SuperHero: “Computer show me on the map if any of my friends are in danger”
How would the computer answer the above question? Is it even possible? Well a few years back the answer would have been no but today it would be a qualified “Maybe”. Let us look at a few technologies which have made this possible
- Real time Location Tracking
- Business Intelligence
- Cloud Computing
- Natural Language processing
How do these make the answer possible? Well first lets tackle cloud computing. With the advent of cloud computing it has become possible for folks to have access to large amounts of computing power at low cost. Of course here we are talking of a superhero who is not a multimillionaire like Batman but more of the garden variety working class Spiderman type who would still like to have on demand access to large amounts of computing power.
OK so we have low cost access to cheap computing power but it still does not tell us how to tell us where the superhero’s friends are or if they are in danger. First where are the hero’s friends? Well if they are carrying cellphones as almost anyone nowadays does then there are services like Google Latitude which can tell us (or the hero) where the friends are.
So next we come to how does the hero know they are in danger. Well suppose this hero does not have a spider sense but he does have a spatio-temporal database of crime statistics which tells him at which parts of the city and at what times crimes are high. He also is using sophisticated OLAP driven Business Intelligence software which is tracking when his friends are making purchases like jewellery (and then walking on dangerous streets) or alcohol (and then getting behind the wheel of their car. The cars lo-jack will tell the hero the car is moving and the friends cellphone will tell him the friend is in the car).
So now the hero knows his friend is in danger and he wants to do something about it but our hero is an efficient hero. He wants to know where he can fly to first so as to do the maximum good so the best and easiest way for him to see the answer is on a map and that is where he sees it on a GIS application deployed on a cloud computing platform like Windows Azure or Amazon S3 and driven by geospatial business intelligence such as GeoMondrian or Oracle Business Insight Suite.
And lastly our hero does not like sitting and typing and clicking so he would like to speak his questions and get his answers and that is what Natural Language Processing provides him (this is probably the biggest contributor to the maybe instead of a yes)
So now our superhero can simulate a spider sense and go help his friends but couldn’t you the average Joe do so too?
And suppose you are not out to save people but to sell to them (yeah I know its not so noble but a mans gotto live. A woman too).
And suppose instead of finding out where to go save people you want to figure out where to do an imprompto sales promotion. You would like to do it where it would have the maximum effect hence you need to make sure of the following
1) The area contains people who are your target audience aka friends
2) They have just indulged in activities which increase your chance of
selling to them. E.g. If they have just watched a romantic movie and
are taking a seaside walk instead of the car they might be interested
in brochures of diamonds to buy for their girlfriends
3) And you would like to do this in a focused manner instead of sending
out SMSs to the entire city
So you use your Geospatial Business Application to create a realtime map of areas with good sales targets and then on the fly set up a geofence so that all cell phones within the geofence receive a MMS with pictures of the diamonds/roses and an attached digital coupon for a 10% discount.
Now that’s just one small example of what is becoming possible. (Yes I cheated we did not talk to the computer but soon we shall be able to)
So what does it mean for companies in the GIS space. Well it means that GIS is becoming something common which is both good and bad – bad because the commodity creation of GIS data is no longer profitable as companies like Google are giving it away for free. However the cheap cost of GPS chips and integration with the worlds of Business Intelligence and Cloud computing are making new wondrous applications possible and opening opportunities for GIS companies to climb up the ladder to more value added applications.
Heres to hoping GIS will soon make all of us superheroes.
