By Noah Doyle, director, corporate development, Keyhole (www.keyhole.com), Mountain View, Calif., and Chuck Herring, director of marketing communications, DigitalGlobe (www.digitalglobe.com), Longmont, Colo.

What’s the value of that property? What new structures are appropriate for that site? What are the risk factors near that building? These questions are asked daily by decision makers in location-dependent industries such as real estate, architecture/ engineering/construction (AEC) and insurance. To analyze a site, decision makers normally would conduct in-depth research and on-site surveys. Yet in today’s fast-paced business environment, traditional research is often too slow. To accelerate the process, Geospatial Decision Support (GDS) tools have arrived to give business decision makers access to geospatial data on demand.
 

GDS Benefits
GDS software is like a virtual GIS on the desktop, yet it requires minimal training and delivers instant results. The top products in this category integrate disparate, high-value data sets into one usable package. They also leverage today’s powerful information-capture platforms, such as imaging satellites, to deliver more customized, up-to-date data than ever before.
 

As with most business-centric information technology solutions, the primary objective for GDS deployments is return on investment (ROI). For example, in the retail industry, business objectives require multiple new store openings annually, or even monthly. Rather than cut the decision-making process short to meet deadlines, site-selection managers can use GDS tools to make real-time decisions. Before spending days driving to sites, users can inspect them virtually from their desks, often eliminating undesirable options right away—spotting poor freeway access or competitor proximity—without leaving the office. Such efficiency leads to increased productivity, which results in positive ROI.
 

Today’s high-performance GDS tools have powerful collaboration features that let multiple users coordinate decisions within a team environment. Imagine calling a colleague to report on a site that is 100 yards from the exit, on the northeast corner, behind the commuter hotel. It’s not the most effective way to communicate spatial information. With GDS tools, however, the colleague can instantly see the same picture of the property, plus any annotations describing zoning, plat lines and even potential designs. Additional annotations can be overlaid with ease while obtaining feedback from all parties to the transaction. GDS solutions enable critical team-oriented business processes to proceed faster and more efficiently.

A Closer Look
One GDS product used by thousands of business professionals is Keyhole Pro, offered by Keyhole Corp., Mountain View, Calif. The product employs principles inherent to the high-end visualization systems of the military. Today, that same power can be put to work on the desktop to freely assess Earth imagery collections married with GIS data. Keyhole Pro gives nonexpert users a visual impression of Earth imagery while integrating the underlying data necessary to make decisions. Keyhole’s partnership with Longmont, Colo.-based DigitalGlobe to incorporate QuickBird high-resolution satellite imagery takes GDS solutions to a new plateau of geographic coverage and currency. For example, the 60-centimeter QuickBird imagery, collected on a frequent basis, enables site developers, real estate professionals, business geographics experts and others who rely on up-to-date maps to visualize new road installations, monitor construction progress and evaluate new development prospects.

Putting GDS to Work
A U.S. national retailer that opens more than 100 big box stores per year uses GDS to accelerate the site-selection process. By “flying” over a neighborhood in 3-D perspective, and visualizing it within the context of surrounding areas, the retailer identifies growth patterns without boarding a plane. A spatial search detects competitor locations, and demographic overlays clearly reveal underserved areas with high income and growth potential. Available sites are easily recognized and flagged for further investigation. The retailer also uses GDS to quickly evaluate sites pitched by brokers before investing time to hear a presentation or visit the site in person. Using GDS tools, the retailer has consistently met or exceeded goals for new store openings.
 

For real estate professionals, the value of a GDS product grows with time. Notes Jay Lucas, president of CCIM’s Site To Do Business, “It lets me see exactly what we are talking about. Recently I was talking with someone who thought they had found a good buy, but I pulled it up and said, ‘No, you don’t want to pursue that property because of its proximity to other problems.’ It was close to an area that is deteriorating. I would have discovered all of these things after driving out there, but now I can do it from the office. That saves me a trip or two a day.”

Another vocal advocate of GDS technology in the real estate industry is Jim Young, president of Realcomm. In his weekly Advisory newsletter, he notes, “Over the next few years, the time demands of commercial real estate professionals will be so tested that the unprepared will simply run out of it—time. Savvy professionals will be sitting in front of life-size screens evaluating  15 sites, while the ‘gunslinger’ of yesteryear will be driving to the first site. This doesn’t mean that we won’t visit sites. It just means the preliminary searches will be more efficient.”
 

Young argues persuasively that advances in GDS technology will fundamentally change the real estate business: “All the rules of how we view things are changing and will forever impact how we conduct commercial real estate transactions.”

Broad Adoption Is Key
To get the most out of GDS, its widespread adoption throughout an organization is key. Some businesses limit deployments to a small group of users, but this is often a missed opportunity. The full benefits of GDS tools are achieved only when the entire team uses them to accelerate the core location-dependent processes. Organizations that adopt GDS solutions broadly will be the first to benefit from their productivity-boosting power. By being first, the early adopters will produce cost savings and quality improvements in their decision-making processes, and will gain a significant competitive advantage. The competitive race is on to reap the benefits of GDS technology.  

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