Blog
As every year around Christmas, I reach for the “bible” again, i.e. the book “Reflections on GIS. Planning Geographical Information Systems for Managers” by Roger Tomlinson. And like every year, I rediscover it, because with the increase of experience, certain aspects have a different overtone.
Yesterday I was „considering” about the financial aspect of individual functionalities. Especially this year I participated in implementations where GIS was not planned. Only the purchase of GIS software was planned, and instead of the processes to be implemented/supported by GIS, we talked about the functionalities to be delivered and included in the order (I know that inspections, public procurement law, etc.). Unfortunately, these systems will last, operating at 10-15% of their capacity, generating minimal profits for the organization.
Meanwhile, Tomlinson in chapter 11 „Analysis of benefits-costs, migration and risk” beautifully proves that the process approach, i.e. „breaking down” the System into information products (e.g. map, report, tool that supports a specific process in the company) and cost analysis and profits of each of these processes, gives a result, in black and white, indicating whether it is worth taking a given action or not and whether it pays off.
Example:
A pipe bursts, water pours out, the water company starts the process of removing the failure. A team with an excavator arrives and starts digging. In the vast majority of cases, they do not know whether there is a power grid, heating network, fiber optics, gas in this place … With a soul in their arms, a copy. Mostly they succeed and do not damage other installations, but sometimes they break optical fiber or cables. Depending on the size of the company, the costs of such repairs are even millions of zlotys.
Meanwhile, if the foreman or excavator operator knew that they could use the Geoportal Mobile application, where they could check the underground network on the basis of orthophotomaps (the National Land Utilities Integration layer), they would know what is under them in a few seconds. You can safely estimate that this knowledge will reduce the amount of damage by 25%. Little? A lot of? Compared to the cost of training with Geoportal Mobile (2h?), in my opinion, it is one of the most effective results.
And going further: if the operator had VR goggles, the data would be in 3D, and the artificial intelligence would guide the excavator, maybe the amount of losses would drop by another 10 percentage points. Would the maintenance of such a system, training and service, be profitable in relation to the benefits?
This question must be answered by the GIS manager in a specific implementation during PLANNING.
On the screen: The utilities network in the vicinity of the GIS Support office in Poznań. GPS position not very accurate, because it was determined from behind the desk. Too cold for „field work” 🙂
We decided to simplify the access to the tools we created for Polish QGIS users even more. Instead of many plugins to download from our repository, we created one. Introducing: GIS Support Plugin!
The GIS Support plugin is an extension to QGIS that adds tools needed for QGIS users in Poland:
- is available in the official QGIS plugin repository. Installation is super easy
- all tools come in one plugin
- new tools will appear during the update
We want to share happy news with you. We had the pleasure to receive the award in the category of Creative Industries in the competition for the Economic Award of the President of the City of Lublin 2019.
For 7 years we have been trying to support our clients in activities related to the use of GIS tools. We are glad that we are appreciated not only on the Polish GIS market, but also in the economic sphere. We always approach our activities open to new challenges and willing to acquire new knowledge. We are proud of our entire team, whose actions contributed to such a distinction. Today, we face new challenges, which we take up with enthusiasm. Thank you for being with us!
In the photos, Paweł Gajewski receives the award from the hands of the Mayor of Lublin.
Our plugin Wyszukiwarka działek ewidencyjnych (ULDK GUGiK) was awarded the first place in the competition organized by the Head Office of Geodesy and Cartography (GUGiK) for the best use of the ULDK API.
On July 14, 2019, the award ceremony was held by the Main Land Surveyor, Waldemar Izdebski.
We are so proud and happy that cofounder of GIS Support – Michał Mackiewicz – is sharing his knowledge and become a coauthor of „Mastering PosGIS. Create, deliver and consume spatial data using PostGIS„. Congratulations to Michał and a rest of the team.
PostGIS in an award-winning core part of most of open source webGIS solutions. We are using PostGIS from the beginning of our GIS activity an we collect wide knowledge about it.
Location Intelligence (LI) is a process of finding patterns and trends in Business Intelligence (BI) data joined with spatial data, for better understanding and decision making.
For many years BI software is present on IT market, and it helps making analysis and searching for answers to the questions which are important for your company. The rapid development of this type of software is due to the following factors: