Tuesday Morning (July 27, 2010 – 9:00am – 12:00pm)

Maps for the Masses
Aaron Koning & Dave Campanas (Safe Software)
Room 1200
The introduction of engaging spatial applications like Google Earth and Bing Maps have inspired a new group of users, traditionally seen as non-GIS, non-CAD users, with the desire to easily browse and understand spatial data - often in real-time. Yet a complex problem still remains: how to convert and restructure enormous datasets so that they can be efficiently accessed by these user-friendly spatial applications. This interactive workshop explores how spatial ETL work flows can be used to enable access to datasets in a method that is easy and quick for anyone to use. Participants will learn practical ways to convert their spatial datasets into a range of formats, including KML, GeoRSS and PDF. We’ll also explore how spatial ETL can be used to distribute or stream data to popular applications like Google Earth, Google Maps, Bing Maps, Acrobat Reader and more. Through a series of examples and exercises, participants will learn practical ways to turn data into maps that the masses can use and understand.

Leveraging the GIS Server Platform
Jeff Archer (ESRI)
Room 1300
The landscape of GIS technology has greatly expanded in recent years. Most of this expansion has been on the web, and has resulted in some revolutionary new conduits for GIS data. A common phrase in our industry for technology that shares geospatial data and functionality over the web is GIS Server. This workshop will be focused on building and using applications that can consume the services hosted by GIS Servers. Come see how easy it is to use common programming languages to quickly build advanced spatial analysis applications using geospatial web services. This workshop will focus on discovering, using, and combining geospatial resources - basemaps, authoritative data, and even your own data - in hands-on exercises to create new and unique applications. Bring your laptop and learn how easy it is to build these applications, understand the technology that powers them, and see examples of GIS Servers bringing high-end GIS analysis to the Web.

Emergency Management Information Exchange Standards
Instructor: Andrew Louis (Galdos Systems Inc.) & Michel Savoie (Public Safety Canada)
Room 1500
Description: Emergency responders and government decision-makers require real-time access to relevant and accurate information in order to exercise their responsibilities. The ability to efficiently manage emergency events requires collaboration between multi-jurisdictional partners with expertise in many different domains. This task depends heavily on the sharing of mission critical data between agencies and across jurisdictional boundaries. While there are significant challenges to achieving data interoperability, multiple efforts are being pursued by federal and local agencies to design and implement advanced information sharing technology and data standards. This workshop will provide participants with an overview of Emergency Management messaging standards (e.g. NIEM, CAP, and EDXL), how they can be combined, and how they are currently being used.

Everything you Always Wanted to Know about KML, but were Afraid to Ask
Bent Hagemark (Google)
CN Strategy Room 2800
This workshop takes a complete tour of KML and its history, including especially how KML works with other web standards. A broad range of products for creating, hosting, managing, and viewing KML will be discussed and demonstrated. Bring your hardest geographic display problems and largest data sets and learn how to best publish this to the most people in the most places on the most number of devices.

Tuesday Afternoon (July 27, 2010 – 1:30pm – 4:30pm)

Interoperability through Support for Standards
Satish Sankaran & Yingqi Tang (ESRI)
Room 1200
Standards are important for achieving interoperability. There are GIS domain standards from OGC, there are foundational standards from ISO and there are infrastructure standards from organization like W3C, IETF and OASIS. To disseminate geospatial resources, many of the standards from these organizations need to be brought together to create a viable services based solution for providing GIS resources within a service oriented architecture. This workshop will delve into some of the dominant OGC web service standards and present various examples for utilizing these services. For demonstration purposes, this workshop will use ArcGIS server technology as a provider of these OGC services and a variety of clients will be utilized to showcase interoperability.

The workshop will address the broad category of “ geospatial interoperability” . While OGC services provide a comprehensive set of protocols, various other technologies like REST and SOAP will also be explored. The goal of this workshop is to expose the attendees to a wide variety of standards as well as practical “of the shelf” solutions that they can leverage to build truly interoperable systems.

A Look at Use Cases and Systems for Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI)
Jeff Archer (ESRI)
Room 1300
Currently, major obstacles such as economic viability, difficulty of terrain, and geo-political constraints can make it difficult for vendors or governments to generate accurate, authoritative data around the globe. There are large gaps in coverage, to be sure. In most cases, the cost of acquiring new and accurate data specific to fill these gaps is prohibitive. Using Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), the engaged community can step in to clear these obstacles and make this data available in a way that is very high quality and viable for a number of important uses. VGI - commonly referred to a crowdsourcing - has opened new doors in the creation and management of geospatial data. In many cases, a motivated and involved community can produce astoundingly accurate data for areas where it does not currently exist .In this workshop, we will investigate several use cases where data was created through VGI for areas that lacked the incentive to create such data otherwise. Recent advances in technology are making VGI a new part of the geospatial mainstream with a bright future. We’ll also look at this new technology and how it can make VGI an important part of any geospatial project.

Going Mobile with Google Geo APIs
Mano Marks (Google)
Room 1500
Mobile mapping presents unique challenges to developers. Screen size, disparate platforms, different means of interacting with the devices, all these factors mean rethinking your approach to map development. However, the growth of smart phone technologies running powerful browsers, support for HTML 5 and JavaScript, and many other features, has changed the landscape of mobile development. And Google has responded by creating releasing technologies that it quick, inexpensive, and easy to bring maps to a range of mobile devices. In this workshop, we will discuss the various mobile options available to you as a developer using Google’s Geo APIs. In particular, we’ll talk about: 1) Integrating with your own applications; 2) Using services native to your device; 3) Performance and user interface considerations; 4) How to decrease bandwidth and latency issues; 5) Business considerations of different approaches to application development; 6) Cross platform issues. The first half of the workshop will be in a presentation format. The second half will be hands on. Participants who choose to code will be able to leave the workshop with a map that works on mobile devices.

City GML
Michael Weisman & Dave Campanas (Safe Software), Volker Coors (Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences), & Carsten Rönsdorf (Ordnance Survey)
CN Strategy Room 2800
CityGML enables rich 3D applications like simulations, facility management, advanced urban planning or emergency response in urban environments. It is an open standard maintained by the Open Geospatial Consortium and is a key vehicle to lift mapping data into the Geoweb. Based on a set of thematic modules such as buildings, vegetation or transportation, users can easily create their own customized application schemas and exchange data between different applications.

This workshops gives an introduction into the powerful capabilities of CityGML utilising numerous real examples and data for 3D urban objects. It will also be shown how a simple extension of CityGML (called an Application Domain Extension) can be created to include additional user requirements. Quality assurance of 3D models including geometry checking and an automated correction procedure will be demonstrated. Using CityServer3D as a database management system, an end to end work flow will be shown.

During the practical part of this workshop participants will work hands-on with Safe Software’s FME software to understand, read, write and convert CityGML data in order to explore CityGML’s capability as a data exchange format.