Just - in - Time Mapping Scenario

M uch of the information that underpins the challenges facing society today—terrorist activities, global environmental change, natural disasters—is geospatial in nature. An everyday example of key geospatial data is the location of a cell phone user who has dialed 911 in an emergency. In terrorist situations, the origins and destinations of phone calls, travel patterns of individuals, dispersal patterns of airborne chemicals, assessment of places at risk, and the allocation of resources are all geospatial data. As the volume of geospatial data increases by several orders of magnitude over the coming years, so will the potential for corresponding advances in knowledge of our world and in our ability to react to change. This article is excerpted from IT Roadmap to a Geospatial Future (National Academies Press, 2003; www.cstb.org/ project_geospatial.html), a US National Research Council report (see the related sidebar). The NRC report outlines an interdisciplinary research roadmap focusing on challenges in location-aware computing, databases and data mining, and human-computer-interaction technologies. Its contribution lies in integrating diverse perspectives, especially on future cross-disciplinary research directions. As Figure 1 shows, the convergence of advances in these three areas, combined with a sharp increase in the quality and quantity of geospatial information, promises to transform our world. Geospatial data have become critically important in areas ranging from crisis management and public health to national security and international commerce. The “Just-in-Time Mapping Scenario” sidebar on page 82 describes a vision of what is possible with integrative, multidisciplinary research efforts. We will need diverse technological advances to achieve this imaginative future.