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Spatial Information Technology: Past, Present, Future

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Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management (GISTAM 2020)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1411))

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Abstract

I have participated for about 40 years in the most astonishing technical development of Geographic Information Systems and seen the inclusion of spatial information technology in nearly all forms of it: spatial database technology, GPS, the web, mobile smart phones. Ubiquitous computing and connectivity became possible. The article will firstly reviews the history of GIS use and divides the development of the enabling technology for GIS use approximately in decades. The development can be broken in roughly decades characterized by the technology which enabled the then dominant GIS use.

The article will then includes some tentative ideas for developments which could occur in the next decade. I will try to draw some conclusions from the review: why did some technologies become successful in the marketplace and while some other did not? What makes a technology to become a smashing commercial success? Google maps might be the most spectacular, but by far not the only example.

My experience leads me to believe that commercial success is the result of the combination of three conditions:

  • a fundamental human need is at the core - e.g. people need to navigate in the world and must avoid to get lost,

  • a cost-effective technical means to satisfy this need is available - e.g. widely available smartphones, and,

  • a business-opportunity is identified - e.g. selling advertisement.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Gordon Moore, co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductors and Intel, empirically observed that computer performance doubles every 18 months or every 10 years the performance increases by a factor of about 100 (\(2^ {(120/18)} = 101.6\)), or the costs decrease by the same factor. For example, the price of a GPS receiver decreased from $30,000 to $3 between 1990 and 2010. Processors improved by a factor of \(10^{10}\) between 1970 and 2020 as a combination of price reduction from $10 million to $100 (i.e. \(10^4\)), an increase in speed by \(10^5\) and with 10 more processor cores - together roughly \(10^{10}\) .

  2. 2.

    Since the Euro has not been used over the entire period under review, I am giving prices in “units” that correspond approximately to one Euro or one US$.

  3. 3.

    https://cartogis.org/docs/proceedings/archive/auto-carto-1/index.html.

  4. 4.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Laboratory_for_Computer_Graphics_and_Spatial_Analysis.

  5. 5.

    My topic was to study the suitability of database management systems for (multi-purpose) cadaster; the supervisors were R. Conzett (surveying) and C.A. Zehnder (IT) from ETH Zurich [27].

  6. 6.

    Most modern OS derive in some form from MULTICS; most notably Multics is the precursor for Unix, which is the precursor for Linux ... see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics.

  7. 7.

    The ETH “Center for Interactive Computing” (ZIR) had one dynamic vector display, an Evans & Sutherland Picture System 2, which could draw wire frame representations of a very small village; the price tag was above one million dollar.

  8. 8.

    Surveying offices in e.g. the towns of Vienna, Basel, Hamburg, or the Dutch Rijkwaterstaat.

  9. 9.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Geographic_Information_System.

  10. 10.

    Other reviews, slightly english-language centered are by [14, 15]. Notable is an early publication in 1988 with contributions from Dangermond, Coppock, Chrisman, Rhind, Tomlinson and Goodchild.

  11. 11.

    The definition was produced in parallel in German, French and English in a small hotel room in Montreux in a long night discussion; it survived the change in terminology from LIS to GIS.

  12. 12.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergraph.

  13. 13.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esri.

  14. 14.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System.

  15. 15.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Predecessors.

  16. 16.

    http://www.laser-scan.com/demo/laser-scan-history/.

  17. 17.

    The production of software is a large investment to produce initially but to produce more copies is inexpensive; this creates a “natural monopoly”. A company having a product can undercut any competing offer and no other vendor will reasonably attempt to make the large investment when the primary vendor will always be able to reduce his price and make it impossible for him to recoup his investment.

  18. 18.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapQuest.

  19. 19.

    https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektronische_Fahrplanauskunft.

  20. 20.

    https://www.wigeogis.com/en/home.

  21. 21.

    More information about the current state of the open source GIS program is found at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRASS_GIS and https://grass.osgeo.org/. A text book is Neteler and Mitasova [45].

  22. 22.

    http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/histor and https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Geospatial_ Consortium.

  23. 23.

    https://cordis.europa.eu/event/id/11209-gipsie-information-day/de.

  24. 24.

    US Vice President 1993–2001 serving President Bill Clinton.

  25. 25.

    https://lbsconference.org/former-lbs-conferences/.

  26. 26.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QGIS.

  27. 27.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HathiTrust.

  28. 28.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Data_in_the_United_Kingdom.

  29. 29.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap.

  30. 30.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokémon_Go.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geoinformation, Technical University Vienna, Gusshausstrasse 27-29, 1040, Wien, Austria

    Andrew U. Frank

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  1. Andrew U. Frank
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  1. Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal, Setúbal, Portugal

    Cédric Grueau

  2. Knowledge Systems Institute, Skokie, IL, USA

    Robert Laurini

  3. Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece

    Lemonia Ragia

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Frank, A.U. (2021). Spatial Information Technology: Past, Present, Future. In: Grueau, C., Laurini, R., Ragia, L. (eds) Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management. GISTAM 2020. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1411. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76374-9_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76374-9_1

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