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GIS is for Professionals?
posted by Satri
on Monday August 06, @01:22PM
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from the evolve-or-disapear dept.
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from the evolve-or-disapear dept.
All Points Blog links to an article on the recurring debate this summer about the democratization of GIS and whether GIS professionals will still be as much valuable as they are now. From the article: "With the arrival of online mapping services such as Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth, geographic information systems (GIS) are now at the fingertips of every Tom, Dick and Mary with an Internet connection. This strikes Vint Cerf as good news. The chief Internet evangelist at Google Inc., and one of the founding fathers of the Internet, says he’d like to see a geographic equivalent of Wikipedia — “Geopedia,” he dubs it — where anyone could add to the world’s geographic know-how. Jack Dangerman is skeptical. He’s the president of Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc., a leading GIS software vendor in Redlands, Calif., known as ESRI. He worries that even the best-intentioned amateur could provide inaccurate data that could lead to a disaster. “Who wants to dig a hole and run into a pipe?” Dangerman asks. [...] “Let’s not just democratize GIS data usage; let’s democratize data creation,” he says. Ron Lake, CEO of GIS software vendor Galdos Systems Inc. in Vancouver, says there is a place for “crowd-sourcing data,” and GIS professionals need to be willing to work with it. However, he adds, “there is such a thing as expert interpretation of information.”" See also related stories.
Related Stories
Will GIS Ever be Integrated into IT?
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GeoReport offers interesting statistics about GIS integration with IT. From the short report: "More than 41 percent say there's not enough management support for integration; nearly 20 percent say there are too few geospatial professionals who understand database technology; 17 percent believe that too few database administrators understand GIS; and only 2 percent say that database technology is too expensive."
Industry: Lack of Geospatial Professionals Everywhere
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All Points Blog has a short entry on the global lack of geospatial professionals. From the blog: "An entire session at the Map World Forum was dedicated to "Capacity Building" a nice euphemism for an educational infrastructure that will support the training and development of geospatial professionals. [...] Molenaar has come up with a rather complicated equation that says we must offer 1000 geospatial course each year and we must educate some 6000 professionals per year to serve the world's requirement for geospatial needs."
Industry: Certified GIS Professionals Making More Money? 6 comments
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All Points Blog links to an article about certified GIS professionals making more money than the not certified ones. From the article: " "I get calls from big organizations pursuing big GIS contracts," Colby said. "But when they get it, they'll need somebody to fill these tasks."
Because of a shortage of GIS-trained workers, companies often turn to their computer programmers, draftsmen or other technicians and have them learn GIS, she said.
"People with GIS certification average about $12,000 more in annual salary than non-GIS-trained people doing the same type of work," Colby said." See also previous related stories.
Slashgeo: New Poll on Who Gets the Geospatial Work Done at Your Office
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The previous poll asked our users if they would contribute to Slashgeo probably gave unreliable results. Out of 46 people, 17% said they're all in, which makes sense because the poll followed the call for collaborators, 17% said they'll submit stories from time to time, 17% said they'll contribute through comments, 32% may eventually contribute while 14% just don't have the time or the will. The new poll asks you about who is doing geospatial work at your office. This poll is directly related to this story about certified geoprofessionals and the problem of low availability of geospatial professionals.
Calendar: GeoWeb 2007 Wrap-Up
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Held in Vancouver, Canada on July 23-27 2007, here's the stories collected discussing the GeoWeb 2007 conference. Let's start with the official press release highlighting the successes of the conference. Then there's Peter Batty who provides his detailed report on the GeoWeb 2007 conference. All Points Blog links to a interview with Ron Lake, an organizer of the event. And previously discussed, there's the article on the value of GIS professionals in the context of geospatial democratization. Finally, Ogle Earth links to
the collection of the presentations videos, encouraging readers to see Google's Vint Cerf's talk. From Peter's entry: "In his introductory comments, Ron Lake said that in past years the focus of the conference had primarily been on what the web could bring to "geo", but that now we were also seeing increasing discussion on what "geo" can bring to the web - I thought that this was a good and succinct observation."
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The intersection
(Score:4, Insightful)( http://spatialguru.com/ )
It is clear that the democratisation of data is new, exciting and liberating for many reasons - particularly the empowering of the general public. It's part of the bigger revolution where data are being cooperatively captured and enhanced - and this well beyond just spatial attributes (though I believe maps are the most exciting media, graphically-speaking, next to photo/video and music).
On the other hand we have highly technical data collection that is well beyond the interest of anyone but a paid employee tracking a corporate asset. The price-point for consumers tracking what could be called proprietary data is not always reasonable for the amount of value that can be extracted. It becomes easy to see how democratisation of key corporate data maybe not only be unfeasible, but likely uninteresting enough for many to care to capture it.
Beyond the data collection/sharing question, there is always the "analysis" component that comes up in the "GIS future" debate. Individuals are now free to make their own maps, there are few technical hurdles. There are even datasets available to help many get started. It's only the start of what can be gained from spatial data analysis (as GIS advocates have argued for years). I believe the tools are changing, making it ever more possible for individuals and society to come to their own analytical conclusions, but the learning curve is still high in many regards.
Sure, you can now find Starbucks within 1km of your hotel, but can you predict the migration of an industrial chemical hazard into the environment? Or delineate the extent of the watershed you depend on for your survival? Not impossible, but the skills required to understand these data alone puts it beyond the reach of consumer-style tools, needless to say that it takes more than a cursory knowledge to work with such models. So who does it? The GIS analysts at Environment Canada, who then serve up the results via WMS. Or the research institutes conservation biologists (trained in GIS), etc. etc.
I fully expect grassroot movements to help tackle some of these kinds of analysis, by building "democratic" tools that help their communities of interest (WPS is helping make this a reality). But to say GIS is somehow being superceded by consumer web apps is like saying Remote Sensing analysis is dead because satellite images are available online. There is still a lot of playing field between the goals.
Tyler
More on GIS professionalism and Google
(Score:2)( http://alexandreleroux.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 17, @04:07PM )