Geo techs often make the argument that location based data is more than a novelty to map and that more data are inherently geospatial than people think. Taking up the cause, I’d like to discuss the benefits of location as well as time-date data provided by GPS during data collection. Time and location data are like the machine Oz had behind the curtain: providing analytical levers and buttons for data (fields of poppies and witches notwithstanding). The business intelligence benefits are presented below within the context of data collection for geographically distributed assets and features.
Embedding the capture of time and location data into data collection workflows can provide business intelligence for data collection programs.
Capture time stamps and location on every possible asset management action possible, such as travel, proximity to key locations, and user actions associated with doing work like measuring or entering data. If you’re harnessing GPS, you’ll have access to very accurate time date stamps. Data with location, time and descriptive properties adds dimensions to information which can be harnessed through tools like online analytical processing (OLAP). To envision what these data dimensions provide, visualize a cube with three axis representing time (when), location (where) and descriptive (what) data (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLAP_cube). Meaningful analysis and representation of time, location and descriptive data results in understanding how things work. If time and location are present across multiple data elements, data can be sliced or pivoted to provide more useful representations of data. Here are some other things which location and time data can provide:
- Validation for a visit to an asset (time and location)
- Duration (time in motion) of tasks or travel
- Time durations by geography
We all know time is money in this economy. One can think of time and location as an accounting system for a data collection program. Do you want to improve a data collection program? If so, measure the components of the program first. Do this by starting with common tasks like travel or site visits.
Geo techies should make the case for the collection both location and time data. Time data is that missing dimension in GIS datasets (until the GIS equivalent of dark matter is discovered). You may have noticed that in ArcGIS desktop version 10, Esri added a time tab within the layer properties tab. This has been a long time coming. Try to imagine geographic information which would not benefit from a time component. Ever wonder when the last time a dataset was changed? Oh yeah, metadata……..we all update that right? Imagine how combining time and location with descriptive data can provide valuable business intelligence which can be used to improve data collection programs, refine methodology and more effectively render how things work. Location combined with time data provides the opportunity to create more interesting and insightful representations and a deeper understanding of processes.
About the Author
The author is a manager at F4 Tech, forest technology consulting firm based in Tallahassee, FL