Singapore: After thought provoking plenary sessions on the day one, the crowds at Map Asia 2009 had a wide choice to listen on a topic that interests them most today. One of the choices was Location Intelligence. A packed hall, eloquent speakers and an inquisitive audience made it all the more lively.

The first speaker in the session was Stanley Ng, CEO MapKing. After a short brief on the activities of MapKing in the countries it serves - ASEAN countries, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan – Ng the challenges associated with the uptake of navigation technologies in these countries. Affordability is an issue, according to Ng, as many ASEAN countries are still developing. On the same count, limited channels, limited 3G, higher costs and limited government support post the challenge.

Listing out major projects taken up by MapKing, Ng said the reason for its successful penetration in these countries is that they could develop local content, rope in local partners and bringing in Asian context in providing better services. Stressing the community participation in data collection, Ng exhorted that connected community will be the future of LBS industry.

Giving an illustration of how Singapore government is facilitating private sector innovation in GIS space, Lo Young Khong from Infocom Development Authority of Singapore acknowledged that more and more people are getting connected and participative in Singapore. Initiatives like Wireless@SG have brought in revolutionary changes in the digital era. To catch up with the demands of the public, it gets imperative for the government to be more open and seek suggestion in terms of content, standards and services. In this direction, he said the government has invited ideas from the private sector. It is evaluating the ideas and by early next year, government will be able to offer some of the services.

He said questions of whether data should be made available for free or at a cost are up for discussion. The initiative also discusses data contribution, data accessibility and how to make it a sustainable business model.

Talking on how time-sensitive and dynamic content can bring value to LBS consumers, Arnout Desmet, Director-Operations, APAC, Tele Atlas, said the significance of community as a source of content is enormous. He opined that the dynamic involvement of the community will help create a better user experience and enable expanded coverage. At the same time, dynamic content like points of interest, visual aides, relevant content and consistent coverage are all quite important for the consumer.

He concluded saying that community generated inputs, provided they can be structured and validated, is a useful resource not only to facilitate and improve accuracy but can also facilitate innovate services.

Roderick Ross, Business and Partner Development – Integeo, Australia, discussed how OGC standards can be used to link business intelligence and spatial analysis for a better output.

Though his presentation, he explored the use of OGC standards in providing generic connection framework between reporting tools and geospatial systems. He also discussed the types of data that can be combined to support better program management, gap analysis and demographic analysis.

He introduced basic business intelligence (BI) tools which provide the ability to analyse non-spatial attributes in data and said that for better BI, we need to combine business data, GIS base maps and reference data. This essentially boils down to integrating business intelligence platforms with spatial integration server to arrive at the right decisions.

He then listed out how several departments which are not typically users of business intelligence - like fisheries, defence, police, lands, health, town planning, innovation, transport, communications are taking advantage of the integrated BI experience.

Source : By our special correspondent