The "Social Network" of Machines
The past decade has clearly been the era of social networks, with revolutionary impact on nearly everything, from social behaviour to mapping and response to emergency events. Associated with the rise of Facebook, Twitter and the other dominant social network sites, we have seen an increased emphasis on “unstructured” data such as imagery, videos and schema-less data stores. This was possible because the intent of these sites and their infrastructure is the direct interaction between humans. Fre...
Examining the Concept of Informed Infrastructure
While later columns will most often look at the details, I thought this first column should be devoted to the variety of concepts that might be attributed to Informed Infrastructure. Clearly it goes beyond the site’s byline of “Extending design to include impacts,” although this has a wonderfully vague quality that could support a variety of notions. To start with, informed infrastructure can be informed about its contents, be that people in a room, cars on a highway, water in a water main, o...
Game On – Why Your Tween is Poised to be the Next Geospatial Super User
Much has been written about converging threads in the geospatial arena over the past several years (6 articles in Safe’s blog alone!), whether it’s BIM and GIS, 3D and 2D, 2.5D and 2D, or even geospatial and music videos! But over the past couple of months I’ve noticed a significant set of developments emanating from the gaming industry that are sure to have ramifications for the unsuspecting, staid geospatial industry. I was first alerted to this trend by my friends over at the Very Spatial...
Sensor Sensibility: Deployment Strategies and Design Tradeoffs
Before we delve too far into the various applications of wireless sensor networks, it may be of some use to review the characteristics of such a system. While wireless sensor networks allow us to deploy and gather information in a variety of places that are impractical to reach - whether due to cost or inhospitableness - they also have a number of constraints that need to be understood. These constraints inform the design, configuration and deployment - and the data collected and resulting appli...
Creating and Enabling a Smarter Enterprise with Location Intelligence
The recent economic downturn has forced enterprises of all shapes and sizes to do more with less, yet they are still expected to return profitable results. This has led many businesses to shift their priorities and strategies for effectively managing customer relationships in a meaningful and profitable way. Location intelligence has become a valuable asset for everyday collaboration and communication among stakeholders. Location intelligence involves the use of geographic relationships to pr...
Sensor Sensibility: Sensors Transform the Information Ecosystem
Welcome to the inaugural issue of Sensor Sensibility. This column will focus on a number of topics related to sensors ranging from sensor platforms to sensor data, standards to architectures. Sensors are transforming the information ecosystem, providing an opportunity for real-time data acquisition of ambient conditions. Historically, geographic information systems have provided the view into the “real world” – from land base data like roads and rivers, to aerial photography or remotely sense...
Informing Design
Geographic information systems (GIS) technology and design have long been intertwined, hard to separate, and competitive. Born from landscape architecture, GIS was seen as the place for mapping, planning, and analysis, while computer-aided design (CAD) was seen as a design tool for engineering and architecture. Those boundaries, ill-defined and arbitrary to begin with, are beginning to blur further with the introduction of geodesign. What is Geodesign? Geodesign is a combination of geography...
Stormwater Interview with Robert Page, P.E., Vice President, HNTB
Santa Barbara County North Branch Jail Expansion
February Issue 2026
