is aware that putting in place a new system, full GeoBI (Spatial ETL, Spatial OLAP Server with Spatial MDX interaction), is not always possible and that the challenge is also to maximise existing information systems (OLAP or OLTP). In those cases, we still bring GEO to the end-user (Geo-dashboards and reporting)... knowing the customer may eventually consolidate their infrastructure,” Vaillancourt said. 
 
From Turcotte’s company’s perspective, geospatial business intelligence is not considered to be a software implementation project. “We try to provide a good advisory approach to our customers that help them take advantage of their data is a geospatial way. Implementing GBI is and involved process from data integration, to analytical requirements to finally deliver a solution. We tend to promote a strategic consulting phase at the beginning of a project to really help identify the target system in regards to a customer’s current situation.”
 
Requirements 
 
According to Turcotte, most companies want to implement geospatial business intelligence technologies, but don’t really understand the requirements. 
 
He referred to few aspects:
 
Is your data geo-reference (geocoded)? 
What level of accuracy do you need? 
What coverage do you need? 
Is there existing 3rd party data that could complement your data? 
Is the data structured appropriately for use in a GBI solution? 
 
“All of these factors will influence the price and complexity of data integration,” said Turcotte. “The best way to approach these issues is to start early in the GBI implementation process to roll in expert resources that are able to provide insight. Also, there are tools out there that help in cleaning and streamlining data, and the implementation of such tools will help in ensuring accurate analysis throughout the life cycle of the application.”
 
Decision-making
 
For his part, Vaillancourt says geospatial business intelligence is BI with geospatial intelligence. It insists on a dimension of the information that BI should include and handle de facto. It uses the same BI technologies but carries geospatial all the way, from the data integration, through OLAP analysis and data mining exploration, to end-users applications like dashboards and reporting. Beyond location from LI, geospatial business intelligence can play with OLAP, masters thematic mapping and allows spatial analysis, he said. It can generate map-centric or map-enabled BI systems according to the requirements from the vertical industry using it.
 
Commenting on how the industry has fulfilled demand from business users for better decision-making tools with fully integrated location and business intelligence functions, Vaillancourt said: “I think the demand in geospatial business intelligence, as we define it, is yet to come, mainly for complexity and cost reasons. This is why we are taking the dual approach of Open Source, via spatialytics.org, to let hard-core developers/integrators multiply instances and a commercial Open Source one, including support, addressing ease of deployment, improving the out-of-the-box experience and also figuring out a self-service GeoBI SaaS/PaaS offering.”
 
PaaS environment
 
The industry is placed to benefit from enterprise-wide business intelligence and geospatial analytics in a true Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) environment. 
 
Turcotte said that while this idea may be sound in concept, there are barriers imposed by businesses. 
 
“BI or geospatial business intelligence tools are inherently tied to business operations, and the data that is represented in these tools is confidential and in constant flux. A cloud/SaaS approach to these types of project is often not even considered because of security issues raised by the companies. However, this mindset may change in the mid- to long-term future, but short-term I see these types of project being delivered internally,” he said. 
 
He added: “Also, I have yet to see a single implementation that is similar. So it is difficult to build a solution that can serve multiple customers. Maybe in a very specialised industry segments, but not in general. I think part of the reason is that geospatial business intelligence is fairly new and best practices and standards have yet to be adopted.”
 
Vaillancourt acknowledged that PaaS is a decent option to reduce cost, time and complexity associated with a geo-integration, but it depends on the depth of the integration. 

“Google Maps API have proved this but, most of the time, the integration was light (geography and advanced functionalities),” he said. “The more an organisation is involved with its own geography, needs to provide layers of geometry and the associated statistics and ask for advanced thematic mapping and spatial analysis, the less likely it will turn to PaaS, or it will be the last to join. It’s not only a technological challenge, it is a cultural one. The more an activity has in-house expertise and is core or near-core business, the less the company will turn to the Cloud.”

He added: “There will always be a place for an “on-premise” offering, but the “on-demand” one is growing fast and is facilitating the adoption of LI in general and will for geospatial business intelligence.”
 
Future
 
Turcotte sees the geospatial business intelligence arena as a growth sector. 
 
According to him, it will enable the integration of a geospatial mindset in new areas that have been historically less focused on geospatial technologies. 
 
“Of course existing geospatial users will keep requiring more and more advanced capabilities. Also, mobile deployment will be required for a lot of geospatial business intelligence implementations,” concluded Turcotte.
 
Jean-Sebastien Turcotte and Luc Vaillancourt are scheduled to speak at Enterprise Strategies in Location Intelligence USA 2011 to be held in Chicago this year (March 30-31). 
 Source :GISuser

University Of Helsinki To Open A Research Station In Kenya in geospatial field

The Finnish contact network in Kenya covers the private sector and government both at regional and national levels. This is evident also in the programme of the inauguration.

The inauguration of the Taita research station will be held on Wednesday 12 January 2011.

Taita Taveta area is located 150 kilometres inland from the coast and approximately 400 kilometres from Nairobi. For years, geographers from University of Helsinki led by Petri Pellikka, Professor of Geoinformatics, have engaged in multi-and cross-disciplinary research in the area in cooperation with Kenyan and international organisations as well as the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences and  the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry of the University of Helsinki.

Since 2003, his TAITA projects have studied land cover and land use change, fragmentation of indigenous cloud forests, land degradation, land use conflicts and livelihoods of local communities in the Taita Hills and surrounding plains.

The main research data and methods have been remote sensing with airborne and satellite imagery, and the use of geographic information systems for mapping, modelling, analysing the landscape changes. The geospatial data is stored in geographic databases for further use and collaboration.

Taita Taveta area is especially well-suited for the research of feedbacks, links and interaction between land cover changes and regional climate. In the future the research will concentrate more on climate change issues.

Young researchers having done their theses at these projects have acquired posts as experts in different parts of Africa.

Taita Hills are verdant mountains surrounded by an arid savannah located in south-east Kenya. They are known for their many endemic species of flora and fauna and rich, diverse natural life, for example, Taita African violet flower (Saintpaulia teitensis).

The diversity of ecology, land use and human activities in the area is unique. The mountain tops have cloud forests and intensive agricultural activities, while the surrounding savannah is home to sisal plantations, cattle grazing grounds and national parks, where wild animals, starting form elephants, graze.

The station was previously owned by a Norwegian mission organisation, Scripture Mission.

After the inauguration of the Taita research station, the University of Helsinki will sign an agreement of collaboration with the University of Nairobi on Friday 14 January at the Main Campus of the University.

Source:Africasciencesnews