There will be few people who would not agree that 2001 has been the most interesting of years for the spatial community. The groundwork for a complete rework of the industry was completed by the Spatial Industry Action Agenda Steering Committee; this, in the long run, may have a profound effect on the industry. But this is by no means the end of the story. There has been a string of mergers and acquisitions that has changed the supply side of the industry and created much bigger companies. This has affected not only software vendors, but also the supply of hardware and services.
What follows is a compendium of some of the more interesting events of 2001. Projecting these trends into 2002, it seems there will be enough work to keep everyone busy.
The market for the supply of high-resolution satellite data looks as if it may be ready to take off at long last. The failure of Orbview-4 notwithstanding, the success of EarthWatch, or DigitalGlobe as it is now known, in lofting Quickbird-2 means there is some real competition, as well as a diversity of choice, for the first time.
Of course, this is a long way from saying there is a viable market. That requires users. It seems that large numbers of people were turned off the market by early hype. Now people are cynical; they will not commit until they can see the data and determine for themselves what it may mean for their business processes. It may take several years to get over this hump.
One of the more interesting issues is what this may mean to aerial surveying, which has been booming over the past few years as aerial surveyors turn themselves into digital data suppliers. While the industry has largely shrugged off Space Imaging, with its Ikonos satellite, on the grounds that its one-metre resolution data is impossibly coarse, it will be more difficult to do the same thing to DigitalGlobe. Quickbird will generate 500 mm pixels. That's still not as good as aerial surveying, but it may be adequate for many purposes. The real question is whether it is so much better that people will be prepared to pay the increased cost.
But even if the answer is not in aerial surveying's favour, there are some new technologies appearing that will make a huge difference to the industry. The use of laser scanning systems in aircraft, which make it possible to create digital terrain models directly from points with 3D co-ordinates is very exciting, and they are now starting to become generally available.
Airborne radar interferometry is waiting in the wings. Although there are only two suppliers around the world, radar has the potential to completely revolutionise the industry. It can work day and night - and independent of the weather. This has extraordinary implications for the utilisation of aircraft. However, the hardware is expensive. Whether it is too expensive remains to be seen.
Without doubt, the biggest disappointment of the year has been in location-based services, where the technology has greatly surpassed the ability of the infrastructure to support it. Neither mobile phone makers nor communications companies have been able to supply broadband services at anything like the rate people want.
Almost inevitably, this process will correct itself as bandwidth becomes available. Third generation phones will arrive from manufacturers; telecommunications companies will install 3G radio networks and connect them with optical fibre.
It will just take a little longer than people hoped. Many of the infrastructure providers have been exhausted by the huge payments they had to make to governments for licences. The communications industry itself is battling with recession, and has no desire to invest in 3G equipment. More importantly, the potential users are distinctly underwhelmed by the whole process. They will not buy 3G equipment unless there is a good reason. In the meantime, companies that want to exploit the opportunity are hurting.
One of the real sleeper issues this year was the creation of AGSO Geoscience out of the old Australian Geological Mapping Organisation and the Australian Survey and Land Information Group. Under the new dispensation, the chief executive of AUSLIG will report to the head of AGSO, who will himself report directly to the minister, rather than the head of a department. Furthermore, the budget for the new organisation will be a line item in the federal budget, rather than part of a departmental dispensation.
The result is that mapping and the creation of spatial data at a federal level is now a concern of Cabinet. Whether or not that is to the advantage of the spatial community depends on the decisions that Cabinet makes, of course, but the potential is there for a much greater profile for the industry in the affairs of the Great and the Good, and therefore more work and more money.
Of course the long-term answer to more work and more money for the industry has to lie in attracting a greater user base. Trends among users are inevitably less easy to discern than those among suppliers. There is some anecdotal evidence of tightening budgets; that people are not updating systems with the frequency they once did. There is no doubt, however, that they are embracing Internet technologies as never before, usually as part of some sort of e-commerce strategy.
The Internet certainly has the potential to expand the user base of the spatial industry, but there are some other technologies that have the ability to change it completely. In that regard, the activities of GPS companies bear some consideration. The big news in GPS this year has been the movement into Machine Guidance.
Machine Guidance, the business of providing the driver of a piece of equipment with instantaneous advice on his position relative to some datum, is taking off in a big way. It will immediately do lovely things to the bottom line of those companies that have been able to deliver reliable product on time and on budget.
The reason is really quite simple: for every surveyor or data-taker out there, there are perhaps 10 or 100 pieces of earthmoving equipment, and all of them are part of the target market.
What's more, for every system installed there needs to be data, and while this may only be drawings completed by a surveyor on site, often enough there will be a whole new market for basic datasets, and for value-adding to those datasets.
Precision Agriculture is a very similar sort of market, and many of the same points apply. Indeed, if anything, agriculture will be an even more lucrative market for value-adding of all sorts. However, Precision Agriculture is further away than Machine Guidance for a number of reasons, not least of which is that the industry has yet to get a really good handle on the value proposition it should put to farmers.
While there have been changes, it is not clear that the industry as a whole is more profitable than it was, or that next year will be better. Most pundits seem to be predicting a US-led recession as the war in Afghanistan hots up. If they are right, we may expect several years in which the economy will be sluggish, even if it does not go backwards.
On the other hand, it may be that the spatial industry will prove to be recession-proof. The client is often the government, and there is lots of pressure on governments to spend in a recession.
Moreover, other typical clients for spatial systems are unlikely to be affected by a depression unless it is very deep. Demand for the services of utilities, for instance, is unlikely to drop much. In fact, to the extent that GIS improves the efficiency of such organisations, it may be that increased pressure on the bottom line will actually help the cause of those who want to spend money on spatial systems.
Beyond that, the spatial industry is securely tied into the parts of the economy that will expand in the coming years, such as e-commerce, e-government and all the other 'e's that depend on the Internet.
There are solid reasons for believing the year ahead will be a good one. Still, there are equally good reasons for caution.
