Where Are We? - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 165

with newfound precision, nonmilitary uses of gps have so proliferated that it
is difficult to catalog them, and new applications appear regularly. A recent
market forecast offered the following breakdown by sector: aviation, maritime
and waterways, highway and construction, public transportation, railroads,
communications, emergency response, surveying, weather, scientific, space,
environmental protection, recreation and sports, law enforcement and legal
services, and agriculture and forestry. 137 This list does not mention the retail,
marketing, and advertising industries, but as many commercial applications
migrate from expensive stand-alone equipment to smartphone-enabled apps,
sellers and ads are sure to follow.
The transition from mapping military targets to using precise coordinates
to keep track of municipal infrastructure like utility poles and fire hydrants was
a natural one. Civil engineering users were at the forefront of systems employ-
ing augmentation techniques such as differential gps, signals from Russia's
glonass satellites, carrier-phase signal processors, and lasers to achieve accu-
racies measured in centimeters. Today companies like Mobile 311, based in
Cary, North Carolina, offer smartphone solutions that allow city workers in
the field to upload infrastructure coordinates and the locations of sanitation
problems, code violations, or repair needs directly to digital geographic infor-
mation systems. 138 The City of Boston has extended this capability to its resi-
dents by creating free apps. Citizens Connect allows users to report and upload
photos of graffiti, broken streetlights, and damaged signs. 139 Users can track
the progress of the city's response online and view all reports on a map. Street
Bump is a crowd-sourcing approach to transportation planning that uses the
accelerometers and gps in drivers' smartphones to detect and upload pothole
locations and rough pavement in real time as users travel Boston's streets. 140
Communities of virtually every size today use gis mapping, and apps like these
will undoubtedly become more widespread. U.S. Census Bureau workers used
gps-equipped handheld computers in 2010 to ensure that census reports accu-
rately link data to the proper geographic area. Some residents evidently saw
listing their latitude and longitude coordinates as more intrusive than listing
a street address. The agency responded to privacy concerns on its website,
explaining that by law it may not share information on individual respondents,
including gps coordinates, with any other agency. 141
gps accuracy yields better maps, but correcting old problems can create new
ones. The North Carolina-South Carolina Joint Boundary Commission autho-
rized new surveys to correct errors dating back to 1735, when surveyors gauged