Mass-Market Geo Drives the Industry

November 25, 2008 By: Sam Bacharach, Carl Reed

The term "mass-market geo" represents the set of Web-based, geospatial-enabled applications that put geospatial technologies in the hands of anyone, anywhere, anytime — as long as they have Internet connectivity. Further, these are applications that can be used by people with no knowledge of GIS, remote sensing, geodata, or metadata. Examples of mass-market geo applications include the various Earth browsers, GeoRSS (http://www.GeoRSS.org), location-enabled mobile applications, and volunteered geographic information (VGI).

Earth Browsers. The "geo-browsers" that have been introduced in the past few years — including Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth, NASA Worldwind, and ESRI ArcGIS Explorer — enable Web users to "fly" virtually over the Earth's surface and zoom down to see more detail, in three dimensions. (MapQuest, Google Maps, Microsoft Live Search Maps, and similar applications show geospatial data in only two dimensions.)

Many of these Earth browsers turn users into publishers, enabling them to easily create "mash-ups" for adding and sharing information via easy-to-use application programming interfaces (APIs). These APIs control the appearance and show the locations of features (such as restaurants or WiFi hotspots), simply by accessing an address field in the publisher-user's database of features. Other mash-up users can view maps and get directions to landmarks or street addresses supplied by the geo-browser service provider, or by any of the many publisher-users.

KML, the API developed for Google Earth and Google Maps, is now an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard. The ability to use KML is supported by a variety of vendor and open-source tools and mapping Web sites.

GeoRSS. GeoRSS provides an information model and describes mechanisms for encoding location into RSS feeds. Currently, there are two GeoRSS encodings: GeoRSS-Simple and GeoRSS-GML. GeoRSS Simple is a lightweight format designed so that developers and users can quickly and easily add location to their existing feeds. GeoRSS GML is a formal GML Application Profile, which supports a greater range of features than GeoRSS-Simple, such as coordinate reference systems other than WGS-84 latitude/longitude. Both formats are designed for use with Atom 1.0, RSS 2.0, and RSS 1.0, although they can be used just as easily in non-RSS XML encodings. Numerous GeoRSS-enabled applications, feeds, aggregators, and readers are now available (http://www.GeoRSS.org/blog)).

Imagine that you have a PDA with an integrated GPS receiver, and that you are on a bicycle trip in New England. A simple piece of software on your PDA could help you create a record of the places you visit. It might accept GPS points and encode them in GeoRSS to provide location tags for features such as a covered bridge or railroad tracks. The GeoRSS feed could then be integrated with a "save and share places" social networking Web site, such as Platial (http://www.platial.com/splash).

VGI. Volunteered geographic information (VGI) is the name given to information reported by individuals that becomes part of geospatial databases, as in Web sites like OpenStreetMap. In one early example, students have been collecting weather information for NASA's GLOBE program (http://www.globe.gov) for years.

The new mass-market geo offerings provide many new opportunities for individuals to create and share geographic information. Users can, for example, rank the quality or fitness-for-purpose of geospatial content, just as books and blog entries are ranked. Indeed, local people often have the best information about local conditions.