It is surely a much observed fact that the community of folk involved in spatial and spatial related fields is a small but diverse group. People know each other across international boundaries. Its a shame therefore that research in this community is not internationally coordinated.
A privileged few (on review boards and committees) around the world are permitted regular insight into proposed and contemplated research projects internationally. This is a wonderful way to see just how the industry is shaping itself and in a small way, permits the steering of the industry to attempt the "really big problems".
However, with this insight comes a realization of two problems that seem to persist. The first of these is the admirably enthusiastic determination to solve a problem that has been solved already. As an example, there is almost always a project or two in a research portfolio aimed at conquering the problem of displaying points on a map. Firstly, this is not a problem that needs solving again. And secondly, we certainly do not need to build another map viewer to do this. There are plenty of brilliant, cheap or free map viewers available for a simple search. If suddenly a researcher comes up with a clever way of displaying half a billion points in a tenth of a second on a web viewer and making them usefully visible to the user, well then lets add that to an existing viewer and perhaps that research is worthwhile. Another favourite is map styling. Once the points are on the map then wouldn't it be great if they all looked like little robots with shadows behind them ? Maybe so but there is no need to build a style engine to allow the little robots to be drawn, scaled, coloured, haloed, shadowed and so forth. Its been done and done well - many times over. If however, a research project figures out how to emulate the wonderful artistic generalization we have seen in hand created maps then that's another matter.
The second problem is that very often, smart people in our community follow a similar path and arrive at a research project very similar to a project being contemplated elsewhere. It happens often that valuable research funds are expended in different places on very similar projects. Even more frustrating is that there are projects that stall at a problem area that another researcher has conquered or is on the verge of conquering. Without visibility into the research, the stalled project may stay that way.
There is one more factor in the spatial research area to consider. It appears that venture capitalists have figured out that location is a key investment point and they are interested in funding projects. There is plenty of evidence to support this. It is also true that there are research funds in many countries that are directed specifically at spatial problems. Unfortunately, many of these are country specific and so the funds are not always optimally deployed for the international success we need. International cooperation originating in a particular country has proven very difficult to foster.
A small international group has met several times now to consider these factors and has proposed a possible solution. Its called LINC and there is a web site that explains how this group might work.
The general idea is that there is an international group of experts whose responsibility is to keep track of essential directions of spatial research and help local organizations with coordination of projects to avoid repetition and duplication. Also, the group think that it should be possible to provide perspectives in directions that spatial research needs to continue to evolve.
Venture capitalists also seek guidance as to where the technology dollars should be invested for a future payoff and this group would be ideally situated to provide that guidance. It has been suggested that the group would stamp promising original research that pushes spatial forwards with a logo to encourage investment and visibility of the research.
Your thoughts on this endeavour would be much appreciated.
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