Between the Poles: 80% of information has geographic location content, doesn't it ?

Geoff Zeiss

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OSGeo was created to support the collaborative development of open source geospatial software and promote its widespread use
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There are proven measures that an administration, owner, or municipal government responsible for an airport, university, industrial or commercial campus, or town can undertake to reduce the risk of underground utility damage, the associated disruptions to operations and business and the danger for workers and the public.
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The U.S. devotes an estimated $10 billion annually to locating underground infrastructure. Every construction project requiring excavation involves significant efforts in locating underground utilities prior to and during construction to reduce the risk of injuries and unexpected project delays. But this information is rarely shared and the location of underground infrastructure is recaptured over and over again. There are successful examples around the world where municipal and regional governments have helped enable a shared underground utility network database.
Growing evidence of the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach to construction
Building information modeling (BIM) has been applied to design-build construction projects for many years. A growing number of countries are mandating BIM for public projects. While the UK government has said that "...we know that the largest prize for BIM lies in the operational stages of the project life-cycle", until recently there has not been hard data to support this conjecture. Similarly there has been only anecdotal support for an integrated BIM and geospatial approach for design, build, operate and maintain projects. Now we are beginning to see data from real world projects that offer evidence for the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.
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Geography2050: Accurate location information about underground infrastructure is essential for powering our future planet
I thought it would be worth while to include here a talk I gave at GEOGRAPHY 2050 Powering Our Future Planet at Columbia University in New York about the importance of accurate location information about underground infrastructure for the future development of the energy grid. With some notable exceptions accurately recording the location of subsurface infrastructure including oil, gas, electric power and other energy infrastructure is ignored - perhaps this is a case of out-of-sight is indeed out-of-mind. The reality is that knowing the location of underground energy infrastructure is critical for national security, for disaster planning and management, for public safety and for economic efficiency. Everyone is aware of at least one disaster resulting from or exacerbated by not knowing where our energy infrastructure is - the explosions in San Bruno in California (2010) and Belgium (2004) immediately come to mind.
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BIM + geospatial interoperability would avoid another CAD + GIS quagmire
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BVLOS drones improve power line inspections amid increasing fire and storm risks for utilities | Utility Dive
Transmission line inspections for vegetation management and other purposes are essential in ensuring grid reliability and resilience. We saw the devastating effect of vegetation encroachment in the recent California fires, which in part have been blamed on failure to maintain properly cleared transmission lines. With drones that can cover great distances in a single flight and provide detailed and accurate aerial imagery of transmission lines and other infrastructure, it is now possible to almost completely automate this expensive process. Automating transmission line inspections for vegetation management using BVLOS drones not only saves money, but also could improve the resiliency and reliability of the transmission grid.

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June 09, 2014

80% of information has geographic location content, doesn't it ?

Everyone in the geospatial industry knows that 80% of data has a geospatial component, but I have never seen a reference or link to the research on which this is based. GIS Lounge has tried to track this assertion back to its original source The earliest mention that was found is an article written by Robert E. Williams in 1987 entitled “Selling a geographical information system to government policy makers.” At the time Williams was the Director of the Alachua County Regional Information Center. The article was published in “Papers from the 1987 Annual Conference of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association” by URISA and contains the following paragraph:

"Automated mapping is probably an easier sell because, again, the policymakers are cognizant of the need for improved mapping capabilities. It has been estimated that approximately 80% of the informational needs of a local government policymaker is related to a geographical location. This information is usually supplied by a map rendering, e.g., maps showing the location of a parcel of land being considered for a rezoning petition."

But there is no link or citation for the statement. So at this point the best guess is that the 80% rule came down from the mountain with Moses.

However GIS Lounge cites modern research in Germany that analyzed German Wikipedia articles and found that the actual number may lie in the 60-80% range.

Posted at 09:30 AM in Spatial Data | Permalink

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80% is one of those geographic urban myths, along the lines of Einstein saying he consider geography for study but found geography too hard so he switched to physics.

My personal belief is that the percentage of location enabled content is actually higher than 80%. Some content has "direct" location codings, such as an address, coordinates, IP addresses, GPS tracking, meets and bounds (20 feet south of the river), landmarks, and so forth. This is not just map information or customer databases but every financial transaction, every stock transaction, location tracking and so on. Then there are indirect location or geographic codings, such as a URL than can be resolved to a physical location.

Between the Poles

Geoff Zeiss

June 2020

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June 09, 2014

80% of information has geographic location content, doesn't it ?

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