It is sometimes suggested that spatial data is just another form of data that can now be maintained in a data base and that in reality there is nothing “special about spatial”. Nothing could be further from the truth. For example spatial data is not the same as integer, alphanumeric or symbolic data for a number of reasons. These are: spatial data is scale dependent: do I query for 37.3N 45.2W..or? spatial queries are endemically computationally expensive…

Till almost early seventies, Survey of India was synonymous with the surveying profession in India. That situation does not exist any more. The reason is not far to find out… Many new organizations, have carved out their own niche in the domain of the surveying and mapping. These new entities have been generally propelled either by the new technology eg satellite imagery or due to unmet demand of a particular type of information – example, Forest Survey of India…

Contrary to the gloomy economic picture painted by the financial pundits at the end of 2008, the reactions to the global economic slowdown are mixed in the survey equipment industry in India. The growth in the survey industry has been fuelled by the spate of infrastructure projects in the country and may well ride out the economic slowdown wave without feeling the pinch much feel the players in the industry…

Over the last few years we have seen significant, global, often disruptive, change in the technological and social environment within which National Mapping Organisations (NMOs) operate. These changes will continue to have profound effects on both: the way geographic information (GI) is captured, managed, traded and used; and the role and function of national mapping agencies…

In this article students from around the globe were canvassed on their views on their studies in geomatics and GNSS. Interesting commentaries and views were received from twelve students. There were a number of common threads that run through their views and these include the major challenges of costs of equipment and software, distinctions between geomatic education, training and research, beyond space, time…

I am not sure if new technologies like Google Earth are disruptive. People have often spoken about Google and Micorsoft being disruptive. It may be true in certain context.If you see the natural evolution the geospatial industry in last twenty years, I think that both have put many elements in a place in a form that has a widespread appeal. I think it has increased people’s awareness in geospatial information, certainly in the mass market. Actually, five or ten years before there was not much demand but with the involvement of big companies, much bigger footprints are now available. It surely has increased awareness.

AT the turn of the millennium there was a mood of optimism and then it all changed. The dot-com bubble burst, 9/11 occurred and climate change became an “uncomfortable truth”. In other words the spirit of the age, or Zeitgeist, changed and new challenges now face societies, industries and individual people.

Professor Laboratory of Communication Engineering, Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, Tokyo, Japan QZSS is a Japanese Satellite System to augment the performance of GPS positioning. It was expected to provide the services of positioning, communication, and broadcasting…

In India, the “extra” digits in telephone numbers have been added a number of times e.g., the digits for Delhi have changed from 5 to 8 in the past five decades. However, with the addition of extra digit of “2” (or “3” or “5”) in the phone numbers of the cities around the countries in December 2002, the total number has reached to “10”, i.e., “2, 3, or 4” digits of city codes plus “8, 7, or 6” digits of phone numbers. In one colony of Delhi, since…

Traditionally GIS are considered to perform four basic functions on spatial data; input, storage, analysis and output. Of these, analysis has received least attention in commercial systems. Typically, a variety of map description and manipulation functions are defi ned by commercial vendors as being “Spatial analysis”, but they have little bearing on the use of this term in the Regional Science Community…