Geospatially Speaking

The development of apps to parse open data has long been a mainstay of the movement, but these apps have traditionally been developed by individuals and not fully-fledged companies. The apps tend to be focused and small in scale. SilverStripe, an open-source web development company based out of New Zealand, has launched an app that allows users to access comprehensive government provided geospatial data, which is something of a first in the open data field.

Geospatial data in particular opens up a new realm of possibility. While many apps have been developed to help locate certain institutions—take, for example, the newest app developed by the Surrey police to help citizens find the local station and look up local crime activity—few of them have the kind of depth and visualization power of the SilverStripe app. This app culls information not only about the local climate and geography, but marine life and deep-water imagery. In essence, the SilverStripe app allows citizens a highly detailed tour of their natural environment using government data.

While the SilverStripe app is in its first stages, the company plans to work further on the visualization aspect of the data. This app has the potential to be extremely engaging item with enormous commercial success. Imagine this: if an app could be developed that could configure real-time information into instant fully detailed 3D visualization, environments which are currently hard to monitor—say, deep trenches in the ocean or the interior of someone’s heart—could be presented in a form that allows people to come up with specific and instantaneous solutions. This app could be applied to complex situations such as wildfires or natural disasters. Perhaps earthquakes could even be predicted with greater accuracy if real-time monitors could be placed within a known fault-line and correspondingly measure incremental increases and decreases in tension. A real-time map of actual tension and building pressure points of an entire continent could be easily assembled with an app that is designed to simultaneously configure and assemble real-time data.

Open data is a field that is not just great for citizen participation in civic affairs; it’s an incredible testing ground for a variety of new technologies that may end up transforming the way we live and do business. Go, SilverStripe!