Geospatial Collaboration: Advances, challenges & future developments

Many tools are being developed that promise to improve geospatial collaboration. Specialty tools for the photogrammatrist and image analyst provide unprecedented ability for the user to create high-quality geospatial features that can be shared among peers. Google Earth provides the capability to create simple geospatial features and even three dimensional models that are regularly shared on the World Wide Web among specialists and non-specialists alike. Open standards such as web services and Geography Markup Language (GML) allow anyone to connect to Web map and feature servers. Yet open sharing presents a number of challenges. For example, if two users create a feature in relatively the same geospatial region, are these two features really the same feature ? Can users specify their confidence in what they have created? Are there ways to filter available features to concentrate on only those relevant to the current problem? How does a user trust that a feature created by another is really what it appears to be ? The answers to these questions will come from a variety of sources ranging from new technologies to clever applications of existing techniques. WIKI-like moderated repositories and specialized feature versioning services represent just two of the solutions that have begun to develop across the geospatial community. These tools and others will eventually lead to enhanced geospatial collaboration.