GIS in the Cloud

The GeoWeb has long been emerging; linked geospatial data, web maps, locative media. However, it has been primarily limited to small datasets of geolocated news items, blog posts or photos. What has been occuring within the last year is the move for larger, more capable GIS, geographic information systems, to also be part of the Web. The popularized phrase is “GIS in the Cloud”.

However, it’s worth investigating this term and realizing that it means more than merely hosting a desktop GIS server in an on-demand environment. It means building geospatial sharing and analysis into the fabric, utilizing the interfaces and standards of the Web, such that it integrates fully and seamlessly. It’s also about the exponential growth through fast-provisioning, compartmentalized access, and on-demand scaling that is necessary and effective in deploying applications to the internet.

Considering the definition of GIS reveals that it is quite accessible:

a geographic information system (GIS) is any system that captures, stores, analyzes, manages, and presents data that are linked to location

- source: Wikipeda: GIS

There are many potential examples of online, web-based GIS that have been evolving over the years. What is interesting is to consider how web applications and services are providing traditional GIS capabilites but in a non-traditional way. The effect is a revolution in the way users interact with their data and collaborate, much the same was Wiki’s are not merely web-based documents but living and constantly evolving consolidations of concensus amongst a community around various ideas.

To highlight how the Web is becoming GIS enabled, lets consider the functionality of some of our platforms and how we’ve integrated with the Web.

GeoCommons as a GIS

The original inspiration behind GeoCommons arose from work in preparing for and responding to Hurricane Katrina. The traditional map publication cycles were so slow that responders would only find out about flooding and impact as the water poured over their doorstops.

So the simple concept years ago was to develop a fast map analysis and production cycle so that responders, and anyone, could quickly, easily, and effectively synthesize data and share these insights with others for better decisions and action.

GeoCommons, our community web site where anyone can contribute data, build maps, and download all of the data and maps, allows for just this. Users can go from a spreadsheet on their desktop, to georeferenced map and combined data in less than five minutes – and immediately share these results with anyone in the world. No additional tools, desktop or web, required.

Along this path we’ve enabled tens of thousands of users to contribute over 40,000 public data sets and maps that are answering their own questions and providing insight across the world on issues from the enviroment, to economics, security, and even personal happiness. Users can easily access this data from anywhere in the world via the internet – independent of location, amount of data, or individual need or purpose. Through the internet, and as popularly referred to now as the cloud, they can access their information and analysis and share this with others.

GeoCommons is by definition a GIS – users can contribute, annotate, and share data through the Finder application. They can visualize this data in maps, and analyze through fusing datasets or utilizing the underlying analysis engine to query and filter data. However, we often don’t refer to GeoCommons as a GIS – it’s much more than that and GIS is just one viewpoint on how to consider the platform, application, and community that collaborate through GeoCommons.

GeoIQ Cloud and Enterprise

Working with Enterprises and Government, public portals like GeoCommons are beneficial but insufficient for certain requirements and mandates. Organizations need a way to ensure their data is safe, secure, and available. Underlying the public GeoCommons web site is a powerful platform called GeoIQ. It provides the same functionality in addition to a host of features we’ll be highlighting in the near future that provide for even deeper analysis, collaboration, and protected sharing.

However, with GeoIQ the same principles are maintained. Users can interact with the GeoIQ platform through easy to use web interfaces – quickly adding, georeferencing, and finding data. They can build maps and share these privately within groups or easily publish to the Web through simple group controls.

And the best effect of all is that when users publish their data or results they are doing so in a myriad of open standard and accessible ways without having to conciously realize or enact these mechanisms. Cataloging, findability, downloading, integrating, and updating can all happen through programmatic and discoverable interfaces to common web services as well as industry standard service protocols. The tools provide appropriate interfaces easily and transparently effectively enabling as broad an impact and collaboration as possible.

We are leveraging the cloud by creating private GeoIQ clusters within minutes and dynamically scaling these for users. They are still part of the Web, in private and secured areas, but able to publish out to any other internet accessible service, public web or private intranet. Users can even move off the cloud to more traditional infrastructure appliances, or even fully offline, to mobile laptops or USB sticks for field deployments. These GeoIQ instances all stay a part of the Web, with the ability to syncronize and pull in data from GeoIQ cloud, GeoCommons community, or any web standards application or service. It’s GIS in the Cloud, collaboration in the Enterprise, and an integral part of the Web.

Forthcoming series

This is the first in a series of posts discussing how GIS is moving to be integrated as part of the Web – through open standards, easy to use interfaces, dynamic and interactive content combined with the advanced analysis that geospatial data can leverage.