GIS

[Maheep Singh Thapar]

Gis

Hi all. I have been here after a long time and that too after seeing the interesting lines about GIS and safety sometime ago by El Guapo and all and about NIMA.
Well first of all Last time i came itwas DAn as moderator and now its El Guapo with a beter snap. Hi Guapo.
WEll I'm a GIS promoter through and through. Although i belong to India where this field is just developing and city mapping and digital tracking may not be that sophisticated but as planners and city managers we do require detailed information and in developing systems like a detailed City GIS we may be inccuring some risk. That comes with any technology. And i think that proper usage shoudl decrease that risk of misuse by others as well as mistakes by our own people( in strategic uses like precision bombing etc). Another exmaple is Nuke technology. The same digital maps we produce and put on the net can come handy for all those cyber savvy terrorists u know. I woulod like to get some reaction on that.

 

[Chet]

Re: Gis

Another exmaple is Nuke technology. The same digital maps we produce and put on the net can come handy for all those cyber savvy terrorists u know. I woulod like to get some reaction on that.

Yeah we've talked about that around the water cooler. In the USA, all of our local government info is considered "public information" and available to anyone that requests it for a small charge. As I undertand it though, our civilian GPS has a built in margin of error that is controlled by the military. Can anyone confirm that?

 

[giff57]

Re: Re: Gis

Yeah we've talked about that around the water cooler. In the USA, all of our local government info is considered "public information" and available to anyone that requests it for a small charge. As I undertand it though, our civilian GPS has a built in margin of error that is controlled by the military. Can anyone confirm that?

It used to have, but I believe the error was turned off. They may turn it back on though if we go to war.

 

[Doitnow]

Finally I could find my earlier messages and now i know that EG started a new thread with this GIS title.

Sorry guys i thought i had lost it. {Cyburbia is becoming a bigeer world everyday u see. }

My intention was not to speak directly of GIS. Infact I am waiting for the time when we will stop using that term so often.( I;''ll have to live very long to see that I think)

I agree about the margin of error in civilian GPS positioning.
As city planners/managers we may require and threfore build these huge databases( now we have moved from MISs to GISs).
I see that with every technological advance the susceptibility to crime and misuse increases. Only that the segement of trouble mongers thins down.
For example the fingerprinting and photo snapping exercise undertaken by the US authrities is a mammoth task but all that data will have tobe stored in some systems somewhere and a huge data security system will have to be developed for that.
Also sucha large concentration of data would mean that the robbers will have to just find out where the pot of gold is?( In this case, the database) and strike rich. I mean the expert cyberthieves.)
Now that was just an example.
I can agive an example of my own country.
In one of the leading conferences during the open house a question was asked about the release of 1:1000 digital maps( with 1m contours) in the public domain and the demand was turned down.
Now this isdata which urban planners and managers require.On one hand we are trying todevelop portals, egov procedures/systems and user freindly web based info services where finally we may have to put in such maps on the net( Technology is moving fast on this front i must say)
SO i think very soon this divide will decrease.
well that kind of wuandary exists where i work.
But questions of
whos going to collect that data?
whos going to standardise and store that data?
whos going to control that data?
whos going to sell that data?
I think these questions will be common for all countries.

Also so much detailed and easily accessible info will give fantastic and new ideas to the troublemakers.

What do you guys think about it.


PS:
This GIS GPS discussion can go on for ages i think.

 

[Michele Zone]

Here is an article about a college student whose work in GIS got the attention of a LOT of people and became classified as a threat to national security:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23689-2003Jul7?language=print

There used to be a built in error but, thanks to competition, it has been removed. However, it is still in place over countries that are considered hostile to the U.S. The competition came in the form of some European countries getting together to launch their own commercial satelite system for GPS. It was threatening to displace the existing American satelite system as the premiere system.

Why they cared, I am not sure. But we were no longer going to have a monopoly and I think the European system has gotten a bit bogged down: it looks less lucrative now that you can get this information for "free". (I guess that was why: preserve the de facto monopoly and you preserve US control over it. In an emergency, we COULD reinstate the error factor for all but American military systems.)

There still is an error factor of 6 to 10 meters for a point taken with "one shot" and not reconciled against data from a known station. Atmospheric bounce causes the reading to be off by that much. If you want better accuracy, you have to stay on the point for a longer period of time -- how long depends on how accurate you want it and what the specifications are for the equipment you are using. Then, on top of that, it has to be corrected against one of the surveyed sites that keep track of such data.

Here in the US, the people who are setting standards are at The Federal Geographic Data Committe http://www.fgdc.gov/

 

[Wannaplan?]

Re: Gis

The same digital maps we produce and put on the net can come handy for all those cyber savvy terrorists u know. I woulod like to get some reaction on that.

How savvy is Osama Bin Laden, that is the question! Is he an ArcView user or an ArcInfo techno geek? Maybe we can get Dan Rather to interview him to find out.

 

[PlannerByDay]

Re: Re: Gis

How savvy is Osama Bin Laden, that is the question! Is he an ArcView user or an ArcInfo techno geek? Maybe we can get Dan Rather to interview him to find out.

That is a good question but realisticly it ain't gonna be Osama Bin Laden who is sitting behind a computer in a cave working on the plan of attack.

It is gonna be the tech savvy college student who has been given orders from Osama or one of his right hand men to use the technology to come up with a plan.

Osama and his organization is no different than any other. The Chief gives an order, and all the worker bees get to work to come up with a plan and present it to the Chief with neat colorful graphics and illustrations. Kinda like a public presentation to the Planning Commission.

Personally I think GIS in combination with all kind of data, even that out of the Farmers Almanic could be a powerful tool for terrorists when planning a future attack.

The models one could generate using GIS are endless. We have all seen the models generated by the US Gov't to show the damage done by the fall of the WTC, and the spread of contamination and debris in journals and even the local newspapers. I'm sure the thugs of the world are doing the samething.

 

[Doitnow]

I keep getting these bouts of GIS fever, map fever, technology fever, technology integration fever.
By the way ive started getting more requests tospeak on the application of GIS GPS in urban and regional planning and some are king enough to pay me for doing that too.
But the point is well said by PlannerByDay that even a graphic or a map can help make decisions make better. Whether its the President of the US or Osama!!
All you need is some educated person toget that information in order and hand it over to someone.

So when i speak nowdays i say this often

"A picture is a thousand words
and a map is worth a thousand pictures"

{ therefore a map is worth what-- a million words?? }

I read that article you mentioned Michele.

and I also feel that this topic( what we are discussing) is very wide and may need a similarly wide approach.

I wouldn't have wanted to start somethoing like this the way it happened ( as a guest). But i cant help my affliction with MAps and GISs and whatnots. I only hope that we get more people to look into this thread...

By the way guys i forgot to mention in my introduction that my interest of research as well as application does also include disaster management. Looks like I have to give another introduction as I am remembering more things...