A Family of Portable Spatial Information Technologies 

Max J. EGENHOFER and Werner KUHN

Emerging technologies will change the future use of geographic information systems (GISs), moving GISs from the office desktops into the users’ hands. Current GIS architectures focus on a static environment in which a user sits at a workstation to perform spatial analysis. With the advent of ubiquitous computing, this setting will change dramatically. Devices that combine a hand-held computer with a GPS receiver, a cellular phone, and a digital camera will enable users to integrate spatial analysis into their daily lives, opening GIS to the mass markets of day-to-day use. Mobile GISs will differ significantly from today’s multi-purpose GISs and we envision a whole family of portable spatial information technologies that will be tailored to specific needs. Smart glasses, for instance, will allow people to augment reality by seeing additional thematic information or seeing through obstacles. Smart Compasses will be based on entry-level Personal Digital Assistants, giving directions in the field on such phenomena as weather-fronts, congestions, or geographic areas. Mobile GISs pose challenging new research questions about the spatial concepts people employ when they move through space, the interaction styles and modalities people use in the field, the particularities about processing spatial queries posed in the field, the efficient handling of massive amounts of spatio-temporal data, and the on-the-fly integration of new field observations with data warehouses across a distributed information network.

KEYWORDS: Next-generation GIS, Mobile GIS, portable spatial information technologies, Geo Sketch Pad, Smart Compass, Smart Horizon, Smart Glasses.

Introduction

Geographic information systems (GISs) as they are known in the late 1990s have reached a state of maturity and a level of saturation. They have seen unprecedented growth and popularity over the last 15 years, but to make the next quantum leap so that GISs become a true asset for new, broader user communities, significant design changes must occur. Pondering about “more of the same” use for GISs (e.g., as advanced map maintenance systems) will not generate challenging research questions, nor will “more of the same” research—more R-trees, more spatial SQL dialects, more formalisms of spatial relations—generate significant advancements. A fundamental assumption behind today’s GIS architectures was that these systems are located on the desk tops of office users; therefore, the platforms—initially mainframe computers—are primarily workstations and Personal Computers (including laptops, their portable descendants aimed at office-like work). Considerations about what manifests a GIS, its data models, user interfaces, software architectures, and data storage do not scale to new use of GISs, such as in a wireless computing environment in the field or on the street. A similar dead-end is the concept of the generic GIS that is supposed to be applicable for the whole range of geospatial application domains. Such GIS platforms expose serious usability problems and build unnatural gaps between user tasks and platforms. Clutching at the top of the GISs does not work, because the underlying assumptions are not synchronized with the concepts needed.

The remainder of this paper presents the opportunities provided by new portable spatial information technologies, the personal spatial assistants of the future. Since they are only a concept at this time, not a product, we discuss technological assumptions and requirements for advancement of our knowledge to make them reality.