The EU would be better off working with Google. There is a need to integrate marine charts, wind, wave and detailed ocean weather plus regional forecasts into the Google Earth and generate GOOGLE OCEANS for marine navigation.
A similar air application could combine this with real time cloud penetrating ground radar imagery of elevation terrain at pin-point accuracy to enable weather independent air navigation and link this to detailed satellite weather and weather station data in real time in GOOGLE AIR.
Electronic charts are presently for sale but this service isn't conveniently affordable or globalized for general use and can be integrated into marine navigation systems but would be more useful integrated into a Googlable framework. NOAA has made a stab at this for US waters with their On Line Viewers but what about the rest of the world?
The impediments to safe navigation around the world are every person's inability to see aids to navigation in poor conditions along with the shoals and land locations and other vessels in the oceans and have warnings that we are nearing them and our inability to see the ground and obstructions and other craft and their contrails in our flight path while flying due to darkness or weather.
Think also of how useful it would be to be able to Google the real time location, speed, course and elevation of every aircraft in the sky or vessel on the oceans. Satellite radar can make this a reality. It would eliminate the need for vessels to carry radar. All they would need is adequate reflectors and GOOGLE AIR or GOOGLE OCEANS and a new modelling program which I would call GOOGLE GIS.
The ideal for global navigators would be to go seamlessly on a laptop or handheld or HUD display interface back and forth from GoogleEarth GoogleAir or Google Oceans to Google GIS with radar imagery for forward and downward seeing and have complete situational awareness on land, air and sea on a par with but more detailed than NASA's J-TRACK for satellites. I think that ESRI needs to be brought into these discussions as well because of their ability to model terrain. For GIS to be integrated into this framework, GIS needs to develop a much more user friendly Googlish interface.
For ESRI to be useful in this exercise, they need to make a friendlier GIS interface and also put their GeoData into the public domain. Perhaps a meeting between Google, EU Sat Nav Companies, Nokia and ESRI could lead to more useful spending of billions rather than another GPS. NATO might want to sit in on it. The next evolution of course is to include global cell phone GPS coverage into this multi-tasking GOOGLY interface Nokia!
If we can put true navigation into the handhelds of the world, more people will be able to afford to participate in trade, commerce and travel on land, air or sea and in relative safety.
Jormawankenobe
Copyright 2008 J. Jyrkkanen
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"a Googlish interface" lol sorry, but that made me laugh