Augmented Reality
Why to go out on the field to update data? Google street view platform shows you free and with no charge how the real world looks, without leaving your office. That’s an interesting perspective, because leveraging it to your GIS environment means you could integrate your data seamlessly like you’re out there yourself. You want to update your municipal data? It’s easy now to locate a missing address in a row of consecutive buildings,; see addresses as pop ups on your screen as if you’re driving down the street. Let’s say you want to direct your field survey to a control point. Control points, which can be of different types (building corner, bush, sewage covers, etc.) can be easily navigated to, and easily located as you get near. Wikitude is a nice app that lets you update KML to your “world” as they call it, and see it as points through your cell phone screen as if they’re right there in front of you. It’s easily done and it’s here. You don’t need to wait for a pair of Google glasses. Augmented reality is something that is creating a lot of buzz. It’s not yet common in our GIS platforms, but it’s coming.