GIS services concepts and Technology January 14, 2010

We all knows about GIS , ie Geographic information system. Simply we can describe as Geographical Information System is any system that captures, stores, analyzes, manages, and presents data that is linked to location. When we consider GIS technically we can explain as, it is  a system that includes mapping software and its application to photogrammetry, remote sensing, land surveying, aerial photography and photogrammetry, mathematics,mapping, geography, and tools that can be implemented with GIS software. Still, many refer to “Geographic Information System” as “GIS” even though it doesn’t cover all tools connected to topology.We can also consider GIS as  the merging of cartography and database technology.

Let us check various trends and applications in GIS Technology

• GIS and Science—3D analysis, graphing and data exploration, and more
• Customization and Application Development- It includes Design and Development
• Creation / Maintenance of Geo spatial Database – Design, Development and maintenance of custom geospatial databases
• Data Integration and Data Format Conversion – Also includes Spatial Analysis and Modeling
• Map Digitization / Vectorization- Digitizing maps ie map digitization services
• Feature Extraction- 2D, 3D feature extraction using AT( aerial triangulation) results
•Ortho photography – Orthophoto Rectification and Mosaicing
•  Route Network Analysis- Design spatial database and model features on a 3D surface for network analysis used by organizations/agencies.
•  Web Mapping / Web GIS – Geodatabase Designing & Modeling, Web Mapping Automation
• Geo-Coding / geocoding - Important point with mapping is registering a map with the correct real world coordinates,ie Image Georectification / Georeferencing
•  GIS and CAD — Building information modeling (BIM), 3D GIS, and more
•  Enterprise GIS—Extending geospatial capabilities to the enterprise
•  Server GIS—Delivering geospatial services through a wide variety of clients
•  Mobile GIS—Making the mobile workforce more efficient
•  Cartography—Additional cartographic mapping, analysis, and editing tools
•  Lidar data processing - Mapping and laser scanning

There are various many other applications in GIS technology, which can be discussed in more detail later in next article.For more details and for any queries contact http://www.sblgis.com/contact.aspx

How to select the right GIS service provider February 20, 2009

Geographical information is on your fingertips now-a-days. The internet opens before you unending possibilities. The only task you have is to select the right service provider for you. But how?

There are some criteria to select the best or the right GIS service provider for your GIS requiements.

Find out your business needs

The first and the foremost thing is to identify the service you need. Now there are companies which do all the work that come under the category GIS and some do specialize in certain services. I would suggest that you go to the companies that have specialized in the services you would like to be done by them.

Reliability

Secondly, find out how reliable is the company. Some companies boast about their work and their efficiency in hyperbolic terms. But need not be completely true. So check out whether the GIS service provider you choose is trustworthy and efficient enough to carry out your work with right manpower and technological resources required.

Quality

You can always ask the GIS service provider for a sample job to be done for you. This will give you an idea of the quality of the work they provide. Choosing the company or opting out is now more easy for you, isn’t it?

Compare prices

If you have found more than one service provider who would give you the same quality work you need, well, make a comparison of their service costs. It is needless to say that you can choose the one that offers you some cost advantages.

Work Capacity

Don’t forget to do some spying on the infrastructure of the company. If you are satisfied about the technology, the manpower, the experience and expertise of the company, there is no looking back. You have selected the right GIS service provider!

Regards

SBL GEOMATICS

By : RARIMA N S

Modern GIS! An overview February 20, 2009

GIS has become somewhat mandatory. Our day-to-day myriad activities of life cannot go on without  GIS.

Developed recently for the purpose of using and studying geographic information, geography underpins GIS and is the key to understanding it. It expresses and describes the locations of objects and features relating to the distribution and patterns of physical and human features that exist on the Earth’s surface.

Modern GIS

Before the advancement of modern GIS, analysis procedures would have been manually undertaken using transparent overlays or run through very slow and incompetent machines with far less power than today’s machines. GIS in the past mainly meant the information obtained from maps.

The critical advantage of modern GIS is that all the functionality for working with manifold sets of geographic data are assembled and automated within one piece of software with improved efficiency and speed.

The input, storage and display of geographical information are now realized in a computer and hence the features and themes can be manipulated, combined and analyzed to generate new information.

Various  GIS software packages are available with different functionality and interfaces. ESRI is the world’s most popular GIS software package.

Some common examples of GIS

Geographic information is as wide and varied from socio-economic or demographic data to physical and environmental data, treated as separate l ‘themes’ of similar types of information. Eg: Physical features or phenomena such as rivers, roads, forests, earthquakes, volcanoes, erosion, floods, vegetation etc. and Human features or phenomena such as population, migration, electoral territories, poverty, religion, health etc.

One such theme could relate to all the ‘rivers’ in a country. The physical features can include flooding and pollution. The location element is the postcode.

One of the main sources of ‘human’ geographic information is the Census. It records a large number of variables about every person in the a country including employment, housing and health. The geography element of it is the location of where people live.

Essentially, geographic information states WHAT is WHERE which needs to record these two elements somehow. Data can be captured from aerial photography, satellite images, field samples, land surveying, population censuses, global positioning systems (GPS) and government administrative records among others.

For combining geographic information themes, geography or location is used as the common denominator or the link. It has the potential to generate new information on patterns and relationships between multiple sets of geographic information that would otherwise be missed, and to aid in answering more complex questions or decision-making.

A typical example is Jon Snow’s investigation of Cholera in Victorian London in 1854. He identified the locations of incidences of Cholera against the location of water pumps, and noticed its gathering pattern around the Broad Street water pump. He identified the contaminated source and created the beginning of modern epidemiology. A map of just the water pumps or incidences of Cholera alone would have been of little value.

Again take the example of flood risk maps where the combined geographic information on the locations of properties and the locations of flood zones can help to identify properties at risk of flooding. This combined information is of huge value to environmental groups and insurance companies providing new information that would not be detectable otherwise.

The benefits of modern GIS

Modern GIS has several advantages over the old techniques of map-making and information gathering. Some of modern GIS are:

• Can cover large study areas (the whole world if necessary)

• Can deal with larger amounts of data

• Can easily select any sub-study area

• Can cope with frequent and infinite edits and changes

• More powerful and resistant to damage

• Quicker and more efficient

• Requires less person, time and money

The Census is the most familiar examples of how GIS can store and display a number of large datasets for the entire country quickly and easily. Without the help of GIS, you would have had to search manually through records on your computer on telephone staff at the Census office to get information about your area of interest.

With GIS, data for any area can be accessed quickly and easily according to a location. We can now store and show maps and aerial photographs covering the whole of a country. For example, Multimap through which you can know exactly where every town and village in the UK was, you would be unable to provide the level of information that Multimap is able to do in just a few seconds. Essentially, you are able to customise your data to suit your needs.

GIS software has a large variety of tools of varying levels of complexity. Shown below are some core standard functions common to GIS software packages.

• Query: Ask questions of feature attributes like: where is _? What’s the nearest_? What intersects with _?

• Mapping and cartography: Visualize features and edit symbology and colours to create an output map with title, scale bar, north arrow etc.

• Select: Classify features and their attributes that meet some criteria.

• Distance: Estimate the distance between features.

• Buffers: Rings drawn around features at a particular distance from the features.

• Overlay: The display of diverse layers of information at one location.

• Clip: Makes an input layer to the size and extent of a selected layer.

• Merge: Merges multiple layers into a single layer.

• Raster analysis: A complete separate suite of tools for raster analysis which includes classifying cells, deriving aspect and slope, mosaicing and calculating new cell values among many others.

• 3D: Data can be analyzed with ‘height’ in 3-dimensions for powerful visualization

Who uses GIS and Why?

GIS has evolved into a technology that is used by a huge number of industries and agencies to help plan, design, engineer, build and maintain information infrastructures that effects our everyday lives.

Use of GIS in different industry

Forestry: Inventory and management of resources

Police: Crime mapping to target resources

Epidemiology: To link clusters of disease to sources

Transport: Monitoring routes

Utilities: Managing pipe networks

Oil: Monitoring ships and managing pipelines

Central and local government: Evidence for funding and policy (eg.) deprivation

Health: Planning services and health impact assessments

Environment agencies: Identifying areas of risk from e.g. flood

Emergency departments e.g. ambulance: Planning quickest routes

Retail: Store location

Marketing: Locating target customers

Military: Troop movement

Mobile phone companies: Locating masts

Land ReGIStry: Recording and managing land and property

Estate agents: Locating properties that match certain criteria

Insurance: Identifying risk e.g. properties at risk of flooding

Agriculture: Analyzing crop yields

Regards

SBL GEOMATICS

BY: RARIMA N S

Scope of GIS Tenders February 6, 2009

Outsourcing is in the air now. Most of the GIS companies outsource their georeferencing work to Geomatics service providers who undertake their projects offering lower costs and better quality work. When the number of such service providers increase every minute, how will you select the appropriate one to suit your business requirements?

Tenders! Internet and newspaper media are crowded with such business tenders currently. You will surely navigate to the right service provider browsing through them.

Just have a look at this tender for a GIS project!

‘The major aim of this project is to implement an efficient and cost effective mapping system for the expansion of the railroad’

You are expected to:

- make GIS-related data accessible to all the staff

- a detailed mapping of the terrain (including utility and contour)

- link all datasets with respect to the geographical components and link them to the Internet’

Going through this, you get an idea of the requirements, the specifications and the pre-requisites of the project.

If you have the right technology with skilled personnel in the specific job they ask for, you can move ahead and make a bid positively.

Tenders open before you immense opportunities to select the right GIS service provider within your estimated expense limits. You can also make an easy choice of the company that has the required technical and professional expertise.

Moreover, you can be stationed at your place and the right service provider will come in search of you with the most competitive prices.

For the service providers, tenders help to make smart bids which are comparatively lower to their competitors. They also come to know about the changing trends, needs, and services in the very innovative GIS arena through these tenders.

It is a highly aggressive world outside which is completely business-minded. Tenders naturally become the catalysts to these high-spirited business motives.

Regards

SBL GEOMATICS
Article by: RARIMA N S

How GIS helps in finding location of migratory birds? February 5, 2009

While  spring, flocks of migratory wading birds arrive from their natural habitat, which would be usually intolerably cool during winter, to a critical non-breeding habitat on the tropical places.

Protection of these migratory birds is a concern that needs some attention. Some of these birds from northern hemisphere fly more than 20,000 km a year in search of a suitable dwelling place for survival during the winter season.

The use of GIS and remote sensing technology can be used as an integral part to trace the migrating location of these birds from field mapping to reporting of the location.

One tip to find the birds of migration is to identify their food habit. This would give an idea of their prospective migrating location with regard to the availability of the specific food.

For instance, if we take the birds that usually migrate from Siberia to the tropical North coast of Australia. These migratory birds feed on small animals that live in mud such as crabs, snails and worms. These birds naturally migrate to the area of low muddy lands of Australia to feed and refill their energy for their journey back to their natural habitat.

Using compatible and innovative GPS units and enough field staff, samples can be collected from various points of the expected area of migration by producing progress maps and occasional species maps. By these procedures, even the presence of any new species in the area also can be identified.

To cite another example, some migratory birds have time and again halted in Malaysia during their roosting season that usually lasts from November to March because of its Matang Mangrove Forest.

The arrival of these migratory birds was observed by The Department of Wildlife and National Parks and they have decided to create a GIS database in order to study the biodiversity and sustainability of migratory birds.

Finally, they made a GIS database for the migratory birds and conducted an overall analysis on the captured data. The methodology run from need assessment to data collection, database development and system integration. This finally resulted in an analysis on the trends of bird migration, the properties of ecosystem, environment sensitivity analysis and spatial statistic analysis on the distribution of the migratory birds.

As already mentioned, the resultant migratory bird’s database contain statistical results on the trend of bird migration which in turn helped to identify the endangered species of migratory birds. When the endangered species are classified, measures and procedures for the maintenance of the mangrove areas are taken.

• The database of the migratory birds with reference to the diversity and sustainability of the birds can been developed using ArcView 3.2, MapObject 2.0, Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0, AutoCadMap 2.0 and S-Plus 2000.

Thanks and regards

SBL GEOMATICS

Article by : RARIMA N S

Photogrammetry companies vs Photogrammetry projects January 15, 2009

Though the significance of Geomatics services are moving uphill, the scarcity of companies offering the services becomes a big issue now. When the growing demand cannot be met by us, the opportunities will be grabbed by the competitors.

By the spread of mapping sites like google maps, live maps etc., people have become more aware of the satellite images and the possibilities of digital mapping. Hence the popularity graph of GIS has taken a steady ascend now compared to the year 2005.

Geomatics makes use of specialized software that is in vogue for its variety of services and customized software for some of the projects according to the specifications of the client.

The GIS application areas are wide ranging from Forestry, Utilities, Oil and Gas industry, Central and local government, Public Health, Hospitality and Tourism, Environmental Management, Emergency Management, Retail Marketing and Management, Mobile Mapping, Real Estate, Insurance, LIDAR and Laser Scanning, Agriculture and Research, Transportation to Public Works.

What makes the scarcity in the photogrammetry companies? One reason is the difficulty to find people with specialization in photogrammerty. Many of the Western universities offer courses in this field. Things are not that easy in many of the Asian countries.

For a GIS company to be successful, it needs to have the appropriate infrastructure which updated technological advances. Moreover it requires highly experienced professionals to carry out the projects in photogrammetry. Other than this, very innovative and specialized workstations are quintessential for the undisturbed workflow of photogrammetry jobs.

Even if a company garners all the above mentioned essentials in this field, they have to pay through the nose to maintain them. This becomes another obstacle in the forming and functioning of a photogrammetry company.

There are very few GIS companies in India as compared to its wide ranging applications.

Regards

SBL Geomatics

Article By:RARIMA N S

GIS Companies in India January 15, 2009

Though not as popular in India as in the western countries, the term GIS/Geomatics and its applications started gaining importance in India. GIS can be categorized into three groups from the business point of view:

1. GIS Survey Professionals
2. GIS Service Providers/ Data Processing Providers
3. GIS System Automation Providers

Some companies engaged in the above three services mostly specialize in one particular industry segment or on one particular area. As an exception, there are a few GIS companies that provide complete GIS services.

This article might sound a bit unfamiliar if it is being read without some knowledge of GIS.

A Geographic Information System is “a distinctive form of database of the world — it is a geographic system with database (geodatabase)” which describes the world in geographic terms.

GIS enables us to observe, understand, interrogate, interpret, and visualize geospatial data in many ways that exposes relations, patterns and trends in the form of maps, globes, charts and reports. GIS answers questions and solve problems by analyzing the data we have and the information is quickly interpreted and shared.

GIS plays a significant role in almost every decision we make. From selecting sites to targeting market segments, from planning distribution networks to responding to emergencies or redrawing country boundaries—all these issues engage questions of geography.

If you are an active geographer or researcher and would like to get in touch with a GIS companies in India, do check the link given below for your reference.

http://www.sblgis.com/gis-resources/gis-in-india.html

The extent of GIS Services is unimaginably wide, and can be applied to each and every phase of human existence or to put it better ” it perfects the existence of living beings”.

If you are a GIS research fellow or a Geologist, you will find this list of GIS companies in India quite useful.They provide the best cost advantages possible and reliable quality. If you find it tedious to get your work done in-house, the modern era suggests finding help from external agency or business partnership/outsourcing.

Regards

SBL Geomatics

Article By: RARIMA N S

http://www.sblgis.com/gis-resources/gis-in-india.html

Importance of Mapping Services December 10, 2008

Yesterday, one of my friends told me that because of the never-ending inflow of information posted on the web, it is more complicated and chaotic to browse and find specific contents. She searched the net for information about  mapping & digitization and ended up with almost nothing!

We usually don’t get the exact information from search engines and catalog. It depends on how you search Google or Yahoo or MSN.

If you want to know about digitization and mapping – you can try ‘digitization’ or ‘mapping’. Wikipedia is always there to give you effective details.

To know about the service providers, start searching for ‘digitizing maps or digitization service providers or services’.

At this juncture, I thought of writing on digitization & mapping thinking that it would be really helpful if we understood the mechanics of things that already play a major role in our life.

My goal is to help you say yes to the eternal hypothetical question of, “Do you want to know what’s Digitization and Mapping?”.

Well, I will try to explain it as simple as possible.

In the realm of geographical operations, an image or map has to be converted to digital or vector form for better comprehension. This process can be termed as digitization.

As you all know, digitized maps are visual forms of data which are easily comprehensible. More over, maps are extremely efficient for the storage, representation and communication of geographic information. As the saying goes, “A map is worth a million words.”

There are many things hidden underground, behind walls, or beneath the sea. From childhood we have come to believe that our favourite super heroes find them using extraordinary powers. But it’s not just a fantasy now. As radiologists use various imaging devices to detect internal diseases or problems, in earth science, geologists use devices to see deep into the earth, behind walls, and below the sea.

With Utility Mapping, we can immediately locate and spot subsurface service utilities like gas, electric and sewer lines. This system can also easily detect depth and location of objects like water mains, underground storage tanks, terra cotta pipes, tree roots and voids. The GIS specialists, using state of the art technology, can infiltrate manmade or natural surfaces, returning data with unsurpassed quality.

Sometimes utility pipes or cables are relocated during repairs or renovations, but maps might not be updated. The result of digging or drilling in the presence of unknown, unmarked, unmapped, or incorrectly located utilities can cause wastage of excavation time, irreversible damage, more money, and worst of all – personal injury or even death. Accurate utility mapping comes to our help here. The use of utility mapping ranges from small gas stations, through industrial plants and military installations, including utilities beneath buildings or other structures.

Another form of mapping is the toposheet mapping. A toposheet is a shortened name for ‘Topographic sheet’, which essentially contains information about areas like roads, railways, settlements, canals, rivers, electric poles, post offices etc.

Toposheet mapping can be used to map the contours and elevations of a specific place. According to their usage, they may be available at different scales, for example 1:25000, 1: 50000 etc. They are made on a suitable projection for that area which contains latitude-longitude information at the corners. Thus any point on it can be identified easily with its corresponding latitude-longitude, depending upon the scale (i.e. if the scale is large, more accurate lat-long). You get accurate information about a specific area with this mapping.

With Cartographic mapping, we map the land parcels and define the boundaries of the land under verification/study. This surely will settle land disputes as we can accurately define the external land boundaries between neighbours, though there is no such device discovered to define the internal boundaries of friendship between people!

SBL Geomatics is an emerging company that has developed unwavering acclaim for effectively carrying out difficult or unusual subsurface detection and mapping with its expertise, experience, and flair for creative problem-solving.

regards

SBL GEOMATICS

Digitization services

Geomatics Services in Retail Industry -Business Geo intelligence November 18, 2008

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How do you choose a successful retails. By understanding geography and people’s relationship to location, we can make informed decisions about the way we live on our planet. Successful businesses use Business Geointelligence. Organizations can go beyond standard data analysis by using GIS tools to integrate, view, and analyze data using geography.

How do you choose a successful retail site?

Location is the often repeated mantra that empowers retail site selection success. Gis accelerates this success by identifying a site of high demand potential and visual exposure through our business geointelligence methods.

GEOMATICS has tailored solutions for specific business needs which include advanced geospatial modeling, statistical analysis, and cross-referencing of customer,public and private data.

All these are designed to help companies identify, analyze, and prioritize the fresh and upcoming business prospects and optimize existing sales and marketing programs to enhance their profit potentials.

Geomatics help you make decisions on

1.Real Estate Management.

2.Planning New Locations.

3.Optimization/ Selection.

4. Business Planning.

5.Territory Planning.

Input for the process

1.Demographics.

2.Expenditure potential.

3.Consumer segmentation.

4.Shopping center locations.

5.Your corporate or proprietary database.

Applications of GEOMATICS Services in Retail Sector

1.Evaluate current market position and identify under and over invaded submarkets.

2.Estimate the number of locations a market can support.

3.Understand the effects of competitive market moves.

4.Identify the optimal expansion opportunities in a market.

5.Evaluate existing stores to spot over & under performers.

6.Measure the impact of new store openings, relocations,remodels, closures, and competitive acquisitions.

7.Identification of a series of existing locations that resemble the proposed location.

8.A compilation of maps and reports that highlight the crucial information about a potential site in a consistent and comparable manner.

9.Score potential locations based on the quality and composition of the expected trade area.

10.Assess the size and shape of a proposed store’s trade area based on urbanicity and competitive intensity.Store networks and prioritize capital investments based on predictive, multi-factor trade areas.

11.Optimize store networks; and localize marketing and merchandising.

12.Prioritize markets to enter, expand or exit.

GEOMATICS Benefits

1.Increase revenue potential by realizing market share.

2.Understand spheres of influence and gain knowledge of your trading areas.

3.Estimate sales and quantify market cannibalization.

4.Enhance performance of existing stores.

5.Prioritize retail expansion and optimize retail network strategies.

6.Improve returns on direct marketing and promotional campaigns with better.

7.Stimulate development strategies for improved results.

8.Reduce risk on long-term real estate decisions.

We hope you found it useful. For more information about the applications of GIS Services in various sectors Please visit the following link. http://www.sblgis.com

Thanks and Regards,

SBL GEOMATICS

GIS Service provider

Advantages of Using GIS Services in Oil & Gas | Petroleum industry November 15, 2008

A sound understanding of geography is needed in every step of a petroleum industry starting from locating a place to drill a well, route a pipeline from the exploration site to the refinery plant, finding an ideal location for a refinery and lot more.

The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is gathering momentum in Oil and petroleum industry as a powerful tool for analyzing and displaying data.

GIS services can be applied in various stages during the development of projects, including: Petroleum Exploration, Production, Managing Facilities & Pipeline Management

Petroleum Exploration:

Gis facilitates the analysis and integration of a lot of different types of data such as satellite imagery, seismic surveys, digital aerial photo mosaics, surface geology studies, subsurface and cross section interpretations and images, well locations, and existing infrastructure information.Combined Image Processing can reveal underground Geological Information.The remote sensing detection of petroleum is based on the characteristic analogy and analysis of remote sensing information from known oil fields. The thinking way is as follows: micro-seeping of hydrocarbon-> ground effect-> remote sensing detection is certainly gainful. Exploration software and GIS are essential for geologists searching for petroleum and mineral deposits.

One specific exploration application involves the creation of reconnaissance maps. Uses of GIS in exploitation projects are perhaps more varied because exploitation evaluation typically deals with more extensive data sets than those typically used in exploration settings. Exploitation approaches are generally applied to mature producing areas where well control is dense, whereas exploration projects may not involve any wells at all. GIS is a particularly effective technology that enables exploration and exploitation teams to share information, analyze data in new ways, and integrate the evaluation process.

Production:

Innovative GIS technology is ideally suited for the overlay analysis of geographic, infrastructure, business conditions, and environmental factors and which can be integrated with other business risk or economic business planning engines to provide a focused business solution tool set.

Managing Facilities:

A large integrated oil company must keep track of every minute detail from drilling platforms to pipeline networks and to refineries for their advancement in this highly competitive business area. Geospatial information can be aptly used to map the gathering and transmission of products to a facility.

Pipeline Management :

GIS programs can be utilized to monitor the condition and flow of pipelines and determine the best pipeline locations to transport oil off the fields and to the refineries. Pipeline Management is a process by which you continually evaluate your active opportunities (from prospects to booked customer) for their balance of QUANTITY and QUALITY.

Some of the GIS solutions currently offered by SBL In Oil and Petroleum Industry:

1. 3D Modeling

2. Photogrammetry

3. Lidar Data Processing

4. GPS Navigation

5. Corporate GIS data management

6. Map production and presentation

7. Digital Elevation Modeling and Hydrological Modeling

8. Environmental sensitivity analysis and modeling

9. Network analysis

10.Pipeline route optimization and pipeline leakage risk

11.Internet mapping and image web server solutions

12.Work flow analysis

13.Conversion of data to GIS format

14.Linkage of oil spill model to GIS.

15.Retail market analysis.

16.Distribution analysis.

17.Market pattern analysis by demographics.

19.CAD Drafting and Designing

20.CAD to GIS conversion

Retail outlet supply routing and many more…

We hope you found it useful. For more information about the applications of GIS Services in various sectors Please visit the following link.  http://www.sblgis.com

Gis Service Provider