Speakers Bio & Abstract

Biography
Han Wammes has over 30 years of experience in both the GI and IT industry and has been working for companies like Intergraph and Oracle and since lately for 1Spatial. As a Land Surveyor by education, Han is passionate about helping to mature the GI industry, as he sees the importance of the role of Smart Geospatial Data and how we as an industry need to collaborate for being able to deal with societal issues.Abstract
Data: get big ... but get smartAlthough Big Data technologies are primarily dealing with the volume and velocity of data, Big Data is still data like any other data. Unless we add Semantics and Rules, it remains meaningless. Likewise if we don't have a purpose for the data, why collect it in the first place? So we need context at least answering: Who, What, Where and When. The same applies to Data Quality; quality of data defines the reliability of the decisions we make based on this data, so it needs to be fit for purpose i.e. Smart Data. While some technologies like e.g. Data Analytics, allow for detecting patterns in data, these ultimately still need to deal with Smart Data. So, besides answering who and what, it is the space-time continuum which determines the context and the value of data; Smart Data. All these aspects are not new though. The lack of Semantics, Rules and Governance of Data Quality has caused many e-Government projects to fail, and despite unifying strategies such as Open Standards, Open APIs and Open Data, a lot of data silos still exist. So we should be careful not to fall into the same trap as we did in the past. If we are able as an industry to transition from just delivering geospatial data to being an integral part of Smart City initiatives by adding context, we can actually start helping making these initiatives more viable, valuable and successful.