QGIS » QGIS Application

Currently, there is a Time Manager plugin for QGIS that animates shapefiles based on attribute timestamps, and it is phenomenal. I think as GIS progresses, the need to analyze the temporal dimension in addition to the geographic dimension needs to be honed and expanded upon further. Right now, I can think of many uses for this. But here's one strong justification for focusing on adding the capability to GIS.

Situation:

• Currently, the only real option for implementing time-aware data is to use spatial databases that store timestamps with every feature being collected.
• Some organizations don't know GIS well enough to understand spatial databases, nor how to manipulate them, so they're stuck with shapefiles, which aren't time-aware without a "datestamp" attribute of some sort.
• Date stamps in shapefiles are "unintelligent" in nature and are not universally formatted to be understood by all applications, having originated by other applications that format time in their own ways.
• It would be nice to know when an item was recorded, when it was modified, how old it is in relation to "today," or possibly to see a range of datestamped points, lines, or polygons on a map that are visually presented with contrasting symbols... much like the logic of "everything on the map that is green is 'current,' whereas everything on the map in red is 60 days old or older."
• Having such a map that visually represented features by time in a dynamic way so as to reflect a reference to the current date could be useful to many agencies for a visual assessment of maintenance maps, service routes, or accounting audits.

I think here the ability to add either a "current date" variable to QGIS, or even an immutable attribute that auto-calculates the current date (plus or minus any number of days, or minutes, or seconds, etc.) would be an exceptional advancement for geographic record keeping and analysis. And, from a symbology perspective, to be able to create a rule filter for an "Is older than [current date] by [x] days/hrs/mins/secs" would be astounding.