Computing, GIS and Archaeology in the UK

Happy New Year everyone. I don’t know about you, but I won’t be inviting 2009 back for a repeat visit any time soon!

Whilst I know it was a tough year for everyone, for me the problems were compounded by health issues (of the chronic rather than serious variety). I won’t go into the tedious details, but even non-serious health problems can take over your life, make you really stressed, and generally cause a nuisance.  Thanks to a very understanding husband, and a very supportive employer, I got through it, but it wasn’t easy.

The worst of it is that having come out the other side (well actually I’m waiting for treatment at the moment) I’m not the person I was a year ago. I’ve lost a lot of self-confidence, and I think it will take a while for me to regain my passion and enthusiasm for things geospatial. I’m not saying I’m giving up (I’m still holding out for a ticket to Barcelona this September), but I want to take things slowly for a while. Maybe. Perhaps I’m just waiting for the right “cool-thing” to come along to get me back into the swing of things…

Enough self-indulgence though, I’m not after sympathy, just a bit of catharsis.  Here’s to better times in 2010!

I’ve been looking at a couple of “cool things” recently that don’t seem to have picked up much coverage in the blogosphere, so I’m going to do a series of occasional posts on them.  The first is GvSIG Mobile and the Tellus Project.

GvSIG Mobile is a development from Prodevelop in Spain, to create an optimised version of GvSIG for small-screened mobile devices such as smartphones and netbooks. The Tellus project links GvSIG mobile with an embedded mobile database, and allows you to synchronise with a remote database, eg PostgreSQL either on demand or when you choose (eg when you have a data signal), using OpenMobileIS.

What you get is a GIS package, allowing you to add base mapping either from your local device or via WMS, and the ability to edit a vector layer on top using on-board GIS or by drawing on the screen. You can add attribute data, and store it locally, then synchronise with a remote database, with full conflict resolution. All in open source- just install it on your device of choice!

GvSIG Mobile screenshot

We think this is fantastic. In it’s current very simple form, we can see many uses for this as, say, a simple remote issue-recording device. We’re adapting this for use as a full relational on-site recording tool for archaeologists, but it could easily work for environmental staff or anyone trying to record data outdoors, perhaps in areas where there isn’t always a good 3G signal.

This is an ongoing project, but is fully working, so if you’d like more information, then get in touch!

So 10 days ago now, the UK Government announced that they would be freeing up some Ordnance Survey data as part of a “drive to improve transparency”. You can read reactions to this all over the geospatial blogs (see Mapperz excellent round-up), some ambivalent, others mostly positive.

Me, I’m with the ambivalent crowd. On one level, assuming it’s actually useful datasets made available, and assuming we get to use them how we’d like to (using it in our internal GIS, for example), it will be great, and my colleagues will find their jobs considerably easier. However, like a lot of things the UK Government has done recently, this was handled badly (the lack of Ordnance Survey input into the original announcement,  speaks volumes). If it’s not going to be done willingly, will we see the same quality? The same commitment to survey the rural areas? Presumably, the cost of the remaining datasets will go up to cover the projected loss of revenue (whatever that is), so a lot of small businesses could end up in a worse situation than they are now- with expensive data that they can’t afford, or free data that’s not fit for purpose because it’s not complete or recently updated. Like Peter Batty, I don’t want our data brought in line with that of the US, as it’s currently much better!

I’m glad there has been a change, as I broadly support the Free Our Data campaign, and have done since it started, but I wanted it to be well thought through and planned for, and not a snap decision to try and win some votes. How naive of me…

I’m also concerned, like Peter Batty, about the affect on OpenStreetMap. I’ve been an enthusiastic convert to the benefits of OSM, since hearing of Muki Haklay’s completeness studies, and with seeing some of the beautiful maps and really cool innovations that it has spawned recently. At conferences in the UK this year OSM felt like the juggernaut it was impossible to ignore, and why would you want to?  OSM is now a valuable part of the UK geospatial ecosystem and I would hate to see that change.

I’ve been out at a couple of Association for Geographic Information (AGI) events over the last couple of weeks- organised by their Northern Group. Their main function is to organised events in the North of England (hence the name), but the outgoing chairman Rollo, has been really pushing for events with a national attendance and relevance. I spoke briefly at both events, and my talks can be found on slideshare and on my talks page here.

The first event, a couple of weeks ago now, was Where2Now- a lively scamper through some leading edge ideas, mainly about geographic location for the masses rather than technical GIS per se (yes, I’m trying to avoid using the word NeoGeography, but that’s what I’m talking about). There were speakers from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, OpenStreetMap, Geovation, Ordnance Survey- in fact if you attended the Geoweb stream at the main AGI conference you’ll have a good idea who spoke! I did a short talk on the impact of “open” (access/source/data) as a disruptive technology (as far as I’m concerned this neo/mashup/open era wouldn’t be here without it), and attempted to demo a couple of deeply cool new toys that we’re working with at the moment- mapchat and gvsigmobile, both of which I think have the potential to be incredibly useful and really big. Unfortunately my laptop had stage fright and refused to speak to the monitor, so I couldn’t do a live demo of gvsigmobile as I wanted to.

Perhaps my favourite talk of the day was John McKerrell, talking about mapme.at, with his geo-clock (if you’ve read Harry Potter, remember the Weasley’s clock, with hands for each member of the family pointing to where they are at any given moment). Luckily John hasn’t found a need for a “mortal peril” setting yet! Mapme.at is great- it’s one of those ideas which can only work with the ubiquitous nature of geolocation these days, in phones, and with all the geo-location apis that you can use. Basically it’s a way of mapping where you are, and of plotting your location history, using feeds from twitter, email, google latitude, fire eagle etc.  Someone asked what it could be used for, but I think that’s missing the point somewhat- John has provided the basic idea,  and it’s up to the user to figure out what to do with it!

Again, the #geocom twitter stream going on in the background provided an interesting counter-point to the talks, although it’s increasingly worrying as a speaker not knowing if there’s a discussion about how rubbish you are going on while you’re giving the talk!

The second event I attended last week was a World GIS Day event at the Grammar School in Leeds. This followed on from the incredibly successful closing presentation at the main AGI conference, in which kids from the school, and a couple of their teachers discussed the way in which GIS is used throughout the whole school. The event last week was a chance for professional GIS users to talk a little about the way in which they use GIS, and also to see in more detail how GIS is used in the school. We also attended part of a sixth-form geography lesson, which was really interesting (not the least for the looks of abject trauma on all the attendee’s faces at sitting in a class room again after many years).

With my “open” hat on, I was quite uneasy about the way in which ESRI is synonymous with GIS in that environment, but to be fair it’s because they have worked extremely hard to provide the material for the teachers, which isn’t yet available anywhere else. My other concern was that teaching GIS seemed to be more about teaching which buttons to press to get a particular result, rather than teaching the theory and asking the kids how to figure it out *in that particular software package*. My “open source” side is frustrated that they are producing a generation of kids who will think ESRI is the only GIS to use, and when they are in  a position to influence the use of GIS themselves, within organisations,  or other schools, that’s the route they will choose. However, where in a school curriculum is the chance to give kids a choice, and how can open source provide them with that? Things to think about…