>well i think its a common saying that "information is power". i think
>restricted data access is one example of its existence in real life. a raw
>data is an unexplored gold mine and hard to collect and in a lot of case
>full of blunders so its no surprise that firms are sensitive about sharing
>raw data.
Having known Andy Smith, Jake Desyllas and Mike Batty, I'm sure the latter
is not the case. I am pretty sure they would all welcome a chance for the
academic community share the wealth of information presented in the paper.
>
>
>just this morning i read an article in the geo:connexion magazine (vol. 2,
>no. 6) in which jack dangermond, the founder and owner of ESRI, the lagest
>GIS company in world, criticising india's data policy as stupid because
>indian "goverment" doesn't provide complete access to its geographic
>datasets to foreign firms although they could be easily purchased it from a
>private firm . that means every data is accessible and you only need to know
>the right person to contact :) !!
Yes Mr Dangermond is quite well known for his free the data point of
view. This data hiding happens in US government too. It was one of
the reasons people died unnecessarily during the 1996 Olympics in
Atlanta. The parks department did not share maps with the emergency
services department. When people phoned up saying there was a bombing
in Olympic park the calls could not be operated on as the emergency
services maps did not have any reference to the Olympic park ! I
agree with you in this respect. The less people in government
departments want to share data the more likely it is too be full of
no use once you get it. On travel survey I saw had no information on
children under 8 ! They just did not exists.
>
>The Tate gallery has been mentioned frequently by our research area!
>
>
>all users of my ArcView extension Isovist Analyst have access to an
>excellent high-quality vector (ESRI shapefiles) of Tate Gallery and the
>famous town of Gassin, used by Prof. Hillier in his book. There are many
>freeware shapefile to dxf convertor available on the internet !
Well there is a difference between a map and a map with observation
movement data.
>
>We do desperately also need a reference data set, as you suggest. Perhaps
>the currently underused www.spacesyntax.net would be a good place to store
>such reference data sets.
A most excellent suggestion. Andy Smith looked like he would put the
data up on the CASA website along with the info.
>
>I think while a single database is very useful for easy access and
>reliability, I am afraid of the issues such as owenership e.g. MSN was
>offering to keep all our data for free on its server for remote
>accessibility but the catch in this nice offer was in small prints. MSN
>apparently wanted to have the ownership of the data as well. I am not sure
>what happened to the law suit!
who/what are MSN why where they offering to put data up on a remote server ?
I'm sure Andy has every thing sorted but I could certainly find space
on the internet to house this kind of info if necessary. Still, does
anyone else have movement information out there ? I know there must
be a fair amount in syntax laboratory.
sheep
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