Over the past two months, I have had occasion to consider the legal and policy issues associated with how spatial data is collected, used and/or distributed by a variety of spatial technologies and for a number of different applications. For example, I recently attended the International Commercial Remote Sensing Symposium, the ESRI Federal User's conference, and a discussion of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Homeland Security Infrastructure Protection (HSIP) program. In addition, over that same period I participated in a board meeting of the Open Geospatial Consortium, and a conference call on data sharing for the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). I also counseled clients in a number of commercial transactions and have been preparing a series of talks on legal and policy issues associated with spatial data infrastructures (SDI).

This process has further strengthened my belief that the fundamental legal and policy challenges associated with the collection, use and distribution of spatial data are universal. That is, the GIS coordinator for a small town or city, faces the same issues as the in-house legal counsel at a commercial satellite imaging company or a social networking company and the international climate change expert attempting to access global environmental data. These issues include intellectual property rights, licensing, national security, data quality/liability and privacy. The relative importance of these issues may vary, depending upon what role an organization plays in the process and the type of issue being addressed. However, the core set of issues are the same.

Unfortunately, I do not think that many of those in these positions see themselves as being part of a broader community of spatial law and policy professionals. Instead, they believe they are dealing with a set of issues unique to their business or agency or issue. This view, while understandable, contributes to the lack of a consistent and transparent legal and policy framework for spatial data. In fact, one can argue that such a framework is not possible until the broader community is identified and energized. Which raises the question, is such a community possible, and if so, how can it be developed?

Microsoft Live Labs’ beta Pivot software lets you slice, dice, analyze and examine data, including geographic data, with a unique, animated visual interface. You can’t currently use your own data, but several sample datasets have geographic attributes, including: National Parks World Leaders Endangered Species Sports Figures Kiva Loans Here’s a screenshot of Kiva loans grouped by alphabetical country groups: Clicking on a [...] Related posts:

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Today some 230,000 miles of Street View coverage has gone live in Google Maps, which represents arguably the most detailed map of the UK every produced. I say this because of the amount of information contained in each panoramic photograph is simply massive.

Yes it may not look like a conventional cartographic map, but it is nevertheless rich geospatial information and represents the next evolution of maps.

Street View images contain both quantitative information, parking restrictions from signs, opening times of shops, the type of tree most common is the surburan streets of Manchester and qualitative information, the “sense of place” something  very difficult to represent using traditional cartographic techniques.

Street View imagery in the UK will I hope become a valuable resource to academics researching the state of the nation at the beginning of the 2010’s, a image taken every 10 metres or so for 238,000 miles a distance equivalent to travelling from the earth to the moon, must represent one of the largest archives of photographs ever collected.

It is disappointing that the raw images used to create street view will have to be destroyed at the request of the European Union Data Protection Working Party, leaving only the privacy blurred published versions for future generations to accesses, still that is the balance we need to achieve between providing useful services and protecting privacy.

When I was running around Covent Garden in the early 1990’s creating a “hypermedia” map using a video camera and Apple’s Hypercard, I had a vague idea that such a database of navigable scenes might be extended to other parts of London, but National Coverage… that would have been Science Fiction !

But then again so once was putting a man on the moon !

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It is always a nice opportunity to speak to people who are not GI Industry experts or mapping mavens but who are “normal” people whose lives are however impacted by Geospatial Technology.

On Monday I has the massive pleasure of meeting some of the business owners located on Shambles which was a winner in one of this years Street View Awards.

Shambles is not your usual shopping street, it looks like a set from the latest Harry Potter film and is populated by various specialist shops including Past Images whose owner Ian I got talking to.

Now you too to can explore this special part of York here virtually , but if you get the chance visit York, make sure you visit yourself !

Ian and his fellow shopkeepers are all enthusiastic users of the web, have websites and appreciate how much difference tools like web search and online mapping have made to their business. Rather than driving trade away, the web is making it easier for potential customers to find their businesses.

Finding is the key point here, I think we in the GI industry often forget just how powerful a simple map showing the location of a business really is.  While we talk about the virtues of Foursquare vs Gowalla or debate how to represent disputed boundaries, real people are using the easy access to mapping to improve, in little ways, their lives !

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The transparent com site lets you select a base map layer from Google or Yahoo, and then overlay an OpenStreetMap (OSM) data layer on top with user-definable transparency. Zoom in to your area of interest, pick the base and overlay layers by clicking on the “+” sign in the upper right: And see the base layer [...] Related posts:

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The transparent com site lets you select a base map layer from Google or Yahoo, and then overlay an OpenSourceMap (OSM) data layer on top with user-definable transparency. Zoom in to your area of interest, pick the base and overlay layers by clicking on the “+” sign in the upper right: And see the base layer [...] Related posts:

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A scrollable, zoomable, fully accurate map of New York City designed to look like an 1980s 8-bit videogame background: Built using Open Source Map data. Via CNet. No related posts. No related posts.

Many European governments (and citizens) have expressed concerns about the privacy implications associated with Google's Street View - the street level images taken from cameras mounted on cars. Most recently, the European Union (EU) advised Google that it should warn towns and cities before beginning to collect images from its Street View vehicles. The EU, according to press reports, also suggested that Google should keep original photos online for only six months instead of a year. (Ironically, this could result in Google having to reshoot Europe every six months, which should raise even more privacy concerns.) This request was made even though Google is taking images from public places and already posts the itinerary for its vehicles on-line and blurs faces and license plates and will remove an image upon request.

The EU increasingly appears to be coming down on the side of individual privacy at the expense of Street View technology. As a result, Google may decide it no longer makes sense to offer Street View in Europe. However, one might question if the EU fully appreciates the value of the Street View data or has truly weighed the opportunity cost associated with losing this service in Europe.

Street View is more than a series of random images of a city or town. It is an organized collection of important information about a location at a given point in time at no cost to the government and available to its citizens for free. This information has tremendous potential value for future as well as current use. For example, imagine how valuable Street View would have been after the recent earthquakes in Haiti or Chile. Rescue workers would have been able to identify where to search with much greater precision and the images would have provided valuable information for reconstruction efforts. Unfortunately, European cities are at risk from similar natural disasters. Or imagine what today's historians could do if they had access to similar imagery of ancient Greece.

Protecting individual privacy is difficult, as the concept itself generally has both a legal and a cultural component. It becomes even more of a challenge when new technology is introduced, and often results in a cost/benefit analysis. However, any such analysis must be thorough and well informed. Restricting the use of new technology without such a rigorous analysis may ultimately prove to be short-sighted.

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There has already been a good deal reported about the recent Congressional hearings regarding the privacy implications associated with the collection and use of location data on mobile devices. It should not be any surprise that Congress is taking a look at this issue, given the growing number of devices and associated consumer applications as well as the potential implications associated with this technology. Nor should it be surprising to hear Representative Rick Boucher state that future legislation will likely include provisions addressing this issue, as Congress been down this road before, including proposed legislation from then Senator John Edwards. In fact, it would probably be prudent for all companies in the U.S. that collect or use customer location data to become familiar with the privacy regimes associated with medical records (HIPAA), consumer credit (Fair Credit Reporting Act) and financial information (Graham -Leach- Bliley Act), as Congress and the Federal Trade Commission appear to have a framework they like to use on privacy matters. It is very likely they will try to apply a similar framework for location data.