Your International Geospatial Briefing for August 14th: World Geospatial Industry Council; CME Group; MapD; smart address plate management systems

World geospatial industry council launches

Geospatial industry leaders from across the world have joined forces to form the World Geospatial Industry Council (WGIC). This historic move will facilitate the exchange of knowledge in the global GIS community, as well as contribute to global economies. The companies who helped to found the council will have an opportunity to improve public perception and awareness of geospatial discoveries.
James Van Rens, who serves as RIEGL representative on the patron board of the WGIC says: “The rising importance of geospatial information in our daily lives has led to the dramatic growth of our industry. It is [our] duty to be a responsible member of the geospatial community and to provide our perspective on important issues facing the world.”

Geospatial enters the world of trade

Geospatial data is becoming more and more important for making informed business decisions. With this fact in mind, CME Group is offering third-party data sets to their customers through CME DataMine, a historic data platform. Investors and traders can use this market data to back-test strategies, track crude oil storage capacity around the world, or monitor corn and soybean growth. Tools like Orbital Insight and TellusLabs will help businesses add value to their trading in the face of geopolitical instability and rising volatility.

Making GIS ‘Cool’

The geospatial industry is facing a shortage of mapping and surveying professionals and still struggles to attract fresh talent. In an effort to provide students with hands-on opportunities to learn about the cool side of geomatics, MapD Extreme Analytics platform is offering real-time analytics so that users can see just how fast and interactive geospatial can be. MapD is designed to attract students, business analysts, and anyone else with analytical minds looking for insights. MapD removes the distinctions that separate business intelligence and GIS data, and is a great tool to demonstrate how many professionals can become geospatial generalists.

Move Over GPS: alternative positioning system based on ID plates for buildings, shops

A new positioning system based on ID plates for buildings, shops and offices, is emerging at the University of Hong Kong. The Global Positioning System has an average error of 10 to 30 meters; to improve accuracy, the team of Professor Anthony Yeh Gar-On have invented a system involving a smart address plate (SAP), a smart address coding system, and smart address plate management system (SAP-MS). The SAP is a bluetooth low-energy proximity-sensing device that stores the unique geo-coded smart address ID of a building. Besides providing more accurate location information to users, the SAP-MS can be linked with a city-wide network to become a single smart city address management system.