Comments on: Slipping down the slope

By: Jakob pokes a stick in the bees nest « Steve’s Little world

Jakob pokes a stick in the bees nest « Steve’s Little world — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 05:16:33 +0000

[...] think this discussion follows similar lines as the discussion James and I had the other day. Geocommons will not replace Spatial Analyst in the hands of a person with [...]

By: Dave Smith

Dave Smith — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 19:08:03 +0000

As a rare breed who is both a GIS practitioner with 20+ years experience and a licensed land surveyor, I see the good and bad of both sides.

And, another thing that I know well is that content is king. Garbage content is worthless, as is great content that nobody can figure out what it is when handed off. Enter metadata, survey-grade and the rest…

Ultimately it always comes down to CAD and GIS being mere tools for getting the job done. As such, it can get in the way, but it can also make the job painless. Metadata has historically been so onerous, with certain fields that, when opened (ATTRDOMV and others) that lead on and on into additional things that demand to be populated, even if the items that go into them are meaningless or irrelevant.

Similarly, with regard to locational data quality, the surveyors have been reluctant to jump into the game and instead just sit on the sidelines and gripe about what crap the GIS contains. I have given many a surveyor a backhander over this.

Just can’t win…

But leading into the future, the more that we focus on content, quality and documentation that lets people make informed decisions, and make the tools transparent (and they are already becoming commoditized, SORRY ESRI…), that is where things are headed.

As Gretzky said, skate to where the puck’s going, not to where it is.

By: de is nutz

de is nutz — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 01:50:42 +0000

dwg and dgn? Sorry to say those are CAD based formats. Not origionaly intended to for spatial formats. But hey, the spatial world somehow found a way to utilize the data. Funny how most CAD drawings are not accompanied with process lineage after process lineage, but yet I know how valuable utility infrastruture CAD data is to gov agencies.

I think the added value to our field having this open data structure is that when I get asked about accuracy in data. I can 1) show them our data process and legacy info 2) ask them to gmap their home address 3) ask them which data they feel more confident with.

In the end IMHO i would think the majority of people using services such as geocommons understand the source.

side note – I bet most everyone has a disclaimer in their metadata? Know matter how hard we try, we’ll just never acheive 100% confidence.

By: Cam W.

Cam W. — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 15:35:25 +0000

Metadata need not be complex (it depends on the data of course). Asking for metadata is like asking for a recipe for your favorite dish. While the original recipe may have covered 4 pages in a cookbook and described in excruciating detail (similar to the ISO standard) all your really need (and want) can be scribbled down on a index card.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 14:01:48 +0000

Vector is agree with you…have you ever seen the ISO standard for metadata? Its huge…i sometimes wonder if they people sitting around the table defining the standard have ever gone as far as to implement it. Its quite ridiculous really….i would go as fas as to say the OGC has also run into this problem. Its essentially a bunch of guys who like throwing theory around withour actually implementing the standards themselves. Just my 3 cents…

By: James Fee

James Fee — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:36:58 +0000

How many of us leverage google maps, yahoo maps, virtual earth, map quest, et et et without truly looking for metadata?

Not sure about you, but I’d never use any of those sources for any NEPA documentation.

By: vector

vector — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 13:06:59 +0000

How many of us leverage google maps, yahoo maps, virtual earth, map quest, et et et without truly looking for metadata? Sure, the respective services may source from a second party such as tele atlas or navteq but what do we know about their means of generating data? More often than not the data speaks for itself and metadata is often leveraged to confirm what one already suspects. Metadata certainly has its place but it could be argued that current standards are rather bloated and need to be simplified for both author and consumer and automated as well.

By: Canuck

Canuck — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 23:14:47 +0000

From what I see, making heat maps is pretty simple (I haven’t made one). You aren’t really doing any real statistical interpolation here – you aren’t making a prediction surface of any sort, you are just making some colours with parameters defaulted for you. Kind of like the defaults in SA no? I mean, how many “GIS Professionals” that interpolate stuff in SA really have a clue about what they are doing? I would argue that many do not, and that many could not tell you the difference between a spline, IDW, kriging, etc. Further dumbing down of GIS IMO.

By: Timmy

Timmy — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 22:34:07 +0000

Consider the amount of information that we require to feel comfortable doing something as fundamental as eating foodâ€¦all we need typically fits on the back of a soup can. Perhaps that is how simple metadata needs to become before it is ubiquitous.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 20:38:29 +0000

Jack..are you kidding me…your saying people dont care about metadata? How do you get intelligent information from an feature dataset, or an image or how do you extract information from a data source. How can i extract a 3D point from an image if i dont have metadata? How can tell you what has changed in an area if i dont have metadata? The problem we have is that we have ‘dud’ formats such as shapefiles, covereage’s, dwg, dgn etc etc that know nothing about data. When these formats were put together they obviously did not think too far into the future of mapping. To do proper mapping you need to be able to persist and track metadata from the moment the source content is collected all the way through the life of that data asset. Until someone solves that problem we will continue to struggle with this problem. Just my 2 cents….