livescience | Earlier this month, a group of policy and legal experts from around the world met at an event
co-hosted by the Centre for Spatial Law and Policy and Harvard
University's Center for Geographic Analysis to examine the challenges
related to our ever-evolving location-enabled society. It was a truly
fascinating event with eye-opening presentations on smart transportation
systems, tweet-mapping and Google Glass.
As experts openly debated the good and bad of the current Wild West era
of geospatial technologies, it became clear that its current and
sometimes lawless advancement is influencing trends in more traditional,
related areas, such as Earth observations and environmental
information.
Consider the following: Last week, Climate Central posted a report that
found that "Six months after [Superstorm] Sandy, data from the eight
hardest hit states shows that 11 billion gallons of untreated and
partially treated sewage flowed into rivers, bays, canals, and in some
cases city streets, largely as a result of record storm-surge flooding
that swamped the region's major sewage treatment facilities." About the
same time, Space Daily published a story on how development
banks are using Earth observations to better monitor and track projects
and investment globally. The BBC and NPR, in turn, reported that
digitized Nimbus 1 satellite data from 1964 clarified the extent of ice
cover in the Antarctic at that time, confirming the theory that sea ice is shrinking.
Those very different stories have much in common. They all illustrate
the importance of geospatial technologies in better identifying,
understanding and managing changing environmental conditions.
But, as we look at the changing planet and try to determine how best to
respond or adapt to its uncertainty, we can be certain that:
- People want and need environmental information like never before;
- Demand coupled with new technologies and resources will enable access and application of that data and information like never before; and
- With personal, economic, and national security interests driving the use of that information, new policy and legal issues will arise like never before.
Some of those issues are the changing roles of the public and private
sector, calls for more open data and information policies, and the
demand for environmental information.
