Editorial

by Jon Fairall

^{Building an Industry}

The Queensland chapter of the Australian Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers' Association has established what it describes as a 'self-reinforcing cluster of companies', called Location Australia. Essentially it is a networking forum for a group of manufacturers linked by an interest in position, navigation and timing (PNT) technologies.

The cluster will connect with bodies such as the AEEMA Industry Cluster in Queensland and the Australian Telematics Cluster.

PNT is probably a new acronym for most readers, but it is really just the familiar Location Based Services, with the addition of timing. The provision of time-related services, although important, is of little interest to readers of this magazine. But it is worth noting that since satellite positioning depends on time, it is easy for electronic engineers to add such services to an LBS portfolio.

Be that as it may, this is exciting news. Taken together with some other straws in the wind, it would seem that Australian industry is preparing to embrace the post- GPS world of global navigation systems with gusto. We will remain sophisticated users, of course, but we will also become creators and exporters of the technology. There is an industry to be created here.

However, it is of concern that this whole cluster concept is being driven by AEEMA, because manufacturing is not where the industry will be based. It may be possible to develop some manufacturing capacity, but the money and jobs here will be trivial next to those that will be possible in the services sector.

If Australia has any selective advantage in this field - and indeed, if this field has any selective advantage for Australian business - it will be because we understand the location industry, and are able to embrace it.

We have a sophisticated research base in university and industry. We have equally sophisticated and demanding users. We have software engineers who can build the interfaces between position information and useful products. We have the spatial databases that allow users to relate position to other artefacts of interest. We even have the expertise to design hardware and put hardware systems together. The only weak link in the chain is the lack of a credible manufacturing industry.

Even more exciting is the fact that in some of these fields, we were pioneers. In others, we are still world leaders. What's more, we have the international connections that can take this expertise to world markets.

There is already an enviable track record in software development. Intergraph's IntelliWhere product was developed in Brisbane. ESRI's ArcPad was developed in Melbourne. Trimble does significant R&D here as well (although its main software development centre is in Christchurch). Leica and others do advanced machine guidance. Beeline Technologies is probably one of the world leaders in the use of GPS in agriculture. Beyond these majors, there are dozens of smaller consultants with significant expertise in the field.

Various features in this issue amplify these points. Our discussion of the activities of the CRC for Spatial Information, for instance, reveals some of the work going on at University of New South Wales to give position information to mobile phones. This is the quintessential consumer app. At the other extreme, Paul Grad's story discusses work being carried out in Brisbane to satisfy the needs of the mining industry for machine guidance -- the quintessential industrial app. More importantly, if you scratch just a little you can find just about every kind of application in between.

But all of this begs an interesting question. It's easy to see the attraction of the new marketplace for electronics engineers, and software programmers, and marketing spin doctors and all the rest. Where is the angle for the poor old spatial scientist?

For that, I think you need to read Robert Lorimer's piece, which takes an infrastructure view of the world on which all this clever stuff depends.

As always, it turns out that lurking in the infrastructure are all the details that can confound these plans. Up till now, we have been able to treat the GPS like a monolithic utility. To use it you just needed to have access to a GPS receiver. To get the most out of the post-GPS world will require far more sophistication.

Lorimer takes a tiered view of GNSS. At level one we get navigation satellite operators. Below them we get seven tiers of vital augmentation systems. Establishing the connection between these systems will occupy many people in the industry for at least the next decade.

One example is our story on the Victorian Melbpos augmentation system. It will make it possible for surveyors to use GPS for some of their most demanding applications.

In very short order, however, the Victorians will need to expand this service to include all the positioning satellites available. The mess of differing standards, datums and formats will need to be hidden, and kept so, despite the tectonic protests of the ground under our feet. It is worth remembering that in a world where we can measure the position of something to better than 20 mm relative to the position of the fixed stars, the surface of the Earth is a rubbery thing.

Then again, consider that without data, none of this matters very much. Position only makes sense if it is position relative to something. Sometimes that is just a grid, sometimes it's terrain morphology. More and more often, however, it will be aspects of the built environment, the cultural layer if you will. The more money people spend on GNSS, of course, the more valuable that layer will become.

There's plenty of work to go around.

JON FAIRALL is the Editor of Position

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(This page last modified on 1 June 2006)