Trends in Geospatial Technology: Revisited

Teaching the Future of Geospatial Technology

I taught a course called Trends in Geospatial Technology as part of the Penn State MGIS program in 2010 and 2011. My students and I evaluated a variety of software and hardware trends that we thought might be significant as they pursed their careers. I selected most of the topics; the students selected, and lead discussions about, the remaining ones. In 2016, some five years on, I wanted to review the topics we covered and offer a status update on them.

Website vs. App

One big question was which type of mobile implementation of location-based solution would win, browser-based ones or dedicated apps?

My sense is that today the pendulum is swaying toward the app. Why? Apps can provide the organization behind the solution with far more data about the user, which is very important when the user is the product. Apps win, even though developing for more than one platform costs more and often mean a multi-part part launch, with the iOS app first, then Android, then maybe Windows and others.  

2015: The State of GIS and Geography Education

An 1899 class in mathematical geography at
Hampton University, a historically black institution
Public Domain, via Wikipedia

I've been doing year end recaps of the GIS industry for more than a decade. My interest has focused more on GIS and geography education for the last few years. I started writing about the topic regularly when I was at Directions Magazine and continued via a newsletter which launched in December of last year.

This will be my first recap detailing the state of GIS and geography education.

Data Points: U.S. Federal Government Geospatial Activities June 2015

It was a big week for the federal government to announce, or for publications to find and detail, GIS-based solutions.  Only one is accessible to the public, but this recap illustrates that GIS trends in the private and consumer sphere are finding their way into U.S. federal government agencies, too. Which trends?

This roller-compacted concrete spillway dam
might be in DamWatch. Source: USDA/NRCS

• complex online geospatial tools
• sensors and alerts
• openness paired with privacy protection
• crowdsourcing
• open source
• open data

The announcements relate to maintaining citizen health when disasters threaten electricity, protecting dams and 

citizens and making better maps of our national parks.