[Geodata] Geodata Research

[Dave Patton]

On 2011/01/25 4:41 PM, David Campbell wrote:
> Excerpts from Landon Blake's message of 2011-01-24 15:28:07 -0500:
>> David Campbell wrote:
>> As part of my M.A. in Computer Science I am going to be doing
>> GIS research, and my interests look like they align well with
>> the goals of the Public Geospatial Data Project...
>>
>> Landon wrote:
>> I take it your interests are along the software development lines, since
>> your major is in computer science. Can you give us any more details on
>> the topic of your thesis? Are you researching a solutions to a technical
>> challenge? Or is your thesis focused on policy issues? What do you hope
>> the end result of your research project will be? Is it going to be a
>> software package, a set of best-practices, or something else? I'm just
>> trying to understand the relationship between your research and open
>> geospatial data.
> 
> Although I am a Computer Science student, my research is a
> collaboration between both the Computer Information Science and
> Earth Science departments. I am interested in the value of open
> source software and open data for solving global issues. I am
> currently in the early stages of research, so all the details of
> where my research will go are not set in stone, but I will begin
> by talking with faculty at my university to see how they use
> geospatial software and data. If anyone has input from the
> commercial world regarding their use or the usefulness of open
> geospatial data or open source software, I welcome the feedback.
> 
> The product of my research will at least be background
> information on and a survey of open source software and open data
> available. The hope is that my initial research will inform me as
> to what problems exist that can be tackled with a technical
> solution (probably involving social issues as well). I also plan
> on creating a website for the sake of demonstrating and comparing
> the available GIS web technologies, and discovering the ease of
> using different data sources for thematic mapping.
> 
> My guess is that there are holes in the data available for
> certain parts of the world and that the interoperability of many
> GISs may be able to be improved. I don't know how much work has
> been done on efforts to aggregate many different data sources to
> get a better picture of global issues.
> 
> I also realize that tackling global issues involves the hard work
> of many people and the ease of learning and availability of GIS
> software and geospatial data is crucial for this effort.

One possible idea would be to tackle the
"Country Shapefiles" problem, which is illustrated
by these recent postings:
http://barendgehrels.blogspot.com/2010/12/free-shapefile-of-countries-of-world.html
http://barendgehrels.blogspot.com/2010/12/free-shapefiles-of-of-world-2.html
http://barendgehrels.blogspot.com/2010/12/free-shapefiles-of-of-world-3.html
http://barendgehrels.blogspot.com/2011/01/free-shapefiles-of-countries-of-world-4.html
Establishing a free, unencumbered, "accurate", and up-to-date
repository of "Country Shapefiles" would be a non-trivial task
that would touch on a range of issues, including geodata
licensing, social and political issues, possible contribution
of data from various sources (including potentially commercial
sources), the need to establish a community contribution model
to keep the data up to date, etc., etc.

-- 
Dave Patton
CIS Canadian Information Systems
Victoria, B.C.

Degree Confluence Project:
Canadian Coordinator
Technical Coordinator
http://www.confluence.org/

Personal website:
Maps, GPS, etc.
http://members.shaw.ca/davepatton/