Perspectives

How fragile are the networks that we depend upon for today's GIS?

One of the more interesting aspects of the ongoing LightSquared drama has been the eye-opening awareness of the Global Positioning System's fragility. The potential repercussions of degraded or blocked signals has been prominent in the news, and has fostered a backlash. Hard to say if this chapter is completely over yet, but the defense of the accuracy and autonomy of the network has given great prominence to its economic and safety importance.

As we move toward a more cloud-based deployment of GIS functionalities and services, the stability of the underlying network is always in mind. It's important not to ignore the cybersecurity issues of today, and the ongoing nuisance of anonymous activist hacker groups. We rely on timely and accurate information to make our GIS work as intended, and those with bad intentions can poison our systems. While the threat is there for potential disruption, the more exposure nefarious actors receive the more vigilant the security. Much in the way LightSquared strengthened the position of GPS, perhaps the same is true of the backbone of Cloud GIS, as with more use and importance the more robust it will become.

Toward Ubiquity

What once was difficult in terms of Internet coverage for data streaming and office connectivity in the field, has turned into commonplace with a myriad of benefits. The productivity of individuals has greatly increased, there's greater accuracy with fewer actors interpreting (and sometimes degrading) the work of others, and the speed of work has greatly improved. It's now commonplace to have Internet connectivity and GPS accuracy even in remote locations, and the speeds that we're able to achieve open up all new possibilities.

As Internet connectivity becomes more ubiquitous, it is set to carry larger data sets that include high-resolution imagery, full-motion video, and sensor readings of all kinds. We're coming into a new era of real-time geospatial awareness, and analysis, and this will provide whole new levels of decision support. As the robustness of our networks enable new capabilities, we'll only want more bandwidth to not only collect and analyze real-time data, but also to combine it with other data sources and to collaborate in real time. The gains will be realized in the enhanced speed of workflows as well as much better contextual decision making.

Sensing Flexibility

Not only can we expect our networks to become more robust, we can also expect them to be much more flexible. Computing immunology has been around for some time, for its obvious benefits that allow us to act proactively rather than reactively. There is ongoing work toward developing self-healing components as in networks of sensors that autonomously repair themselves, and network monitoring systems that both alert us to anomalies and potentials for failure as well as self-repair around trouble.

Such built-in flexibility is the idea behind Smart Grid technologies where sensors and systems act in concert to ensure optimum power distribution. This same intelligent network technology is being deployed broadly for other infrastructure networks (water and gas pipelines among them), and will proliferate given the obvious efficiency benefits and cost savings. With the move toward self-healing systems we place greater reliance on automation, with monitoring and control as programmed actions rather than reliant on human actors. For an increasing number of networks and systems, this approach is proving its merit.

Handling Complexity

The move to more of the Web Services and cloud-based approach helps us to get away from closed black box systems that few understand, and toward more open components that allow us to tinker and interchange tools and data sources seamlessly. With more open platforms, we are less dependent and not as fragile to change, while gaining much greater ability to tailor solutions to our specific goals and environments.

In order to address the complexity with today's interconnected infrastructure and environmental systems, we'll need far greater degrees of monitoring and analysis with greater speed and connectivity to people. The chief enabling force for this next-generation geospatial framework are the networks of bandwidth, position accuracy, imagery, sensors and platforms, and online processing. Therefore, the security and reliability of our networks (and our defense against bad actors) becomes imperative to our success.