Findability and the Geoweb

5 August 2009 Geoff Zeiss

I remember somebody some years ago saying “you are what you can find.”  Text based search engines have made made it possible to find exponentially more information much faster than anyone ever thought possible.

There is an interesting discussion initiated by Mano Marks on the topic of linkability and findability in the context of spatial data.  He starts out by reiterating the incredible statistics on KML that Michael Jones presented in his GeoWeb talk,
  • More than 500,000,000 KML/KMZ documents on the Internet
  • More than 250,000 Internet websites hosting KML/KMZ content
  • 2 billion placemarks accessible on the public Internet  

He then compares linking and findability of spatial data compared to text.  Someone else has said that much of modern computing, and especially the web, is basically fast text processing.  Mano’s point is that linking HTML pages is easy, because it is involves linking words and phrases.  Finding things is the same, you look for words and phrases.  But linking geospatial data, for example, overlapping polygons, points inside a polygon, or lines that intersect a line or polygon and finding information based on these links is more complicated.  Jason Birch points that Geospatial/GIS folks do these kinds of thing routinely, but Mano’s point is that they are seldom done on an internet scale, the scale at which Google operates.

I think the same argument would apply to imagery where links were based on shared patterns.  An internet example would be Photosynth. 

Of all the things that the semantic web could address, imagery (including digital photos, for example, Flickr) and geospatial data should be at the top of the list, not least because of the incredible volume of spatial and image data that is available on the web. And it may be more useful to concentrate on these two areas than try to address the problem of a general semantic web.
Geoff Zeiss

Geoff Zeiss

Geoff Zeiss has more than 20 years experience in the geospatial software industry and 15 years experience developing enterprise geospatial solutions for the utilities, communications, and public works industries. His particular interests include the convergence of BIM, CAD, geospatial, and 3D. In recognition of his efforts to evangelize geospatial in vertical industries such as utilities and construction, Geoff received the Geospatial Ambassador Award at Geospatial World Forum 2014. Currently Geoff is Principal at Between the Poles, a thought leadership consulting firm. From 2001 to 2012 Geoff was Director of Utility Industry Program at Autodesk Inc, where he was responsible for thought leadership for the utility industry program. From 1999 to 2001 he was Director of Enterprise Software Development at Autodesk. He received one of ten annual global technology awards in 2004 from Oracle Corporation for technical innovation and leadership in the use of Oracle. Prior to Autodesk Geoff was Director of Product Development at VISION* Solutions. VISION* Solutions is credited with pioneering relational spatial data management, CAD/GIS integration, and long transactions (data versioning) in the utility, communications, and public works industries. Geoff is a frequent speaker at geospatial and utility events around the world including Geospatial World Forum, Where 2.0, MundoGeo Connect (Brazil), Middle East Spatial Geospatial Forum, India Geospatial Forum, Location Intelligence, Asia Geospatial Forum, and GITA events in US, Japan and Australia. Geoff received Speaker Excellence Awards at GITA 2007-2009.

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