JANUARY 2008 VOL 12 ISSUE 1 RNI 68561/18/6/98/ISSN 0971-9377 UP/BR-343/2008 Subscriber’s copy. Not for Sale 40 Status of GIS in Africa 44 Status of GIS in Europe 48 Geospatial Initiatives in Israel 54 Geo-information in the The Global Geospatial Magazine Age of Instant Access 58 Geospatial Technology takes centre stage Looking Forward... About the cover: Page 3 AFRICA I AMERICAS I ASIA I AUSTRALIA I EUROPE www.GISdevelopment.net 10 - 13 FEBRUARY, 2009, HYDERABAD, INDIA G27497_GIS-Dev_Oct07.indd 1 9/28/07 9:31:37 AM In this issue... Advisory Board Dato’ Dr. Abdul Kadir bin Taib Deputy Director General of Survey and COLUMNS 48 Geospatial Initiatives in Mapping, Malaysia Israel Aki A. Yamaura Editorial 05 Sr. Vice President, Asuka DBJ Partners, Japan Objectives of the Survey of Israel's National Amitabha Pande Annual News roundup 06 Geospatial Portal… Secretary, Inter-State Council, Government of India Dr. Haim Srebro Tech Horizon 64 Bhupinder Singh Sr. Vice President, Bentley Systems Inc., USA Events 66 52 Public Private Bob Morris President, Leica Geosystems Geospatial Imaging,USA Partnership in Middle East ARTICLES BVR Mohan Reddy Implementation of PPP model in the Middle Chairman and Managing Director, Infotech Enterprises Ltd., India Usage of OGC Standards East… 30 Fernando Pizzuti David Maguire Director, Products, Solutions and International, in Indonesia, Thailand and ESRI, USA Malaysia 54 Geo-information in the Frank Warmerdam President, OSGeo, USA The current standing of the use of OGC Age of Instant Access Prof. Ian Dowman standards in the development of NSDI and Various application, product inititaives and similar projects… President, ISPRS, UK their regional usage overview… Dr. Markus Lupp Prof. Josef Strobl Dr.-Ing. Phisan Santitamnont Director, Centre for Geoinformatics, University of Salzburg, Austria 36 Geoinformatics in 2008: 58 Geospatial Technology Kamal K Singh Convergence bringing Chairman and CEO, Rolta Group of Companies, India exciting opportunities takes center stage Prof. Karl Harmsen Exciting opportunities in the Geospatial Taking stock of technological developments Director, UNU-INRA Industry as a result of convergence in busi- in 2007… Marc Tremblay ness models, technological innovations, Joseph R. Francica Vice President, Commercial Business Unit, social requirements and more… DigitialGlobe, USA Dr. David Hastings Mark Reichardt ABOUT THE COVER... President and Chief Operating Officer, OGC, USA 40 Status of GIS in Africa The perspective of authors from different regions Prof. Martien Molenaar have been depicted where they see the newer Rector, ITC, The Netherlands The use of GIS by government departments technologies being developed for better growth of Matthew O’Connell the geospatial industry in the times to come. We all in the execution of their functions… look forward to this! CEO, GeoEye, USA Dr. Derek Clarke Prof. Michael Blakemore Emeritus Professor of Geography, GIS Development is intended for those interested and involved in GIS related activities. It is hoped that it will serve to foster a growing net- University of Durham, UK Status of GIS in work by keeping the community up-to-date on many activities in this 44 wide and varied field. Your involvement in providing relevant information Dr. Milan Konecny is essential to the success of this endeavour. Europe: Opportunities President, International Cartographic Association, GIS Development does not necessarily subscribe to the views Czech Republic expressed in the publication. All views expressed in this issue are those and Challenges of the contributors. It is not responsible for any loss to anyone due to the information provided. Er. Mohammed Abdulla Al-Zaffin Overview of Geospatial industry in Europe GIS Development Pvt. Ltd. Printed and Published by Sanjay Kumar. Director, GIS Centre, Dubai Municipality, UAE with respect to GNSS, SDI, etc.,… Press M. P. Printers B-220, Phase-II, Noida, Gautambudh Dr. Prithvish Nag Prof. Dr. Josef Strobl Nagar (UP) INDIA Publication Address P-82, Sector-11, Gautambudh Nagar, Noida, India Editor Ravi Gupta Director, NATMO, India Rajesh C. Mathur President, ESRI India President M P Narayanan Editor in Chief Ravi Gupta Managing Editor Maneesh Prasad Publisher Sanjay Kumar Robert M Samborski Excutive Director, Gita, USA Editorial Team: Honorary Advisor Prof. Arup Dasgupta Sr. Associate Editor (Honorary) Dr. Hrishikesh Samant Associate Editor Dr. Satyaprakash Assistant Editor Saurabh Mishra, Anamika Das Sr. Sub Editor Harsha Vardhan Prof. Stig Enemark Sub Editor Gaurav Sharma President, FIG, Denmark Sales and Marketing: Regional Managers Middle East Swati Grover North America Annu Negi South East Asia Pacific Sunil Ahuja Regional Sales Managers Europe Niraj South Asia Prashant Joshi Dy. Managers Sales Middle East Prof. V. S Ramamurthy Sharmishtha Seth South Asia Anupam Sah, Vivek Rawat South East Asia Pacific Kavitha Seras Marketing Co-ordinator Chairman, IIT, Delhi, India Megha Datta Sales Co-ordinator Uma Shankar Pandey OFFICES Design Team: Sr. Creative Designer Deepak Kumar, Prashant K Sarkar Assistant Graphic Designer Manoj Kumar Singh India Circulation Team: Arpita Majumder, Vijay Kumar Singh GIS Development Pvt. Ltd. A-145, Sector - 63, Noida, INDIA Tel: Fax: Software Development Group: Team Leader Kumar Vikram Team Member Viral Pandey +91-120-4260800 to 808 +91-120-4260823-24 UAE Portal Team: Product Manager Shivani Lal Dy. Manager Anshu Garg Team Member Anjali Srivastava GIS Development Branch Dubai Airport Free Zone Area, P.O. Box No: 54664, Dubai, UAE Tel: +971-4-2045350, 2045351Fax: +971-4-2045352 Malaysia Suite - 22.6, Level - 22, Menara Genesis, 33 Jalan Sultan Ismail, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - 50250 3 Tel: +601-72929756 Fax: +603-21447636 GIS DEVELOPMENT | DECEMBER 2007 Vol. 11 Issue 12 Email: [email protected] From Editor’s Desk The winds of change ohn Naughton a control engineer - cum-journalist in his Keynote Address at UK Marketing Society in Maneesh Prasad J Managing Editor & Chief Operating Officer February, 2006 talked about our transforming world. He started with a Latin phrase - "terra [email protected] firma" or solid earth, which may give an impression to an individual that the ground on which he is standing is quite firm. But a A milestone has been crossed by the geospa- geophysicist knows that the ground on which tial community with the commercial large we are standing is shifting, continously. scale availability of the maps in mobile phones. It is now common to find an 'Off-The- The ability to sense change also depends Shelf' mobile phone with satellite navigation upon where you are with respect to the refer- software. And it is not just N95, iPhone(for not ence plane! having GPS) or Android, making waves today, but we are going to see a deluge of similar The change has always been subtle. products, applications and platforms in days Although on a Year-On-Year basis perhaps the to come. We are also quite sure it is not just change detection would not have been so going to stop with street routing. It is matter explosive as compared to what it appears in a of time before the entire topographical map is decade or two. At no point of time we felt we squeezed into the pocket phone and bundled were undergoing a revolutionary change in with sundry location-based applications. the way we communicate, access information and conduct our business. But we have a mark There is little doubt, that in the 'Mobile shift from early nineties to present day in War' GPS will Rock! And so will the geospatial many of our activities . applications. Looking into what has changed between 1st Although for many regions of the world, Jan 2007 and 31st Dec 2007: we had launch of street and other important land marks data radar imaging satellites and optical remote are not available in ready to use manner, but sensing imageries became better. We had this is not stopping cell phone companies large acquisitions and some big money were from integrating the Google Maps in cell exchanged with merger & acquisitions. The phones to start with. mainstream giants were talking about more and more aerial photographs of cities around Let us cherish this moment in geospatial his- the world. With the giants in the geospatial tory when we are moving into the revolution boxing ring, there would be availability of phase. more and more funds for the research leading to some exciting products in days to come. With best wishes for the New Year 2008 “” GIS DEVELOPMENT | JANUARY 2008 Vol. 12 Issue 1 5 Yearly News 6-19.qxp 1/4/2008 3:52 PM Page 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 News 2007: Annual Roundup The year 2007 was eventful for Geospatial industry. In our annual news roundup for the year 2007, we have important developments mentioned here. We are quite sure some of these developments would have long term implications on Geospatial Industry like polarisation of Geospatial Industry, Technology convergence etc. We do look forward to you views on this annual news roundup and possible indication to any particular development which you feel would have an ampact on our Geospatial Industry in years to come. - GIS Development Team is a distributor and systems integrator outstanding shares of IONIC Software, of products and solutions for cus- a geospatial software company head- tomers in the field of positioning, nav- quartered in Liege, Belgium, as well as igation, alignment, measurements all the shares of the related American Business and surveying using various tech- company IONIC Enterprise. nologies such as optical and GPS LGGI also acquired the technology based equipment, aerial photogram- assets of Acquis, a provider of web- metry, GIS and mapping, construction based data editing software for Oracle Acquisitions and mining machine control, portable Spatial. Leica Geosystems will use this coordinate measuring machines technology to provide enterprise 'ACQUIRE AND EVOLVE' SEEMS TO BE (CMM), laser scanning, and weather functionality on the Oracle Spatial THE MANTRA OF THE 2007 GEOSPA- meteorology.