Espatial

Posted on August 25, 2006
Filed Under Companies |

With all the buzz and focus on social networking via the wire we might remind ourselves from time to time that we live in a world where we meet people, drive cars and …. Should that be where we drive cars and meet people? Geospatial data and applications are going to impact on how we live. move, meet. ESpatial has some great ideas.

It’s hard to talk down a hype like Web 2.0 but the application pipeline has an equally fascinating set of possibilities that may well have a greater impact - and more readily recognisable revenue stream.

One area is the city. Web 2.0 and the transformations taking place in business are about unleashed creativity. Creativenets are growing al around us. Creativenets can be both virtual as well as physical and cities need them in the physical here and now.

A couple of years back we were talking about the internet and edemocracy, ecitizenship and a host of other application e-areas. That’s dried up because of the swarm around YouTube. Pity really.

One or two of the projects that might make difference need a bit of the limelight. E-spatial http://www.espatial.com/ is an Irish company that is working with Dublin City, Barcelona City and Helsinki to embed computing in the physical structure of the cities to improve the very real networks that exist layered on each other – transport, relations with city authorities, policing – that make a social network function.

The aim is to create interfaces, mediating tools and social processes between the city, the citizens and other stakeholders, and between official and expert knowledge of urban infrastructure and the knowledge that is based on lived experience of the city. It is a citizen driven design.

ESpatial’s approach presses the same button that Web 2.0 projects do, just that it is very real and unlikely to create a swarm of addicted users sat at their PCs.

On the other hand if we could transfer the current focus on virtual communities to real communities that would be no bad thing.

ESpatial are presenting in London at the AGI conference in September on geographic information in facilitating improved communication, more joined up working, greater information sharing, better decision making and improved service delivery, all leading to thriving business success and at GeoInt in Orlando in November.


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