Virtual Earth brings clarity to business intelligence
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If you’ve ever used the Starbucks website to find your nearest coffee, you’ve already used Microsoft’s Virtual Earth technology. The same system is now being evaluated by several Public Sector organisations who see mapping and spatial data as a route to improving their service to citizens.
Paul Curran reports.
Virtual Earth brings together information from a variety of data sources, matches it up with geospatial information - that’s “maps” to you and me - and then pulls more useful information out of the result.
For a public sector organisation, that can mean helping to gather and present statistics on employment, earnings, mortality rates or school results. In a healthcare context, it is used to track diseases or to monitor how long it takes for an x-ray to cross a hospital.
“It’s a technology that creates visually appealing results by overlaying location-relevant data onto map imagery taken from satellite sensors and aerial footage,” says Microsoft Virtual Earth solutions specialist, Vikas Arora. “Users can drag, drop and pan-down on maps at the click of a mouse.”
Pinpointing amenities
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Most of us have used online maps at one time or another to help us get somewhere. Virtual Earth betters other offerings by presenting a unique “bird's eye” view of locations taken at 45 degree angles to show building facades, side views and entrances.
The technology is already the driver behind Microsoft’s popular online Live Search Maps platform, whose point-of-interest database lets users perform web searches by organisation, individual and address. By entering “London”, for example, you’ll be able to see four different views of Buckingham Palace and most of the capital’s other landmarks in detail.
“This is an obvious godsend for retailers and estate agents, but this powerful technology has equal potential in the public sector,” says Mr Arora. “Local authorities are already investigating its use to provide citizens with precise directions to services and facilities such as job centres, hospitals and council offices, as well as helping to familiarise them with the layout of those amenities.”
For example, enter a postcode in the “services locator” facility on the NHS Choices website and it’s Virtual Earth that will let you view specific entrances to wards and clinics, car parks, bus stops and so forth. “It enables patients, visitors and staff to navigate around a hospital site from their PC,” says Mr Arora. “Knowing precisely where they need to go offers enormous security and peace of mind to patients under the stress of ill health.”
Life-saving applications
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Mr Arora says other useful applications of the technology for the public sector abound. “For instance, police forces can use it to quickly analyse their response times after incidents and plan resources more effectively as a result. The emergency services can use it to map incidents such as chemical leaks, where a contaminated area can be mapped to take account of environmental factors such as wind speeds and direction.”
“Ambulance services can use it to track emergency vehicles and plan routes by having all the latest traffic information overlaid on a Virtual Earth map of their patch.” Geospatial data can play a role in saving lives, and reducing the cost of providing public services effectively.
Business Intelligence and KPIs
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Mapping the world we live in isn’t just about getting from A to B, though. Public sector organisations can also find Virtual Earth’s mapping capabilities invaluable in understanding day-to-day performance metrics.
Arora explains that maps can be overlaid with web paths leading to tools that allow people to run queries and instantly view information on particular units. This simplifies number-crunching and gives administrators a more succinct (and often more intelligible) view of statistics, helping to identify where exceptions are occurring.
“Town planners can use Virtual Earth to map out council boundaries, manage planning applications, utilities works and so forth. Until now, they’ve had to rely on reports and Excel spreadsheets, which are not as visually powerful, and not something that busy managers particularly relish. Most want to log on, click a button, highlight something and get information at a glance.”
Meeting public sector challenges
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Arora says budget pressures, changing policies and an ageing technology infrastructure sometimes make collaboration, communication and cost-savings more difficult in today’s public sector. “Managers are often pulled in different directions,” he says. “On the one hand, they’re tasked with improving data management, analysis and overall communication, while on the other they’re expected to cut costs and deliver clear value to the taxpaying public.
“The Virtual Earth platform meets these challenges by helping public sector bodies plan, predict and respond faster and more efficiently. It’s a flexible, accessible visual platform that allows them to analyse more effectively the overwhelming amount of data that flows through their doors every day.”
“In short, Virtual Earth lets public sector organisations of any kind visualise and analyse data from a variety of databases and share it with other government departments and, where appropriate, with the general public. The insights they gain from these data visualisations can then be extended to their decision-making process, which in turn can help them cut costs and achieve their goals.”
Public sector organisations can use Virtual Earth to:
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- Make public service locations more discoverable for users via detailed maps, 3D capabilities and driving directions.
- Create disaster management solutions that can coordinate central and local government resources
- Manage real-time data updates from multiple information sources to keep government departments connected and organised.
- Manage data streams and information updates using GeoRSS feeds to view a wide range of data sources, including census data or health information.
Exploring the world can be extremely difficult for kids in wheelchairs, who have problems overcoming obstacles such as curbs, steps and stairs. That’s why four Hamburg students have developed new navigation software - based on maps created by Virtual Earth – that can be downloaded onto a smart phone or other mobile device. The more the system is used, the smarter it becomes for others. Whenever users encounter an obstacle travelling through the streets, they can upload comments to the software to identify the obstacle. Supported by Microsoft, the Trailblazers project so fascinated the company’s boss Bill Gates that he invited its creators to meet him in Seattle to learn first-hand how they went about it.
A manager’s perspective
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Information and knowledge hold the key to driving better patient outcomes, according to Paul Kendrick, corporate health informatics programme manager at Lincolnshire Teaching Primary Care Trust and a keen supporter of mapping technology.
“The way information is created, stored and shared within the healthcare industry today often limits the ability of doctors, nurses, clinicians and administrators to collaborate effectively,” he says. “Too often they are bogged down with paper-based processes, manual data entry and isolated systems that are unable to share data.”
“Seeing information colour-coded on a map also connects far more immediately with the general public and makes services seem much more accessible to them. As well as enabling the NHS to introduce innovation more quickly, mapping technology will help to keep doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals fully abreast of changes to services.”
He is also convinced that mapping can help with complex management tasks. “NHS Trusts need tools that help people to visualise information in a way that makes sense to them, be they clinicians, finance directors or chief executives,” he says. “That way, they can make decisions more accurately.”
“As Trusts begin formulating a better foundation of services for managing KPIs, and start to impart more of this information to the public, mapping technology will grow in importance. NHS Choices is already a clear example of this, where the technology is offering different ways of getting to services.”
“Virtual Earth provides a simple way of conveying complex data very quickly. It helps Trusts like ours make healthcare information richer and more meaningful to the public than the ‘dry’ tables they’ve previously been used to. As the saying goes, a picture paints a thousand words.”
