This is the second part of a two-part article that provides a unique view into the fundamental technology trends that will shape mobile computing for those who use and deploy these systems for utility applications. Part I appeared in the January/February edition of this magazine, addressing the "hard tech" – or machine and product centered -- trends in base technologies such as wireless networking, GPS commoditization and ubiquitous mobile computing. Part II focuses on the trends in "soft tech," essentially human-centered aspects of go-anywhere computing, mobile GIS integration and field automation.
Part I, Revisited
For those readers who did not read Part I, the following bullets summarize the primary
conclusions conveyed in last month’s edition.
• Major new wireless network standards, particularly the new WiMax broadcast system to be deployed in 2005, will fundamentally reshape the wireless landscape by offering high-speed wireless access with the speed of local area networks and the range of 10 to 30 miles. When fully deployed over the next few years, the low-cost WiMax service will likely become an economically disruptive alternative to the existing high-speed services such as cable broadband, DSL, "hot-spots" and the "3G" wireless voice-data cell service providers, as well as to planned services such as "Internet over power lines." It will also provide the only economic alternative for high-speed services for rural areas.
• The commodization of GPS is essentially complete, with continuing improvements being made in accuracy and cost. Any mobile application should include GPS, but it must meet today’s demands for accuracy and performance and ease of use. While easily available corrections such as differential GPS and Wide Area Augmentation Satellite signals can provide one-meter accuracy, survey accuracy (sub-meter) is available off-the-shelf from equipment provided by several vendors such as Trimble Navigation. Additional low-accuracy location services are available from several wireless phone services, particularly Nextel.
• The explosion in low-cost, application-specific, high-performance, embedded-computing form
factors will continue to force field application software away from the "Windows-Icon-Mouse-Keyboard" WIMP interfaces to field-friendly user interfaces including touch-screen input, voice recognition and prompts, and simplified point-and-shoot entry.
• The inexorable drive to cheaper, longer-range RFID devices can eventually enable "self-reporting" and "drive-by-inventory" of equipment that otherwise requires tedious data entry to track field and office locations. The long-range mobile RFID reader with location-sensitive tags has the potential to radically simplify the life cycle management of critical facility assets, although this is severely limited by the lack of standards and high prices for the tags with these capabilities.
Soft Tech Trends
There are a variety of human-centered, soft tech trends that will create both opportunities and challenges for IS-IT groups struggling to deploy and maintain a new generation of mobile technologies. According to Hewlett-Packard Development Company, "The power behind mobility lies in the ability to change the way work gets done, so employees are more productive, and the business gets better results… business should demand from their providers: Simplicity, Security, and Seamless connectivity." The struggle to integrate embedded computing, universal communication, field-specialized systems and distributed data bases is creating a radically different alternative to traditional lap-top PC model. The evolution from the old to the new will likely echo the changes that occurred with migrating from mainframes to desktops in years past.
There’s no question that mobile information systems will enable the next productivity leap in a wide variety of enterprises, utilities high among them, due chiefly to its ability to bring
automation and efficiency to a new range of processes, and deliver data wherever and
whenever it’s needed. Realizing the full potential of mobile technology, however, requires
supporting a variety of complex standards as well as field-oriented design, development,
deployment and support challenges.
The integration of mobile devices and on-demand connectivity to data residing on corporate systems is already resulting in strong ROI with paybacks in six months or less, limited only by the ease of use in the field and the (currently large) custom development and GIS system costs. The huge technology turnovers and the utility industry’s need for proven and stable implementations is another driver to "product," rather than "custom" solutions.
What to Standardize?
To quote from the 1980s, "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them." The mobile landscape is complicated by a variety of competing standards and incompatible protocols. Palm OS battles Windows CE. Bluetooth is taking on 802.11b. While 3G is more and more
promising, the 2G digital cellular networks that still predominate offer three different standards—Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA), and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). Wireless applications must work with one or more of these standards, but designing devices that can accommodate multiple standards may limit their field functionality.
A standards-based system will survive the constant technology revolutions, drive vendors to reduce costs and enhance value. On the other hand, the blind adoption of standards can lock IT groups into obsolete technologies. Standards-based solutions are built to a previously existing public standard that has equivalent solutions from multiple vendors, as opposed to a
"vendor-standard solution," which by definition is self-limiting and not open.
The standards-based solution supports recognized official standards such as IEEE communication protocols, Windows embedded operating systems, SQL/ADO/ODBC database management systems and Internet standards such as XML.
On the other hand, if you allow hardware form factors, field user interface and other productivity-related factors to be specified functionally, rather than locked down, you allow a variety of approaches for implementation without major impact on the bedrock technologies. Using "vendor" or "industry" standards may be hazardous to the long-term economic health of your project because of the rapid changes; therefore vendor-independent solutions are much preferred.
For a free copy of selected communication, Internet and GPS standards, please contact info@har-gis.com
Ubiquitous Geo-spatial Data
In 1999, what’s now called the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and was then called the Open GIS Consortium, demonstrated the ability for a simple HTML-based Web client to transparently query, access and display GIS data from multiple, geographically distributed sources using its Web Map Service Interface specification. Since then, interoperable access and use of geospatial data has become common, marked by a shift from tightly coupled architectures like CORBA and OLE/COM to loosely coupled, highly distributed architectures such as mobile wireless infrastructures and the Internet.
There is a strong need to find, bind and use geospatial content and services on demand. This includes a wide range of spatially related technologies, for example, surveying, GPS, photogrammetry, remote sensing, imaging, conversion, mapping, cartography, GIS, decision support, business demographics, mobile applications, location-based services, asset (facility) management, and Web publishing. As a result, organizations like OGC, working in tandem with standards organizations like ISO, OASIS and the W3C, are making great strides in the ability to integrate content and services from multiple providers, as well as to integrate legacy systems and content into new workflows.
Rapid advances in the mathematical field of "computational geometry" has enabled remarkable performance and efficiency gains for geo-spatial database systems, and enabled high performance, highly compacted geospatial data for mobile workers. It’s possible today to view and manipulate a wide variety of complex geospatial data, such as the detailed road network and address database for multiple states, on low-cost field devices – data extending far beyond the limitations of simple map overlays. With their increasing low cost storage, even the smallest PocketPC® can store and process large databases given the correct software.
In fact, GIS is an increasingly limited terminology: OGC specifically called to replace it with the term "geospatial", in order to signify that standard applications and data sets now routinely use geographic data. With Oracle 10g, Microsoft’s location-based SQL Server and initiatives by other mainstream technology leaders, this trend toward broader, deeper leverage of geospatial resources – both in and out of the field -- will continue to accelerate rapidly.
Democratization of Information
Supporting this trend toward "geo-spatialization" is the wide-spread availability of high-accuracy GIS data, both as the result of widespread adoption of GIS projects and data conversion efforts, and also from commercial land base providers. Accurate satellite imagery providers offer on-demand mapping data at low costs. "Outsourcing" of labor-intensive projects is moderated by security concerns and, most importantly, the lengthy quality control processes necessary to receive acceptable, high-accuracy deliverables.
Currently, tremendous amounts of corporate information and GIS data have been locked away on the desktop systems, for access and maintenance by specialized systems and highly skilled operators. The technology to unlock this information and distribute it to the field users, who have access to "ground truth," is limited not by the hardware, but by the programming skills and field-usable software available to distribute and maintain this data in the field.
This calls for new approaches, such as integrating existing disparate data sources in the field, rather than constructing costly, massive and inflexible integrated systems. It makes no sense to deploy GIS data and ignore critical field
documents including CAD drawings, site photography, video, CIS databases, asset records, work orders, real-time operations data, SCADA information and even email. This confluence of information in the field regardless of source is a fundamental trend. The trend is NOT to deploy limited "mobile GIS" solutions, but rather to implement field-usable "field information systems" that have geospatial capabilities, along with the ability to leverage a wide variety of additional enterprise data.
Field User Interface Requirements
To ensure widespread adoption of field technologies, field workers cannot be forced to learn to use multiple, different interfaces, specialized commands or even menus and tiny icons in order to use information from different data sources and systems. A common "gloves-on" field user interface is required, but poses a severe challenge to developers, who are accustomed to using keyboards and windows-icons-menus-pointer – or WIMP -- interfaces. Hands-on access, using touch-screen and voice input technologies, is a definite advantage for field usability. The user requirements are severe and include:
• Absolute reliability of re-usable software components instead of the constant
debugging of custom applications for each customer. Re-booting is not an option.
• Durability of all hardware and intermittent wireless connection.
• Complete functionality for field operations applications. Work-arounds require reliance on paper bound processes.
• Incremental implementation and expandability into new areas without reprogramming. Initial success is critical to field adoption.
• Scalability from entry-level systems to hundreds and even thousands of users, across multiple platforms and networks. Hidden bottlenecks exist for most network-based and data-based platforms.
• Integrated field interface across multiple field applications and data sets. The field user requires simplicity.
Custom versus Product
Any mobile initiative that requires specialization of hardware and vertical applications will result in higher development costs. There is a strong need for standard components that can be re-used and are easily configured by IS-IT staff without the need for custom programming. These solutions provide the value-add and competitive advantages of custom products, without the high costs that come with acquiring and maintaining custom features. The components must be re-usable and integrated across a wide variety of hardware, including pocket computers, ruggedized systems, multiple communications and multiple enterprise applications. This has been the trend for successful systems in many other industries.
Although today there are very few providers of such products, the economics of product software will force many existing application vendors to change their systems and offer this architecture to their clients. Today’s multiple single point field applications must give way to easily configured, reusable, integrated and extendable multiple mobile components. PC-level applications can be incorporated in hand-held platforms. One example is the ability to use handhelds not just for field inventory and alphanumeric forms entry, but to also use the same platform for GIS display, GPS navigation, vehicle tracking, dispatching, routing and
custom forms-driven work management.
Summary
In conclusion, it appears that the increasing expansion in computer technologies is mirrored by a convergence of infrastructure, assimilation of GIS into geo-spatial applications and integration of multiple features into common simplified field interface. Single point applications, although easily implemented, must soon consolidate to true information systems supporting field users. The economics of reusable software products will collide with the custom vertical application requirements to produce innovative flexible and configurable products. Lastly, the revolutionary nature of impending changes in network communications, hand-held computing power and universal location services has the potential to obsolete many recently introduced mobile systems.
About the Author
Jim Hargis is president of har*GIS Field Information Systems, developer of the TruckMap* Field Information System™ (www.truckmap.com). His 30-year career has been dedicated to the innovation, design, development and implementation of spatial and mobile technologies for more than 200 utility companies and local governments. Mr. Hargis holds a BS in Physics from Rice University and an MBA from the University of Denver. He is a past Board member of GITA and has contributed a dozen papers, presentations and seminars. Mr. Hargis has developed and patented essential technology for automated map generation from facilities databases. Part I of this article, along with an expanded glossary of terms for wireless and GPS technology are available from the author via email to info@har-gis.com or at www.har-gis.com.
Part I, Revisited
For those readers who did not read Part I, the following bullets summarize the primary
conclusions conveyed in last month’s edition.
• Major new wireless network standards, particularly the new WiMax broadcast system to be deployed in 2005, will fundamentally reshape the wireless landscape by offering high-speed wireless access with the speed of local area networks and the range of 10 to 30 miles. When fully deployed over the next few years, the low-cost WiMax service will likely become an economically disruptive alternative to the existing high-speed services such as cable broadband, DSL, "hot-spots" and the "3G" wireless voice-data cell service providers, as well as to planned services such as "Internet over power lines." It will also provide the only economic alternative for high-speed services for rural areas.
• The commodization of GPS is essentially complete, with continuing improvements being made in accuracy and cost. Any mobile application should include GPS, but it must meet today’s demands for accuracy and performance and ease of use. While easily available corrections such as differential GPS and Wide Area Augmentation Satellite signals can provide one-meter accuracy, survey accuracy (sub-meter) is available off-the-shelf from equipment provided by several vendors such as Trimble Navigation. Additional low-accuracy location services are available from several wireless phone services, particularly Nextel.
• The explosion in low-cost, application-specific, high-performance, embedded-computing form
factors will continue to force field application software away from the "Windows-Icon-Mouse-Keyboard" WIMP interfaces to field-friendly user interfaces including touch-screen input, voice recognition and prompts, and simplified point-and-shoot entry.
• The inexorable drive to cheaper, longer-range RFID devices can eventually enable "self-reporting" and "drive-by-inventory" of equipment that otherwise requires tedious data entry to track field and office locations. The long-range mobile RFID reader with location-sensitive tags has the potential to radically simplify the life cycle management of critical facility assets, although this is severely limited by the lack of standards and high prices for the tags with these capabilities.
Soft Tech Trends
There are a variety of human-centered, soft tech trends that will create both opportunities and challenges for IS-IT groups struggling to deploy and maintain a new generation of mobile technologies. According to Hewlett-Packard Development Company, "The power behind mobility lies in the ability to change the way work gets done, so employees are more productive, and the business gets better results… business should demand from their providers: Simplicity, Security, and Seamless connectivity." The struggle to integrate embedded computing, universal communication, field-specialized systems and distributed data bases is creating a radically different alternative to traditional lap-top PC model. The evolution from the old to the new will likely echo the changes that occurred with migrating from mainframes to desktops in years past.
There’s no question that mobile information systems will enable the next productivity leap in a wide variety of enterprises, utilities high among them, due chiefly to its ability to bring
automation and efficiency to a new range of processes, and deliver data wherever and
whenever it’s needed. Realizing the full potential of mobile technology, however, requires
supporting a variety of complex standards as well as field-oriented design, development,
deployment and support challenges.
The integration of mobile devices and on-demand connectivity to data residing on corporate systems is already resulting in strong ROI with paybacks in six months or less, limited only by the ease of use in the field and the (currently large) custom development and GIS system costs. The huge technology turnovers and the utility industry’s need for proven and stable implementations is another driver to "product," rather than "custom" solutions.
What to Standardize?
To quote from the 1980s, "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them." The mobile landscape is complicated by a variety of competing standards and incompatible protocols. Palm OS battles Windows CE. Bluetooth is taking on 802.11b. While 3G is more and more
promising, the 2G digital cellular networks that still predominate offer three different standards—Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA), and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). Wireless applications must work with one or more of these standards, but designing devices that can accommodate multiple standards may limit their field functionality.
A standards-based system will survive the constant technology revolutions, drive vendors to reduce costs and enhance value. On the other hand, the blind adoption of standards can lock IT groups into obsolete technologies. Standards-based solutions are built to a previously existing public standard that has equivalent solutions from multiple vendors, as opposed to a
"vendor-standard solution," which by definition is self-limiting and not open.
The standards-based solution supports recognized official standards such as IEEE communication protocols, Windows embedded operating systems, SQL/ADO/ODBC database management systems and Internet standards such as XML.
On the other hand, if you allow hardware form factors, field user interface and other productivity-related factors to be specified functionally, rather than locked down, you allow a variety of approaches for implementation without major impact on the bedrock technologies. Using "vendor" or "industry" standards may be hazardous to the long-term economic health of your project because of the rapid changes; therefore vendor-independent solutions are much preferred.
For a free copy of selected communication, Internet and GPS standards, please contact info@har-gis.com
Ubiquitous Geo-spatial Data
In 1999, what’s now called the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and was then called the Open GIS Consortium, demonstrated the ability for a simple HTML-based Web client to transparently query, access and display GIS data from multiple, geographically distributed sources using its Web Map Service Interface specification. Since then, interoperable access and use of geospatial data has become common, marked by a shift from tightly coupled architectures like CORBA and OLE/COM to loosely coupled, highly distributed architectures such as mobile wireless infrastructures and the Internet.
There is a strong need to find, bind and use geospatial content and services on demand. This includes a wide range of spatially related technologies, for example, surveying, GPS, photogrammetry, remote sensing, imaging, conversion, mapping, cartography, GIS, decision support, business demographics, mobile applications, location-based services, asset (facility) management, and Web publishing. As a result, organizations like OGC, working in tandem with standards organizations like ISO, OASIS and the W3C, are making great strides in the ability to integrate content and services from multiple providers, as well as to integrate legacy systems and content into new workflows.
Rapid advances in the mathematical field of "computational geometry" has enabled remarkable performance and efficiency gains for geo-spatial database systems, and enabled high performance, highly compacted geospatial data for mobile workers. It’s possible today to view and manipulate a wide variety of complex geospatial data, such as the detailed road network and address database for multiple states, on low-cost field devices – data extending far beyond the limitations of simple map overlays. With their increasing low cost storage, even the smallest PocketPC® can store and process large databases given the correct software.
In fact, GIS is an increasingly limited terminology: OGC specifically called to replace it with the term "geospatial", in order to signify that standard applications and data sets now routinely use geographic data. With Oracle 10g, Microsoft’s location-based SQL Server and initiatives by other mainstream technology leaders, this trend toward broader, deeper leverage of geospatial resources – both in and out of the field -- will continue to accelerate rapidly.
Democratization of Information
Supporting this trend toward "geo-spatialization" is the wide-spread availability of high-accuracy GIS data, both as the result of widespread adoption of GIS projects and data conversion efforts, and also from commercial land base providers. Accurate satellite imagery providers offer on-demand mapping data at low costs. "Outsourcing" of labor-intensive projects is moderated by security concerns and, most importantly, the lengthy quality control processes necessary to receive acceptable, high-accuracy deliverables.
Currently, tremendous amounts of corporate information and GIS data have been locked away on the desktop systems, for access and maintenance by specialized systems and highly skilled operators. The technology to unlock this information and distribute it to the field users, who have access to "ground truth," is limited not by the hardware, but by the programming skills and field-usable software available to distribute and maintain this data in the field.
This calls for new approaches, such as integrating existing disparate data sources in the field, rather than constructing costly, massive and inflexible integrated systems. It makes no sense to deploy GIS data and ignore critical field
documents including CAD drawings, site photography, video, CIS databases, asset records, work orders, real-time operations data, SCADA information and even email. This confluence of information in the field regardless of source is a fundamental trend. The trend is NOT to deploy limited "mobile GIS" solutions, but rather to implement field-usable "field information systems" that have geospatial capabilities, along with the ability to leverage a wide variety of additional enterprise data.
Field User Interface Requirements
To ensure widespread adoption of field technologies, field workers cannot be forced to learn to use multiple, different interfaces, specialized commands or even menus and tiny icons in order to use information from different data sources and systems. A common "gloves-on" field user interface is required, but poses a severe challenge to developers, who are accustomed to using keyboards and windows-icons-menus-pointer – or WIMP -- interfaces. Hands-on access, using touch-screen and voice input technologies, is a definite advantage for field usability. The user requirements are severe and include:
• Absolute reliability of re-usable software components instead of the constant
debugging of custom applications for each customer. Re-booting is not an option.
• Durability of all hardware and intermittent wireless connection.
• Complete functionality for field operations applications. Work-arounds require reliance on paper bound processes.
• Incremental implementation and expandability into new areas without reprogramming. Initial success is critical to field adoption.
• Scalability from entry-level systems to hundreds and even thousands of users, across multiple platforms and networks. Hidden bottlenecks exist for most network-based and data-based platforms.
• Integrated field interface across multiple field applications and data sets. The field user requires simplicity.
Custom versus Product
Any mobile initiative that requires specialization of hardware and vertical applications will result in higher development costs. There is a strong need for standard components that can be re-used and are easily configured by IS-IT staff without the need for custom programming. These solutions provide the value-add and competitive advantages of custom products, without the high costs that come with acquiring and maintaining custom features. The components must be re-usable and integrated across a wide variety of hardware, including pocket computers, ruggedized systems, multiple communications and multiple enterprise applications. This has been the trend for successful systems in many other industries.
Although today there are very few providers of such products, the economics of product software will force many existing application vendors to change their systems and offer this architecture to their clients. Today’s multiple single point field applications must give way to easily configured, reusable, integrated and extendable multiple mobile components. PC-level applications can be incorporated in hand-held platforms. One example is the ability to use handhelds not just for field inventory and alphanumeric forms entry, but to also use the same platform for GIS display, GPS navigation, vehicle tracking, dispatching, routing and
custom forms-driven work management.
Summary
In conclusion, it appears that the increasing expansion in computer technologies is mirrored by a convergence of infrastructure, assimilation of GIS into geo-spatial applications and integration of multiple features into common simplified field interface. Single point applications, although easily implemented, must soon consolidate to true information systems supporting field users. The economics of reusable software products will collide with the custom vertical application requirements to produce innovative flexible and configurable products. Lastly, the revolutionary nature of impending changes in network communications, hand-held computing power and universal location services has the potential to obsolete many recently introduced mobile systems.
About the Author
Jim Hargis is president of har*GIS Field Information Systems, developer of the TruckMap* Field Information System™ (www.truckmap.com). His 30-year career has been dedicated to the innovation, design, development and implementation of spatial and mobile technologies for more than 200 utility companies and local governments. Mr. Hargis holds a BS in Physics from Rice University and an MBA from the University of Denver. He is a past Board member of GITA and has contributed a dozen papers, presentations and seminars. Mr. Hargis has developed and patented essential technology for automated map generation from facilities databases. Part I of this article, along with an expanded glossary of terms for wireless and GPS technology are available from the author via email to info@har-gis.com or at www.har-gis.com.
