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| More than just a 'MAP' |
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| Tuesday, 27 October 1998 00:00 | ||||||||
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Source: In-Tech, The Star (page 11) The Asian geographic information systems (GIS) market is the fastest growing GIS market in the world, according to Selangor Menteri Besar, Datuk Abu Hassan Omar.A GIS is essentially a digitised map; users can click on any feature or area on the map to call up relevant information from a database. It is used for city planning, infrastructure planning and maintenance, utilities planning and management, as well as natural resource, forestry and agricultural monitoring and management. "GIS can help minimise the adverse impact of development on the environment without affecting economic growth," Dr Abu Hassan said at the opening of the 4th Annual GIS Asia Pacific Conference and Exhibition held in Petaling Jaya on Oct 13-16. A total of 80 local and foreign delegates attended the conference. About 18 local and foreign companies exhibited their GIS software and solutions, GIS and mapping related hardware, equipment and services. GIS for cops Among them was Austria's Progis, which launched a new version of its WinGIS product, which now has the ability to integrate with Global Positioning Systems (GPS). According to Freddie Grossmayer, vice-president of Progis Asia, said that pilot trials of a GPS-enabled WinGIS have been used to manage fleets of police cars in Portugal and the movement of tractors on farms in France, Austria and Germany. "While there are no applications in Asia as yet, we expect one of the first users will be the police," he said. Also new to WinGIS 3.4 is support for Active X controls, which would allow an object-oriented application to drive GIS functions written in Delphi, PowerBuilder and Visual Basic. Launched about a month ago, WinGIS Isomodul version 2 features the ability to draw a profile of terrain along a straight line between two points on a map, such as between two cities. "Such a feature is useful for analysing landfill requirements, seabed analysis or flight path of planes," Grossmayer said. Local Progis distributor Rank Tower Sdn Bhd has sold WinGIS solutions to three local clients. Educating town councils Aileen Chan, business development manager of McCalis Solutions Sdn Bhd, said she has visited many city and town councils worldwide, and claims that they lack an understanding of the full potential of GIS. McCalis Solutions is the local distributor of the Windows-based ILWIS (Integrated Land and Water Information System) solution, develop by the Netherlands International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences. "With GIS, councils can also do 'what-if' analyses of the impact height of a building will have on traffic and other problems on the ground," Chan said. "With a truly comprehensive GIS, using currently available relevant data, councils can even know the number and colour of dogs in a certain household, and people can see who their neighbours are from their desktop," she said. However, Chan said that many GIS vendors don't inform their clients of the processes required in creating even a simple system. Thus, councils tend to think that just because they have a digital map, they have a GIS. "They don't realise that it requires relevant data which has to be collected and input into the system before they can have a functional GIS," she said. The object-oriented ILWIS provides a tool for collecting, storing, analysing, transforming and presenting data. It can generate and model spatial and temporal patterns and processes. It also comes with an extensive set of documentation about the basics of GIS and image processing and their application in many fields, including land evaluation, urban analysis, natural hazards, environmental management, risk assessment and map production. Local GIS consultant Digital Wizards Sdn Bhd (DigiWhiz) showcased a new GIS-based, pro-active database management solution which intelligently alerts decision makers about actions to take, based upon time or events. "For example, a pro-active database used for tax collection can alert managers in advance when deadline for receiving tax returns approaches, and it can print out reminders," said DigiWhiz chief executive officer S.Sivaji. "Proactive management can also be integrated into a variety of management information and decision support systems," he said. DigiWhiz's main products include monitoring and information systems for highway management, vehicle tracking, automated client locater for courier companies, petroleum geological information processing, mining and estate management. According to Sivaji, most local products are from the government sector, since 80% of government data is spatial. DigiWhiz's solutions are based upon the integration of applications written in a variety of popular languages, GIS software and databases. The company also provides GIS training for an organisation's professional and technical personnel. Apart from GIS, DigiWhiz also provides MIS, operational information systems, remote sensing, geographical information technologies, global positioning systems (GPS), computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) systems. Tabs on phone lines Local Intergraph distributor Antaragrafik Systems Sdn Bhd showcased the recently launched Geomedia range of GIS software from US-based Intergraph Corp. Antaragrafik customises Geomedia to suite local customers needs. Its clients include Petronas, which uses it for plant design; the Land and Survey Department as a GIS; and Telekom Malaysia, which uses it for automated mapping and facilities management. "Telekom Malaysia's system has a map of each user's address and can identify the office or home to which each line runs, and to track line availability, " said Intergraph account development manager Shahiran Jaafar. The Windows-based Geomedia modules include Geomedia Professional, which can be used for data capture, automation and maintainance of data in popular graphic file formats. It also supports enterprise data management, spatial analysis and map production, and allows for customisation using a variety of Windows-based tools including Powersoft Powerbuilder, Microsoft Excel, Visual Basic and Visual C++. Geomedia Network is a module for analysing transportation and logistics networks; while Geomedia Web Map allows users with a Windows-based browser to obtain graphic and textual information on a particular part of a "smartmap" from various sources over an intranet or the Internet. Intranet GIS Systems integrator Sepakat GIS I-Net Sdn Bhd has integrated the Internet-enabled ArcView GIS 3.0 image analysis software by the Environment Solutions Research Institute (ESRI) to provide solutions which enable users to view data from the Geological Survey Department over an intranet. The system links digital maps to spatial data and allow users to call up information on points on a map from a database. "For example a user can click on a road or railway to call up relevant data," said Hon Mun Wah, Sepakat GIS Internet solutions manager. "The system will enable geological data to be shared over the Internet by departments such as the Geological Survey Department, the Drainage and Irrigation Department, Forestry Department, Department of Agriculture and Department of Land and Mines," Hon said. Sepakat GIS integrated ESRI GIS, Netscape Web Server and used the Cold Fusion rapid development tool to enable information from databases to be put on the Internet. "We also hope to enable different departments to buy maps from each other and 'contra off' the costs," Hon said. Sepakat GIS also launched the Orbcomm Data Communicator, which supports two-way communication via Orbcomm's 36 low earth orbit (LEO) satellites. "The Data Communicator can be fixed to pipelines to enable a control centre to monitor the fluid flow and send back signals to regulate the flow. It can also be fixed to containers to enable remote monitoring and control of its internal environment wherever the container is," Hons said. Orbcomm is a joint venture between the US-based Orbital Sciences Corp, Canada's Teleglobe Inc and Technology Resources Industries Bhd of Malaysia. Orbcomm is locally represented by Celcom Sdn Bhd. Selling regional FJ Edar Sdn Bhd is the sole distributor of ENVI (Environment for Visualising Images) and the IDL (Interactive Data Language) fourth generation language. It said it plans to market ENVI throughout the Asean region. "ENVI sales are currently controlled from Singapore, but we are planning to distribute it Asean-wide from Malaysia," said FJ Edar executive officer Nurishah Mohd Nadzir. FJ Edar started marketing it one year ago, and now has over 20 local customers. The product runs on Windows 95, Windows NT or Unix. Developed by Colorado-based Research Systems Inc, ENVI enables scientists to process, analyse and display remote sensing data. So far, we have sold ENVI to the National Centre for Remote Sensing, Universiti Telekom, Universiti Putra Malaysia and the Geological Survey Department," Nurishah said. Piezo printers Eastern Systems Design (M) Sdn Bhd announced the availability of 42-inch and 54-inch models of NS Calcomp Corp's CrystalJet 7042 and 7054 wide-format colour inkjet printers. CrystralJet printers use a piezo-electric printhead technology which prints up to 720 dpi in colour, compared to 360dpi for Calcomp's earlier models. Both models incorporate a 133MHz Pentium chip, 48MB (or 64MB) of RAM, 2.5GB of hard disk capacity and a touch screen. Due to be locally available on Nov 1, the 7042 and 7054 cost RM107,000 and RM147,000 respectively. GIS data provider Geomatics Data Services Sdn Bhd (GDS) provides data for GIS developers as well as 'orthophotos' - aerial photos which can be built up into a map of a city. GDS also provide land surveying, hydrography and aerial photography services. According to the company, 1:10,000 scale orthophoto of Kuala Lumpur costs around RM10,000, but since aerial photos are restricted items, one must get security clearance from the Special Branch and the Army before you can acquire them. The company also obtains satellite images from around the world and assembles the images into a composite mosaic for its clients. GDS also introduced a Hiei Photo System aerial photo, jointly manufactured by Osaka Optical Ltd and Tomtecs AG Corp of Japan.
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