Is open geospatial data a myth?
Matt Sheehan
Working at the convergence of Geospatial, AII, spatial computing and blockchain ~ Unlocking geospatial's potential at Versar
Dare I touch upon this subject? It's important. So treading cautiously .. let us proceed.
That term open. I have found it to be well .. a somewhat flexible term. I read about open portals, open source, open this, open that. Some interpret open as free.
Open to me means accessible. Transparent. No lock. No mystery. This is an important definition. Open data means any data within an organization can be used anywhere; to solve any problem. In its native form.
In contrast closed is hidden. Opaque. Locked. That can be severely limiting, often restricting an organization to one set of tools only.
I touched on this a little in a recent article, but let's colour this picture with an example. Imagine your financial dept have their data in Oracle, mapping have geojson files, engineering have spreadsheet based data. You have a question which, to answer, requires each of these data-sets. An open scenario would allow you to bring that data together and approach the problem from the best angle. That flexibility means you can choose the right tool(s) to solve the problem.
In contrast, imagine before you can answer your question, you need to convert all this data to a new format. A closed format. That time consuming process means you have locked your data down, effectively limiting the tools you have available to solve problems.
What an open data system look like ..
Let's walk through an open data example. I'll use one of the tool-sets I know well, Luciad, to help illustrate. Let's imagine a simple smart city problem. To start exploring the solution to a transportation problem, we need a web accessible digital representation of a city. Our steps are as follows:
- We use airborne sensors to capture imagery and LiDAR data.
- We also use terrestrial LiDAR tools for ground-level digital reality capture.
- Once captured, specialist software tools are used to generate point clouds and mesh data. This is exported to LAS (point cloud), and OSGB (mesh) open data formats respectively.
- The data is loaded into Luciad Fusion which generates an open OGC 3D tile service for streaming over the web.
- A 2D/3D web app toolkit like LuciadRIA can then be used to provide a web app which gives access to this open data to visualize and analyse.
The workflow is shown above. How do the end results of this workflow look? Take a look at this incredible video:
To conclude. Open geospatial data system are certainly not a myth. But the term open has been somewhat misused. 'Support for open data' leaves much unsaid. It is certainly true that some of the closed systems available today bring with them benefits, but limit the path to solutions. My sense is we will increasingly look to truly open data to solve business problems using geospatial technology
You can reach me at [email protected]
Geospatial Product Owner
5 年Controversial title with some convenient product placement!! Open is well defined and understood. Cool video though!
Nothing without Space & Time.
6 年Is Copyright a myth? And what about Open Data Warranties? Or Open Geodata & GDPR? Are legal actions and thus judgements a myth in this context? Using Data in Business - no matter if its Open or not - is a question of rights & restrictions. That is not a myth.
Associate Geospatial Consultant at Jacobs
6 年Matt Sheehan so what you are saying (in not so many words) is that data transparency coupled with open formats makes data open? Not always. It's a good start but it also relies on open metadata, open (free cost), open, defined processes and interoperability using both open source AND specialized software. I know it's going to be a long road to be more collaborative in the collection and management of location infornation, but we need to start somewhere, and open data seems like a good place.