June 22

Contents

Editor's Introduction

In this week's issue (which comes out late due to some travel complications I had), I report on the conclusion of the first act in the MAPPS lawsuit, GITA's decision to change the focus of its conferences, and, of course, the ESRI International User Conference. Plus, 22 press releases.

Last week, as you probably noticed, I accidentally re-used the previous week's introduction. Hopefully, you looked at the table of contents… In case you did not, here are the links to last week's articles:

• GIS for Archaeology
• The Atlas of Yellowstone.

From San Diego, California,

— Matteo Luccio

Judge Dismisses MAPPS Lawsuit

Late last week, a federal judge issued a long-awaited decision on the lawsuit brought by MAPPS against the federal government. The lawsuit was about the meaning of the Brooks Act regarding definitions of surveying and mapping, the extent to which federal contracting activities must follow Qualifications-Based Selection (QBS) rules, and whether the work must be performed under the responsible charge of a licensed professional. The judge ruled in favor of the government, finding that "plaintiffs lack the requisite standing to maintain this action" because individual surveyors or their firms did not suffer an "injury in fact."

The ruling, on procedural grounds, leaves most of the substantive issues unresolved and the door open to further litigation. Both sides believe that the game is not over. While the coalition that formed to oppose the lawsuit hails the ruling as a defeat for the plaintiffs, MAPPS' executive director, John Palatiello, also claims vindication in some of the judge's findings.

For background

• MAPPS' position
• the opponents' position
• March 1 update
• March 8 update

The ruling

Reactions to the ruling

MAPPS issued the following press release:

"In a decision based entirely on process, the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has ruled that MAPPS and its co-plaintiffs do not have standing to bring the question of whether the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) properly implement the Federal 'Brooks Act' and its application to a broad scope of surveying and mapping, as repeatedly prescribed by Congress on numerous occasions and under numerous provisions of enacted law. By ruling on process, the Court did not address the legal merits and policy issues of the case as presented by MAPPS and its co-plaintiffs, which means the question of QBS applicability to mapping is unresolved and leaves the door open to further litigation.

However, the Court did reaffirm the fact that where an applicable state licensing law requires performance by a licensed surveyor, a Federal agency must abide by that state law and use QBS on the contract. This is an important victory with regard to programs like the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP). MAPPS is also heartened by the fact that the court noted, 'the record unambiguously reflects that the provision of "mapping" services in the modern marketplace includes a much broader scope of work than the traditional mapping work of land surveyors.' MAPPS strongly agrees with this statement. It is the essence of the substance in the case. Moreover, the Court did not accept the claim of the amicus parties, that only licensed architects, engineers or surveyors would be able to do Federal mapping contract work if the Court ordered QBS. The Court's ruling reaffirms MAPPS contention that this was not an issue in the case.

The Court did not comment on the full legislative history, nor on the more than a dozen individual pieces of enacted legislation and Congressional legislative history in which Congress ordered QBS for mapping activities broadly defined, nor the various state law definitions of surveying that include mapping activities.

The game is not over. This action is tantamount to a balk being called in the top of the first inning. This is still a nine-inning game.

MAPPS remains committed to professionalism and the ability of our members and others to fully and openly compete for Federal contracts based on competence and qualifications, rather than on price. MAPPS remains committed to protecting the public health, welfare and safety. The MAPPS Board of Directors will continue to discuss this issue with the MAPPS membership, consult with legal counsel, deliberate with MAPPS partners in COFPAES, and consider the next course of action. The MAPPS Board is grateful for the support it has received from so many members, other associations, and stakeholders in the private sector and government, and looks forward to continuing to work with these parties on this important issue."

The Association of American Geographers (AAG), the GIS Certification Institute (GISCI), the Geospatial Information & Technology Association (GITA), the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS), and the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) issued the following press release, titled "Geography, GIS, and Mapping Communities Support Court Ruling in MAPPS Lawsuit; MAPPS v. US — MAPPS Loses Lawsuit":

"The U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, last week ruled against special interest groups seeking to strictly limit government contracting for mapping and GIS activities. In the matter of MAPPS, et al., v. United States of America, Judge T.S. Ellis III issued a summary judgment in favor of the government based on the MAPPS plaintiffs' failure to 'establish that an injury in fact was suffered by the individual surveyors or their firms.'

Several geographic and GIS organizations, including AAG, GISCI, GITA, UCGIS, and URISA joined together to support the government and oppose the MAPPS litigation through educational outreach and the development of an Amicus Brief to the Court on the case. The AAG has also established a Mapping and GIS Community Defense Fund to help defray the cost of legal fees and educational activities related to these issues (see www.aag.org).

The Management Association for Private Photogrammetric Surveyors (MAPPS) filed the lawsuit earlier this year seeking to limit competition for federal mapping contracts of nearly every type, including GIS services, to firms of licensed architects, engineers and surveyors.

'The federal court's rejection of the MAPPS lawsuit in this ruling will help ensure that all qualified professionals in the mapping and GIS communities can fairly compete for government contracts,' said Douglas Richardson, executive director of the AAG.

A ruling in favor of the MAPPS plaintiffs would have had far reaching negative impacts on cartographers, geographers, computer scientists, planners, foresters, GIS specialists, governmental agencies, GIS service companies, and many others who have long been creative, innovative, and productive forces in the mapping and GIS fields.

I asked John Palatiello and Bob Samborski, GITA's executive director, for their reactions to the ruling.

Yesterday, Palatiello told me:

"Obviously, we are disappointed in the court's ruling; however, we think that a lot of positive came out of it. Our attorneys are looking at the ruling and they will be advising us as to our options. The MAPPS board will evaluate those options and decide a course of action.

However, there are some things that the court did say that we find very helpful and very positive. Number one, the point that the amicus parties were making — that the litigation was about restricting all federal geospatial contracts solely to licensed architects, engineers, or surveyors — was not accepted by the court and nowhere in the decision did the court say that that was the case. So we feel enormously vindicated that that interpretation that was put forward by the other organizations, as we said all along, is not true and the court just did not buy it.

Number two, in the opinion, the court said that in those situations where the services being contracted for fall within the state law definition of a licensed profession, particularly surveying, the government agency has to honor the licensing law and has to use QBS. That is a victory for us. That statement is not in the April 19, 2005 notice that the government had in the federal register and the fact that that statement is now in the court opinion is a step forward. That says, for example, to the U.S. Department of Agriculture that they now have to use the Brooks Act on the NAIP contracts in those states where state law defines that work as surveying.

The court also said that mapping in today's market and technology is much more than what surveyors traditionally did in the past. We agree with that statement completely. That, we think, is the reason Congress acted and that's why we thought the regulation needed to be changed to reflect what Congress said, because Congress has recognized that mapping is more than it used to be. We are encouraged by that statement in the decision as well.

The ruling is not what we had hoped for, but for somebody to say, 'MAPPS lost,' period, end of sentence, that's not entirely true."

Yesterday, Samborski told me (if this statement sounds a little disjointed, blame it on my notes, not on Samborski's speaking style):

"I don't think it is over yet. We are waiting for the other shoe to drop.

We would have preferred a ruling on the merits rather than the issue of standing. This ruling leaves the door open. We are sure that [MAPPS is] actively pursuing finding an individual or organization that can claim to have suffered damage. That seems the natural legal progression. We have not seen the last of it yet. We will have to get used to seeing more about this in the industry news. We need to wait and see. We will have an appropriate time to respond legally. This lawsuit caused good communication between the various organizations. We had a meeting with URISA and GISCI yesterday."

GITA Changes Focus of Annual Conference

Ten years after changing its name to Geospatial Information & Technology Association and facing a steady decline in attendance at its annual conference, GITA has decided to re-name the event the "Geospatial Infrastructure Solutions Conference." This repositioning and shift in how GITA will brand and market the event better reflect "the broader scope and industry audiences that GITA's conference has accommodated over the years," according to the organization. The next conference will take place 2008 March 9-12, in Seattle, Washington.

According to GITA's executive director, Bob Samborski, his organization, which has always conducted surveys of its members, was particularly thorough in its polling following this spring's meeting in San Antonio. It realized that most attendees own, operate, maintain, and/or protect infrastructure. Additionally, while the focus of the organization's GIS for Oil & Gas conference (taking place this year on September 24-26 in Houston, Texas) is clear, that of the organization's main annual conference has not been. As a consequence, Samborski says, many potential attendees ask themselves "Why should I attend?"

Various GITA activities contributed to the realization that it was already focusing mostly on infrastructure and would benefit from making this focus explicit. Samborski points to two of them: projects on return on investment (ROI) and critical infrastructure protection and a grant that the U.S. Department of Labor gave GITA to "define and communicate geospatial industry workforce demand."

"We want to evolve toward a solutions, rather than technical, conference," says Samborski. "We are now going to be marketing it to people maintaining the infrastructure." Most attendees, he points out, are already technologically sophisticated. They want to know what other verticals are doing regarding specific problems, such as outage management.

Samborski does not expect the number of conference participants from utilities and local governments to change significantly. However, he expects to see more people from "One Call" centers and similar organizations.

Re-focusing the conference this way, Samborski says, will also enable GITA's leadership to identify additional potential participants — for example in the fields of alternative, or "green," energy and emergency response. The geospatial dimensions of emergency response will be the focus of a component of this year's conference, in Seattle. "Anything that impacts the infrastructure and has a geospatial component should feel at home at GITA," Samborski says, "including gas, infrastructure solutions, and emergency response."

ESRI International User Conference

Unlike last year's big release of ArcGIS 9.2, version 9.3 — still in the development phase and expected to be available in beta this summer and released in early 2008 — represents a more "incremental" set of improvements. That's what ESRI president Jack Dangermond told 14,500 participants from 113 countries at the Twenty-Seventh Annual ESRI International User Conference (UC) in San Diego at Monday morning's opening plenary session. Later, in briefly commenting on the state of the privately-held company, he mentioned another increment: ESRI has grown 15 percent since last year.

Despite fears that conference attendance would be reduced because this year's dates placed it in the same fiscal year as the 2006 conference for many local governments, attendance was up compared to last year. According to Wendy McKinney, ESRI Events Manager, this is due to the large number of new people in attendance — comprising 32 percent of the total. Twenty percent were from outside the United States.

There were 735 sessions listed in the program (yes, I counted them!), divided into 42 tracks, and 50 of them were running concurrently at any given moment during the conference; there were almost 300 exhibitors in the exhibit pavilion… In short, the UC, was a huge event. Therefore, these notes are but a few, very idiosyncratic highlights of the first day's plenary session.

As usual, Dangermond welcomed participants by saying that the purpose of the conference was to bring people together — to share experiences, ideas, information, values, and approaches. "This week is all about GIS, geography, and sharing your knowledge," he said. Against a backdrop of beautiful graphics on three enormous screens, he gave scores of examples of GIS applications in science, government, and business.

One slide displayed a list of 145 recipients of this year's ESRI Special Achievement in GIS award. One of these award recipients, Saudi Aramco, also received the Enterprise Application Award. I was very disappointed that ESRI — a progressive company that cares so much about social improvement and environmental protection, as emphasized throughout this conference — would give one of its top awards to a company that is owned by one of the world's worst dictatorships and profits from the industrialized world's addiction to oil. By contrast, Dangermond gave the President's Award — whose recipient he chooses personally, as he emphasized — to The Nature Conservancy!

Dangermond gave the ESRI Lifetime Achievement Award to Don Cooke, a GIS pioneer, who then gave a short presentation about his life and work. Cooke was a member of the Census Bureau team that in 1967 developed the method to store digital spatial data known as the Dual Independent Map Encoding (DIME) system. In 1968 he co-founded Urban Data Processing, Inc., now Harte-Hanks Data Technologies (HHDT), a supplier of MCIF services and software to banks. Cooke founded Geographic Data Technology, Inc. (GDT) in 1980, which was the major TIGER digitizing contractor in the mid-1980s, and data supplier to the U.S. Census Bureau. GDT was acquired by Tele Atlas in 2004 and Cooke remains an integral part of the company as Chief Scientist.

The conference keynote speaker was the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, professor Wangari Maathai, founder and leader of the Green Belt Movement, who Dangermond introduced as "the most interesting person" he'd ever met and one with whom he shared a passion — planting trees. (On Tuesday night, at the annual TeleAtlas party, Cooke joked that at Monday's plenary he'd been the court jester, warming the crowd for the queen.)

In his presentation, Dangermond listed population growth, global warming, social conflicts, resource shortages, loss of biodiversity, and security as the world's top problems and greater knowledge and as its top needs awareness, comprehensive planning, conservation of nature, efficiency and sustainability, and collaborative action. Defining geography as "the science of our world," he said that it helps us see the world as a network of interrelated systems and provides a context for understanding how humans are a part of its evolution. "The Geographic Approach," the theme for this year's conference, he explained, is a framework for understanding and managing our Earth.

In reviewing common patterns of GIS implementation, Dangermond divided them into three groups: desktop, for ad hoc projects and analysis/modeling/mapping by individual professionals; multi-user, for shared databases, fixed applications, and transactions by work groups; and federated (aka "enterprise systems"), for integration, sharing, and collaboration by organizations. He then discussed how the Web provides a new pattern for implementing GIS — by supporting collaborative computing, service integration (mashups), user-contributed content, and distributed data management — and pointed out that Microsoft and Google are already using this platform, providing image basemaps for the world. He summarized this in the title to one slide: "For consumer-focused geospatial visualization and mashups. Their vision is to georeference all content on the Web… one more aspect of search."

GIS professionals, Dangermond added, are also using the Web as a platform to publish authoritative knowledge and build professional systems. "Soon we'll be fusing everything — creating mashups among GIS servers, integrating consumer basemaps with GIS data, publishing GIS services into consumer viewers, and integrating georeferenced Web content." As for the enabling technology, in addition to GIS software, he cited faster processing, increased bandwidth, larger storage, mobile GIS, Web services, and real time sensor networks.

Among the enhancements in ArcGIS extensions in 9.3, Dangermond highlighted the following improvements

• for geographic science: Gaussian geostatistical simulations, improved proximity analysis, vehicle routing with time windows, scatter plot graphics, geographically-weighted regression analysis, and a new contouring tool for spatial analysis
• in scripting and model building: a continuous progress tool bar, easier dialogs, and rich error messaging
• in mapping and labeling, including multi-viewer windows, geologic symbols, curved graticules, polygon labels, flexible callout positions, WYSIWYG editing of features, street numbering placement, contour labeling, and stacked Asian characters
• in 3D analysis and visualization: improved rendering, better labeling, textured COLLADA, time series animation, spatial analysis, faster Web services, KML, and tracking analysis in 3D
• to analyze and visualize geographic networks: new diagram types and new ways to see and analyze relationships
• the ability to edit cadastral fabrics with Survey Analyst
• in Web mapping, including Web tips and transparent navigation tools, building on AJAX standards for Web communication
• in ArcGIS Mobile
• in ArcGIS Server: better documentation
• support for Postgre SQL, Oracle Express, and DB2
• more and faster image processing tools

Regarding ArcGIS Server 9.3, the following list of improvements was given, in increasing order of importance

1. printing maps
2. map tips
3. interoperability (better support for OGC standards, including support for OGC WMS 1.3 and support for OGC-WCS)
4. ArcGIS for AutoCAD (provides context for CAD engineers)
5. REST API and Javascript for Mashups; ArcGIS geoprocessing in Microsoft Virtual Earth
6. cashing and performance: pre-cashing data for selected areas of interest allows faster refreshing
7. least flashy but most important: enhancements in security, via user log-in, https, and certificate information

Dangermond also reviewed the whole gamut of ArcGIS products — including ArcGIS Server ("ArcGIS Server Supports Mashups, integrating multiple GIS services and making use of consumer map services"), mobile workforce solutions, and solutions products — such as Military Analyst, Business Analyst, and ArcLogistics. However, he was quick to add, "Our focus is more than just software" and includes also improving education, technical support, and customer service.

Throughout the morning and afternoon plenary session, Dangermond called on various ESRI staff to give short presentations and demonstrations. With regard to improvements in technical support, he called on Nick Conte, head of the Education and Technical Support Unit. "For 25 years," Conte said, "we've educated our users in the classroom. For the past ten years, we've been able to take the education on line at the Virtual Campus." To continue to drive down the cost of training, Conte explained, ESRI also relies on training seminars, podcasts, etc., as well as the ESRI Press.

Because the 9.2 release was the most successful in the company's history, Conte said, ESRI this year is expanding technical support by 30 percent. Already, he explained, the company has "processes and procedures" that make user requests an integral part of the development cycle — "support is part of the cycle to build better product" he said (applause). Now, ESRI is going to put diagnostic reporting into 9.3 (applause). Additionally, he announced, it is going to do something that users have been asking for a long time: give them access to ESRI's knowledge base and bug lists (big applause). "What we know about the quality of ArcGIS on a daily basis, you will know about the quality of ArcGIS on a daily basis."

Clint Brown and Christine Leslie gave a presentation on Survey Analyst, which was developed in partnership with Geodata Info Systems and released as part of service pack 3 for ArcGIS 9.2. It allows users to bring CAD lines and recorded dimensions into the cadastral fabric. They demonstrated how users need only join a few points, then can let the autojoin feature do the rest (applause). The new CAD survey tools, Brown pointed out, also give users a new workflow, resulting in vertical integration.

Repeatedly throughout the day, Dangermond emphasized ESRI's collaboration with other vendors, developers, and user communities:

• Survey Analyst's capabilities, he said, are bringing the survey and GIS communities closer together
• speaking of ArcGIS for AutoCAD he said: "It just makes sense that these two worlds come together."
• introducing ArcGIS Explorer — a new, free, downloadable globe resembling Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth that ESRI unveiled a couple of weeks ago and that he described as "fast, intuitive, and Web-centric" — he acknowledged that ESRI "worked closely" with Google and Microsoft on this project
• he repeatedly pointed out that ArcGIS Server supports mashups

Here are a few more bits and pieces from my notes:

• David Maguire presented new tools for geographic regression analysis, including new types of graphs and models, and demonstrated a few of them using foreclosures as an example. "Geographically, with regression, taking local patterns and processes into consideration, we can predict foreclosures," he said. This, he added, will allow financial institutions to be smarter lenders and assistance agencies to target those in greatest need.
• A demonstration of an ArcGIS Tracking Server application developed by Bradshaw Consulting Services, Inc. showed a large number of moving objects (ambulances in Kansas City, Missouri), tracked at sub-second refresh rates and displaying their status, direction of travel, speed, and 9-minute response area.
• Jian Lange, product manager for ArcPAD 7.1, announced that it now includes complete street map data for the United States and Canada. The software allows users to classify features from a drop-down menu and add photos and it gives them the range and bearing to each feature. It also allows them to zoom to that feature, show all the features in a feature class, add/edit items in the related table, and manage data with the data manager. According to Maguire, ArcPAD 7.1 will be available "in a couple of months."
• An application created by PenBay Media allows users to georeference a static plan by using two control points, then download the plan to a mobile device and use it to collect data in ArcPad.
• Mindia Brown demonstrated the Integrated Forest Resource Information System (IFRIS) solution, developed by Timmons Group for the Virginia Department of Forestry, that utilizes Web-based geodatabase editing, analysis, and reporting using ArcGIS Server. VDOF employees use it on a Trimble GeoXM GPS receiver to record time and accomplishments spatially, allowing managers to charge different grants depending on the location of the work.
• The plenary also included three impressive hardware demonstrations: of a pen that allows users to write on maps printed on normal paper but with special watermarks and then, by docking the pen, transfer their annotations to a digital map on screen; of an 8GB flash drive pre-loaded with ArcGIS, Linux, Java, and emergency response data — such as the floor plans for all the schools in a city; and a SAC data appliance with more than 100GB of QuickBird imagery.
• The U.S. Census is buying 400,000 copies of ArcPad. "At least [census takers] will know where they are," Dangermond quipped.

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