Navigating the global GIS market

Global demand for all types of technology based on geographic information systems (GIS), or spatial information, is booming with sales of everything from complex corporate fleet tracking systems to in-car navigation units growing strongly.

Driving bulldozers to carve out the firebreaks needed to contain out-of-control wildfires in mountainous North American forests is dangerous and demanding work.

But a New Zealand company specialising in GPS guidance systems has begun an export push, which includes targeting Californian forest fire-fighters, who it believes will be willing buyers of its safety-enhancing technology.

Dunedin-based TracMap NZ launched into the local GPS guidance market in October 2006 and now sells its systems both here and internationally, and has grown to employ 18 staff.

Situational Awareness

Managing director Colin Brown says fire-break building bulldozer operators are just one of a number of niche markets TracMap is pursuing as it grows a global market for its 6½-inch screen in-cab navigation units.

The navigation units provide drivers of heavy machinery in remote locations with vital ‘situational awareness’ information. The technology uses GPS to help vehicle operators navigate safely in unfamiliar territory, alerting them to dangerous terrain or even warning them to avoid ploughing through protected sites such as native burial grounds.

TracMap’s initial focus was the domestic market for agricultural aviation – selling aircraft-based GPS systems to the likes of the topdressing industry.

Having built its brand in that market, the company is now expanding into overseas markets, particularly Australia and the US, with both its aviation and land vehicle systems.

Brown says while it is early days for TracMap’s foray into the rural North American fire-fighting market, the company has received an encouraging response and believes it is a market with a multi-million dollar potential.

“It’s a case of there being a well defined need [for GPS guidance technology] and no other apparent solution. We’re positive we’ll turn it into something pretty strong over the next couple of years,” he says.

TracMap’s path into the GIS export market – build on top of initial product development and sales success in the local market – is the type of business model promoted in a recent Government-funded report.

Prepared for Land Information New Zealand, the Department of Conservation and the Ministry of Economic Development, the report – ‘Spatial information in the New Zealand economy: Realising productivity gains’ – says the use of spatial information added at least $1.2 billion to the local economy in 2008 and has the potential to add billions more.

Prepared by consultancy firm ACIL Tasman, the 153-page report provides a comprehensive insight into the GIS market and is valuable reading for anyone with an interest in the field.

It can be downloaded from the Geospatial Office’s website.

It says while there was an estimated $1.2 billion in productivity-related benefits to the New Zealand economy in 2008 flowing from the increasing adoption of GIS technologies, other non-productivity benefits linked to the increasing use of spatial information ‘are probably worth a multiple of this’.

But the report warns a number of barriers to the adoption of spatial information are limiting the benefits New Zealand is able to reap form the technology.