The innovative and diverse projects include the ability to combine data from tiny sensors, the Internet and a variety of other sources with map information and geographic imagery. The university research teams aim to study and map the physical world in real time, to push the technological boundaries of local search, and to understand the potential societal impact of these kinds of geographic technologies. New solutions ultimately resulting from the research are expected to yield rich and diverse benefits, such as helping tourists find affordable restaurants with the shortest lines, or helping scientists understand changes in the ecology of biological systems under the threat of climate change.
"The ability to search for and analyze information within the context of location is a field with great potential," said Sailesh Chutani, director of External Research and Programs, the arm of Microsoft Research that works closely with academic institutions. "These researchers are using a powerful new approach to solve fundamental problems, and our programs are designed to help them in a number of ways -- funding to bring in additional resources, software and data to use in experiments, access to top researchers at Microsoft, and collaboration with the broader, global research community."
In addition to the unrestricted monetary awards, winners of the SensorMap RFP will receive access to Microsoft's SensorMap geographic sensor-data publishing platform, enabling them to integrate and publish searchable data through a map interface. The Virtual Earth RFP winners will receive some of Microsoft's Web-based geographic imagery, which in combination with the Interactive Virtual Earth software development kit will enable researchers to explore potential applications of location-based Web searches.
"We believe scientific research can be highly enriched through access to geographic presentation assets," said Gur Kimchi, software architect for Microsoft's Virtual Earth business unit. "Data gathering is an expensive operation today. These RFPs allow us to share and utilize the rich data we've collected for the benefit of the scientific community, with the potential ultimately to enhance scientists' understanding of ecology, meteorology, epidemiology and virtually any field of inquiry that can benefit from displaying and analyzing data geographically."
