4 ms·

May I ask, how does one waste “hundreds of thousands of dollars” with a poor choice of coordinate system? That sounds spicy.

aardvark179 6y ago
If the simple planar distance and the geodetic distance are significantly different and you use the planar distance for some analysis then the best case will be you got your analysis wrong, the worst case would be that you have bought the wrong quantity of material or built some unworkable or unnecessary. Or you just misplace where poles are and work crews waste time finding them, or you give wrong information for call before you dig queries and somebody goes straight through a pipe or conduit. GIS systems are an area where software and the physical world can meet in ways many devs don’t appreciate.
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  I used to work for BT a while back and on the "Engineering" side there where many problems with the drawings of plant being wrong or lost. Also workmanager aka workmangler was known for sending linemen (engineers in BT speak) to the wrong place and also sending multiple teams to the same fault
  - aardvark179 6y ago
    Yeah, I used to work on the Smallworld GIS software and it was fascinating seeing the hoops customers would jump through to deal with data having systemic problems. Some had to keep using there own background data because it was wrong, but it was also what everything had been entered into the system relative to. So if they started using correct background data they would have had to move all their assets to the proper positions, and the offsets were not universal across their operational area.
perrygeo 6y ago
When you pull the trigger on a processing job involving a few hundred GBs of data and get a parameter wrong, you may have to re-run it and pay for the wasted compute/bandwidth. In this sense, getting the coordinate system right is no different than getting any other parameter right. When you increase bad inputs by 1000x, the magic of scalable cloud infrastructure multiplies your mistakes for you automatically.
pastage 6y ago
You discover the error too late and fail to submit your proposal. I've seen this happen for a 7 figure bid. This was in orgs that are not used to coordinate systems, for reference we have thousands of crs in my local area, sure when you know that you need so many you usually have the experience to get it right.

aardvark179 6y ago

If the simple planar distance and the geodetic distance are significantly different and you use the planar distance for some analysis then the best case will be you got your analysis wrong, the worst case would be that you have bought the wrong quantity of material or built some unworkable or unnecessary. Or you just misplace where poles are and work crews waste time finding them, or you give wrong information for call before you dig queries and somebody goes straight through a pipe or conduit. GIS systems are an area where software and the physical world can meet in ways many devs don’t appreciate.

C1sc0cat 6y ago
I used to work for BT a while back and on the "Engineering" side there where many problems with the drawings of plant being wrong or lost. Also workmanager aka workmangler was known for sending linemen (engineers in BT speak) to the wrong place and also sending multiple teams to the same fault
- aardvark179 6y ago
  Yeah, I used to work on the Smallworld GIS software and it was fascinating seeing the hoops customers would jump through to deal with data having systemic problems. Some had to keep using there own background data because it was wrong, but it was also what everything had been entered into the system relative to. So if they started using correct background data they would have had to move all their assets to the proper positions, and the offsets were not universal across their operational area.

perrygeo 6y ago

When you pull the trigger on a processing job involving a few hundred GBs of data and get a parameter wrong, you may have to re-run it and pay for the wasted compute/bandwidth. In this sense, getting the coordinate system right is no different than getting any other parameter right. When you increase bad inputs by 1000x, the magic of scalable cloud infrastructure multiplies your mistakes for you automatically.

pastage 6y ago

You discover the error too late and fail to submit your proposal. I've seen this happen for a 7 figure bid. This was in orgs that are not used to coordinate systems, for reference we have thousands of crs in my local area, sure when you know that you need so many you usually have the experience to get it right.