Batty consumerization of geospatial
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This document discusses the consumerization of geospatial technologies and how it will impact utility companies. It describes how consumer apps are driving higher expectations for simplicity and usability. It also outlines some of the challenges of building field applications that can work both online and offline. It discusses different architectural approaches for offline data storage and synchronization, including replicating databases on laptops, using PhoneGap with SQLite, caching data with HTML5, and alternatives like external storage on USB sticks. The key is providing robust offline access while syncing large datasets when back online.
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Batty consumerization of geospatial
- 1. The consumerization of geospatial Peter Batty Ubisense @pmbatty
- 2. OVERVIEW • Brief background on our customers • Consumerization • Simplicity • Field applications, online and offline
- 3. Figure 11: Conduits in an Underground Photo by whalt - http://flic.kr/p/7D7rd Underground utility boxes are the structures that provide access conduits, examples of underground utility boxes include manholes, configurations of underground utility boxes can be created seen below and to its right the butterfly diagram managed 19. Customers: utilities and telcos Photo by ☺ Lee J Haywood - http://flic.kr/p/7iX7f5
- 5. Trench route for new cable Figure 20: Inserting new cable Structures which new cable will be placed in Select conduit for new Single button press inserts new cable cable Ordnance Survey Crown copyright. All rights reserved.
- 6. fields such as installed date, etc. These fields may be used ‘as is’, configured to hold specific information or additional fields may be added using the standard tools available to system administrators. Figure 42: Rack mounted equipment Port Shelf Card Mounting position detail
- 7. Smallworld
- 8. Location is now flic.kr/p/7rnNAD flic.kr/p/7NEJzF Pervasive and Simple in consumer applications
- 10. “Consumerization of geospatial technologies will boost business-side expectations and inspire new utility applications,” ! ! “Shifting market dynamics will challenge incumbent utility GIS vendors' ability to satisfy business expectations, prompting utility CIOs to evaluate new GIS capabilities."! From Gartner report “Consumerized Geography Will Change Your Utility GIS Strategy”, November 2012 http://www.gartner.com/id=2260419 !
- 12. We are building applications for the 95% of people in an organization who are not GIS users
- 13. 13 “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do”
- 14. TOPICS • Familiarity • Panning and zooming • Search (including queries) • Minimal layers • Focused applications • Network links • Rather than “trace”
- 15. FIELD APPLICATIONS ONLINE AND OFFLINE
- 16. GENERAL REQUIREMENTS Leverage modern tablets and smart phones (and support laptops too)! ! Leverage wireless networks, but run offline too! ! Common development environment across platforms
- 17. APPLICATION OVERVIEW This presentation features screen shots that step through a demo of Ubisense myWorld for damage assessment. The demo features two separate users: Operations center user, with overview of situation, including data from all field users Damage assessor with laptop in the field, capturing damage assessment data
- 18. Operations Center Operations center overview map – currently all is quiet, no damage shown
- 19. Damage Assessor in Field WiFi is on Currently online (wireless) Damage assessment user in the field, currently in online mode (with wireless connection)
- 20. Damage Assessor in Field Damage assessoCr crreeaatetse d admaagme aasgseess mpeonti npotint in the field
- 21. Damage Assessor in Field Damage point is created in local database and displayed on map on laptop
- 22. Operations Center Syncs to operations center within ~1 minute, damage point displayed and overview map updated
- 23. Damage Assessor in Field Offline WiFi is off Back in the field, we are now in offline mode (wireless connection is lost). Google Map has disappeared here.
- 24. Damage Assessor in Field Now we are displaying OpenStreetMap as an offline map instead of Google (which can’t be used offline)
- 25. Damage Assessor in Field In offline mode, we can continue to display maps, select objects, and search for assets
- 26. Damage Assessor in Field We can also continue to create damage points while in offline mode (which are stored locally)
- 27. Damage Assessor in Field We have now created two more damage points offline
- 28. Operations Center Back in the operations center, we still just see the single damage point at the moment
- 29. Damage Assessor in Field Online WiFi is on Now the field laptop has a network connection again and is back online, so the damage data can sync
- 30. Operations Center The data has synced and so we now see three damage points back in the operations center.
- 31. Operations Center We can report on the damage points and get aggregate information
- 32. Field users can also use tablets like iPad or Android, which support taking photos.
- 33. Take a photo on the iPad
- 34. Operations Center Operations Center also gets immediate visibility of photo (assuming user online) Photos can also be emailed in from any smart phone
- 35. OFFLINE REQUIREMENTS • (Ideally) cross platform • Android, iOS, Windows 7 and 8 (and web) • Need ability to sync large datasets (gigabytes) for some situations • In other situations may be able to use smaller datasets (for single job, like walking an electrical circuit)
- 36. DATABASE SYNC • Sync of bulk GIS data • Initially read only for short term applications • Typically want to do nightly over non-cellular connection • Time critical data like damage assessment •Want to sync as soon as possible (two way) • Needs to connect / disconnect / sync transparently
- 37. THREE ARCHITECTURES TRIED PostGIS Mapfish Offline storage SpatiaLite JavaScript Replication Caching
- 38. ARCHITECTURE 1 LAPTOP REPLICA PostGIS Mapfish Windows (or Linux or Mac) only ! Use identical software stack to main server ! Need custom replication - haven’t found PostgreSQL replication for sometimes disconnected model ! Pros: Simplest to implement Cons: Laptop only, heavyweight
- 39. REPLICA CONCEPT Master database Local database Full or partial (spatial) replica Potentially multiple gigabytes (raster tiles) Incremental update is important
- 40. ARCHITECTURE 2 PHONEGAP REPLICA • Have our web application running offline on Android and iOS • Replaced PostGIS with SQLite - for geometry and attributes, and also tiles •Wrote JavaScript wrappers to replace (basic) MapFish services offline • Refactored code so small number of classes contain differences between online and offline - tile and database access
- 42. CAUTION WITH IOS • Apple terms and conditions regarding approval and software distribution can be a major pain • All code, and all changes, need to be reviewed by Apple - even for testing (this has tightened up recently, since they bought TestFlight) • If you need custom apps for individual customers there is a separate Enterprise Developer Program or Volume Purchase Program, which each have their own complications
- 43. ARCHITECTURE 3 HTML5 OFFLINE • Cache smaller amounts of data using HTML5 offline capabilities • More dynamic and easier to deploy than bulk replication
- 45. HTML5 OFFLINE CONCEPTS • Cache manifest files (Appcache) • Lists files cached offline • Useful tool is manifestR • Offline storage • Various types
- 46. HTML5 manifest file Static files (app) Dynamic files (data)
- 48. OFFLINE STORAGE LIMITS MOBILE http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/offline/quota-research/
- 49. OFFLINE STORAGE LIMITS DESKTOP http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/offline/quota-research/
- 50. LargeLocalStorage is a cool library which abstracts various types of local storage, and storage limits
- 51. CACHING TILES (1) • Caching individual tiles using app cache •Works reasonably for smallish areas, like an electric circuit - 1-2 minutes download. 800 tiles to level 18 for sample circuit • App cache is all or nothing - any failure means whole cache doesn’t load • No ability to manage / delete caches programmatically • Can also cache individual tiles using local storage and programmatic download - more code but more control
- 52. CACHING TILES (2) • As in other situations, copying individual tiles is very slow • Not practical for larger downloads •We have done some experimentation downloading mbTiles files and reading them in JavaScript using sql.js •Worked pretty well in Chrome on laptop or high end Android, for file of 275Mb - had to overcome some memory issues / flakiness • Didn’t work on iOS, hit 50Mb size limit (even on Chrome)
- 53. CACHING ATTRIBUTE DATA •We have tried using geoJSON tiles and implemented select against those - worked fine, should scale to large areas • Also tried just downloading a single geoJSON file for the whole area, works fine for smaller download areas • Could consider using local storage database also
- 54. OTHER OPTIONS
- 55. Field Papers
- 56. EXTERNAL STORAGE Maps on a USB stick Easy to provide full set of maps Some functions unavailable offline AirStash Provides WiFi access to SD card - usable with more devices
- 57. OFFLINE SUMMARY • It will be great when we have universal wireless coverage! • Today, offline is still harder than you would hope • Large scale robust sync for enterprises is not rocket science, but a lot of detailed work to do well • HTML5 caching has a lot of promise, is workable in some scenarios today, but still not quite fully baked • Alternative options like Field Papers or external storage may make sense in some cases
- 58. Usability / simplicity flic.kr/p/3guaAu Keep it simple!
- 59. ? Peter Batty! @pmbatty! peter.batty@ubisense.net! about.me/peter.batty