The completion this month of the Geodirectory, a complete database of nearly every address in the Republic featuring exact geographical co-ordinates, paves the way for the introduction of a number of commercial applications targeting information at very specific audiences.
The Geodirectory, featuring around 1.4 million address records, has been compiled by the Ordnance Survey of Ireland and An Post. It attaches map co-ordinates to the address of nearly every household in the Republic. Now a number of mapping software companies are devising applications to place on top of this information to deliver valuable information to clients about their customers.
Known as geographic information systems (GIS), the computerised mapping programs help corporations, private groups and governments make decisions. They work by connecting information stored in a computer database to points on a map. Information is displayed in layers, with each succeeding layer laid over the preceding ones, like transparent sheets on an overhead projector.
The resulting maps often reveal trends or patterns that might be missed if the same information were presented in a spreadsheet.
In the US several years ago, a series of knife attacks in Brooklyn first appeared to police investigators to have little in common with one another. But when their locations were displayed on a map with other data, like known sites where gang members gathered, connections were made.
A local gang, it turned out, had been conducting initiations, and part of the initiation process had involved slashing attacks.
Another example is a short messaging service from Logica Aldiscon, which allows department stores to issue information about sales or special offers in particular branches if a mobilephone user who has requested such information is in the vicinity of that branch.
In the US, Sears Roebuck & Company department stores use software from Environmental Systems Research Institute to pinpoint the best places to open new stores. The company pulls up local suburban maps and uses its customer database to look for areas with large percentages of homeowners, for example, who are likely to spend more on home-improvement items, like those sold at Sears, than those who are renting. As usual the first to benefit here from the potential of the new technology will be mobilephone operators. They will be able to harness the information for their WAP (wireless application protocol) services to deliver location specific information to customers.
In the Republic, two recently established commercial mapping and routing services companies have already worked closely with mobile operators here.
By mapping business listings on to geographical data, telecoms operators can colour code customer profiles to work out the best route for road digging and network rollout.
Bizmaps and Iris both plan to capitalise on the geographic analysis capability of the retail, telecommunications and financial services sectors. Using the Geodirectory, information stored within any company database can be mapped visually and put to a range of uses.
Mr Feargal O'Neill, co-founder of Bizmaps, has spoken with the emergency services about deploying mapping software in Garda and fire stations to validate and verify locations quickly. An Post may decide on completion of the Geodirectory to issue every address with its own co-ordinate number to make it readily traceable.
"A lot of people are interested in using the Geodirectory for commercial purposes, but it needs to be 100 per cent complete before people buy into it," Mr O'Neill says.
Direct marketing companies can also look forward to significant cost reductions through the elimination of multiple mailshots to individual addresses because of variances in address information.
According to Daratech, a US market research company, the geographic information systems software industry will have sales of $700 million (€735 million) this year. Leaders in the field today include US companies Environmental Systems Research Institute, Intergraph and Mapquest, which was recently bought by Time Warner/AOL in a pre-Christmas and pre-merger deal then valued at around $1.1 billion. Bizmaps currently offers a "virtual map" service to customers wishing to depict company specific information in visual format. Iris says it plans to launch its MapServer product in the final quarter this year.
One of the biggest barriers to GIS services at the moment is limited bandwidth over mobile communications and unsophisticated display screens on mobile devices.
The Republic's first WAP phone offering can only accommodate poor resolution maps. However it is hoped the next generation of WAP phones, due to be released before the end of the year, will allow for improved graphics.
Until now, GIS has been viewed as a costly tool used largely by cartographers, demographers and planners. The arrival of the Internet and technological developments mean it is now an affordable consumer tool, opening up the area to a series of innovations.
Car and personal navigation devices have been tipped as the hottest new computer appliances on sale this year, with the prices of units in the US ranging from $200 to $400.
Several years ago a global positioning satellite (GPS) system-backed navigation system, such as that used by US marines in the Gulf War to find their bearings in hostile territory, would have cost around $1,000.
Magellan Corporation has introduced a line of GPS receiver products for the popular Palm V organiser. Its voice-assisted satellite navigation computer allows drivers verbally to request an address.
The satellite receiver of the Magellan system establishes the present position of the car by interrogating the nearest satellite of the GPS and brings up the location on a coloured liquid crystal display map. A synthesised voice then guides the driver, while a marker on the display follows the car's movements. The completion of the Republic's Geodirectory this month will play a critical role in the introduction of similar applications here.
