Project Objectives

Collaboration with
Geospatial Information

Collaboration, whether within a single field or across disciplines, is a commonplace of the information age. Normally, collaboration with information means sharing information within a group.

Collaboration may be asynchronous, which is to say that shared information is used by different people at different times, with either technology or procedures stepping in to assure that everyone’s information stays up to date.

Collaboration can also be synchronous, or same-time. Evidently, in that case the information is shared in real-time, more or less. And of course, the typical way of doing this kind of collaboration is in a meeting. The meeting may take place in a conference room or an emergency operations centre – or it may take place “virtually” through telephone or video conferencing.

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Defining
GeoConferencing

The Internet has made data conferencing for real-time, location-independent, collaborative viewing or editing of digital information widely accessible. However, one area where we have seen a deficiency is in the area of virtual meetings using geospatial information. Maps and georeferenced imagery have typically been treated as pictures without being georeferenced. Lack of a spatial reference drastically limits the ability to combine geoinformation from multiple sources flexibly, and it reduces the utility of the information that is created during the conference.

Consultants TGIS has been working since the late 1990s to improve data conferencing using geospatial information. We call this concept geodata conferencing or, more succinctly, geoconferencing.

In a geoconference:

►      Participants share information in a synchronized, georeferenced workspace;

►      Geomatics specialists can aid non-specialists to find, understand and use pertinent geospatial information;

►      All the participants have a means of “gesturing” at the map (pointer), so that the object of a remark or discussion is clear to all;

►      A zoom or pan of the map is automatically and rapidly seen by all participants so that the conversation can remain focused;

►      Participants can add or remove geospatial information layers;

►      Georeferenced map annotations can be used to record interpretation of the map contents as well as new information.

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The GeoConferencing Service and the CGDI.

GeoInnovations project:
Real-time Collaboration Service
for Geospatial Information

The objective of the GeoInnovations project was to develop a new tool for the collaboration toolbox: Internet geoconferencing.

To provide the basis for the geoconferencing, we would produce conference server software To illustrate the server’s capabilities, and to provide all the elements necessary for a geoconference, a demonstration client was also to be developed.

The system would have the following characteristics:

►      Easy accessibility using the most widely-available technology platform (to create as many potential users as possible);

►      Low bandwidth requirements (a conference should be functional even with dial-up connections);

►      Conference participants should be able to communicate across organizational firewalls with little or no effort by system administrators;

►      Interoperability with Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure services to provide access to a wide-variety of geoinformation;

… and of course the service would have to provide the features of a geoconference as mentioned above.

An extension to the project, added in March 2004 and supported by the Canadian Space Agency, added an additional objective:

►      Allow participants to access and manipulate satellite image products within a geoconference, in fusion with other geodata.

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