Evolving Spatial Patterns

the venue for interaction a virtual online data super-store. Additionally, the accessibility to data is no longer tied to ownership or control of the acquiring technology, subject to considerable government restriction, or restricted to only those entities that can invest in considerable computer storage. In recent years, several private companies have built the requisite infrastructure to make data more accessible to a broader audience near-real-time via the internet. Advances in associated standards, such as ISO JPEG 2000 (JP2) and Geography Markup Language (GML), are integral to these market advances, as well as the value-added tools and technologies that are now being designed to facilitate true interoperability. Clearly, there are geopolitical issues helping to drive the current business of earth observation. International tensions, especially since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, have certainly kept defense and security high on the priority list of most nations. Combine defense with natural disasters, such as the 2004 Sumatran Tsunami, and increased attention on global warming and there is an increased demand for four-dimensional high-resolution remote sensing of our environment. Furthermore, in addition to the traditional “remote” platforms – satellite and aerial – individual citizens have become another earth observing-platform generating realtime views of what exists at any given moment in any given place. So, the final trend in earth observation is this ubiquity of data; the push of timely, high-resolution data to any device, anytime, anywhere.