Chris Heathcote is bringing up the rear of the conference with a talk on geolocation.
- no magic bullet
- GPS is not the solution
- appreciate the toolbox
- measures
- accuracy
- availability
- reliability, trust, etc
- What’s good enough?
- 20-50m?
- too much costs too much
- to little isn’t useful
- Here we go
- 0. assume: The Earth
- 1. the time: is it light? dark? what time is it here?
- 2-7. cultural clues: which cel phone operators? which wi-fi? phone number syntax? newspapers available? accuracy: country
- 8. Ask someone. Accuracy: 10 meters (if you’re lucky)
- 9. Use a map. Accuracy: 10 meters to 1 mile
- mobile tech
- 10. cell ID. You have to go through the operator. accuracy: 50m to 2 miles.
- 11. cell ID (local lookup): you’ve got to keep track of geo data youself
- 12. angle of arrival (AOA)
- 13. time distance of arrival (TDOA) 30-50m
- 14. observed time difference (OTD) 25-250m
- 15. assisted GPS: mainly in japan. cel operator assists GPS chip with your location for more accuracy.
- Geo Tech
- 16. GPS: pretty good, but doesn’t work everywhere. Are there satellites above me? kills batteries.
- 17. WAAS: improves accuracy for GPS. Even more sattelites required. 2m-25m
- 18.differential GPS: needs two receivers pretty close. 1-3m.
- street furniature
- 19.postcodes and zipcodes. usefulness varies
- 20. street names. Not all countries have street names. hard to enter when mobile. 20m-hundreds of miles
- 20a. street corners, intersections provide more accuracy. 10m-miles
- 21. street numbers: great, if available.
- 22. biz names. go out of date really quickly. lots of some types of businesses in some locations
- 23. landmarks and littlemarks. what can you see?
- 24-26. public transport. bus stops, street lamps, traffic lights. bus stop UUIDs. Data is proprietary
- 27. location street signs. dedicated geolocation street signs. 10m accuracy.
- 28. geowarchalking. rock! pirate geo graffiti. geolocate the world.
- emerging tech
- 29. dead reckoning. accelorometers, compasses, really accurate measurement of relative positions. needs accurate location and time source to start with.
- 30. wi-fi triangulation. active campus
- 31. broadcast TV/radio triangulaton. needs broadcast reception from three different locations. not likely in many areas.
- IP lookup: great for a country or continent but not much better than that. Varies.
- location advertising
- 33. encoding of location in access point name/location points. part of SSID or whatever is advertised.
- 34. local servers/rendezvous: where am I. fixed machines that say where they are.
- 35. bluetooth. dink. here you are.
- bonus
- 36. RFID. anything that transmits can give you location. Is this scanner geolocated? or in reverse, card senses if scanned and potential lookup
- a social future
- 37. who are you near? where are they?
- 38. objects you are near. are they broadcasting their location? what’s more accurate? do something with it.
- 39. the road most traveled. recording and aggregate accurate flows. time, speed, quantity of movement. maps autogenerate themselves on the fly. better directions, see who has been where recently. WAAG.
- winding down: location is important. what if you want to be lost?
the presentation is here. #geo on irc.oftc.net is another place to check out. locative.net. Become a geowanker. Great presentation, Chris!