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Digital Planning

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Ignacio Arnaiz

Arnaiz Urbimática

I remember the documentation of a postgraduate course on Planning Techniques where the topic of the day was Information Systems. A course taught by Maruja Gutiérrez-Díaz in 1977. (Maruja is nowadays an innovation consultant after many years working for the European Commission and 15 years in charge of the Regional Information Center in Madrid, which was a pioneering center in digital documentation already in 1973).

In this document (if somebody is interested I can upload it) Maruja establishes some principles:

• Urban planning is a continuous activity: it is subject to permanent changes. However, its lack of efficiency is usual because it can be in contact with a situation at a given time and immediately afterwards it gives it up generally to discover in the next contact that all forecasts made have become unrealistic. Therefore, the continuity of urban planning is a radical and imperative change.

• Urban planning is an integrated activity: from being a theoretical exercise it has to become to be integrated in a complex territorial management system. Maruja establishes administrative processes as regular information sources and also the need for its automation.

• Urban planning is a redistribution mechanism of great social importance in which public participation is essential.

Maruja conceives urban planning as a control mechanism which constantly receives information from the actual information of the system and from the desirable situation of the system, always trying to adjust one to the other, defining the adequate courses of action in the form of plans and projects.

It is incredible that at that time problems where already so well defined. Over 35 years have passed and we still cannot say that digital urban planning is a reality. If with the technological means available in 1977 the ambition was the one demonstrated by Maruja, with the current technological means we have to say that our ambition is quite diluted.

Let’s state some problems and its possible existing solutions:

Technological problems:

• There are no technological problems: all the objective requisites to have completely digital urban planning can be achieved efficiently by the current technology.

• There is only one condition: the continuous urban planning that Maruja defended in 1977 requires the contemplation of maps as instruments that are at the service of the spatial planning. Plans are not the spatial planning; they are vehicles which serve the spatial planning. What happens is that the spatial planning built with plans on paper is unmanageable. However, if the instruments are digital and are built like transactions which update the spatial planning; then, it is feasible to obtain a digital spatial planning in force from the review of all the approved instruments.

• And as corollary, if plans must be built as transactions, they cannot be pdf documents or sets of files of a different nature, more or less integrated. Plans must be xml and gml electronically signed documents.  In addition, they must contain structured data capable of fitting into an information system.

Urban planning problems:

• The process of urban planning systematization cannot modify the urban planning skill. The skill is always de same, with all its complexities, its advantages and disadvantages. Computer science’s objective is not to simplify plans; its target is to simplify the production and access to the plans, as well as to increase its intrinsic quality. That is why it has to be able to constitute a neutral system which contains the whole spatial planning in force under any legislation.

• It is desirable that the information and structure of plans is subject to a certain degree of “standardization”. This standardization must share standard planning concepts and parameters and must have several spatial plans or urban models also standard. It should favor the implementation of specific solutions necessary to solve the peculiarities of each territory or the oddities of each planner or competent authority.

• It is necessary to separate the information from the mode of representation. Delimitation of sectors is not established by a red dotted line. It is established by a closed polygonal line. According to the form of publication, that line can be represented by red dotted lines or by any other means, as long as its meaning is understandable for the observer.**

**

• It is also necessary to understand that urban planning standardization does not take into consideration the definition of documents and formats of plans. On the contrary, it takes planning concepts and criteria of graphic segregation of the land into account according to the model envisaged for the future.

** Legal problems:**

• A point of the territory might be affected by local planning, territorial planning, sectoral planning and by legal transitional dispositions. There may be serious contradictions among all of them and there is not any order which establishes which one to follow first; moreover, there is not mutual transposition or mutual updating either. This creates great confusion and moreover the different degrees of graphical accuracy and range of each level make the problem even more complicated.

• The legal commitment of plans lies in the official stamp and in the signature of its documents. It is unclear that digital plans in structured formats can keep their legal commitment. What it is also unclear is that a current spatial plan built by a transactional system can inherit that commitment from the plans which have been used to build it.

Administrative problems:

• Urban planning competency is distributed between the municipality and the Commission for territorial urban planning depending on the region. This supposes that the spatial planning, from a regional point of view is one and from a local point of view, it is another one. In general, the concept of “structural” is used for the regional information and the concept of “detailed” for the local one. Everything, from my point of view, quite artificial and arguable. The spatial planning is the spatial planning; therefore, it is everything which determines the functional purpose of the land.  Nevertheless, with these distinctions, confusion is assured.

• To this, we have to add that the spatial planning is also formed by decrees or judgments which emanate from the state level or from the field of jurisprudence and that do not seem feasible to obtain as transactional digital plans. This means that the judgment must be transferred, interpreted and formulated as a digital transaction by a competent technical officer through a process of interpretation susceptible of counteracting its effect.

Production problems:

• Plans are written by technical offices, sometimes by many different offices. That is why I talk about collaborative planning. And these offices have to change the way of making plans, because they must stop using CAD and Word to produce paper and start using specific tools to design transactional digital plans. The experience of Extremadura and Castilla y León testifies to the huge difficulties that the management of this change implies.

• Plans are written by each officer regarding his own planning culture, tinged with the legislation in force. This leads to plans which are heterogeneous, confusing and full of mistakes and which have their own planning concepts, their specific languages of representation and the tactic that “paper can put up with everything”. Nowadays, it is not only necessary to modify the tools used, but also to standardize the product.

We will see in the coming posts some solutions suggested by Arnaiz Consultores

Planeamiento Digital

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Ignacio Arnaiz

Arnaiz Urbimática

Recuerdo la documentación de un curso de postgrado de Técnicas de Planificación donde el tema del día era Sistemas de Información. Un curso impartido por Maruja Gutiérrez-Díaz en 1977. (Maruja es actualmente consultora de Innovación, tras muchos años en la Comisión Europea y 15 años al frente del Centro de Información Regional de Madrid, un centro pionero en documentación digital, en 1973!!.)

En este documento (si alguien tiene interés se lo puedo remitir) Maruja establece algunos principios:

• El planeamiento es una actividad continua: está sujeto a cambio permanente. Pero su falta de eficacia es habitual ya que toma contacto con una situación en un momento dado y acto seguido lo abandona para generalmente descubrir en la siguiente toma de contacto que todas las previsiones hechas han quedado fuera de la realidad. Por tanto la continuidad del planeamiento es un cambio radical imperativo.

• El planeamiento es una actividad integrada: de ser un ejercicio teórico debe pasar a integrarse en un sistema de gestión territorial complejo. Maruja establece los procesos administrativos como fuentes regulares de información y la necesidad de su automatización.

• El planeamiento es un mecanismo de redistribución de enorme importancia social en el que la participación pública es esencial.

El planeamiento lo concibe Maruja como un mecanismo de control que recibe constantemente información del estado real del sistema y del estado deseable intentando en todo momento ajustar uno al otro definiendo los cursos de acción adecuados en forma de planes o proyectos.

Es increíble que en esa fecha los problemas ya estuvieran tan bien definidos. Han pasado 35 años y no se puede decir que el planeamiento digital sea una realidad. Si con los medios tecnológicos que había en 1977 la ambición era la demostrada por Maruja, con los medios que tenemos hoy en día, hay que decir que nuestra ambición esta bastante descafeinada.

Así que pongamos sobre la mesa algunos de los problemas y que soluciones posibles existen:

Problemas tecnológicos:

• No hay problemas tecnológicos: todos los requisitos objetivos para disponer de planeamiento completamente digital pueden ser resueltos eficazmente por la tecnología actual.

• Sólo hay una condición: el planeamiento continuo, que Maruja propugnaba en 1977, exige contemplar los planes como instrumentos que están al servicio de la Ordenación. Los planes no son la Ordenación, son los vehículos que sirven a la Ordenación. Lo que pasa es que la Ordenación construida con planes de papel es inmanejable. Pero si los instrumentos son digitales y están construidos como transacciones que actualizan la Ordenación, entonces es viable obtener una Ordenación vigente digital producto del refundido de todos los instrumentos aprobados.

• Y como corolario, si los planes se deben construir como transacciones no pueden ser documentos pdf o conjuntos de ficheros de distinta naturaleza mas o menos integrados. Los planes deben ser documentos xml y gml en formatos firmados electrónicamente que contengan datos estructurados susceptibles de integrarse en un sistema de información.

Problemas de técnica urbanística:

• El proceso de sistematización del planeamiento no puede modificar la técnica urbanística. La técnica es la que es, con todas sus complejidades, sus ventajas y sus inconvenientes. La informática no tiene por objeto simplificar los planes, tiene por objeto simplificar la producción y el acceso a los planes y aumentar su calidad intrínseca. Por ello debe conseguir un sistema neutro que contenga sin pérdida toda la Ordenación vigente bajo cualquier legislación.

• Es deseable que la información y estructura de los planes esté sujeta a un cierto grado de «normalización». Que ponga en común conceptos y parámetros urbanísticos estándar y disponga de una «paleta» de ordenaciones o modelos urbanos también estándar. Sin menoscabo de que permita las soluciones específicas que deba haber, para resolver las peculiaridades de cada territorio o las manías de cada planificador o de la administración competente.

• Es preciso separar la información del modo de representación. La delimitación de los Sectores no se establece mediante una linea de trazos rojos. Se establece por una poligonal cerrada. Según el medio de publicación esa linea se podrá representar por trazos rojos o por cualquier otro medio, siempre que su significado sea inteligible para el observador .

• Es preciso también comprender que la normalización del planeamiento no comprende la definición de los documentos y formatos de planos a presentar sino de los conceptos urbanísticos a aplicar y de los criterios de segregación gráfica del territorio según el modelo previsto de desarrollo futuro.

Problemas jurídicos:

• Un punto del territorio puede estar afectado por el planeamiento municipal, el territorial, el sectorial  o por disposiciones transitorias legales y que existan contradicciones graves entre todas ellas sin un criterio claro de precedencia ni de trasposición y actualización mutuas. Este es un lío grave donde los distintos grados de precisión gráfica y alcance de cada nivel complican aún mas el problema.

• La vinculación jurídica de los planes reside en los sellos y firmas de sus documentos. No esta claro que los planes digitales en formatos estructurados puedan conservar su vinculación jurídica y que mucho menos una Ordenación vigente construida por un sistema transaccional pueda heredar esta vinculación de los planes que han servido para construirla.

**Problemas administrativos: **

• La competencia urbanística esta distribuida entre el municipio y la comisión de urbanismo territorial de distinta forma según la región. Ello supone que la Ordenación, desde un punto de vista regional es una, y desde un punto de vista municipal es otra. Se suele atender al concepto de «estructural» para la información regional y «detallada» o «pormenorizada» para la municipal. Todo ello, desde mi punto de vista, bastante artificial y discutible. La Ordenación es la Ordenación, es decir todo lo determina el destino funcional del suelo. Pero con estas distinciones la confusión está abonada.

• A ello se añade que la Ordenación también se forma mediante decretos o sentencias que emanan del ámbito estatal o jurisprudencial y que no parecen factibles de conseguir como planes digitales transaccionales. Significa que la sentencia debe trasladarse, interpretarse o formularse como una transacción digital por un funcionario técnico competente mediante un proceso de interpretación, susceptible de desvirtuar su efecto.

Problemas de producción:

• Los planes son redactados por oficinas técnicas, en ocasiones por muchas oficinas distintas. Por eso yo hablo de planificación colaborativa. Y a esas oficinas hay que cambiarles la forma de hacer planes, porque deben dejar de utilizar CAD y Word para producir papel y empezar a utilizar herramientas específicas para diseñar planes digitales transaccionales. La experiencia de Extremadura o de Castilla y León dan fe de las enormes dificultades que conlleva gestionar este cambio.

• Los planes se redactan por cada técnico según su propia cultura urbanística, matizada por la legislación vigente. Ello conduce a planes heterogéneos, confusos, plagados de errores, con conceptos urbanísticos propios, con lenguajes de representación específicos y con la táctica de que «el papel lo aguanta todo». Ya no solo es preciso modificar sus herramientas sino que también es preciso normalizar su producto.

En próximos post veremos algunas de las soluciones que Arnaiz Consultores propugna para resolver estos y otros problemas relacionados con el urbanismo digital.

Ignacio Arnaiz Eguren

Director de Innovación – Arnaiz Consultores SL

Es interesante visitar www.urbanismoenred.es

In this document (if somebody is interested I can upload it) Maruja establishes some principles:

• Urban planning is a continuous activity: it is subject to permanent changes. However, its lack of efficiency is usual because it can be in contact with a situation at a given time and immediately afterwards it gives it up generally to discover in the next contact that all forecasts made have become unrealistic. Therefore, the continuity of urban planning is a radical and imperative change.

• Urban planning is an integrated activity: from being a theoretical exercise it has to become to be integrated in a complex territorial management system. Maruja establishes administrative processes as regular information sources and also the need for its automation.

• Urban planning is a redistribution mechanism of great social importance in which public participation is essential.

Maruja conceives urban planning as a control mechanism which constantly receives information from the actual information of the system and from the desirable situation of the system, always trying to adjust one to the other, defining the adequate courses of action in the form of plans and projects.

It is incredible that at that time problems where already so well defined. Over 35 years have passed and we still cannot say that digital urban planning is a reality. If with the technological means available in 1977 the ambition was the one demonstrated by Maruja, with the current technological means we have to say that our ambition is quite diluted.

Let’s state some problems and its possible existing solutions:

Technological problems:

• There are no technological problems: all the objective requisites to have completely digital urban planning can be achieved efficiently by the current technology.

• There is only one condition: the continuous urban planning that Maruja defended in 1977 requires the contemplation of maps as instruments that are at the service of the spatial planning. Plans are not the spatial planning; they are vehicles which serve the spatial planning. What happens is that the spatial planning built with plans on paper is unmanageable. However, if the instruments are digital and are built like transactions which update the spatial planning; then, it is feasible to obtain a digital spatial planning in force from the review of all the approved instruments.

• And as corollary, if plans must be built as transactions, they cannot be pdf documents or sets of files of a different nature, more or less integrated. Plans must be xml and gml electronically signed documents.  In addition, they must contain structured data capable of fitting into an information system.

Urban planning problems:

• The process of urban planning systematization cannot modify the urban planning skill. The skill is always de same, with all its complexities, its advantages and disadvantages. Computer science’s objective is not to simplify plans; its target is to simplify the production and access to the plans, as well as to increase its intrinsic quality. That is why it has to be able to constitute a neutral system which contains the whole spatial planning in force under any legislation.

• It is desirable that the information and structure of plans is subject to a certain degree of “standardization”. This standardization must share standard planning concepts and parameters and must have several spatial plans or urban models also standard. It should favor the implementation of specific solutions necessary to solve the peculiarities of each territory or the oddities of each planner or competent authority.

• It is necessary to separate the information from the mode of representation. Delimitation of sectors is not established by a red dotted line. It is established by a closed polygonal line. According to the form of publication, that line can be represented by red dotted lines or by any other means, as long as its meaning is understandable for the observer.**

**

• It is also necessary to understand that urban planning standardization does not take into consideration the definition of documents and formats of plans. On the contrary, it takes planning concepts and criteria of graphic segregation of the land into account according to the model envisaged for the future.

** Legal problems:**

• A point of the territory might be affected by local planning, territorial planning, sectoral planning and by legal transitional dispositions. There may be serious contradictions among all of them and there is not any order which establishes which one to follow first; moreover, there is not mutual transposition or mutual updating either. This creates great confusion and moreover the different degrees of graphical accuracy and range of each level make the problem even more complicated.

• The legal commitment of plans lies in the official stamp and in the signature of its documents. It is unclear that digital plans in structured formats can keep their legal commitment. What it is also unclear is that a current spatial plan built by a transactional system can inherit that commitment from the plans which have been used to build it.

Administrative problems:

• Urban planning competency is distributed between the municipality and the Commission for territorial urban planning depending on the region. This supposes that the spatial planning, from a regional point of view is one and from a local point of view, it is another one. In general, the concept of “structural” is used for the regional information and the concept of “detailed” for the local one. Everything, from my point of view, quite artificial and arguable. The spatial planning is the spatial planning; therefore, it is everything which determines the functional purpose of the land.  Nevertheless, with these distinctions, confusion is assured.

• To this, we have to add that the spatial planning is also formed by decrees or judgments which emanate from the state level or from the field of jurisprudence and that do not seem feasible to obtain as transactional digital plans. This means that the judgment must be transferred, interpreted and formulated as a digital transaction by a competent technical officer through a process of interpretation susceptible of counteracting its effect.

Production problems:

• Plans are written by technical offices, sometimes by many different offices. That is why I talk about collaborative planning. And these offices have to change the way of making plans, because they must stop using CAD and Word to produce paper and start using specific tools to design transactional digital plans. The experience of Extremadura and Castilla y León testifies to the huge difficulties that the management of this change implies.

• Plans are written by each officer regarding his own planning culture, tinged with the legislation in force. This leads to plans which are heterogeneous, confusing and full of mistakes and which have their own planning concepts, their specific languages of representation and the tactic that “paper can put up with everything”. Nowadays, it is not only necessary to modify the tools used, but also to standardize the product.

We will see in the coming posts some solutions suggested by Arnaiz Consultores

Ciudad colaborativa

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Ignacio Arnaiz

Arnaiz Urbimática

Internet ha proporcionado un modo nuevo de construir conocimiento y compartir información entre las personas. Hay algunos ejemplos significativos:

• El desarrollo de software mediante las comunidades de open source ha creado sistemas sofisticados que han sido aceptados mayoritariamente por la industria, Linux es desde luego su mejor exponente, pero hay innumerables ejemplos menos conocidos y no por ello menos importantes.

• La construcción de enciclopedias, de repositorios de conocimiento, es una actividad que casi ha eliminado del mercado a la enciclopedia tradicional, incapaz de mantener el ritmo de actualización que le marcan centenares de miles de personas colaborando en mantener una wikipedia o proyectos similares.

• Incluso en ámbitos tan especializados como los mapas, OpenStreetMap es un excelente ejemplo, las comunidades de usuarios están suplantando eficazmente a los organismos geográficos creando información geográfica utilizable.

Son sólo tres ejemplos de un universo de colaboración que se llama de muchas formas: coworking, crowsourcing, crowfunding, geonetwork, que se extiende viralmente y que acelerará, sin duda, la velocidad a la que se genera y comparte el conocimiento.

La ciudad, como ámbito de vida y de relación, no se puede escapar a esta ola de cambio. Es más, debe pasar a ser el ámbito principal donde este fenómeno se materialice. A su favor tiene que Internet es una herramienta fundamental porque elimina las distancias, pero también ha puesto en valor a la ciudad precisamente por lo contrario: porque permite la relación directa y personal. Las ciudades son el punto de encuentro, los atractores que cristalizan el contacto personal y la colaboración. Este será un factor nuevo en la competencia de las ciudades por brillar como focos de cultura e innovación.

Para conseguirlo son necesarias dos acciones:

1. Diseñar métodos, lugares y medios donde la ciudad se exponga como centro de esta nueva cultura de colaboración:

• Centros de Innovación y creatividad

• Centros de convivencia y coworking

• Laboratorios de vida (Living Labs)

• Planificación colaborativa: agentes de toda clase participan en el diseño de la ciudad para poder sincronizar los ritmos de cambio social con los ritmos de cambio urbano

• Regeneración y crecimiento urbano colaborativo: nuevos barrios sostenibles

• Colaboración público-privada: la ciudad es cosa de todos

2. Dar personalidad a la ciudad como ente inteligente, creando también nuevas formas de relación entre los seres humanos y la ciudad y de los propios elementos de la ciudad entre sí, porque la asignación de conocimiento y capacidad de comunicación a las cosas que forman la ciudad ya se ha iniciado y abrirá un mundo inmenso de posibilidades de interacción y de relación. Para todos nosotros la ciudad solo es un soporte material donde vivimos, trabajamos o disfrutamos de nuestro ocio. Podemos desarrollar una relación sentimental con ella o con ciertos lugares que en nuestra imaginación la representan. Pero nuestro conocimiento de la ciudad es el producto de la enseñanza y de nuestra propia percepción. La ciudad no dialoga directamente con nosotros porque no existe como entidad. En todo caso lo hace indirectamente mediante señales, paneles o carteles que el administrador de la ciudad utiliza como guía para sus ciudadanos.

El cambio real vendrá cuando podamos establecer un diálogo con la ciudad, o con sus partes componentes, porque la ciudad haya pasado a ser un organismo sensible capaz de tomar decisiones y actuar, en virtud de un proceso de distribución, entre todos sus componentes, de inteligencia y de capacidad de computación.

Una ciudad como Madrid es un enorme puzzle de millones de piezas individualizables -he calculado que más de veinte millones- que se configuran como espacios tridimensionales asignables a una función concreta: habitaciones o piezas de un edificio, edificios completos, parcelas, aceras, calzadas, intersecciones, pasos de peatones, vados, aparcamientos, jardines, conductos de infraestructura, instalaciones, vehículos, personas..

La inteligencia de la ciudad como un ente será una propiedad emergente de la inteligencia combinada e interactiva de los millones de elementos que la forman. En ese momento los ciudadanos serán socios de su ciudad y se habrá alcanzado el sueño de una ciudad colaborativa. Ignacio Arnaiz Eguren  Director de Innovación – Arnaiz Consultores Bibliografia http://www.enhr2007rotterdam.nl/documents/W21_paper_Barendse_Duerink_Govaart.pdf

http://www.springer.com/earth+sciences+and+geography/geography/book/978-4-431-99263-9

https://springerlink3.metapress.com/content/t0m5h1q538350282/resource-secured/?target=fulltext.pdf&sid=t4iwiep5ijdjuzxyk2olvwlt&sh=www.springerlink.com

Collaborative City

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Ignacio Arnaiz

Arnaiz Urbimática

Internet has provided a new method for acquiring knowledge and sharing information among people. There are some important examples:

• Software development in open source communities has created sophisticated systems having been mainly implemented in industrial sectors –Linux is one of the major examples, but there are numerous less well-known examples which are not less important.

• Encyclopaedia and knowledge repository creation is an activity having almost removed the traditional encyclopaedia from the market, that cannot be updated as quick as other projects are by hundreds of thousands of people contributing on the maintenance of Wikipedia or similar projects.

• Including specialized fields like mapping, OpenStreetMap, where user communities are efficiently replacing geographic entities, generating usable geographic information, represents a superb example.

These are just three examples of a collaboration universe indistinctly called –coworking, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, geonetwork… spreading out like a virus, it will speed up the way knowledge pieces are created and shared.

The city, as a living and interacting entity is also the subject of this wave of change. Indeed, it may become the essential element putting this idea into effect. For that purpose, Internet can be useful, as a basic remote tool, but also enhances direct and personal relationships, highlighting city role in this way.  Cities are meeting points, a magnet making personal contact and collaboration possible. This will be considered a new factor when developing top city culture and innovation services.

In order to achieve that, two actions are required:

1)       To devise methods, places and means allowing the city to develop this new collaboration culture:

• Innovation and creativity centers

• Coexistence and co-working centers

• Living Labs

• Collaborative Planning –all sorts of agents participate in urban design to synchronize social change patterns with urban change patterns.

• Collaborative urban regeneration and expansion –new sustainable neighborhoods

• Public-privet partnerships –city is about everyone

2)      City should possess its own character as an intelligent entity, establishing new kinds of relationships between citizens and the city, as well as among all the components of the city. Providing city-integrated elements with knowledge and communication ability will open up –it has been already– a new world of possibilities for interaction and relationships.

We may consider the city as a material support in order for us to live, work or simply enjoy our free time, building an intimate relationship with it or any particular place representing it. However, our city knowledge is the product of our education and own perception. The city cannot talk to us, as it is not a real entity –in any case, it will do it indirectly by signals, panels and posters used by city manager as a guide for its users.

The real change will take place at the moment we will be able to engage with the city or any of its components, since the city will have become a responding entity making decisions and performing, in virtue of a distribution and intelligent process and a computing capacity among all its components.

A city like Madrid represents a giant puzzle of thousands of identifiable pieces –I have estimated more than 20 millions, configured as tridimensional spaces to which a particular function is assigned: rooms in a building, entire buildings, plots, pavements, roads, intersections, crosswalks, entrances, car-parks, gardens, infrastructure supply lines, facilities, vehicles, pedestrians…

City intelligence as an intelligent entity will be an emerging feature of the millions of its components. At that stage, citizens will be interacting in partnership with their city and the dream of a collaborative city will come true.

Ignacio Arnaiz Eguren  Innovation Executive – Arnaiz Consultores Bibliography

http://www.enhr2007rotterdam.nl/documents/W21_paper_Barendse_Duerink_Govaart.pdf

http://www.springer.com/earth+sciences+and+geography/geography/book/978-4-431-99263-9

https://springerlink3.metapress.com/content/t0m5h1q538350282/resource-secured/?target=fulltext.pdf&sid=t4iwiep5ijdjuzxyk2olvwlt&sh=www.springerlink.com

Location services, an emerging technology

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Ignacio Arnaiz

Arnaiz Urbimática

A few years ago, when there was no way of getting the position of an object on the terrestrial space except with leveling instruments, a geodesic network or and numerous surveys, maps were valuable data, incredibly expensive, been updated after years or decades.

When army aerial photography became an affordable commercial product, that situation changed and an army of land surveyors armed with chains and levels was not needed to be sent any more, but they would rather paint –and still painting excellent maps by a plotter in their office, tracing every visible object on the pictures.

However, flying, making pictures and manually retracing all color and height changes in every picture, and identifying every visible object are not cheap. It is difficult, some clouds, shadows, big trees or soaring slopes may not make it easy. High amounts of money have been spent in trying to automate map production from aerial aircraft or satellite pictures by automatically comparing pictures using sophisticated algorithms… It is clear the result is nothing to shout about. We are still a long way off a map to be automatically made out of a couple of stereotypical pictures.

Assuming it will be useful in the future –as some technical experts do currently rather consider the ortophoto projected on 3-D Lidar model, instead of an interpreted map –LIDAR model is built by a laser radar on an aircraft getting a tridimensional image of the terrain by making millions of field measurements through terrain probes.

Indeed, there are GPS, letting you know the position of an object through a mechanism that used to be luggage-sized with a dish antenna and it is now used in automotive navigation systems, doing sophisticated calculations on routes from street and road maps. They have been finally integrated in all cells and cameras and they can also receive maps through 3G connections from worldwide geographical servers. Amazing, right?

The navigation systems and the navigation system-integrated cells have certainly had a great success, although it also means our navigation systems informs a data provider of its position, i.e. our position, by GPS or triangulation with neighboring telephone antennas (NBL Network Based Location.) That provider can also inform third parties of that information. Well, the system the provider uses in order to know the position of mobile devices is called Location Based Services (LBS).

LBS is composed of two parts –one receiving position on each device, stored in a continuously update database and another part processing user requirements, aimed at reaching one or some devices. All the new capabilities in order to find friends or businesses providing services near you are supported by Location Services.

It is worth reading Wikipedia article on them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location-based_service or on http://lbspro.com/?q=que-son-servicios-localizacion-LBS (in Spanish)

Location Services offer new future valuable possibilities, but they also represent serious personal privacy-related problems to be discussed.

In my opinion, their essential point is making maps dynamic, i.e. a map will not just contain static objects arising from periodical shots by remote sensors, but they inform about dynamic elements whose position is constantly changing. Indeed, understanding TomTom services is interesting http://www.tomtom.com/en_us/maps/tomtom-maps/, as well as Google’s http://google-latlong.blogspot.com.es/2011/07/live-traffic-information-for-13.html

On that basis, a high number of solutions spread out:

• Indoor Location Services are expanding now, and they begin to be implemented in guiding customer throughout shopping malls and users in big buildings.

• If Location Services are not just integrated in mobile devices and they are also used on all components in the city, they will thus create dynamic maps providing real urban situations at any time, so customer’s needs and user’s expectations will be certainly satisfied by these Location Services.

• Future LBS should execute new tasks. They will not just provide you with a particular position coordinate, but they will also provide object 2D or 3D models based on a service location protocol with the elements and devices on which they are installed.

• Furthermore, LBS will be present in the public sphere, as territorial administrative competence will be submitted to any competence establishing if an object is authorized or not to be identified by LBS.

• Future LBS will be hierarchically managed, i.e. responding to the spatial structure of the territory –a hierarchy concerning urban areas, from living parts in a building to city elements, exists; all of them should be managed through intelligent systems controlled by their own location services.

On upcoming posts, we will start thinking about how to take advantage of LBS, but also how to avoid LBS!

Ignacio Arnaiz Eguren

Director de Innovación – Arnaiz Consultores SL – [email protected]

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