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G E O S P A T I A L
I N D U S T R Y
M A G A Z I N E
GEOSPATIAL
WORLD
JANUARY 2016 » VOLUME 06» ISSUE 6 | ISSN 2277–3134
www.geospatialworld.net
INDUSTRY
ANNUAL EDITION 2016
The geospatial industry is going through a great churning to
discover new processes and business models. Catch up
with the pathbreaking innovations and technologies
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CONTENT
7 VOLUME : 6 ISSUE : 6
Editorial
Tech Trends
Industry Outlook
The changing dynamics of the geospatial industry is
changing the way we use technology. As the focus shifts
from hardware to software, and standalone products
give way to system integration and solutions, businesses
are getting impacted, ushering in an era of consolidation,
collaborations and partnerships.
There’s revolution in data acquisition, Big Data is
becoming bigger, apps are being more popular and things
are getting more and more connected in the era of IoT.
Catch up with some of the most prominent technology
trends and how they are changing the industry.
36 Small Satellites
10 Creative destruction of GIS is upon us. Are we ready?
Small sats have come into their own in big boys’ realm
40 UAVs
12
Ola Rollén
Hexagon
14
Bryn Fosburgh
Trimble
Drones take wings, but still bound by regulations
27
Wade Larson
UrtheCast
28
Robert Zitz Leidos
16
Bhupinder Singh
Bentley Systems
29
Juergen Dold
Hexagon
Geosystems
48 Mobile Mapping
18
Ray O’Connor
Topcon Positioning
Systems
30
B.V.R. Mohan Reddy
Cyient
52 Apps
20
Amar Hanspal
Autodesk
31
Manish Choudhary
Pitney Bowes
44 Big Data
Future is in analytics & interconnected Big Data
Proliferation in sensors driving mobile mapping
Apps the new way to go, Thanks to mobile devices
56 Automated Cars
Cars will no longer be owned, but called up when required
22
24
K.K. Singh Rolta
Dr Kumar Navulur
DigitalGlobe
32
34
Michel Stanier
Teledyne Optech
Amit Somani ADCC Infocad
60 Smart Cities
Citizen-friendly solutions the key, not technology fixes
64 BIM + Geospatial 26
Stuart Blundell
Harris Geospatial
Solutions
35
Anup Jindal RMSI
BIM + Geospatial = Environmentally
sustainable cities & infrastructure
5 • Geospatial World • January 2016
Policy Pulse
Policies guide the total strategic effort of the geospatial industry. The biggest push on this front has been in the
shape of open data initiatives taken by various governments. After all, what is the point of having great content if
you are not going to liberate it?
68 UN-GGIM: The Way Forward
72
Barbara Ryan
Group on Earth
Observations
77
Kshemendra Paul
Information Sharing
Environment, US
74
Scott Pace
Space Policy Institute,
George Washington
University
75
Sue Gordon
NGA, US
76
Tim Trainor
US Census Bureau
78
Nigel Clifford
Ordnance Survey,
UK
79
Jeffrey Harris
USGIF, US
80
A.S. Kiran Kumar
ISRO, India
BIM 360, Autodesk
ContextCapture, Bentley
Product Watch
Get updated on some of the most promising products and services from
top companies
Pages 82-90
Falcon 8, Topcon
VZ-400i, RIEGL
UltraCam v5, Microsoft
AppStudio, Esri
Intergraph NetWorks, Hexagon
Focus3D X 30, Faro
LuciadRIA, Luciad
Galaxy, Teledyne Optech
PageWide XL, HP
East View
Nautiz X8, Algiz RT7, Algiz 10X,
Handheld
TerraGo Edge, TerraGo
ConflateX, RMSI
Pix4Dmapper, Pix4D
Summit UAS, DAT/EM Systems
From the editor
Prof Arup Dasgupta
Managing Editor, arup@geospatialmedia.net
2016 could be a year
of ‘democratization’
E
very time when the
month of January
comes around, I
begin to wonder what
earth-shattering geospatial events am I going to predict
for the New Year in the January
edition. This year, I was intrigued
and then convinced by the arbitrariness of this concept of New Year
after someone on Facebook had
recently concluded that the concept
is fallacious as it just represents
the completion of one more orbit
of the earth around the sun from an
arbitrary starting point. It is not even
a heliocentric reference point like
the winter solstice; summer as those
‘down under’ will aver, which itself
is an arbitrary construct.
Going through various articles
slated for the January 2016 edition, it
dawned on me that the world in general and geospatial world in particular does not race from event to event
timed by this arbitrary epoch. Rather
it is a process of continuous change,
of waves of evolution as it were. At
intervals some technology arrives to
disrupt the status quo but soon gets
absorbed in the scheme of things
through a process of adoption and adaptation. For example, can we mark
a point in time when say, remote
sensing became active? Rather, do
we not see a blip that was aerial
surveys, then handheld photography
by astronauts, then TIROS and then
several blips like ERTS, RESURS,
SPOT and IRS that seem to blend
into a continuum of satellites with
more and more advanced features.
Therefore, instead of trying to be a
Geospatial Nostradamus, I shall limit
myself to a few observations based
on the current situation of the geospatial world around us.
My first impression is that the leitmotif for 2016 seems to be ‘democratization’. This is reflected in the
shift towards consumption-oriented
business models. Consumers are
looking for localized solutions, but
are not interested in putting together
solutions themselves from scratch,
buying data, systems and software,
coding their own applications and
managing workflows.
In this consumer-centric holistic
approach, the data acquisition is purposed and the workflow is integrated
into the hardware and software such
that the consumer is able to get solutions on demand and at their location
which could be at their desk or on
site. This indicates that geospatial
services will continue to grow in the
form of integrated applications, or
apps. Apps bring the real world to the
digital world and thus helps the user
to understand the problem and apply
the right solutions to it.
Chairman
M P Narayanan
Publisher
Sanjay Kumar
Managing Editor
Prof. Arup Dasgupta
Editor — Defence &
Internal Security
Lt Gen (Dr) AKS Chandele (Retd)
Editor — Mining (Hon)
Dr. Hrishikesh Samant
Editorial Team
Bhanu Rekha
Anusuya Datta
Ishveena Singh
Amit Raj Singh
Design
Debjyoti Mukherjee
Product & Marketing Team
Harsha Vardhan Madiraju
Sanskriti Shukla
Vijay Kumar Singh
Disclaimer
Geospatial World does not necessarily subscribe to the views
expressed in the publication. All views expressed in this
issue are those of the contributors. Geospatial World is not
responsible for any loss to anyone due to the information
provided.
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The old cliche ‘the consumer is always
right’ seems to be the indication
for geospatial activities in 2016
Apps will have to be platformagnostic, based on standards and
deployed on the Cloud. Apps will
cover a very wide range from
3D solutions for engineers to
location-based consumer solutions
for tourists. Apps will need data
from various sources; geospatial data
from satellites, UAVs and ground instrumentation which could be human
operated DGPS or automated purposed sensors, like meteorological
instruments. Considerable data will
also come from other data streams,
like GPS data from smartphones, financial data from electronic financial
transactions and from RFID sensors
mounted on mobile assets. Another
major source will be unstructured
data coming from crowd sourcing
and from social networks.
The processing of large data
streams, both structured and
unstructured, will call for Big Data
analytics. While this is already well
established in business intelligence
applications, it is yet to make significant inroads in the geospatial world.
However, with the range of data
collecting systems increasing from
large and small satellites, aircraft and
UAVs, static and mobile sensor networks and crowd sourcing, it is only
a matter of time before Big Data
analytics becomes a part of the armoury of the geospatial professional.
The publication and discovery of
these data sets and analytic solutions
will depend strongly on the Cloud.
Apps development is open to independent developers for consumer
solutions. This trend is extending
to professional solutions as well.
As solutions become complex, their
realization will require partnerships
between government institutions
and private players, between data
generators, hardware and software
providers and developers. Partnerships will require sharing of data and
intellectual property and this will
have to happen in an environment of
security which encourages confidence without become overbearing.
Univerzalisation of apps will
need certain policy initiatives like
standardization and open data. While
standardization of data has been
achieved the open access to data is
still work in progress. Data for public good is easily available but other
data which has economic implications still requires to be purchased.
Government institutions in many
countries are still grappling with this
issue. Another issue is that of privatization of solution providers. Clearly,
where public good is involved, like
at times of disaster, the government
has to take a lead role. However, in
areas like inventory, infrastructure,
business and consumer affairs the
private sector will play a bigger role.
The old cliche “the consumer is
always right” seems to be the indication for geospatial activities in 2016.
On that thought, let me sign off with
best wishes for the next 366 rotations
of the planet Earth about its axis.
Remember, 2016 is a leap year!
Advisory Board
Ahmad Fauzi Bin Nordin Sr
Director General of Survey
and Mapping (JUPEM), Malaysia
Aida Opoku-Mensah
Special Advisor: SDGs/Agenda 2030,
UN Economic Commission for Africa
Barbara Ryan
Secretariat Director,
Group on Earth Observations
Christopher W Gibson
Vice President & Executive
Committee Member, Trimble
Derek Clarke
Chief Director-Survey and Mapping &
National Geospatial Information,
Dept of Rural Development & Land Reform, South Africa
Dorine Burmanje
Chair-Executive Board, Cadastre, Land Registry and
Mapping Agency (Kadaster), The Netherlands
Ed Parsons
Geospatial Technologist, Google
Greg Bentley
CEO, Bentley Systems
Jay Freeland
Retired President & CEO, FARO
Prof. Josef Strobl
Chair, Department of Geoinformatics,
University of Salzburg, Austria
Kamal K Singh
Chairman and CEO, Rolta Group
Kumar Navulur
Director, Next Generation Products,
DigitalGlobe
Mark Reichardt
President and CEO,
Open Geospatial Consortium
Mladen Stojic
President, Hexagon Geospatial
Mohd Al Rajhi
Asst Deputy Minister for Land & Surveying,
Ministry of Municipal & Rural Affairs,
Saudi Arabia
Sandeep Singhal
Director, Cloud Storage, Google
Stephen Lawler
Senior Vice President,
Worldwide Engineering, Cyanogen
Vanessa Lawrence
Inaugural Co-Chair, UN-GGIM
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Industry Outlook
Creative
destruction
of GIS is
upon us
User engagement is driving the industry
as mainstreaming of geospatial data and
technology is unleashing its real value
and potential
I
n a futuristic article in the annual edition (January
2010) of Geospatial World, Ed Parsons, Geospatial Technologist at Google, had predicted that the ‘Creative
Destruction of GIS’ will soon be upon us owing to the
broad trends in technology, Internet and the increasingly ubiquitous use of geospatial data and applications.
Today, GIS and geospatial technology have reached that
existential moment where the belief in being ‘exclusive’ is
fast getting replaced with the realization that geospatial is
a given, integrated and invisible capability.
This mainstreaming of geospatial data and technology has unleashed the value and potential of this powerful technology in umpteen ways, silencing the critics
who often said geospatialists were enamored with the
exclusivity of the technology and the skill it takes to
develop that exclusive capability rather than the benefit
it creates. Today, the user is the centre of geospatial
Are we
ready?
ecosystem and every industry trend can best be seen as
a result of the deepening dialogue, clear understanding of the needs and increasing trust and engagement
between technology providers and technology users.
Consumerization of professional space
Companies are increasingly leveraging Cloud-based technologies to deliver value from their labs to customers’ job
sites/offices. The ability to deliver Cloud services through
existing applications and being able to deliver updates is
another reason innovation cycle is rapidly accelerating.
The agility and flexibility of the Cloud in catering to and
engaging with the user in a two-way communication is
also driving software business, a sign of maturity of the
industry. The software subscription models are perfectly
aligning with customer project cycles, allowing them to
select what they need and when they need.
Smarter
hardware
Quick change is the norm in a competitive business environment making companies pioneer and/or reinvent themselves,
sometimes by design and sometimes
because of necessity. Companies are increasingly aware that their bottomlines are
determined by the value their technology
brings to customers. So, they primarily focus on providing an end-to-end workflow
solutions. The trend has also increased the
use of open source software and open data
along with proprietary software allowing
hybrid solutions to proliferate.
Collaboration and connectivity across
the workflow is improving productivity,
enhancing transparency and quality.
However, no single company has all the
requisite technology components of the
solution value chain and companies are
increasingly adding cost-effective and
competitive offerings either by acquiring,
partnering or collaborating with others,
thus creating a rich culture of innovation
and professionalism within the industry.
Shared information infrastructure
No solution is competent enough to
deliver the requisite outcomes of a user
without appropriate data. New and
sophisticated sensor technology is causing
an exponential increase in the volume,
type, speed and ease of access to data. This
data revolution and improved analytics
are creating unprecedented possibilities
for geospatial industry facilitating rapid
turnaround for informed intelligence and
decision making.
Access to the latest data is the key to
unlocking this intelligence and so conventional hardware/software companies are
increasingly adding data capabilities to
their inventory. They are also partnering
with other data providers and sharing data
and information repositories. Hexagon Geospatial’s recent partnerships with Ordnance
Survey UK, Airbus Defence and Space, and
BlackSky are examples
of shared information
infrastructure trend. The
increasingly positive senIntuitive
timent around open data is allowing huge
software
repositories to be shared as stakeholders
become increasingly aware of the returns of
open data to businesses and economy.
The versatility of Cloud and the need to
solve increasingly complex problems have
vastly evolved the way data and information is shared. The ability to manipulate and
process data in a shared high-performance
End-user
computing environment is allowing a
engagement
user to access data from any location. The
model
economics of moving data, processing
and hosting services by commercial Cloud
providers also has become an accepted
norm. The key drivers behind the concept
of “sharing” are open source
Cloud platforms as a service
(PaaS) providers such as Cloud
Foundry and commercial
Seamless
Cloud services from biggies
workflow
like Amazon, Google, IBM and
Microsoft. Some believe that
soon, shared information will
be the expectation, and, in the
eyes of many, a social responsibility.
Integration is the key
In the end-user engagement model,
hardware is becoming smarter, software
is becoming intuitive, workflow is becoming increasingly seamless and solutions
have more ease of use. However, to truly
benefit from systems integration, virtually
every aspect of the workflow must be
considered. Geospatial technology must
be integrated in such a way that when it is
employed on any aspect of a project, that
data — that solution — is preemptively,
or actively available, to solve customers’
current and future needs. The bottom line,
in the entire scheme of things, is value
creation and building trust.
Easy-to-use
solutions
Let's see
what our
experts are
Saying
Industry Outlook
We can’t Solve Today’s
Problems
with Yesterday’s
Technology
Many
organizations
that have
not been
traditional
geospatial
customers are
starting to see
the inherent
value in
location
information
and are
seeking ways
to acquire,
manage,
disseminate
and utilize
this content
O
ne of the trends in the
industry today is the
shortening product/
tech innovation
lifecycle — not only
in terms of development, but also in
regard to the entire decision-making
process. Individuals and organizations
see value in geospatial information, but not necessarily through the
traditional depiction in a static map.
The expectation today is for a simple,
understandable answer that provides
unique insight into complex problems.
This is a trend that we are seeing in
many markets and has been an impetus
for us to innovate the way we deliver
our technology, providing a pragmatic
approach to building solutions quickly
and in ways that make sense.
We are definitely shortening the
decision-making process through the
Hexagon Smart M.App — combining
fresh content, targeted workflows
and meaningful analytics to provide
insights in a simple way. We are providing online access to near-real-time
data through partnerships with companies like Airbus Defence and Space
and Ordnance Survey UK, and fusing
it with best-in-breed geospatial tools
for customization. We have created
an ecosystem of empowering partners
with specific domain knowledge to
build not just a map, but an information
experience based on streams of data
and powerful, 360-degree analytics.
End-to-end workflow
with solutions
Hexagon doesn’t look at the world
of hardware or software or apps or
content separately. Our primary focus
is to provide an end-to-end workflow
with solutions that make sense. And
in many cases, this requires hardware,
software and content, together with
industry-built solutions that actually
solve problems.
However, we do continue to
see numerous opportunities in our
hardware, especially in the geospatial
space. Technologies like mobile mapping, terrestrial LiDAR mapping and
UAS’ are growing, and we expect to
see this trend continue. One of the exciting things about the geospatial field
right now is that many organizations
that have not been traditional geospatial customers are starting to see the
inherent value in location information
and are seeking ways to acquire,
manage, disseminate and utilize this
content. As more of these customers
come on board, they will need a way
to get the information they require.
More out-of-the-box thinking required
At the end of the day, if you do not understand a user’s
specific workflow or problem, don’t expect them to use
your solution (even if it is inexpensive). As a whole, I think
we haven’t been thinking outside the box. Innovations from
20 years ago are providing a baseline for the technology
we are now offering to a new, modern user base. And yes,
when you try to extend ‘as is’ technology from 20 years ago
to a new audience, you can expect the uptake to be minimal. So we cannot solve the problems of today with technology from yesterday. For this reason, we have to innovate
ourselves to increase the uptake of geospatial technology to
a broader and much wider audience.
What customers really want is an answer to a business
question. Everything else is just a tool to derive that answer.
For this reason, the Hexagon Smart M.App is not about
delivering products or technology, but rather about providing access to the answers an individual seeks. For example, Geosystems GmbH, a Hexagon Geospatial partner in
Germany, has built a Cloud-based application that can take
the data collected by UAS platforms and process it on the
Cloud, generating image mosaics and 3D point clouds from
the raw data. This enables a UAS company to collect more
data instead of being tied to their computer processing data.
Data should be interoperable, easily working in as many
platforms as is feasible. Hexagon has always valued this
methodology, connecting to and partnering with as many organizations as possible. Access to the latest data, whatever the
format, empowers you to make the smartest decisions. You
can see this commitment through Hexagon Geosystems’ and
Hexagon Safety & Infrastructure’s partnerships with other
software companies and system integrators, as well as Hexagon Geospatial’s recent partnerships with Ordnance Survey
UK, Airbus Defence and Space, and BlackSky, among others.
many people as possible. Last, in order meet industry
needs, we must form vertical and regional partnerships to
make our solutions available on a local and global basis.
Mainstream IT companies like Amazon, Microsoft,
Apple and Google are adopting location capabilities by
buying-out geospatial players. If anything, this provides
us much greater opportunities in the marketplace. I think
it is actually a sign that the market is coming to realize the
vital importance of location-based data. The explosion of
geospatial data is outpacing what even the experts predicted.
Everything has a geospatial component, especially as more
and more everyday objects become geospatially enabled.
Lamp posts will soon tell us not just that their bulb burned
out, but exactly where they are located, allowing us to
quickly schedule maintenance trips. Every purchase is made
at a specific location, allowing us to not just understand
where things are purchased, but to better plan the logistics
to get the right products to the right places at the right time.
This can completely transform the way we do business, and
Hexagon can provide the technology to power this understanding and help our customers shape smarter change.
Partnerships add to strengths
Hexagon greatly values the strength that can come from
partnerships. There is such a deluge of data being collected
about our dynamically changing world, and any single
piece of that data could provide the key to unlocking major
innovations in how we understand the earth. As I have
said, we have been actively building partnerships with data
providers to help ensure that our tools work as seamlessly
as possible. Similarly, we are partnering with other platform
providers to ensure our content gets into the hands of as
Ola Rollén
President and CEO,
Hexagon
Geospatial World • January 2016 • 13
Industry Outlook
Consumer
Market Driving the
Professional
World
From
providing
horizontal
services,
geospatial
is moving
to providing
solutions
to vertical
markets,
which is
leading to
the growth
of overall
geospatial
industry
T
he consumer world
expects a new technology gadget every 12 to 18
months. This expectation has now been
driven into the professional marketplace and applies to both hardware
and software. In the past, technology
or products from the professional
world were migrated to the consumer
world. Today, that trend has shifted
and it is the consumer world driving
and seeding the development of the
professional world.
All companies have a ‘not invented here’ component in their culture.
This is good because it creates a balance of buy versus build. In addition,
it helps drive innovation and maintain
an effective cost and competitive offering. However, Trimble is looking
to utilize its industry domain expertise to develop applications leveraging both consumer and professional
platforms. Today, if you look at the
mixed reality environment, either
with a Google Tango or Microsoft
HoloLens, these technologies were
developed for the consumer world.
This will provide the customer an
innovative platform with a much
quicker time to market, as compared
to if the technology was developed
internally.
Solution takes the cake
People ask if we are a hardware or
software company. My answer is
that we transform the way the world
works by providing solutions that
improve the productivity, quality, and
safety of a particular industry. This
is accomplished by utilizing technology (hardware and software) that
integrates and optimizes an industry
workflow continuum. We have broadened our portfolio to include more
software, but this does not diminish
our hardware offering.
The comment that software and
apps ‘take the cake’ is probably not
relevant. It is the solution that ‘takes
the cake’. Think of your smartphone.
If it was only hardware and no apps,
would it be anything more than a
phone? If you had the apps but no
smartphone platform, would they
improve productivity?
In the last decade, geospatial
companies have primarily been
concentrating on professional services
— either surveying, GIS or photogrammetry that have been providing
deliverables to specific industries, like
construction — whether it is heavy
civil construction be it roads, railways, airports or building construction or mining or specific industries.
From providing horizontal services,
geospatial is moving to providing
solutions to vertical markets. If you
take the case of mining industry,
one needs to plan-design-mine the
ore-reclaim.
Connectivity across this workflow and collaboration
enhances the productivity. If I can collaborate across the
stakeholders, I can get visibility, I can improve transparency that will really enhance quality and productivity. So, it
is the customer and the customer’s workflow that is driving
the integration. And we as manufacturers have to look at
making our solutions more connected. Consolidation of
the industry has been part of this process. As you expand
geospatial to touch more vertical markets, that grows geospatial industry as a total market as well.
All of us have a set of solutions we offer to a particular
industry. A customer needs to be able to integrate those
solutions. Cooperation is needed because a customer may
have different brands for different solutions because they
believe they are the best-in-class solutions. As industry
providers, we must provide integration across that workflow or continuum. Hence, our ecosystems, whether from
Trimble’s perspective (Trimble Connect) or from others
who offer similar collaboration services, we must have
interoperability in-built into the systems. OGC drives geospatial standards and on the building side; BuildingSmart
has driven standards to allow interoperatbility. As manufacturers, we need to facilitate tightest interoperability by
sharing APIs and providing that connectivity.
Localized, not generic solutions
I think geospatial uptake is highly penetrated in the
consumer world. Smartphones have GNSS, a mapping
function, and access to location based services. Several
non-traditional markets/players are increasingly adopting
geospatial technology and that offers more opportunities
for those who are geospatial professionals and for those of
us who offer solutions to geospatial professionals
and people who need geospatial data.
For the professional world, it depends
on the solution type and geography. Solutions like the traditional mechanical
total stations are highly penetrated
worldwide. Solutions like imaging
solutions have low penetration
throughout the world. The
challenge for all geospatial
Bryn Fosburgh
Trimble Navigation
providers is to have their solutions localized for a particular region and industry. A generic solution usually only
meets 80% of the customers requirements. Deep industry
localization along with the corresponding market localization, coupled with localized service and support through
the combination of local distribution networks and manufacturer offices, enables increased market penetration.
It’s not that location has suddenly become important.
What has happened is you are finding technologies that
come from consumer world driving themselves into the
professional world. In the past, the professional world
spawned technologies that were lapped up by the consumer world. But now, the trend has reversed. Take Google
Tango, which is a mixed reality product, for example. Or
even Microsoft HoloLens. In our case, we are looking at
those technologies which we call/belong to mixed reality
that deal in the world from reality to virtual reality. These
are mixed reality platforms that would be developed for
gaming industry or other type of applications. We are now
looking at how can these be applied to cadaster world,
mapping or heavy civil construction. This is really an
interesting change.
Industry Outlook
The Advent of
Consumption
Oriented
Business Models
T
he geospatial industry
is becoming a more
engaged industry, and it
is Google who changed
the dynamics for us. A
company whose revenue is driven
by advertising has made the map an
everyday commodity. This has upped
the bar of people’s expectations. If
a map can be accessed through a
simple interface, why is the wealth of
everything else not being explored
in a similar manner?
What is more, the innovation cycle
is rapidly accelerating across the world.
The consumerization of hardware, like
drones and cheap sensors, combined
with the Cloud, has served as an inflection point for the industry as a whole.
Companies have been forced to come
up with new consumption-oriented
business models, as opposed to the
business models of ‘pay in advance’.
You can track exactly what is being consumed, which is much more
efficient. People don’t mind paying for
what they have consumed.
Rapid innovations are also leading
to collaborations in the industry,
which is good for the industry as
a whole. If companies work
with like-minded firms
to exchange software and
Bhupinder Singh
Bentley Systems
service-orientation, users can access both the services from
a common interface. If both companies are providing online
services, why not provide them on one common portal?
Ease of use is essential
Today, no software vendor can get away with a product
that is not easy to use. The new generation of professionals
entering the workforce today has grown up on tools which
they have used and learnt without any training. When I
joined the workforce 30 years ago, I was made to attend
four training classes before I was allowed to step into my
department. My on-boarding was one month of training.
Today, we have only 10-15 minutes of learning modules.
The conditioning of the workforce is such that they are
demanding results faster than people realize.
Companies need to understand that software must be
intuitive, so people can learn it without much training. Users
today expect seamlessness. They want to start the job on one
device, continue on the second device, and then move on to
the third. We are growing up in a world of digital natives.
The next generations of kids are very comfortable in the digital world, and they demand software that reflects that ease
of their capabilities. We should be able to meet that demand
and deliver software that would appeal to them just like a
Hollywood movie would. Companies need to solve workflow challenges every day. And these are hard challenges
because you have products that have been around for a long
time. Over time, as you add more and more capabilities to
these products, without removing the obsolete capabilities
and simplifying them, the products become quite complex.
Shared information and security
Infrastructure providers are reaching that stage where the
storage and compute costs are decreasing rapidly, while
We should be able to meet the
demand of the next generations
and deliver software that
would appeal to them just like
a Hollywood movie would
the amount of data we are capturing is growing. The
dimensions of the cost are being replaced by the dimensions of security. We are at a stage where we need to trade
off between accessibility and security. And that trade-off is
something that the industry is still grappling with. How do
you figure out the right level of secure access, especially
with critical infrastructure like national security infrastructure? From the standpoint of the industry, this is something
we need to work on.
Digital rights managing capability is being built into
platforms, but we need to be able to surface them in a way
which would allow governments to be more comfortable
while using the Cloud. It is more likely that private Clouds
will evolve in response to these kinds of trends.
We want to offer a portal through which other people’s
data is accessible. By leveraging Web map services through
conceptual design tools, our Cloud services can navigate
multiple data providers, and the end users can navigate and
engage in a commercial model with the data providers. Our
power lies in being able to federate across other companies’
data sources, and there are many of them. We want to make
sure our users can find them through our interfaces and then
leverage them depending upon what their needs are, and at
what scale.
Service-orientation to adopt and absorb
Service-orientation is a trend that has continued. Our
mission continues to being able to define the services, make
the services discoverable, being able to federate amongst
them and aggregate them. We, at Bentley, have a broad set
of services to offer, and with every new capability that we
add, we think what service-orientation we can offer with
that. Sometimes, we have to wait for a certain hardware
to be available before we do that. At other times, we are
dependent on some other tool for it to become useful. But,
at the end of the day, whenever we come up with anything
new, we think of what sort of service orientation will it
have to deliver its value, because that is the most flexible
way for users to adopt and absorb.
That said, there is still a lot of work to be done to get
the data sources where they are locked up into the user
interfaces. There are several places where a lot of value and
lot of decision support has to happen, analysis needs to take
place, and careful orchestration of data has to happen.
Industry Outlook
We
are Entering
a New Era of
Expectations
T
Companies are
increasingly taking
to a systems
integration
approach as it is a
strong driver for
business growth,
but, that is not
to say that the
demand for specific
application-based
products has
declined
here is no doubt that the
speed of communications along with rapid
prototyping, thanks to
3D printing and other
“maker” technologies, have dramatically accelerated our vetting processes
for new ideas, and compressed our
time-to-market for new products.
Topcon lives by the mantra of TM-1
— to the market first!
We are entering a new era of expectations that are shattering business
models in many industries. If any company in our industry thinks it can meet
these expectations alone — which can
change faster than most businesses can
effectively adapt — I believe it will
quickly suffer declining sales and market share. Furthermore, they become
a target for absorption, probably by
one of the companies they should have
been partnering with all along.
Open architecture for
information availability
The new generation of geospatial
‘consumers’ will expect an open
architecture in regard to information
availability. Companies that believe
they gain some type of marketing
advantage by trying to retain exclusive
systems will ultimately find themselves at a great disadvantage. Shared
information will be the expectation,
and, in the eyes of many, a social
responsibility.
Companies are increasingly taking
to a systems integration approach as it
is a strong driver for business growth,
but that is not to say that the demand
for specific application-based products
has declined. So we are taking the
approach that neither can dominate
our development model. The beauty
for the majority of our end-users —
whether fully integrated via our enterprise infrastructure, or a stand-alone
application — is that the flow of data
can be shared based upon the need of
the project.
Hardware is as
important as software
That is why it would be fallacious to
say that software and apps have scored
a march over hardware. Apple would
not be where it is without the iPod,
iPhone or iPad. Likewise, Topcon wouldn’t be where we
are without our 3D machine control systems and innovative
robotic total stations. Of course, just as important, we also
wouldn’t be headed where we are without our MAGNET
software or Sitelink3D site management solutions.
The reality is that both hardware and software are central to our business model. Our plan is simple — we want
to make the most innovative and productive hardware and
software. Period. From a revenue point of view, it really
makes little difference overall as our objective is to sell the
complete solution.
Workflow adaptation and educating
consumers
Cost and ease-of-use always play a role in adoption of any
product, but I don’t think that either are a barrier for exponential ‘uptake’ in geospatial technology. There are two
much more critical factors. The first is the workflow adaptation. To truly benefit from systems integration, virtually
every aspect of workflow must be considered. Geospatial
Ray O’Connor
President and CEO, Topcon
Positioning Systems
technology must be integrated in such a way that when
it is employed to any aspect of a project, that data — the
solution — is preemptively, or actively available, to solve
future issues. Secondly, and these really go hand-in-hand,
we must help educate our customers and their workforce
in understanding and applying a solutions approach. They
know how to gather extreme amounts of data. The key is
adapting their workflow and workforce to benefit from it in
the most widely productive manner.
A number of mainstream IT companies, like Amazon,
Microsoft, Apple, Google and many others are not only
integrating location capabilities into their products and services, but they are developing consumer opportunities that
pull precision geospatial technology along with it.
The advantage for a company like Topcon is that we
are far more than a ‘location provider’. The widespread
credibility and adoption that these companies bring to our
core technologies helps accelerate our efforts to make our
markets more receptive to integrating geospatial solutions
into their workflow.
Industry Outlook
The Goal is to Make
the Best
Decisions
Using Up-to-Date
Information
W
e are increasingly leveraging Cloud-based technologies to deliver ongoing value to our customers, and to swiftly drive innovations from our labs
out to our customer’s job sites and offices. Given
the wide use of geospatial data in every sector and
the need for real-time access for decision making, we see Cloud-based
technologies and tools drive faster and more informed decisions.
From agile software development and investments in startups to
new projects, we are driving innovation across our organization and
ecosystem. For example, the ability in our tools [like, InfraWorks
360, ReCap, Memento] to remove traditional data silos and
create single 3D high-res accurate models and views
combining CAD, BIM, LiDAR, sonar, etc., allow us
to create a digital mirror of the physical world. It
also reflects the speed of this innovation lifecycle.
Software via the Cloud
Subscription offers two benefits: firstly, it aligns very well
by continuously delivering innovation to our customers;
and secondly, a subscription model also aligns well with
the project cycles of our customers, allowing them to
select what they need, when they need it. We know that
customer business cycles change as do the scope, size and
type of projects they work on. This allows them to put the
maximum set of tools to deliver a particular client’s project
effectively and efficiently, and gives them the flexibility
to change that toolset for the next project. It’s a win-win
scenario in both directions.
Complete workflow solutions
Customers care about getting their work done, not about
individual applications. Service-oriented architectures and
better interoperability between products are the hallmark of
substantiated modern solutions. That is why Autodesk has
been developing solutions, such as, InfraWorks 360, which
offer civil infrastructure and geospatial professionals a data
agnostic tool for getting their work done.
Projects carried out in the architecture, engineering and
construction [AEC] industry are fundamentally fragmented
by nature, because there are so many diverse disciplines
at play across distributed locations. The ability to collaborate across companies, disciplines and locations is
game-changing for the AEC industry. It is finally allowing
us to put data at the center of a customer’s experience as
opposed to applications, and the benefits of this change
are profound. Imagine the ability on a project to share rich
3D data in real-time for decision making, allowing project
members to view that information on a device that best
suits their needs. This greatly reduces timelines for RFI and
can even address change orders before they happen.
Amar Hanspal
Products, Autodesk
Companies are increasingly
taking to a systems integration
approach as it is a strong driver
for business growth, but that
is not to say that the demand
for specific application-based
products has declined
Cost and ease of use
The time required to adopt BIM — relative to a learning
curve and training time — combined with the need for ease
of use for BIM solutions are the key investment-related
factors challenging the adoption of BIM within the global
geospatial community. With this in mind, we are working to
make our BIM software solutions easier to use. And we are
building apps better suited to the various persons involved
with projects. For example, instead of expecting a supervisor
to use a BIM authoring tool, we are providing solutions, such
as BIM 360 Field, which is geo-location aware and has the
right level of functionality a supervisor in the field wants and
needs. We are developing several tools using this approach,
and making it easier to use by presenting information within
the flow of their work process, as opposed to making users
change and learn a way of thinking and working completely
different from what they already know.
Collaboration and partnerships
Nothing gets done by individuals alone. So many projects unfortunately wind up being like orchestras without
conductors. We must find a way to get everyone involved
with a project on the same page, and tapping each player’s knowledge to achieve the best results. Obviously,
easy-to-use, Cloud-enabled collaboration solutions, along
with BIM, marks a huge step forward for the global AEC
industry. The goal is always going to be to make the best
decisions using up-to-date information.
Industry Outlook
80% of
Data
has a
Locational
Context
Businesses
are investing
in IT systems
to unlock the
hidden value
of data — not
only internal
business data,
but the vast
quantities of
social and IoT
data to gain
deeper insights
T
he technology industry
continues to remain
in a state of flux with
constant innovation
and advancement. The
advent of social, mobile, Cloud, and
increasingly the Internet of Things
has led to a growing deluge of data,
in excess of trillions of bytes being generated daily. It is generally
acknowledged that around 80% of
data has a locational context. As a
result, businesses around the world
are realizing that adding a geospatial
dimension to data provides insights
far deeper than is otherwise possible.
Therefore, digital map data is rapidly
becoming an integral and essential
part of decision support systems.
Constant advancements in technology is cutting down gestation periods
and shortening innovation life span.
Convergence, integration and pervasive Cloud-based business solutions
are key trends that are driving and
shaping the future growth of geospatial technologies.
The convergence of geospatial
technologies with industry-specific
information systems has enabled the
harnessing of true potential of geospatial information for improving the productivity and efficiency of enterprises
cutting across industries.
In today’s world, geospatial technologies are significantly enhancing
the quality of decision support systems
resulting in more effective business
and public governance processes.
Platform-agnostic
integrated solutions
Our approach has been to develop
integrated solutions that are
platform-agnostic. Envisaging the
market trends over the past few years,
we have developed a repository of
sophisticated IP that integrates geospatial information with mainstream
IT systems. These Cloud-enabled
IP-based solutions are at the heart of
numerous solutions for effective decision making enriched with locational
intelligence.
This approach has placed Rolta
at the forefront of IT companies that
provide field-proven solutions leveraging geospatial technologies to solve
real-world problems.
The relentless innovation in the
last decade has clearly resulted in
hardware becoming commoditized.
Furthermore, the advent of mobility
and pervasive computing enabled by
the Cloud has drastically changed the
revenue matrix and IT investments
models for businesses. Increasingly,
businesses today are investing in IT
systems to unlock the hidden value of
data — not only the internal business
data, but the vast quantities of social and
IoT data to gain deeper insights into consumer patterns and thereby gain a competitive edge.
Geospatial technology has become
more accessible due to its online usage for
mapping, directions and decision-making.
Cloud computing helps many geospatial
users to avoid the expense of hardware and
focus more on their ability to manage and
process data. The ability to manipulate and
process data in a shared high-performance
computing environment allows a user to
access data from any location. Another tremendous change is the rapid rise of mobile
offerings. Now, users can access smart apps
that tap into data and analytics to support
specific workflows.
Today, more than ever, businesses are
expecting their employees to work on the
go. Whether they are at a client site, travelling, or working from home, employees
are increasingly relying on mobile devices
and the pervasive computing enabled by
the Cloud. Businesses, therefore, can no
longer rely on individual products and are
increasingly focusing on seamless system
integration and workflow solutions. Integration through Web Services, such as OGC
Web Services, make the data accessible
to address spatial information needs over
global networks, including mobile devices.
Geospatial technologies
entering the IT mainstream
There is overwhelming evidence that integration of geospatial systems into mainstream business and e-governance processes leads to enhanced effectiveness. With
the proliferation of Web-based geospatial
data and GPS-equipped smartphones, we
are clearly seeing these restrictions and
limitations disappearing and geospatial
technologies entering the IT mainstream.
Rolta has been at the forefront of
developing intellectual property that
integrates spatial and non-spatial
data from disparate sources. Our
endeavor has been to build
industry-specific solutions
that combine vertical domain
knowledge with geospatial and
IT expertise. These ‘productized’ solutions can be rapidly
deployed for a faster RoI.
Fast turnaround time is
the deciding factor impacting business bottom lines.
Companies cannot afford
to reinvent the wheel. It is,
therefore, natural to have
synergetic collaboration
and partnership to stay
ahead of the competition.
As I mentioned
earlier, 80% of the data
has a locational context
and clearly mainstream IT companies,
such as Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc.,
are enriching their products
and services with locational
capabilities. This trend will
undoubtedly increase the
proliferation and adoption of
geospatial technologies. Rolta
has moved up the value chain
from geospatial data creation
to the development of geospatial fusion and geospatial analytics. Geospatial technologies
will become an integral part of
modern business solutions and
decision-making.
K.K. Singh
Founder-Chairman
& CEO, Rolta
Industry Outlook
Satellite
Industry is Moving Toward
Complete Workflow
Solutions
T
he satellite industry is
not functioning in isolation anymore. The industry is fast realizing that
we are part of a solution
for a problem we are trying to solve
for a customer. Not only DigitalGlobe,
but the whole satellite industry is
moving to provide complete workflow
solutions to customers.
DigitalGlobe has taken the approach of Golden Circle — which is
outside-in rather than inside-out. Tech
companies typically are inside-out.
Their traditional approach was: ‘I
have this picture, what can we do
with that?’ Instead, we can actually
turn that around and ask the question,
‘Who is your customer?’ Once you
know who your customer is, the next
circle is what is the problem that
they are facing. Once you know the
pain point, the next circle is how do
you address that problem. Finally,
the outer circle happens to be what
are the technologies that could solve
that problem. It could be imagery,
Dr Kumar Navulur
Director, Next Generation
Products, DigitalGlobe
platform, algorithms… they need to
be all brought together to solve
the problem.
We don’t need to reinvent
the wheel, but collaborate
DigitalGlobe has a strategic initiative
called Geospatial Big Data & Analytics. The reason we call it strategic
initiative is because we realize we need
partners to make the solutions. When
we talk about geospatial Big Data, our
strength happens to be only part of the
content — the imagery. And we can
also derive some information layers
automatically from the imagery. There
are three types of services — platform
as a service, content as a service [having data easily accessible and easily
manipulated by the end users] and
software as a service or tech as a service. This is where I see lot more
collaboration with software
image analysis companies.
There is no reason
for DigitalGlobe to
reinvent the wheel.
Our customers are not investing in
IT. Instead, our job is to solve their
problems with technology. In this
case, we will put our imagery next to
the advanced algorithms of a software
company and bring together a solution
for the customer.
At DigitalGlobe, we believe in
partnering — whether with people in
midstream or upstream industries —
and educate them on what is possible
with imagery and our geospatial Big
Data to deliver new solutions to those
new industries.
Whether it is the GIS industry
or the imagery industry, we need to
make all of it bigger. The way to do
that is for us to be on the stage as
service providers to both private and
government sector. For this, we need
to partner with deep subject matter experts. This is an industry in great need
of expanding its horizons. The good
news is that we are already doing it.
Industry Outlook
Customers Want Products
that Make their
Lives Simpler
A
t a recent IBM
sponsored technology event in New
York City, a senior
executive started his
briefing with a statement from an IDC
Futurescape report: “One third of the
Top 20 companies will be disrupted
over the next three years because they
are not moving fast enough.” Rapid
change is the new normal in a global
and flattened business landscape where
disruption can occur from three people
working out of a garage or when a
large company decides to move into an
adjacent market. For instance, Google’s recent decision to compete with
Amazon Web Services for ‘on-demand’
supercomputing resources.
Great products that meet
mission-critical needs
Customers want products that make
their lives simpler. Services, system
integration and workflows are all necessary components of a solution, but
great product design can move those
elements to the background. Think
about the navigation system on your
phone or in your car as the product
you use every day to get from point A
to point B. As a user, you just want to
Stuart Blundell
Director of Strategy &
Business Development,
Harris Geospatial Solutions
type in the location and let the magic
happen. The complexities of GPS
triangulation, routing algorithms, and
wireless services are all involved, but
they stay hidden in the background.
Using that paradigm, our focus is
on building great products that meet
mission-critical needs, whether it be
secure network communications or
weather satellites, and that satisfy
that innate need for customers to
make their lives simpler. Great
product designs will always
trump an alternative solution
requiring extensive system
integration.
Hardware is and always
will be key in delivering a
“platform” for developing
higher-margin software
and related information
services. Similarly, advanced space payloads and
related ground processing
infrastructure serve as a
platform for geospatial Big
Data analytics. The economics
of moving data, processing and
hosted services to commercial Cloud
providers has become an accepted
norm. The pace of change in technology in this space is phenomenal. Key
drivers behind the concept of ‘sharing’
are open source Cloud platforms as
a service [PaaS] providers, such as
Cloud Foundry, as well as the real
shortage of skilled workers in the areas
of cloud computing and data science.
There are only so many of these people
in the job market and the competition
to hire them is intense. My hunch is
the concept of “sharing information
infrastructure” will continue to evolve
around these principles of open source
PaaS and commercial Cloud services
from major heavyweights.
Increased Accessibility
and Democratized
EO Data
A
s a young company,
we are well accustomed to pivoting and
reinventing ourselves,
sometimes by design
and sometimes of necessity. So, we are
yet to experience a time when innovation cycles have been long. That said,
about two years ago, we assembled a
talented R&D department to help keep
UrtheCast ahead of the curve. It is
quite possible that R&D has never been
more important than it is at this time in
history, which is probably true for the
entire tech sector. There is an expectation that organizations will continually
outdo themselves — and fast. This has
been part of UrtheCast’s culture from
the beginning: from our cameras on
the ISS, to our Deimos satellites, to
the development of our constellation
of 16 optical and SAR satellites, to the
development of our Web platform.
Customers still want data
Increased accessibility, fewer barriers,
and democratized EO data — these are
key elements in UrtheCast’s mission.
From the start, it has been our aim
to make this data more accessible
to developers, so they can go on to
build tools to address big monitoring
needs: deforestation, refugee crises,
environmental change, impacts of
natural disasters, urban growth, natural
resources, and so forth. We recently announced that the UrtheCast Developer
Platform is now public. Pulling satellite
imagery from a variety of sensors at
different resolutions, developers can
leverage not only our growing suite
of camera sensors, but also third-party
data. Imagery, video, and metadata are
extracted from these sources to provide
developers with an increasingly rich
archive. Staying true to our vision of
democratization, free access to the
platform is available. These APIs are
built on open, modern Web standards,
and there is no need for people to be
geospatial experts.
It is a bit of a cliché in earth
observation to say that customers
want complete information
solutions and services and
not data or products, but,
I think if we are honest
with ourselves we as an
industry have some
ways to go in really
achieving this in a
comprehensive
manner. Like others in the industry,
this is our also part of the vision at UrtheCast, and something we are working toward, but frankly we are not
fully there yet. Ultimately, our strategy
to do this is through the API-based
platform we are building, allowing
customers to access our data directly
or through third party developers’ apps
that use our platform.
Sharing information
infrastructure
It was inevitable that data sharing
would become the standard — Cloud
technology, the ubiquity of the Internet,
and the need to solve increasingly
complex problems paved the way for
the amount of information we see
shared today. In many ways, the space
industry is coming late to this game.
I think it is going to be fascinating to
see how quickly and effectively the
industry adopts and adapts such trends
in the coming years.
Wade Larson
CEO & President, UrtheCast
Industry Outlook
Customers are
Moving
Hybrid Model
Toward a
A
lot of people are
familiar with large,
expensive and great
capabilities that
exist with traditional
satellites for geospatial data collection.
They are, however, not very familiar
that they can do great things with small
satellites. As we keep up with technology, today we can do good things for
a fraction of the size and cost. Many
of these innovative companies have
used advances in consumer electronics,
automotive grade electronics, changes
in manufacturing processes, materials,
changes that occurred and continue to
occur in computer processing, communications architecture, increasing
bandwidth, etc.
From data to complete
analysis
The US government today is looking
at two ways to get their data. The
NGA recently released its commercial GEOINT strategy, in which they
talked about two ways of buying
geospatial intelligence information.
One is the traditional way — where
the systems provide bits [0s and 1s]
directly to them and they will
work with that information.
Another way they
intend to do is to
have a service
where a
company like
Leidos will do
the analytics using
disparate
sources of imagery, other sources of
data, look for changes, look for interesting things that the agency would be
interested in and alert them about the
changes.
Partnerships, collaborations
Leidos is fairly well known in US
government and industry as a company that leans forward and looks
forward to new partnerships. We are
always looking for small companies
that we can bring onto our teams. We
also mentor many small companies.
First of all, we don’t have all the solutions. We are about integrating many
good solutions into a greater solution.
This is achieved by collaborating,
partnering, bringing together new
ideas, different people and companies.
The other aspect of this is to help the
users collaborate. We work with all the
military, intelligence agencies, homeland security and other customers. We
have an understanding what the customers are doing and sometimes what
we end up doing is helping customer
A to know that customer B has similar
issue/project and if the two of them
work together, they could probably do
something greater together.
Robert Zitz
Senior Vice President &
Chief Architect, Leidos
W
hat we are
driving right now
is the connectivity between the
digital world and
the real world. Whenever you need to
create a new infrastructure, any plan
is only as good as its assumptions. So,
you need to know what the reality is.
We are driving reality capture solutions by creating new ways to provide
these realities to the digital world.
Over the last few years, we have driven mobile reality capture quite dramatically. We fly in and build 3D cities
for the ultimate app. While mapping
street assets, we put our equipment
on a car. We have ground penetrating
radar technology, which can make the
invisible visible, like the pipes in the
ground. All these technologies help us
to mirror the reality into a CAD file.
We are building a bridge for our
customers to move from traditional
surveying to using extensive software
and sophisticated instruments. We are
binding our existing technologies of
scanning into new software to make the
workflow easy. Our reality-capturing
technologies can decipher everything
from traffic lights to the lines on the
road, which then you need to maintain
in preparation of the autonomous cars in
the coming decade.
Workflow needs to be
automated in real time
The cars need to know whether these
assets are in place or not, and it is our
job to make sure they are at the right
place on the map at the right time. But,
the workflow also needs to be automated and integrated in real time. When we
Bringing the
Real World into the
Digital World
capture data in different ways and amass
it, we give the industry an opportunity to
create new products.
Transformation is not a new force at
Hexagon. We have been transforming
this market even before 1921. In the
beginning, it was optomechanical and
then it was optoelectronic, followed by
the industrial revolutions. Lately, we
are witnessing integration of software
workflows into connected devices. Today, the process starts with the software
on the sensor. You can get CAD files onto
a total station and work on them. The
other side to this transformation
is to interlink these with
other software. Since we
live in a digital world,
you cannot neglect the
path from raw data
to the application. If
you do not link this
information to the
hardware, even the
best software would
not be able to keep
you from losing
information. It is
only when you
create a seamless
link between the
entire process
that you can
bring the real
world into the
digital world.
Juergen Dold
President, Hexagon Geosystems
Industry Outlook
Product-Technology Lifecycles
Businesses
O
Shrinking and Reshaping
ne of the most
reflective changes in
the recent past is the
dramatic shrinkage of
product/technology
lifecycles. The collapse of lifecycles
means that replacing a product or
service line every two years is becoming the norm across many industries.
Furthermore, if a business is not quick
to introduce a product to the market, it
risks launching goods that have already
been superseded by competitors. This
changing environment means that
accurate market demand planning and
forecasting has never been more imperative. The key to this is the innovation
that enables organizations to quickly
and effectively manage operations and
gain a greater perspective over the
entire supply chain. A similar example
is the Internet of Things (IoT). The
Internet has revolutionized the world
in a big way. IoT will create significant disruption as well as significant
opportunities in the coming years as
companies create products and services
that fit into a new world of connected
devices and ecosystems.
Solution-centric approach
Solution has become the end of the
value chain and a company cannot
give a solution with just hardware
alone. Trimble and Hexagon are
the best examples here, which are
primarily hardware companies, have
major revenue sharing from software
business now. As a part of innovation,
versions of software being replaced
by apps. Though they are not charging
directly, they are teasing users with
their products and solutions
on their apps. Through
freely available apps, the
companies are aiming to increase their
footprint in terms of
outreach. Though the
companies are shifting to software and
apps, cost still remains a big challenge
which is a hindrance to the growth of
the industry.
Mainstreaming of geospatial
Mainstream IT players, like Amazon
and Google, are venturing into the
location sector for competitive advantage. The intention is not to develop
geospatial products or solutions, but
a need for new technologies to enable
a seamless delivery in their own field.
Ground-breaking acquisitions and
mergers have been taking place in the
industry as a way for businesses to
expand horizons and gain competitive
advantage. This is true for Apple’s acquisition of a US startup, Mapsesnse.
Traditionally, GIS services were
handled by specialist players in GIS
while the IT services companies handled all other relevant IT systems. With
the advancement of GIS across industry
and user friendliness involved in viewing any relevant data on top of a map
with right coordinates, the business users in the industry are starting to prefer
any GUI or MIS report to a GIS map.
This trend is making big companies
develop in-home GIS groups to enable
GIS across the business units.
B.V.R. Mohan Reddy
Excecutive Chairman, Cyient;
Chairman, NASSCOM
Location
is an Important Factor
in All Kinds of Data
I
ndustries are evolving to acquire
end-to-end capabilities as part
of a natural evolution. Desktop
geospatial industry is evolving
to enterprise and Web and is
also providing capabilities to APIs. The
applied use cases toward next generation businesses are also evolving, and
some of them have been very disruptive to traditional industries. This trend,
known as the consumerization of GIS,
increasingly requires non-GIS experts
to build and support location-based
applications and services. Eventually, either specialized businesses will
acquire horizontal technology stacks
or geospatial companies will acquire
further capabilities in vertical solutions.
interoperability are the next big thing.
Take for example, Big Data and
Hadoop platform integrated with LI
APIs. An agile and flexible platform
can help organizations extract more
value from their data to drive greater
profitability, reduce risk and deliver
more personalized and contextually
relevant customer experiences.
To really make sense of any data,
location is an important factor. To do
the analysis in location context, you
need to geocode, route, geo-fence and
run spatial analytics. The biggest social
media companies could end up becoming the largest geospatial companies,
as they are capturing billions of data
points centered around their users.
Open ended architecture
and interoperability
Real-time location data a
disrupting technology
The next wave of value creation
would come from companies with
solid technology platforms. APIs
and microservices are becoming the
core plumbing for the next set of
architectures and workflows. And
architectures that are fairly open-ended and are open to partnerships and
Real-time location data became a disruption to the traditional taxi business
model all over the world. Take Uber
for example. Disruption to commercial taxi businesses via mobile apps is
fundamentally dependent on location,
where you are, where you want to go,
what is real time weather, traffic, what
is demographic location data analysis. To that business, location data
becomes crucial to integrate.
Similarly, e-commerce companies who are the next big trend
are going mobile-first because
Manish Choudhary
VP, Global Engineering,
& Managing Director,
Pitney Bowes Software India
they realize how to overlay their
customers on a map at a particular
place and time and draw inferences
for shipping and tracking. These two
non-traditional players have either
acquired or partnered with geospatial
companies to solve their critical problem and the same would apply to any
data company.
Industry Outlook
A Successful Model Extends
Verticallyand
Horizontally
both
T
here is no doubt that the
product development
cycle continues to be
accelerated. Companies
can no longer provide by
themselves the compelling end-to-end
solutions that the market is looking
for. The challenge therefore lies is in
understanding where one clearly adds
value and has a sustainable competitive advantage and focus one’s efforts
there, and then find the right partners
in each target market to offer clients a
superior complete solution.
Given the high risk associated, this trend is particularly
challenging for companies like Teledyne
Optech that have
always been technology innovators and
market creators. Our
organization has adjusted in several ways: we
have moved away from
pure ‘technology push’
innovations
and have been working closely with
forward-thinking clients and development partners to reduce market and
technology risk and make sure that we
get it right the first time.
Software is the main driver
Software has undoubtedly grown
in prominence, as is expected in a
maturing market. Today, clients are
primarily interested in the data products generated through software at the
end of the value chain. Software is
also the main driver when it comes to
productivity, a key decision factor
in maturing markets. As a result, we have rebalanced our
development team to reflect
the growing importance of
software and have adopted
a systems approach that
improves hardware and
software integration. We
are also recognizing that the
value chain extends beyond
Teledyne Optech’s
core capabilities and knowledge base,
and so we have been partnering and
integrating with software companies
that have established themselves as
leaders in specific market verticals.
Nonetheless, there continues to be a
great deal of innovation at the hardware level, which then open the door
for new markets and software-driven
end products, or enable new levels of
productivity never before achievable.
Cost-effective and
intuitive workflows
We are working on both hardware and
software fronts to make data acquisition, data processing and end-product
generation as cost-effective and
intuitive as possible. With features
like PulseTRAK and SwathTRAK,
our latest airborne LiDAR sensor, the
Galaxy, has dramatically increased
sensor efficiency and reduced operating costs, while totally eliminating
the complexity in project planning and
data collection. In the same way, our
LMS software is now enabling the user
to process LiDAR and imagery data
through the same workflow and is optimizing the processing algorithms in
order to achieve survey-grade accuracy
even in very difficult environments.
Michel Stanier
COO, Teledyne Optech
Industry Outlook
As Solutions Become
Complex,
Collaboration Becomes
Imperative
R
apid changes in
product lifecycle are
re-shaping the business
by heavy competition
and low cut off rates.
In this evolving scenario, it is necessary to keep pace with market trends,
and keep innovating and searching
for faster and more efficient solutions.
Organizations need to understand the
sustainable products in their bag. They
need to critically analyze the drastic
change of demand to maintain their
product lifecycle as there is rapid
advancement of technology.
This shift in demand is natural
and expected. As solutions become
complex and specialized, the need for
implementers and integrators became
imperative. Since clients expect endto-end solutions under one roof, the
business ecosystem is developing in
a more collaborative environment to
fight back the competition.
One-size-fits-all
philosophy doesn’t work
Today we cannot rely on the one-sizefits-all philosophy and custom-make
each solution we offer for each individual. As the clientele grows more mature
and technologically enlightened, we
are expected to churn out high-quality
solutions with niche technology at optimized cost. For instance, we at ADCC
collaborated with domain-specific
solution provider for BPAS and RAMS
to compete in the market and enhance
our opportunities. We also actively
collaborate with industry giants like
Esri, Intergraph, Bentley, DigitalGlobe,
etc. For overseas business, we collaborate with local companies to increase
our credentials, to reduce cultural and
language gap, and to understand the
market. I believe there cannot be a
standard model for collaboration, we
need to follow due diligence and be
customer-centric in our approach to
build solutions and must mutually fill
in the gaps.The trend of sharing information infrastructure is a positive step
toward better business environment.
This has enabled specialized solution
providers to come together and create
precise offerings that are better suited
to the client’s needs.
Information sharing also plays
a crucial role for organizations to
execute quick and cost-effective
solutions. Governments are coming
up with various solutions, such as
SDIs, to bring all data on a common
platform for them be accessible by different organizations. This will reduce
the cost of data preparation and also
repetition of data creation. The best
part about geospatial solutions is that
it not just adds value to your offerings,
but it also gives us smart tools.
Amit Somani
Joint Managing Director,
ADCC Infocad
Innovations
are Transforming
the Industry
O
ne of the trends we are
witnessing today is of
companies building
their businesses around
geospatial technology as well as data. Uber would be
a good example of this. Companies
are innovating to improve the quality
of maps, to quickly map new areas,
and develop a new technology for
pin-pointing location more precisely,
both inside and outside. So, there is
a lot of innovation which is being
fuelled by these new applications. This
has also created a need for the industry
to broaden its definition. We need to
look at ourselves as more than just
horizontal providers of technology.
The industry has transformed into a
bigger player solving consumer and/or
business problems.
Mainstreaming of geospatial
Because of evolution in the startup
space and competition, even large
players like Google and Apple are
trying to make their platform better.
All this has created an opportunity
for companies like RMSI. If the big
players have to ramp up or improve
their data, they need to reduce the time
to market. As a whole, this is creating
opportunities for the industry.
The apparatus fuelling innovation
is the sharing information infrastructure. This has opened up dialogue
about Big Data, the benefits of which
are yet to be realized by the geospatial
domain. If all the data from various
countries and different regions were
to combine with all the other data
from sensor systems, imagine the
kind of insights we would be able to
get. We can create new applications
to solve complex problems using that
insight.
Information sharing is also important for small and medium enterprises
because it enables them to compete on
a global scale without being weighed
down by upfront investments. So, in
a way, it has unlocked the startups,
as well as the mid-sized businesses,
and given them the opportunity to go
global. Traditionally, geospatial has
been a very specialized field with
specialized skills. But,
all these activities
have mainstreamed
geospatial to such
an extent that
companies like
Anup Jindal
CEO & Joint Managing
Director, RMSI
Google are openly saying how their
strategy revolves around maps.
Mobile platform is important
This year, a very fundamental shift
happened: the Internet access on
smartphones took over the Internet
access on desktops across the world.
This means that, increasingly, more
and more Internet access would happen on smartphones now, which would
blur the difference between an app and
a Web application. All your technologies need to work seamlessly on a
mobile device; you cannot ignore the
mobile platform anymore. Companies
need to internally set up the capacity,
capability and innovation of increasing their mobile outreach. Extensive
use of mobile devices also means that
companies can bring in new sensors.
Soon, they will even start monitoring
pollution levels in the cities.
Tech Trends | Small Satellites
Small sats have come into
their own in Big Boys’ realm
S
pace technology
used to be a big boys
realm. Big budgets, big facilities,
big teams and big time
schedules summed up these
efforts. Usually, these were
government laboratories,
as in the case of India, or
government-funded projects
in big companies, as in the
United States of America.
The users also were big
government departments
and big corporations.
However, this big approach
had limitations. Beginning
with ERTS (now Landsat),
the initial euphoria of seeing
large swathes of land in one
scene was soon tempered by
the amount of information
that could be drawn from
these scenes. Large swathes
of farmland were visible,
but individual crops could
barely be identified unless
they covered large areas. This
required higher resolutions,
but swath got limited and so
did the revisit periods, making the monitoring of the
crop growth difficult. Other
applications like defense,
urban and disaster manage-
ment demanded high resolutions, shorter revisit times
and faster data processing.
Multiple satellites, pointable
sensors, agile spacecrafts
solved some of these problems, but always at the cost
of some parameter. Multiple
satellites increased the cost,
pointable sensors and agile
satellites resulted in limited
coverage.
This is when small satellites came into their own.
They cost less, both in terms
of the satellites and launch
costs, and, therefore, a
multiple set of such satellites
could be arranged to fly in
formation as a constellation to provide both wider
coverage and higher revisit.
However, the time from imaging to data in the hand of
the user remains a problem
because of the sophisticated
preprocessing. Advances in
electronics are now enabling
the development of nano and
microsatellites. Also, these
can now be designed and
made in simple laboratories,
as can be seen from the large
number of satellites designed
and built by students.
Data and data processing
is now more accessible
through the Cloud. It is not
only students, but, with the
maturing of technology,
many industries are developing microsatellites with
seven-year life and ‘appropriate’ risk-reward that satisfies
venture capital providers.
Nanosatellites may lack in
sophistication, but they meet
the need of frequent revisit
and fast turnaround of data
which suits many critical
applications, like defense and
disaster support.
Josh Alban, Vice President – Sales, Planet Labs
Forcing the industry to move faster
Instead of just looking for highly precise and
high-resolution pixels, we are opening up a new league
of data in and around time resolution — data based
on temporal resolution. Nanosatellites are forcing the
industry to move at a fundamentally faster pace. If you
are not taking 5 to 10 years just to build a satellite, you
can innovate on the core technology more quickly. That
enables a company to serve better and more interesting
datasets to not only existing customers, but also to people
who know very little about geospatial information.
Today, we are benefiting from the years of investment
the consumer electronics community has put in nanotechnologies. In many ways, our small satellites are producing
superior datasets compared to very large and expensive
satellites.
Opens up the space for small countries
A lot of small countries with limited budget are
investing in small satellite technology. It is a lot cheaper
application to invest in when compared with starting a
full space science program or developing geo capabilities
and satellite communication. Earth observation is the
wisest start in this industrial process with the potential
of developing more extensive programs later on. We are
seeing countries such as South Korea or even Nigeria
and Algeria who started off with this technology and now
have a diverse EO program. We expect other countries to
follow this course.
Low capex model and competitive pricing
We have seen an unprecedented level of investment
— $415 million — coming into the business in the last
couple of years. The low-capex model is attractive to
investors. There is, of course, a risk factor. But it is
On the back side of all of this data creation, there is an
analytics community which is frustrated with relatively
shallow global spatial datasets, and is ready for our new
temporal datasets. In the last five years, this community
has made rapid strides in the fields of machine learning
and Big Data concepts. We look forward to see what they
will do with our data.
Frequent launches a plus
In a more traditional cadence of launching, failures would
be a very big problem [Planet lost 34 satellites in launch
failures in 2015]. But, we have launched nine times with
a failure rate that is quite low.
The fact that we launch more frequently means that
one failure would not impact the broader evolution of the
constellation.
important for the industry that some of these projects are
successful so that future investments are not affected.
Microsat data is priced very competitively. They
also have the capability of launching a vast number of
satellites in one go.
Small sats answer the questions of temporary revisit,
bringing it down to hours, rather than days. We
do not necessarily expect it to tap into the
high-precision defense markets.
The data has the potential to open up
completely different market areas, such
as, in market and business intelligence,
support to financial communities,
insurance, etc. Some of the
monitoring-style applications
will see increased competition
and the trend could prove to
be disruptive.
Adam Keith, Managing Director, Euroconsult Canada
Tech Trends | Small Satellites
Big players are here to stay, but small
sats will expand the market
In many recent cases, these embody a disruptive movement
to provide rapid, low-cost data service to a much wider
audience/market. The compromise is the
achievable swath and resolution. Often
times, nano and microsatellites might
be quoted to have high resolution,
when really it is the ground sampling
distance that is being specified and not
the actual resolution. You can’t break
the laws of physics, and usually, a
larger instrument is required for
high spatial and spectral resolution and/or large swath. For
these missions, the satellites
will be larger. One can think
of nano and microsatellites
as expanding the market
to include users of lower
resolution data that would
not otherwise have access to images from more expensive
satellites. Nano and microsatellite approaches are also
being used to reap the benefits of mass production for
large constellations. These constellations increase the total
volume of data available and reduce the latency of data.
This again promotes market growth to include those who
need low latency, quick revisit, and a more images in a
short period of time.
Quicker revisits, lower cost
We need to produce satellites that are not top performers
in favor of quicker revisit, higher data volumes and lower
cost. This makes imagery accessible to a larger, untapped
market. The cost of satellites, ground stations, and operations needs to be kept low enough to allow business models to close. Otherwise, commercial exploitation of satellite
imaging will not be successful. The traditional big players,
like DigitalGlobe, will likely still have a role with the high
resolution, high performance missions. However, these
large satellites will not be amenable to mass production
and commercial data services owing to their cost.
Dr Robert E Zee, Director, Space Flight Laboratory, Microsatellite Science and Technology Center,
University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies
Real disruptive business segments
will emerge
Nanosatellites are great for a few applications and they
are simply not right for others, like the more classical
intel- or defence-related applications that need high resolution and high frequency. The business of EO imagery
is very much government
driven. But now, we are
seeing a new B2C business
developing on the top of
this and that is fuelled by
nanosatellites. This is the
kind of demand that will
develop with
the platform
itself. So,
the classical
segments will remain there and will grow steadily in the
next few years, but the real disruption is going to come
from the other side. And this would be possible only if
there are innovations in Web technology for allowing
the people to access this data and the data stream that
populate this platform with counters.
Affordable and democratic data
One of the key points of being able to expand the market
is now the availability of reliable data. But this data has to
be available at the right price and with a proper frequency.
So it is a combination of three factors — the data quality,
the price and the refresh rates. Further, the way this data is
distributed is becoming more and more innovative, so we
are able to access EO imagery not only faster and cheaper,
but also in a more democratic way. It not only allows
more users to access the data, but also access it differently
to be able to process it in real time.
Fabrizio Pirondini, CEO, Deimos Imaging
Makes a great business sense
The Silicon Valley venture capitalists
The trend of microsatellites is catching up because of
several great business reasons. Essentially, these can
boil down to technology and availability of capital. It
is now possible to manufacture satellites that are just
as reliable [depending on the application] for a lot less
money. In our case, we have been through three separate
designs for a satellite, and we finally arrived at the one
which has the appropriate risk reward in terms of what
it would cost to fly it. And we have gone down dramatically in terms of the weight and the cost; not only what
it costs to build a satellite, but also in terms of launching
it. For each kilogram that you take off a satellite, you
save tens of thousands of dollars in launching it. And we
have built satellites weighing as less as 15 kgs. There’s
a tremendous amount of technology innovation that is
occurring in the sphere of engineering and manufacturing of these satellites, and PlanetiQ has benefited greatly
from it.
If I talk about the other driving force behind this trend,
which is the financial one, you need to know what
venture capitalists in the Silicon Valley would be able to
finance. We are witnessing an explosion in the 3U satellite form because they are very inexpensive and are considered by some as ‘disposable’. We, however, have not
taken that approach. We don’t view them as disposable;
in fact, we have a seven-year design life on ours. I would
say that we have gone up in the value
chain by building a more robust satellite. But, the venture capital community is very detail-oriented and they
want to weigh their risk-reward
on the amount of money they
are willing to put forward,
and the amount it
takes to build these
instruments.
Anne Hale Miglarese, President, PlanetiQ
Why do we need to re-invent
There is a lot of commercial opportunity
in the 1-metre resolution space. We have
to look at better and higher resolutions
in this area. At BlackSky Global, we are
deploying a constellation of 60 satellites
to change how we look at the planet.
So, instead of viewing 1 or
2 revisits per day
we are planning
40-70 revisits per
day. Ultimately,
it is going to be
very disruptive on how
we look at
the planet
in a positive way
because
suddenly we can do things with satellites that were not
possible before. Big satellite players like DigitalGlobe are
the biggest leaders in the industry. They have 80% of the
revenue, they have a great spark to capitalize the revenue
and they really have the customer base. And they will
continue to be the leaders 5 to 10 years down the line.
Those who innovate will stay relevant
Our business, however, is going to come from everywhere. Ultimately, it comes to three things — revisit rates,
the price point for the products, and the user experience.
As an industry, we can do much better in all these areas.
As we bring the imagery prices down with time, we
will be opening up new markets. Also, we need to focus
on distribution partners and channels. We have to think
about what that means to the satellite industry, the ground
segment, the distributors, the analytics community... So,
there is a lot of business opportunity throughout the value
chain. Organizations that innovate will stay relevant in
this market and those who do not, could be left behind.
Jason Andrew, CEO, BlackSky
Tech Trends | UAVs
drones Take wings, but still
bound by regulations
U
AVs and their
cousins — the
drones — have
been in the
news for all the
wrong reasons. TV serials like
Homeland have made them
out to be evil destructive
inventions. The fact is, they
range from toy helicopters
to those evil, destructive
things we see on the TV.
Somewhere in the middle are
the peaceful ones, ranging
from a quadcopter carrying a
video camera and recording a
wedding procession to more
sophisticated ones which are
stabilized and mounted with
sensors like digital cameras
and laser scanners for remote
sensing.
The use of UAVs for remote sensing fills a big need.
They can be flown at short
notice, and can cover small
areas in very high resolution
as the flying height is low.
The cost of operation is also
low and data is available
almost immediately. For
example, they have been
used in the Nepal earthquake
recovery management by
students with a minimum
amount of ‘flight training’.
While digital cameras have
been the sensor of choice till
now, laser scanners are fast
becoming popular.
Does it mean that remote
sensing from high resolution
satellites will be replaced?
The answer is no. In fact,
neither will aerial photography become obsolete. UAVs
provide a quick and easy
solution and that is also their
weakness. While they are
good for single sorties over
small areas, they cannot
replace aircraft which can
cover multiple large areas
in a single sortie. Further,
modern aircraft sensors are
complex and yield multispectral data which can be
used for multiple purposes.
Satellite remote sensing can
cover even more areas, which
gives a degree of synopticity
not available from UAVs or
aircrafts.
UAVs are limited by regulations of where they can
be flown. These regulations
vary from country to
country. In some countries,
there is a complete ban,
while in other countries,
the operation is limited in
height and to areas away
from aircraft routes and
range is limited to line of
sight between the operator
and the UAV. Despite these
limitations, the use of UAVs
is expected to grow particularly as new lightweight
sensors are being developed
exclusively to be used on
UAVs.
It is about democratization of aerial
imaging and data itself
Vast majority of UAS will continue
to be imagery based
UAS provides accurate aerial imagery — previously
controlled by government, aerial mapping and satellite
firms — accessible to all. In that sense, it
is less about a technology or interesting drone concept and more about the
democratization of aerial imaging
and data itself. Aerial imaging is one
of the most powerful forms of geospatial information available, across a
vast range of industries and applications. UAS is playing an increasingly important role, and now
complements traditional
aerial survey, mapping
and satellite data.
Sensor development, and the decrease in the actual size
of sensors while keeping or improving their functionality,
is the main reason the UAS market is able to exist today
in its current form. Laser scanning is less important than
imagery in the UAS market, given the advances in photogrammetry we have seen, especially in the recent years.
Scanning will continue to be a niche sensor, but it is unlikely to be widespread in the UAS market given the cost
and complexity. The vast majority of UAS are, and will
continue to be, imagery-based. Beyond visual line of sight
is interesting as it would allow corridor mapping by UAS.
There are still significant technical, safety and regulatory
concerns that need to be addressed before a UAS with
few or no redundant systems could fly in such conditions.
Until then, it’s an interesting industry to watch.
Todd Steiner, Marketing Director – Imaging Business Area, Trimble
New way to safely and efficiently
collect spatial data
UAVs are continuing to push the paradigm shift of
moving from ‘point-to-point’ data collection to a
‘continuous representation of reality’ — capturing all
information in a scene at once and distilling that down
to required spatial data
(points, lines, polygons,
attributes, orthomosaics and digital
elevation models)
on the desktop. In
addition, we shift
from ground data
collection to aerial,
which provides a
new way to safely
and efficiently collect
spatial data. Data can be
collected in areas that
may not be
accessible in any other way in a fast and efficient
manner. Users can access the data they need in a
safe, easy, efficient and profitable way. While sensor
development has lagged behind the pace of the UAV
hardware, it is rapidly improving with the emergence of
new options for both hyperspectral and thermal imaging.
Current laser scanning technology needs to change dramatically, in both size, weight, and energy consumption,
to be used on UAV hardware platforms.
Good fit for core geospatial businesses
UAV technology is a good fit for our core business,
representing another valuable tool for our customers to
increase their efficiencies and stay competitive. Agriculture is a significant market for Topcon with high UAV
acceptance. And with our recent acquisition of Digi-Star,
aerial mapping is proving to be a helpful tool for crop
management, irrigation planning and determining plant
health. Our aerial mapping solutions have also brought
us into new markets, such as inspection and monitoring.
I am sure we will continue to be surprised by the applications that arise for UAVs.
Charles Rihner, Vice President – GeoPositioning Solutions, Topcon Positioning Group
Tech Trends | UAVs
The real challenge is to move into apps
There has been an explosion in the UAV market, and
analysts are predicting further growth. There is a lot of
competition in the segment. However, it is not enough to
deliver only the nice copter technology. I think we have
the nicest copter; we have a customer who said it looks
like a iPhone. But this is not enough. The real challenge
is to move into the applications. Customers not only
want drones, they also want core applications so that
they can work with all the data which we can generate
with the drone technology. And for this, we are developing a lot of applications for stepping in the surveying
business. We now have the new functionality for high
precision GNSS so that the customer can work very
efficiently. They can speed up in their surveying process
and this is then very helpful.
value, and so we need applications with which you can
move in the whole business. And this, I think, is the
main success factor. It is also very important that UAVs
are capable of adopting very flexible and varied sensors
because every customer has
a different application,
a different sense of
philosophy. This is our
concept at the moment:
you can adapt very easy,
different sensor technologies, optics so we can
cover a lot of
applications.
Create business space and add value
You have to create business spaces, you have to
convince the customers that you can generate and add
Dr Herbert Machill, CEO, Aibotix
Uncertainty over standards and rules
The advent of UAV/RPAS as a low-cost platform for mapping and surveillance purposes has generated a revolution
in platform development with an exponential number of
configurations and sizes. While this explosion has created
many options at very different price/performance points,
it has also led to extreme fragmentation and uncertainty
about standards and rules, ultimately resulting in
much confusion in the marketplace. Given
the payload limitations of most UAVs,
imaging sensors have primarily been
deployed based on their inherently
smaller size and power requirements,
and they have been challenging the
scanning market by asking the question,
‘What is good enough?’ Platform
development has been far and away more
prolific than LiDAR sensor development. There are LiDAR sensors
available that currently serve
the UAV market space, but
typically these sensors either only support general mapping
requirements in terms of accuracy and measurement
precision, or they are priced too high and remain outside
the payload capabilities of most UAV platforms. At this
stage, technology limitations and the absence of platform
standardization prevent the development of a sufficiently
performing yet low-priced LiDAR sensor that could seriously disrupt the engineering-grade survey market.
Cost savings are undeniable
UAV deployment as an alternative platform for low-cost
data collection is attractive to many. Cost savings are
undeniable in the context of single localized surveys.
However, their adoption for multiple same-day collects
of independent survey areas is impractical and inefficient.
In these cases, low-cost manned platforms are still more
efficient, and are not affected by the current legislative
restrictions that govern the UAVs. Therefore, manufacturers must consider sensor development in the context of
available platforms, required accuracies and the application verticals in which they choose to participate.
Mike Sitar, Business Unit Manager, Airborne Mapping Solutions, Teledyne Optech
Integration into national airspace
Advances in smaller and lighter sensors
Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are changing the
landscape of many industries and finding roles in
almost every walk of life. As far as the spatial industry
is concerned, the real advantages are to be found in the
sensors. The lower cost of operation compared to traditional means of data collection has also meant that more
data can be collected, integrated and cross referenced to
create ever more detail of the subject area. UAS come in
a variety of sizes with increasing
payload capabilities. However, it is important to utilize
the right technology for the
given task. Developments in
the integration of larger UAS
into national airspace will give
the spatial industry new
horizons when it comes
to covering large
areas quickly
and efficiently.
UAS technology developed in the past few years,but it is
the sensors that deliver the real results. The advances in
smaller and lighter sensors, in conjunction with the developments in the aviation regulatory environment, has
allowed UAS to be operated in all sorts of environments,
delivering all sorts of information that only a few years
ago could not be dreamt of. These advances (in photographic resolution, LiDAR and laser scanning technologies, even spectral analysis) all needed a very stable
platform and have found a natural home with UAS.
One of the biggest new advances that I see happening in the next few years is an increasing development
of large UAS capable of operation alongside manned
aviation, and covering large distances whilst carrying a
wide array of sensors. Couple this with the anticipated
advances in computing and the benefits will be staggering. Systems will be able to operate at considerable
distances from base (with no need for co-located operators) providing data at very short notices in quantities
not yet envisaged.
Gary Clayton, Chairman, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems
Smaller, more efficient and all-weather
UAVs provide an alternative, more cost-effective method
for collecting data. They are smaller and, therefore, can
be used when needed; rather than scheduling time and
resources to use manned aircraft or satellites. They can
often fly closer to the targeted area to collect more accurate data than possible with alternate methods.
They can also supplement other data that is collected,
so more information is available for analysis and reporting. UAVs can also be used in weather conditions that other aircraft cannot operate, thus ensuring that projects stay
on target. The markets that rely on up-to-date, accurate
and detailed GIS data will adopt UAV technology more
quickly by having additional sensor payloads available.
Users who want to get their jobs done more accurately
and more efficiently will discover new applications.
Sensor manufacturers need to catch up
The UAV market and technology are evolving at a rapid
rate, making it difficult for established sensor manufacturers to keep up with this pace. The challenge is that
most sensors today haven’t been designed for unique
characteristics or variation in the sizes of UAVs. Bulky
and full metal encased sensors on the underside of a
UAV can drastically impact the flight
performance, communication link,
reliability and safety of a UAV.
Unless you operate a large UAV,
these sensors can’t be used. That
said, sensor manufacturers are now
realizing the potential of the UAV
market for new business and are
starting to adapt their technology to integrate with
UAVs. We are starting
to see smaller, lighter
sensors with the same
or better performance
than “off-the-shelf”
sensors. Laser
scanning tech is
catching up.
David Proulx, VP Product & Marketing, Aeryon Labs
Tech Trends | Big Data
The future is in analytics
& interconnected Big Data
W
ith the
advent
of satellite
remote
sensing, Global Navigation
Satellite Systems, aerial
surveys, sensor networks,
radar, and LiDAR, the volume
of geospatial data has grown
exponentially with data
production crossing storage
capacity in 2007 itself. To
these conventional sources,
add the unconventional
sources like location aware
devices, crowd-sourced data,
RFIDs and IoT data sources
and you have a huge data
stream. In its report on Big
Data, McKinsey Global Institute estimates that location
data level stood at 1 petabyte
in 2009 and had a growth
rate of 20% per year. This did
not include data from RFID
sensors. It also does not include ‘dark data’, that is, data
collected by researchers and
lying in private archives.
The UN-GGIM estimates
that of the 2.5 quintillion
bytes of data generated everyday, a significant portion of
the data is location-aware.
However, it would be
wrong to create bins for
geospatial Big Data and
other Big Data. The key to Big
Data is the need to look at all
data in ensembles specific to
applications.
Thus, according to Prof
Shashi Shekhar of the University of Minnesota, Big Data
also includes data-intensive
computing, middleware,
analytics and scientific and
social applications. In fact,
the current trend of interconnecting different data
sources through the Web
will ultimately give rise to
the Internet of Things, where
every source will have its own
Uniform Resource Identifier
and geospatial data will
become omnipresent. There
will be over 50 billion such
resources by 2020.
The UN-GGIM report on
future trends in data over
the next 5-10 years indicates
that Big Data is coming to
the fore. It is of the opinion
that the future is not one Big
Data store, but a number
of datastores interconnected and accessed through
models satisfying different
end uses. Big Data will
require open standards to
discover, access and publish
data. The provenance of data
will also become important.
Big Data is increasingly finding importance in transport,
logistics and disaster
management which present
the challenges of data volume, velocity and variety.
Big Data is junk if you can’t understand it
Everything that happens, happens somewhere. It’s the
‘where’ that provides context. In the words of Richard
Saul Wurman, “Big Data is junk if you can’t understand it,
but a map is a pattern made understandable.” Practically,
everything has an explicit or implicit geospatial location
— explicit when a latitude and a longitude are provided,
implicit when an address is specific, like 380 New York
Street, or implied in a mobile Tweet such as, “I’m eating a
Chicago style pizza in downtown Manhattan.” Even if the
location service on the phone is disabled, a natural-language
processing analyzer can determine that Chicago is not the
correct location of the Tweet — downtown Manhattan is the
location, and that can be converted into explicit latitudinal
and longitudinal values. What’s getting better is our ability
to model and forecast our cultural, physical, and biological
futures. The difference is real-time data. You have sensors
pulling in information about traffic, noise, air pollution,
water quality. GIS has always been about data, but now GIS
is getting filled with streams of real-time data. We are able
to integrate that data from different sources and analyze it
against historical patterns to make predictions. So instead
of simply telling you what current traffic conditions are, we
can predict what the next hour of traffic will be like and tell
you the best way to get where you’re going.
Beyond the 3 Vs
Big data usage is more than the traditional volume, velocity and variety (3 Vs); it is the realization that sometimes
the 3 Vs just don’t apply. For example, imagine if another
Fukushima Daiichi event happens — the sparse data
from sensors in a remote village is not coming in fast,
is not big and is very structured. However, the window
of opportunity to respond to such
an event is so small that we
need new ways to determine
whether that village needs
to be evacuated, and we
need certainty in our decision making. This is where
geospatial analytics is
most relevant in the form
of Bayesian kriging with
regression executed very
quickly by nontraditional
means.
Mansour Raad, Senior Software Architect, Big Data Advocate, Esri
Multi-model analysis
There have been a lot of new innovations in the world of
Big Data and Big Data modeling. There is a lot of data
coming in. New innovations like self-driving cars are
bringing in completely new kinds of real-time data.
There are some buzzwords — real-time, in memory,
relational table and rows, NoSQL key-value, Hadoop
sharding, graphs — that are going around for new
technologies. All of this comes down to the multi-model
store that is doing the analysis of the data — whether
it is coming from existing databases, materials coming
from blogs, financial reports and data from the agriculture world. Then there’s real-time information and electrical monitoring, etc., like the Oracle Multi-Model platform and Cloud Data platforms One Shared Multi-Model
Store or Multiple Independent Stores. It depends on the
customer’s choice and supports any data type, any scale,
on-premises or in the Cloud. Whatever is right for your
company or your application, the ‘multi model’ platform
can handle it.
Re-purposing the data
Because you have a lot of data and it’s complicated, you
need to re-purpose the data. The data is already in
a store, but different human beings will use the
data in different ways. Now, environmental
monitoring people, agricultural people have
different terminologies for the same data. You
can use different terminology to remap it into the
terminology used by that particular customer. But
you are paid to collect, store and model the data
only one time. That’s the beauty of providing
the semantic layer on top of it. Convergence requires access to different data
model stores either write custom
software or use semantics.
Steve Hagan, Vice President, Database Server Technologies, Oracle
Tech Trends | Mobile Mapping
Proliferation in sensors
driving mobile mapping
O
ne of the
most difficult
tasks for a city
administration is to keep
track of the construction and
modification of buildings
within its jurisdiction. While
there are documents galore
of permissions and payment
of taxes, these do not
include the actual situation
on the ground. Satellite imagery from time to time can
track changes but cannot be
used to determine adherence to laws.
Mobile mapping, which
uses a 360-degree viewing
camera system mounted
on a car, can collect more
useful data as the car travels
down city roads. This data
can then be analyzed offline
for illegal constructions and
modifications. Such imagery
is precisely located using GPS
and can be used for precise
mensuration of building
façades.
Mobile mapping also
provides the ‘street view’ in
Google maps and other such
sites, providing an augmented reality view to users. Apart
from photographic cameras,
laser scanners are also used
for the same purpose.
Terrestrial laser scanners can be used in mobile
mapping for other areas, like
recording mine activities,
mapping and virtual reconstruction of heritage sites
and mapping of geological
and geomorphological
hazards like landslides and
rockfalls.
Mobile mapping is also
used for determining rights
of way for future roads,
pipelines, transmission lines
and railway lines. For many
of these applications where
vehicles cannot be used
UAV mounted scanners are
adopted. Ship-mounted
scanners are also very useful
for mapping the coastal
environment.
These applications
earlier required a considerable post-processing and the
access to the results were
limited. Now apps are being
developed that provide the
results on portable devices
that can be used in-situ. Also,
the ensemble of sensors is
growing and now includes
in-situ sensors and other
devices like autonomous
car sensors. Post-processing
is moving to the Cloud and
apps soon will be able to
analyze the data for specific
end-uses.
Dr Harald Teufelsbauer, Product Manager, Mobile Laser Scanning, Riegl
Diversity of applications is a huge plus
Mobile mapping helps in time-efficient and safe surveying
of large areas. The dense point cloud that is created from
mobile mapping creates detailed and accurate acquisition
of topography, façades, pavement, traffic signs, construction sites, and other minute details. Mobile mapping provides a precise level of detail that can be used for a variety
of tasks, such as, engineering, modelling, and monitoring,
and also for training and planning purposes in surveillance
activities. Recent developments in autonomous driving
require highly precise 3D road maps. Various automotive
industries have already taken to mobile mapping to produce a new dimension of road maps.
The diversity of applications that mobile laser scanning
can be used for is a huge plus. Different levels of information can be extracted out of a point cloud acquired in just
one acquisition campaign. Compared to traditional single
point surveying where targets are mostly captured following
Across-the-spectrum benefits
Smartphones and tablets, with their sundry sensors
— including GPS and other location services —
significantly enhance the delivery of mobile mapping and
location-enabled apps and services to a large audience.
The cost for ‘good enough’ accuracy in commercial grade
devices is significantly less in every dimension — device,
training, sensors and applications. In addition, the apps
delivered to consumer devices today are generally more
advanced in usability and integration than the software on
proprietary devices.
Location-based services and apps integrated into
routing and logistics workflows have reduced the cost of
getting things where they need to go. Whether it is iron to a
steel mill, or flour to a bakery, or beans to a café, companies and enterprises are benefiting from mobile mapping.
Ironically, it is some of the traditional survey companies
and a few government agencies that are benefiting the least
— the former not being able to navigate the innovators’
the requirements of one specific application, the immense
level of detail in laser scanning point clouds allows multiple
uses of one dataset for a wide field of applications.
Growing demand for hybrid systems
To a certain degree, the accuracy of mobile laser scanning
systems is dependent on the availability and quality of
GNSS, which can be a limitation for certain applications.
In GNSS-denied areas, terrestrial laser scanning is the
complementary solution to create highly precise point
clouds. Of course, there are a few challenges that we see in
the wider uptake of mobile laser scanning. With increased
scanner performance and high level of point cloud detail,
further development in smart data processing will gain
importance in the field to make businesses more efficient.
There is also a growing demand for hybrid systems, such
as, terrestrial to mobile systems or mobile to airborne systems, without losing performance for special applications.
dilemma, and the latter being hamstrung by moribund IT
policies and glacial adoption rates.
Too strictly tethered to Web services
One of the limitations of mobile apps is being too strictly
tethered to Web services. Part of this is driven by technology
— the computing resources behind
say Google or Amazon Web Services are more powerful than a
smartphone. However, vendors
who don’t want any separation
between them and customers
are driving much of this. This
has a trickle-down effect, where
applications don’t work as efficiently in low-bandwidth
environments or even
work at all when off
the grid completely.
George Demmy, Chief Technology Officer, TerraGo
Tech Trends | Mobile Mapping
A trend from a solution standpoint
Mobile mapping is driven by the need to efficiently collect
3D position, condition and visualization data across networks, corridors and high-value sites. Traditional surveying
is not suited to cover data collection of 100s or 1,000s of
kms of roads, pipelines or powerlines efficiently.
The move toward making mobile mapping technology
and data accessible to more users is the main industry
trend from a solution standpoint. This includes: intuitive
touchscreen, ease of use, dramatically lower costs coupled
with higher functionality and imagery as the ideal for both
human and machine interpretation of mobile mapping
data, and Cloud infrastructure and ecosystems to process,
host and publish data. The main challenge with mobile
mapping is the cost to collect data, like the road network
of a state or a country — mobilization, salaries, vehicles,
etc. Perhaps, as cars increasingly have on-board cameras and sensors for semi-autonomous and autonomous
driving, they will become a source of data and the industry
will re-focus on software, apps and delivering and publishing data and information. In a long term, mobile mapping,
as we know it today, could cease to exist, and evolve to
being something commonly used, whether actively or
passively, by almost everyone.
Apps to be a growth area
Apps allow customer problems to be addressed and
solved, like pavement marking detection or volume calculations on mines. This is a new trend in mobile mapping
and will be a growth area in the future, allowing more
people to participate in this market and provide a broader
range of solutions, especially to more specialized applications. Moving forward,
the importance of apps will be coupled
with the ability to process, share and
publish data in the Cloud. The amount
of data collected and the resulting
logistical challenges to transfer data
from the field to the office, and
then analyzing the data within
a time-sensitive framework,
remains a challenge.
Eric McCuaig, Market Manager, Land Mobile and Aerial Mapping, Trimble
A paradigm shift
The emergence of mobile mapping technology has brought
about a paradigm shift in moving from “point-to-point”
data collection to a “continuous representation of reality”
— capturing all information in a scene at once and distilling that down to required spatial data on the desktop. The
biggest advantages of collecting asset data with a mobile
mapping system are speed and
efficiency. A mobile mapping
system will collect all roadside
assets while traveling at normal vehicle speeds. Specific
points of interest can then
be taken from that dataset
on the desktop at any time,
eliminating field re-visits. An
additional benefit is safety:
mobile mapping from a
vehicle allows the user to
safely collect data and eliminates the need for fieldworkers
to work in hazardous conditions on highways and roads.
Speed and ease of use
Mass data collection for utilities, road mapping, construction, railway mapping, and mines represent common
applications. Mobile apps are not only increasing the
speed in which that data can be accessed and used, but
also the expectations of how quickly the data should be
collected and used. Mobile mapping systems offer a good
RoI when an agency has a large, ground-accessible area to
be mapped. For agencies that just need a small amount of
field mapping done, purchasing a mobile mapping system
may not be the right choice. Accessibility is a major
limitation in terms of the technology. There are occasions
when the mapping vehicle cannot get to every location
where a user requires data. New technologies such as
unmanned aerial systems can be used in combination with
mobile mapping when data is needed in these areas.
Dave Henderson, Director – Geospatial Solutions, Topcon Positioning Group
High E ffic ienc y
B et ter Per for ma nce
http://www.kqgeo.com/en
Email: ank e@kqgeo.com
M alaysia O ffice: Level 41, V ista Tower The Inter mar k,
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Su r vey Ins tru m ent s
Tech Trends | Apps
apps the new way to go,
Thanks to mobile devices
A
pplication
is, what we
were taught,
the use of
data to create
meaningful information
using the tools of our trade.
An example is the analysis of
remote sensing data using
an image analysis software
and ground truth to create
a meaningful map, like a
land-use map. Since then,
applications have moved
beyond such simple tasks to
more complicated ones, like
how to align a new
road. Along the way
the abbreviation of
applications, apps,
has become a word
by itself. So what are
apps?
The growth of
apps has been driven
by the evolution of
mobile devices, like
tablets and smartphones. An app
usually invokes complicated functions,
usually somewhere
in the Cloud, to give
the user a simple
answer.
What is new in the world
of apps is the professional
app that cater to users from
the fields of science, engineering, defence, homeland
security, administration and
business.
Apps have become very
important in the field of
C4ISR as well because soldiers have become sensors
and receive on line instructions from their command
base. Police, firefighters and
rescue teams require apps to
navigate areas under threat
or damage. Since professionals do not have to go back to
their desktops for analysis,
this enables in-situ decision
making and viewing the
results in real time or near
real time.
Apps are platform and
software neutral and have to
follow open standards to be
acceptable in the marketplace. This is an excellent
opening for independent
developers.
Dirk Gorter, Director of Product Management, Esri
Leverage the power of Web GIS
Traditional GIS users are empowered with rich content
and processing, but a whole new class of apps is making
all this information more useful and timely to the users.
These apps allow users to integrate, visualize, and analyze geospatial data of all types. All this comes together
to extend the traditional role of GIS as not only the
system of record, but also as the system of engagement,
providing the basis for understanding, communicating,
and collaborating across the organization and beyond.
The apps in a Web GIS range from rich desktop apps to
browser-based Web apps to native mobile apps.
The apps world has moved to using focused apps
for specific tasks. Mobile apps are a good fit for people
collecting data out in the field. They need apps that work
well, either connected or disconnected from the network,
and that take advantage of increasingly sophisticated
hardware devices, such as GPS, graphics processing units
(GPU) and cameras. Other users need to do advanced ad
hoc work with local data and CPU-intensive processing —
a great fit for desktop apps. And then, there are users who
rely on a continuously connected environment and need
focused apps that can be configured for their audience.
App revolution is changing every industry
It allows professionals to move beyond their desktops
and enables many more people to leverage the critical
information inside their GIS. This revolution is also obviously changing the way software is licensed. With the
new licensing, many of the apps can be shared across the
organization and beyond, extending the reach of Web GIS
to millions of people without additional licensing. Having
everyone always connected to the same authoritative data
enables smooth coordination between the field and the
office, avoiding the version control issues that can arise
with paper-based workflows.
Ubiquitous availability and ease of use
Challenges traditional licensing system
People like ‘apps’ because they are available anywhere
and because they provide ease of use for specific tasks.
In our industry, the days of generic one-size-fits all GIS
applications are over. Industry players that can offer
flexible deployment options and a high usability on
focused tasks will thrive. Our approach to this is flexible
software components for quickly building dedicated
apps, and an agile approach in line with Gartner’s “API
economy” philosophy. For instance, we see a strong
movement toward cross-platform Web apps, exploiting HTML5 and WebGL technologies. But Web is not
the only deployment option. Microsoft has invested
in getting Windows 10 on mobile devices such as the
Microsoft Surface 3 tablet. This brings desktop applications, like LuciadLightspeed, to the mobile market, for
example, for use in Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs). We
believe this will be a big game changer for our industry.
For very high-end applications, virtualization and GPU
in the Cloud offer interesting deployment options.
The expectation of ubiquitous availability on any device
challenges traditional licensing. New business models pop
up every day. The only possible answer by our industry is
flexibility to adapt to those business models. For instance, users increasingly
expect free apps and are only willing to pay for premium services
that offer more capabilities, or
better data sources. We see
the industry moving toward
Cloud-hosted apps with
free and subscription-based
licensing schemes.
The landscape is scattered, and apps should really
be interoperable. That is why we
invest so much in standardization
via participation in OGC and
other organizations.
Frank Suykens, Chief Technology Officer, Luciad
Tech Trends | Apps
New and innovative applications
for mobile devices
Mobile apps are being designed with consideration for
the demands and constraints of the devices in use; thus,
they are in a way focused and customized solution for
every particular use case in each specific user space. Geospatial mobile apps on a smartphone or tablet can provide
a way to bring together spatial and non-spatial
business information to provide a geospatial context without needing an additional,
specialized device.
As smartphones and tablets are trending,
most people rely on mobile applications for
day-to-day work. From your favorite
weather tracker or news app to
booking a commercial ride,
developers all around the
world are working hard to
develop new and innovative
applications for mobile
devices, and geospatial
is no different. Our smartphones today leverage location to
provide us with contextual information based on where we
are and what we are doing. In order to provide and deliver
a dynamic information experience, it is necessary to fuse
four key ingredients — geospatial content, business, and
industry workflows and analytics — that not only include
geo-processing and spatial analysis, but the visual communication of that information and a design experience for
delivering a tailored information to the customers.
Simple tools to solve complex problems
Traditionally, geospatial companies used to build complex software with the belief that people can use them to
answer simple logical things. This has changed enormously
and now organizations are more focused on developing
simple tools and techniques for complex problems. The
new-generation smart apps are cost effective and allow
you to use the power of traditional software that can be
accessible across the geography, but for different local
datasets, making it more customized, agile, focused and
user-friendly.
Atanu Sinha, Director, India and SAARC, Hexagon Geospatial
All the Buzz about Geospatial Biz
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Watch the important news, listen to top influencers,
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Tech Trends | Automated Cars
Cars will no longer be owned,
but called up when required
T
he DARPA Grand
Challenge on
autonomous cars
held on November 3, 2007 saw
three winners. The challenge
was to navigate an urban
and off-road environment of
60 miles, obeying all traffic
regulations and taking into
account traffic in the form
of other autonomous and
human-driven vehicles,
while achieving a speed of
up to 30 miles per hour and
completing the course in less
than six hours.
The DARPA challenge has
spawned several commercial
ventures. The most visible
ones are the 20-plus Google
cars which have together
clocked nearly a million miles
and each are now routinely
clocking 10,000 miles a week,
mostly in city-driving, which
is the average American
driver’s annual run.
There are four levels of
automation. Level 1 is Cruise
control which keeps the car’s
speed steady at a preset level
and is available on most cars
today. Level 2 is Adaptive
Cruise control where the car’s
speed can be automatically
varied depending on the
speed of the car head, and
other features that make the
driving experience safe. This
too is available in high-end
cars. Level 3 is 99% automation with auto-steering.
This is the target of most
autonomous cars. Level 4 is
where the car operates on its
own totally without human
intervention.
Lux Research credits the
market for Levels1 and 2 are
now about $2.4 billion but
is expected to rise to $102
billion by 2030. Levels 3 may
be partially achieved by 2030,
creating a market of about
$73 billion. But, the study
feels that 2030 is too early
for full automation because
of regulatory issues and lack
of reliable prototypes which
have make the cut to production. While autonomous cars
will result is major savings in
terms of reduced accidents
and optimized fuel usage,
there is a possibility that
Level 4 autonomy will actually change the owner-operator
model.
Cars will no longer be
owned, but called up when
required. Such a model may
result in loss of jobs — but
that is another story.
Automated driving is well underway
It is true that the legal framework is not fully
in place yet and that safety concerns need to be
addressed as well. We are engaged in active discussions with all our partners,
governments and other stakeholders to move things forward in
these areas. But generally, good
progress is being made. Today,
majority of leading carmakers
and Tier 1 suppliers are working
on technology for self-driving
cars. We consider ourselves a
partner for these companies in
this process, providing a crucial
element to make self-driving cars
a reality with our highly precise and
real-time HD Live Map.
Cars have an incredibly rich array
of sensors generating tons of data, which currently just
sits in the car. The next few years will see us begin to
harness that data in the Cloud and do useful things with
it. When combining that data with other data from road
infrastructure, like connected traffic lights, we can begin
to cut journey times and congestion by enabling vehicles to be more aware of their environment. The map is
a way of making sense of all this data.
Common data format is necessary
If we, as an industry, are going to pool data from
different vehicles, that data needs to be intelligible and
useable regardless of brand. That’s why we, and many
others in the industry, have been discussing a common
format for the data that gets ingested by a Cloud. We do
not have a timeframe, but there is definitely a broad base
of support for this initiative, as is in everyone’s interest.
There is a general awareness among carmakers that they
need to work together as an industry.
Bruno Bourguet, Senior Vice President Sales & Business Development, HERE
Mainstreaming of autonomous tech
Removing the driver from the equation is the single biggest paradigm shift the automotive industry experienced
since its inception. However, we think that the horizon
to see truly autonomous cars in significant numbers of
the streets goes beyond five years. Concretely, in the
next five years, we expect more and more ADAS features to become available. We think the mix of vehicles
with ADAS or ADAS-like features is likely to increase.
We expect to see these features trickling down from
high-end models to more mainstream cars and brands,
and we expect to see the price tag for these features to
decrease steadily over time.
Technology to evolve faster than legalities
We expect a gradual increase in the penetration of
features paving the way to autonomous driving. And
it will be no different for autonomous driving. Due to
the magnitude of this paradigm shift, we expect the
legal environment to catch up with the
technology. But, this will happen
when the industry can prove
that autonomous driving
saves lives, reduces
emissions and increases
the relevance of the automobile product. With the
recent takeover of HERE
by German carmakers,
TomTom remains the
only independent, business model-free global map
maker for the automotive
industry. Our main target
users are Tier 1 suppliers
and car manufacturers
who need to solve the
positioning requirements.
Jan-Maarten de Vries, VP Automotive Product Strategy & Marketing, TomTom
Tech Trends | Automated Cars
Chris Urmson, Director of the
Self-Driving Car Project, Google
Road safety is top concern
About 33,000 people die on America’s roads every year.
That is why, so much of the enthusiasm for self-driving
cars has focused on their potential to reduce accident
rates. One of the most important things we need to
understand in order to judge our cars’ safety performance
is “baseline” accident activity on typical suburban streets.
Quite simply, because many incidents never make it into
official statistics, we need to find out how often we can
expect to get hit by other drivers. Even when our software
and sensors can detect a sticky situation and take action
earlier and faster than an alert human driver, sometimes
we won’t be able to overcome the realities of speed and
distance; sometimes we’ll get hit just waiting for a light to
change. And that’s an important context for communities
with self-driving cars on their streets. Although we wish
we could avoid all accidents, some will be unavoidable.
Deeper integration between industries
The automotive industry has, in fact, already entered
very seriously into the automated driving challenge.
Suppliers have developed the necessary technologies in
order for higher levels of automation to be researched.
And all manufacturers, while already introducing
advanced driving assistance systems, are now testing
systems to enable higher automation levels. The industry
will change toward a deeper integration between suppliers and manufacturers, and will also implement more
cooperation with other sectors: electronics, IT, telecoms.
We see automation as a progressive process, where we
have to solve challenges step-by-step. Several decades
will be needed to reach the level of high automation,
where the driver is not anymore expected to take control
and the vehicle is able to manage any situation. The
ERTRAC road map foresee the SAE level 4 of automation to reach the market around 2025.
The most common accidents our cars are likely to
experience in a typical day-to-day street driving — light
damage, no injuries — aren’t well understood because
they’re not reported to police. Yet according to National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data,
these incidents account for 55% of all crashes. It’s hard
to know what’s really going on out on the streets unless
you’re doing miles and miles of driving every day. And
that’s exactly what we’ve been doing with our fleet of
20-plus self-driving vehicles and team of safety drivers,
who’ve driven 1.7 million miles (manually and autonomously combined). The cars have self-driven nearly a
million of those miles, and we’re now averaging around
10,000 self-driven miles a week (a bit less than atypical
American driver logs in a year), mostly on city streets.
(Excerpts from: The View from the Front Seat of the
Google Self-Driving Car)
The real push came from automotive
industry
There is a perception by the media that non-automotive
companies are very active and advanced, but this is due
to the high media attention that these companies are able
to create. In fact, within the automotive industry, huge
investments in R&D have been done and are being
done on automated driving. Currently, it is the
first area of R&D spending by the industry. The
push is, therefore, also very much from inside
the car industry.
Safety is the first priority, and all systems
deployed on the market will need to demonstrate
extensively their safety. Public authorities are
aware about the challenge, and cooperation
with the industry has started in order for the
regulatory frameworks to be reviewed and
adapted.
Xavier Aertsens, Director, European Road Transport Research Advisory Council
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Tech Trends | Smart Cities
Citizen-friendly solutions
the key, not technology fixes
T
he word smart
implies many
things, a neat
and well-dressed
person or a
quick-witted and intelligent
person. It could also mean a
sharp and stinging pain! So
what is a smart city? A neatly
laid out and ‘intelligent’ city
or one that is a pain to live
in? Assuming that our city
planners do not mean to
subject us to further pain,
and also assuming that they
do not want to raze down
a city and build a neat one
instead, that leaves us with
‘intelligent’. What makes
a city intelligent? A city is
an ecosystem built by its
inhabitants. It is the intelligence of the inhabitants
that makes a city functional,
liveable and lively.
However, most ‘smart
city’ planners tend to
think in terms of technology, rapid transit systems,
e-Governance, geospatial enablement, optical
fibre, routers and switches.
Millions are spent and then
the planners sit back and
find that it does not give the
desired results. Technology fixes do not make for
intelligence; citizen-friendly
solutions are the key. For this
to happen the citizens must
become a part of the process
and not just the passive end
beneficiaries of technological ‘smartness’.
The UK Department of
Business, Innovation and
Skills considers smart cities
a process rather than as a
static outcome, in which increased citizen engagement,
hard infrastructure, social
capital and digital technologies make cities more
livable, resilient and better
able to respond to challenges. This can be achieved by
the effective integration of
physical, digital and human
systems in the built environment to deliver sustainable,
prosperous and inclusive
future of its citizens.
A smart city should have
free data flow between
citizens, government, enterprises and institutions. Such
data needs to have a geospatial component because
most often the questions
are related to location and
routing. Smartness will be
decided by the prudent use
of its resources, enabled and
assisted by geospatial and
ICT, to address factors like
employment, transportation,
environment, safety, low
carbon footprint, affordable
housing, clean drinking water, electricity, and so forth to
create a sustainable lifestyle
for its current and future
citizens.
Michael Dixon, General Manager, Global Smarter Cities, IBM
Prospects are limitless
the Global ‘Smart City’ Market until 2025 report.
A smart city is any urban area that exploits information to
optimize the delivery of city services. We can now monitor,
measure and manage nearly any physical system at work
in our cities. We have the ability to collect and analyze
real-time information on everything, from transportation
networks to hospitals to the electricity grid. The uses for
this information are nearly limitless. It can be used to empower citizens, build political capital, or develop new business models and partnerships with the private sector. It can
be used to model and predict how changes to one system
will affect others, decreasing the risks of change and speeding the return on investment. And it can be used to draw
the businesses that attract talent, and the talent that attracts
businesses. Also, “smart cities are anticipated to create
huge business opportunities across different industries with
a total market value of $1.565 trillion by 2020,” according
to Frost and Sullivan’s Strategic Opportunity Analysis of
Growth chart of the city data
A key element of the smart city is the growing deployment of intelligent devices across the urban landscape,
including, for example, smart meters, intelligent building
controls, traffic sensors, smart street-lighting, and, of
course, millions of smartphones.
Together, these devices provide an unprecedented
amount of data on the city and its inhabitants. The ability
to harness real-time, highly granular data across a wide
range of city operations and services is changing the way
the urban environment is managed and experienced. The
prospects for how this data may be used are enticing for
any city leader.
Predictive analysis of traffic and transportation patterns can reduce congestion and improve the efficiency of
public transportation services. City resources for public
safety, social care, and other key services can be targeted
more effectively using up-to-date analysis. Energy efficiency programs can be directed at the most vulnerable
households and at suitable buildings for retrofit programs.
Bring together right resources at
the right time
The purpose of smart systems is to embed technology into
the way the world already functions. We can operate in
large cities by using sensors to extract information about
traffic flows and utility systems, like water and energy.
Analyzing patterns and trends then allows us to make predictions. For electricity, for example, we can predict the
usage in a given time-frame so that we can appropriately
manage power production. For instance, IBM worked
with Stockholm, Sweden, to launch a host of smarter city
initiatives to reduce traffic and pollution, by aligning road
demand and supply. By helping cities bring together the
right resources at exactly the right time, there is tremendous opportunity to provide better service to citizens and
make better use of limited funds.
Increased access to city data can increase citizen engagement and encourage new forms of creativity and innovation among developers and other service providers.
Visualizing the city
The greater availability of data and
the growing complexity of city
management are putting a new
onus on the importance of
spatial analysis, modelling, and
visualization tools. Engineers,
urban planners, and property
developers, for example, are
looking up to modelling tools
and GIS-based systems for a
long time. Today, new applications are emerging that focus on
environmental impacts, mobility
strategies, and resilience
planning.
Eric Woods, Research Director, Smart Cities, Navigant Research
Tech Trends | Smart Cities
The people make a smart city ‘smart’
A smart city becomes smart when the data collected can be
used among the people, government and private enterprises. It is the people who make a smart city ‘smart’. A smart
city goes beyond its sensors, fibre optics and infrastructure. A smart city is where public administrators, private
sector and citizens understand the potential of geospatial
information in solving key issues and are capable of interpreting geospatial data and formulating questions.
Making geoinformation available and accessible is
only one side of the coin. The other side is nurturing and
developing ‘spatially-enabled citizens’ who are conversant with geospatial information and empowering them
to contribute their own visions of a smart city. The role of
private sector would be to process this data and provide it
for the public use.
With a deeper talent pool of ‘spatially enabled citizens’, cities can come up with even more diverse and
innovative solutions for their problems. Governments will
need to work in tandem with academic institutions, indus-
try and other stakeholders to develop
capacity in geospatial information
and technology, and nurture a new
generation of ‘spatially enabled citizens’ for smart cities of the future.
Need for strong policy,
legal environment
Data flow has to be
multi-directional, between
individuals, businesses,
government agencies,
and across cities and
countries. Hence, we
will need to create a
strong policy and legal environment, and
put in place data
policies and
standards.
Vincent Hoong, Former Chief Executive,
Singapore Land Authority
Europe and US are taking the lead
Most of the current smart city processes originate
from Europe or the US. The processes in these regions
already have ready access to the spatial and textual
data for modelling, computations or to display components of their systems. Highly detailed terrain models
are available ‘off-the-shelf’ to assist
processes dependent upon gravity
or ground shape while the city
models are available to define
the urban environment. These
can be commissioned as well
with relative ease owing to
the relatively low pricing and
abundance of competent suppliers, the proximity of suitable
resources, and the efficiency of
modern technology. Authorities want, and
need to, better
manage and utilize their urban environment, and are
calling on a range of professional skills to create the tools
to deploy smart city concepts. The tools, sensors, services
and processes are quite well-developed, and are currently
being implemented in the US and Europe.
Dearth of suitable spatial data in APAC
Unfortunately, in Asia-Pacific, the availability of suitable
data is extremely limited. The last decade saw lean
demand for such data, hence the drivers to collect and
archive the data did not exist. Government legislation
often limits the collection and distribution of “off-theshelf” data. Data collection must be bespoke and must
be backed by a government agency, so to say. There is
no reason why these processes cannot be rolled out to
improve the management of cities in Asia-Pacific, except
for one reason. The “missing ingredient” is the dearth of
suitable spatial and textural data upon which these clever
processes can operate. There is a range of technology now
available across Asia-Pacific which can help fill that void.
David Jonas, Business Development Manager, AAM Group
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Tech Trends | BIM + Geospatial
BIM + Geospatial =
Environmentally sustainable
cities & infrastructure
T
oday the building
industry is about
much more than
just bricks and
mortar. Not only
do you have to build right,
but, as Terry Bennet of Autodesk puts it, is it the right
thing to build? BIM helps
the designers and contractors to scientifically design
structures with all facilities
coming in to place at the
right time, avoiding costly
reworks. Is that all? A building is not just a building, but
a part of an environment
which already exists or is
planned.
This environment
consists of access methods,
facilities, utilities and, above
all, people who will live and
work in them. Just as the
building occupies a physical
space, so does the immediate environment. This realization has brought about
an integration of Building
Information Management
(BIM) with geospatial to
enable the designers to view
their creation in the context
of the environment in which
it is to be built.
A marriage of BIM
and geospatial results in
environmentally sustainable
cities and infrastructure.
Efficient use of limited
resources, better control of
schedules and strict adherence to standards are some
of the other benefits that
can accrue from a cooperation between BIM and
geospatial systems.
There are some existing
standards for BIM sector,
such as, IFC from BuildingSMART for open data
exchange, CityGML From
Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) for modelling
building at various levels
and InDoorGML, also from
OGC for modelling and
sharing indoor space data.
InDoorGML is the latest OGC
standard focused on mobile
indoor location applications,
specifically navigation.
BIM is expected to
increasingly use time
information in the form
of 4D data from remote
sensing and other sources
to monitor the progress
of work, detect possible
environmental issues and
conflict with other activities. The key is to develop
intelligent systems that will
ultimately lead to smart
cities and add to the quality
of life of citizens.
Terry D Bennett, Senior Industry Strategist, Civil Infrastructure, Autodesk
Help in planning efficient infrastructure
As the demand for all infrastructure rises globally, the
pressure to focus on the right way to increase infrastructure — by taking into account costs over the lifecycle
of an asset, and helping to future-proof that asset for
growth-increases. All infrastructure is a system and the
information infrastructure that supports it is no different.
The system requires the capability for monitoring and
measuring the degree of change, then analyzing options
for addressing it and then communicating those options
and their intended impact to drive human actions or in
some cases take action without human interaction. This
all requires up-to-date accurate geospatial data as the
input into a BIM process to supply the context models
required to make these decisions. In the longer term,
this decision-making process of BIM+Geospatial will
help in the planning of newer more efficient versions
The future for BIM+Geospatial is bright
It has been reported that up to 82% of all smart city
initiatives today are thought to have come up short of
expectations, and up to 42% are considered to be failures.
Due to the failures of smart cities, to merely apply BIM+
Geospatial apps might show some benefits, but will, for
the most part, be perceived as delivering less than desirable success stories. As such, it would be far better to
apply ‘new’ BIM+Geospatial concepts to programs, such
as an intelligent-Enterprise Information Modeling driven
‘Intelligent Cities and Communities Transformation’.
We need programs and initiatives that enable ‘smart’
properties, buildings and cities to evolve into ‘intelligent’
properties, buildings and cities.
Intelligent Cities 3.0
The use of ‘intelligent’ BIM+Geospatial (combined with
CAD and Alpha/Numeric Point Solutions) via i-EIM driven Quad-Directional Connectivity and other applications
has enabled the evolution from ‘smart’ properties, building
and cities into ‘intelligent’ properties buildings and cities,
infrastructure itself. It becomes a positive feedback loop
that improves both the physical and digital infrastructure
of the city. With the ability to create accurate, intelligent
city and infrastructure models in hours and days, it allows
us to focus on the problem we are trying to solve, not the
data interaction challenges of decades ago.
Era of connection
As Big Data and near real-time geospatial reality capture
(laser scanning, sonar, GPR, drones, etc.) rise, by leveraging this information as an infrastructure type, we are
entering a new era — the ‘Era of Connection’. This is
where we leverage and extend BIM, combine it with smart
systems/sensors and the analytics of geospatial and Big
Data to create future ‘smart cities and its supporting infrastructure systems’. In this transition, the role of infrastructure planners and designers changes fundamentally.
enabling significant advancements from Intelligent Cities
1.0 to Intelligent Cities 2.0 to Intelligent Cities 3.0. Big
Data, which enables ubiquitous access of data, information, knowledge and wisdom, intelligent-enterprise asset
management, Intelligent-Building Information Modelling, Intelligent-Geospatial Infrastructure Systems, and
Intelligent-Enterprise Resource Planning for everyone,
is greatly enhanced with Intelligent
BIM+Geospatial apps that readily
empower ‘intelligent’ individuals
and communities. Advanced focus
on social, economic, political
issues are enabling organizations
to dramatically advance intelligent
BIM+Geospatial activities. Lack of
funding, timely and cost-efficient
education/training and the
cooperation between smart
technology software and
service providers are three
of the biggest challenges.
Bruce K Forbes, President/CEO & founder, ARCHIBUS
Tech Trends | BIM + Geospatial
BIM isn’t just for buildings
Merge geospatial with other capabilities
The focus on BIM is putting a focus on the relevance of
the management of information that geospatial has been
doing for a long time. BIM is giving geospatial a stamp
of relevance, authority and reason that we have
struggled to have before, as well as providing
more formal, cross-industry standards.
One big factor is the recent emphasis
and recognition that BIM isn’t just for
buildings, it is for infrastructure. By
default, BIM exists within the natural environment and legacy
assets and geography; so it
requires location and geospatial, to be taken into
account. The industry’s
move toward 3D/4D
and predictive and
visualization analytics
also fits well with this
trend.
One big trend is the Internet of things, people, places…
and pretty much everything! There is also an increase in
using UAVs to do surveys. Satellite imagery is also so
accessible now and is offering really exciting prospects
for real-time monitoring. Drones and satellites are rapidly
transforming surveying and monitoring. Other trends
include crowd sourcing, and the way people are now able
to move through infrastructure in a more controlled and
informed way. This means we need to consider not only
the build and operation of infrastructure, but also when it
is ‘in use’. This means thinking about how we use robotics, like CAVs (connected autonomous vehicles), moving
people and equipment to construction sites or taking our
post instead of the postman.
Cyber security is a challenge — it can be both an
inhibitor and an excuse for not moving to digital data. We
will need to get out of our silos and look at other areas
like systems engineering. The biggest challenge though
is getting people to collaborate. Geospatial can only be
fantastic if merged with other capabilities.
Anne Kemp, Director (BIM Strategy & Implementation), Atkins
Direct impact on asset performance
BIM can be defined as advancing the reach and benefits
of digital engineering models from design into construction, and from project delivery into asset performance.
We have long recognized that BIM is the best, if not the
only, way to arrive at better performing infrastructure
assets and better performing infrastructure projects. Our
cumulative BIM advancements over the past 30 years
began with a steadily increasing depth of information
modelling (specifically design modelling and analytical
modelling) on one axis, and increasing breadth of information mobility on the other. What is recent are our BIM
advancements in asset performance modelling. These
advancements enable BIM to have a direct impact on
asset performance, benefiting owner-operators.
Governments must take the lead
Governments around the world, such as the UK, the
Netherlands, Singapore, and Dubai, are in the process of
mandating BIM processes and deliverables for publicly
funded infrastructure projects to improve
project cost effectiveness and improve
the performance of the assets built.
Bentley is working closely with a
number of these government organizations, including the UK, to help them
achieve their goals. BIM and the creation
of smart cities go hand in hand. As a
result, Bentley’s many years
devoted to BIM advancements have resulted in
significant contributions
to smart city design,
construction, and operations. Our products
provide for the integrated engineering
management. They
bring together data
from multiple sources.
Ted Lamboo, Senior Vice President, Bentley Systems
Policy Pulse | UN-GGIM: The way forward
Integrating
Ge
spatial
Information into
Sustainable Development Goals
T
Greg Scott
UN-GGIM
Prof Abbas Rajabifard
University of Melbourne
he year 2015
has proven
to be a
pivotal year
for global
development. The Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) came to an end,
and a new and ambitious
development agenda was
adopted by world leaders.
‘Transforming our World:
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ is
the global policy to guide
the way we collectively
manage and transform
the social, economic and
environmental dimensions
of humanity and our planet over the next 15 years.
The 2030 Agenda will be
anchored by 17 Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs), 169 targets and a
global indicator framework, in order to measure
and monitor progress.
Data, as the basis
for evidence-based
decision-making and
accountability, will be
crucial to the success of
the 2030 Agenda. As a
geospatial community, we
immediately recognize
that location and geography are linked to many,
if not all, elements of the
SDGs. But many have
asked, what are the expectations and implications
for geospatial information, earth observations,
and other location-based
information? The answer
– considerable!
After many years of
our combined endeavors
to adequately articulate
the role, need and value
of geospatial information
technologies and services
to governments and
decision-makers around
the world, now is the
moment in time where we
can, and must, elevate and
demonstrate our ‘geospatial value proposition’.
The global geospatial
community, particularly
through national geospatial information agencies,
has a unique opportunity
to integrate geospatial information into the global
development agenda
in a more holistic and
sustainable manner, specifically in measuring and
monitoring the targets and
indicators of the SDGs.
However, the opportunity
brings with it substantial
expectation to deliver!
The 2030 Agenda
The 2030 Agenda specifically demands the need
for new data acquisition
and integration approaches to improve
the availability, quality,
timeliness and disaggregation of data to support
the implementation of the
new development agenda
at all levels, including to
“exploit the contribution
to be made by a wide
range of data, including
earth observations and
geospatial information,
while ensuring national
ownership in supporting
and tracking progress.”
This need has a goal,
target and date associated
with it, as described in Goal
17 in data, monitoring and
accountability: “By 2020,
enhance capacity-building
support to developing countries, including for least developed countries and small
island developing States,
to increase significantly the
availability of high-quality,
timely and reliable data
disaggregated by income,
gender, age, race, ethnicity,
migratory status, disability,
geographic location and
other characteristics relevant in national contexts.”
In terms of practical
action what does this mean
for geospatial practitioners
in many countries? Firstly,
we must consider how
these global goals will be
measured and monitored,
and how progress is made
within and across countries. Then, where is the
data and evidence coming
from? What are the signals
or indicators of progress
being made and what is the
framework and context?
The key question is how
can geospatial information be implemented and
integrated, at a policy level,
in order to contribute more
holistically to measuring
and monitoring the targets
and indicators of the SDGs.
Not easy when we consider
that very little is understood
regarding the role of geography in sustainable development processes at the
inter-governmental level,
including how geospatial
information can be applied
to sustainable development,
and how policies can be
implemented to bring the
two together in a coherent
and integrated manner.
Goals, targets,
indicators and data
The 17 SDGs comprise the
aspirational and universal
global goals to be achieved
by 2030 while the 169
targets provide the detailed
objectives to measure
progress over the 15 years.
But in terms of a robust and
annual follow-up and review
mechanism for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, it will actually be the
global indicator framework
where the data acquisition,
integration and disaggregation will be needed. The
indicators are the means by
which national governments
can consistently monitor
achievements on, and report
2030 Agenda will be anchored by:
17
1
Sustainable
Global
Development Goals indicator framework
169
Targets
progress toward each of
the 169 targets. So the real
data inputs and subsequent
outputs will be through the
indicators, and based on
national circumstances. The
United Nations Statistical
Commission, also responsible for global reporting on
the MDGs, established the
Inter-agency Expert Group
on Sustainable Development
Goal Indicators (IAEGSDGs) to develop the
global indicator framework,
which will be presented for
adoption by the Statistical
Commission at its 47th
session in March 2016.
While the development
of the indicator framework
has largely been a statistical data approach, based
on the similar history of
the MDGs, the need for
‘geographic location’ in
a new era of data needs
is well recognized. The
statistical community
understands that geospatial information and earth
observations are able to
provide new and consistent
data sources and methodologies to integrate multiple
‘location-based’ variables to
support and inform official
statistics and the indicators for the SDGs. These
methods are able to fill data
gaps and/or improve the
temporal and spatial resolutions of data, by bringing
together information from
various sources, particularly those related to the
environment. Therefore, the
The question
is how can geo
information be
implemented
and integrated
at a policy level
to holistically
measure and
monitor the
targets of SDGs
United Nations Committee of Experts on Global
Geospatial Information
Management (UN-GGIM)
is working closely with the
statistical community, at a
national and global level,
to provide inputs into the
processes to develop the
global indicator framework
with the IAEG-SDGs. Led
by Denmark, a task team of
15 countries has been established to provide these geospatial inputs. Further, at its
recent Ministerial Summit,
the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) launched
an initiative to expand its
partnership with UNGGIM to build processes,
mechanisms and capacity to
integrate earth observations
with geospatial and statistical information to improve
the measuring, monitoring
and achievement of the
SDGs. These new efforts
are now being combined
to determine the geospatial
Policy Pulse | UN-GGIM: The way forward
aspects and inputs for the
indicator framework.
Integrating all
information
Implementing the SDGs,
and measuring and
monitoring their progress,
will require new and
large amounts of data,
more rigorous modelling
and analysis, and much
better data management.
It will also take transformative change and
collaborative approaches
to link different data to
geographic location. The
location element of data,
including statistical data,
is going to be critical in
the future. As a minimum,
‘sustainable data for
sustainable development’
will require consistent
statistical, geospatial and
earth observation data as
the core inputs into the
global indicator framework. Figure 1 visualizes
what we need to consider
in terms of the key areas
of data contribution and
integration to the indicator
process, and informed by
good science, enabling
technologies, and sound
policy. As indicated above,
the good news is that these
three communities are
now very well aligned and
positioned to start doing
the heavy lifting, and in
fact, have already started.
Geospatial
framework
When considering a
conceptual integrative
framework, the starting
point for many countries
is the national spatial data
infrastructure (NSDI) and
the provision of reliable
fundamental geospatial
data. Although sometimes
maligned or misunderstood, the NSDI — or subsequent evolution thereof
— is going to be more
SD4SD
Sustainable data
for Sustainable
development
Earth
Observations
Geospatial
Information
Informed by science, technology and policy
Figure 1: Key areas of data contribution to the global indicator framework
important than ever, but it
must be viewed in a different manner. The NSDI,
like the data it provides,
must no longer just be
seen as a mechanism for
mapping and data delivery,
but for data integration,
analysis, modelling, aggregation, fusion, communication and delivery. The
NSDI of the future, fuelled
by consistent and best
available fundamental geospatial data, can provide
the means to organize
and deliver core geographies from everywhere
(within governments and
society) for many national
outcomes, including
sustainable development.
Within the environment of
the NSDI, integrating and
re-purposing fundamental
data into specific thematic
topics is not technically
difficult and has multiple
benefits in many areas, assuming that the data exists,
is standards-based, interoperable, and is available.
At its fifth session
in August 2015, UNGGIM agreed that there
is an urgent need for a
set of global fundamental
geospatial data themes
(authoritative, harmonized
and homogeneous
framework data) to be
able to measure, monitor
and manage sustainable
development processes
in a consistent way over
time, and to work jointly
toward a minimum set of
15
Countries have formed
a team, led by Denmark,
to provide geospatial
inputs
fundamental data themes.
These efforts are now
being initiated and led by
UN-GGIM Europe. While
this work will evolve in
the coming period, we
can abstractly consider
the high-level framework
in which the NSDI could
provide the national
to global sustainable
development geospatial
dashboard. As depicted
in Figure 2, applying an
extended and elaborated
set of national fundamental data themes to the
17 SDGs and targets by
means of the global indicator framework presents
both considerable challenges and opportunities
for the global geospatial
community.
Maximizing the value
of fundamental geospatial
information to capture
elements of the 2030
Agenda, for decision and
policy-making, is going
to be critical to the future
development path of
many national geospatial
information agencies in
the coming 5-10 years. For
many countries, especially
developing countries, sustainable development will
provide a tangible political
Data Over Space and Time
FUNDAMENTAL
Geodetic
Elevation
Water/Ocean
Land Use/Cover
Transport
Cadastre
Population
Infrastructure
Settlements
Admin. Bdys
Imagery
Geology/Soils
Observations
Etc.
SOCIAL
Society
Poverty
Education
Health
Population
Employment
Water
Sanitation
Equality
Gender
Governance
ECONOMIC
Well-being
Cities
Water
Energy
Infrastructure
Industry
Sanitation
Economy
ENVIRONMENT
Water
Seas/oceans
Land use/cover
Ecosystems
Forests
Agriculture
Climate
Biodiversity
Natural Hazards
Pollution
Figure 2: Extending national fundamental data themes to the 17 SDGs and targets by means of the global indicator framework
‘trigger’ to accelerate the
development and adoption
of legal, technical, geospatial
and statistical standards;
openness and exchange of
data and metadata; interoperability of data and information systems; and integration
of statistical and geospatial
information, including its
management and exchange.
In other words, the 2030
Agenda will be a trigger to
accelerate the development
and/or expansion of NSDI
strategies. It will also provide
a strong consensus on the
need to integrate the NSDI
within national government’s
development plans. An NSDI
strategy that is anchored to
sustainable development, as
an overarching theme, would
provide an ‘information’
approach to national policy
and implementation. It would
also bring the analysis and
evidence-base to the process,
and thereby a consistent
monitoring and reporting
framework, that would benefit all areas of government.
The expectation is that by
2020 we will be able to significantly increase the availability of high-quality, timely
and reliable national data that
is disaggregated by a number
of characteristics, including
geospatial information. This
will require collective global
leadership, and it will require
appropriate frameworks and
methods. National geospatial
information agencies will
need to: collaborate more
closely with national statistical and earth observation
professional communities;
be more unified with similar
national to global objectives
and aspirations; be delivering
consistent and reliable data
that is fit-for-purpose; and
demonstrate the functionality
and value of the geospatial
data by integrating it into the
wider sustainable development policy process. For its
part, UN-GGIM, including
its five regional committees,
is focusing its activities on
achieving such integration
and providing a consistent
and influential policy voice
at the global level.
Greg Scott is Inter-Regional
Advisor for Global Geospatial
Information Management in
the United Nations Statistics
Division, Department of
Economic and Social Affairs
Professor Abbas
Rajabifard is Head of the
Department of Infrastructure
Engineering and Associate
Dean (International), The
School of Engineering at the
University of Melbourne. He
is also Director of the Centre
for Spatial Data Infrastructures
and Land Administration, The
University of Melbourne
Policy Pulse
The benefits from open
data are immense
G
overnments
and public
authorities
across
the world
are launching Open Data
initiatives. Authorities have
finally begun to realize
the value that opening up
data can have
on economies. It is also
believed that open data
policies encourage the use
and uptake of geospatial
data. The United States,
in general, has some fairly
broad open data-sharing
policies. And yet, for the
Landsat data, the first satellite of which was launched
in 1972, the United States
sold that data for some 34
years or even longer. The
data was sold for $500 a
scene, when the government
was operating the satellites,
and for $5,000 a scene
when the private sector was
operating the satellites. Even
then, when the industry technologically got to the point
when data can be distributed
over the Web, there really
were no incremental costs
for delivering that data.
Finally, in 2008, the
USGS and the Department
of the Interior announced
that all Landsat data will
be broadly and openly
available. At the peak of
data sales in 2001, 51 or
52 scenes a day of Landsat
data were sold. The revenue
generated from that was
barely $4.5-5 million.
And even then, it was just
government money being
re-circulated, because the
buyers comprised of federal
agencies and universities
who received their funding
from the government and
contractors who were working for federal agencies.
And let’s not forget the
administrative costs that
were being incurred with
each transaction. But, soon
as the data was released
broadly and openly, the
orders jumped up to 5,700
scenes a day across the
globe. According to an analysis in 2011, the economic
benefits of broad
open data policy
brought back
$1.7 billion
to the US
Barbara Ryan
Secretariat Director, Group
on Earth Observations
economy and $400 million
to other economies around
the world. That far exceeds
the $4.5 million one federal
agency was earlier getting
from data sales.
More transparency
across the world
The gigantic success of
this decision put a lot of
pressure on the rest of
the world, with Europe
adopting a broad, open data
policy for its Copernicus
program. I am convinced
that Europe will see the
same kind of economic
returns and hope that these
broad open data policies
will be adopted elsewhere in
the world. With the private
sector coming in and building value-added products
and services, there will be
more transparency, which
in turn will help national
economies. The benefits are
just immense.
If most government
agencies were to adopt open
data policy, it will totally
transform our understanding
of how the earth behaves
as a system. It is not just
terrestrial data; it is oceanic
data, atmospheric data…
And if you really want to
start looking at how the
earth’s climate is changing,
you want data across all
those disciplines. We just
have not been able to get
good global snapshots when
we had a business model for
data sales, such as, the dust
storms off the Sahara are
affecting coral reef health in
the Caribbean, air pollution
coming from Asia, etc. We
have to recognize the fact
that we are just as connected in the physical world
as we are in the digital
world. I do realize that we
would like there to be big
paradigm shifts, but when
you think about long-lasting
change, sometimes, all you
need are incremental steps.
Gentle persuasion relentlessly applied is what you
need to stay in the game.
Integration issues
are there
We are encouraging the
governments to release for
public use all earth observation data that they collect
— be it from satellites,
balloons, UAVs, stream
gauges, rain gauges, et al.
Our argument is that if taxpayers and governments are
funding the agencies building the earth observation
systems, the outgrowths
of these systems should be
made broadly and openly
available to those taxpayers.
So, we are largely targeting government agencies
with earth observation to
encourage the adoption of
broad open data policies
and practices. There is still
a lot of public data that we
have challenges integrating with. This is also a
technological issue because
we have not quite got to the
point where data standards
are the same and data can
If taxpayers are funding the
agencies that are building
the earth observation
systems, the outgrowths
of these systems should be
made available to taxpayers
be easily brought in from
one sensor to another. On
the policy side, making that
data available depends on
the will of the organization
and/or the governments
to share their information
more broadly. When we
start collecting more data
on the economic returns
and when the governments
see their economies benefit
from broad open data policies, that will start to speed
things up again. So many
of our political leaders are
concerned about jobs and
economic growth, and this
is a wonderful, enabling
technology to deliver that.
Crowdsourced or
authoritative data
I cannot say that we are
there yet with the real
ingestion of crowdsourced
data yet, but it absolutely
will play a big role in the
future. I know there are
some purists who are very
intent on authoritative data,
and there are times when
that is actually essential. But
for many of the other issues,
when those authoritative
data sources just do not
exist, there is a very significant need for crowdsourced
information.
I would like to cite an
example from when I was
working with the US Geological Survey. Shortly after
the World Wide Web came
into existence, the part of
the organization that looked
at geologic hazards sent out
a short message following
an earthquake: “Did you
feel it?” They asked for inputs like did the books fall
off the shelf, did you felt a
little dizzy, etc. Then based
on that crowdsourced information, the scientists in the
organization could see part
of the landscape that they
had no idea — the sediments were a little different,
there were faults in the area
that they didn’t predict.
There is a wonderful world
of crowdsourced information that can actually inform
scientific analysis.
Policy Pulse
Data privacy is a burning issue
E
xplosion in
data and data
analytics
has led to
increased concerns about data privacy.
Common people mostly
rely on mobile data, maps
and various applications.
But then there are uses of
geospatial data that are
not visible to people. As
geospatial data becomes
more and more embedded
in applications, the real
policy question that comes
up is when does the rights
of the consumer to privacy
and to controlling information about themselves are
infringed. Insurance companies certainly want more
data about you, healthcare
companies want more data
about you. The balance lies
in what you control about
yourself and what they
know about you.
US vs Europe
in technological and market
landscape mean that those
are increasingly under stress.
Europeans have taken a more
cautious and conservative
approach to protecting individual privacy. And it is not
an industry to industry question; but really about whom
does the consumer trust. Do
they trust the companies to
protect and manage the data
or do they trust and rely upon
governments to do that? Or
do they trust neither and seek
to encrypt more of that data?
Innovation in
private space
Roughly 85 cents of every
dollar that NASA had went
out to the industry. So it’s
not like a lot of it was kept
inside. The industry has
always been the primary
performer of these activities. But what we would
always do is making sure
that there was in-house
intellectual capacity so that
government could oversee
a good contract manager.
And the way to do that
is not by reading papers
and reports; you had to
have people who knew
how to build satellites.
The scientific community
within NASA, for example,
always made sure there is
at least one or maybe two
missions that were being
built in-house. So there was
a balance between what the
governments can do, what
their capacities are and
where are the sources of
innovation, which are normally in the private sector.
A classic example of
this is that we have weather
satellite systems and there
have been debates on
whether they should be privatized. In general, the
In the US, we don’t regulate
the data and the information.
One of the things that has
happened is a realization
that the regulatory structures
that we have arethe ones
that were created in the early Director, Space Policy Institute,
1990s for technologies and
Elliott School of International
architectures, worked in the
Affairs, George Washington
University, US
early days, but the changes
Scott Pace
White House and Congress
is the opinion that those satellites are so important for
public safety that we do not
really privatize them. However, we do see that they are
new sources of private data
for occultation measurements, and can provide
accuracy to weather predictions. There are private
firms that are now ready to
step out with small satellites
to provide this kind of data
on a commercial basis so
that the government doesn’t
have to outlay that funding
on its own.
Data is wonderful, but we need
the craft to command it
T
impact on someone else’s
he National
future decisions. This is also
Geospatial
the reason why NGA has put
Intelligence
our information on GitHub,
Agency has
and our apps are available
been stressing
on iTunes and Google Play.
on unclassified geoint for
All this not only makes us
quite some time now. This
more accessible and transmovement has arrived as a
parent, but also sparks the
part of the technical revoluinnovation that is going to
tion. As we put sensors on
be the engineering tunnel to
everything and put smart
where we want to go.
devices in everybody’s
hands, we need to figure out
how to make sense of all this Managing disasters better
information. Geography and
Putting data in the public
geospatial reference are a
domain also helps in better
great way to do that. Which
administration and disaster
is why our vision has been
management. Take the Ebola
pretty consistent: Know the
crisis, for example. When
Earth, Show the Way and
the US President asked
Understand the World. We
for all hands on deck, we
are focused on having such
realized that we could help.
a command on geospatial in- We recognized that our contelligence that we can enable tent, maps, elevation data,
better decision-making. The
population data, etc., could
bits and bytes do not matter
be really useful to a set of
if they cannot be used by
people wearing white coats
somebody in the time frame
who didn’t have access to
they need it in. We need to
classified systems. But, these
hone the craft of commanding geospatial intelligence.
The information we have
Deputy Director,
needs to be presented in
National Geospatial
a way that it can have an
Intelligence Agency, US
people did have access to the
World Wide Web. It took us
a couple of weeks to get all
the information for them,
and I can say with conviction that our data helped a
great deal in the understanding of the outbreak.
Strategies for growth
Data is wonderful, but, it
is the people who help to
act on that data. So, we
really invest in our men and
women. Nowadays, we don’t
have to work as hard to acquire the data as we used to
earlier; the data just comes
to us. What we have to work
on is to gain such expertise
that makes us the best in
our profession. Another
exciting strategy for growth
is partnerships.
Sue Gordon
Policy Pulse
Spatial data has the potential to drive
decision making
W
hen we
started
out initially,
there
was nothing called as
spatial database; it was only
relational databases of rows
and columns. We designed
a topologically structured
spatial database in the
early 1980s. We worked
collaboratively with the US
Geological Survey and put
together a nationwide set of
street data and hydrographic
data using many different
boundaries for collection,
tabulation and dissemination of data. We offered that
data to communities, states
and counties.
Our TIGER data is one
layer [TIGER products are
spatial extracts from the
Census Bureau’s MAF/
TIGER database, containing features such as
roads, railroads, rivers, as
well as legal and statistical
geographic areas]. And that
is because we topologically
enter that information into
the file and we maintain it as
we add new addresses, make
changes, add a new road. We
are counting people, we are
counting economic activity,
we are counting locations,
residences. In the early days,
we would make that data
available on tapes. After the
1990 Census, we put the
data on CD-ROM and made
that available to people. We
want to make the information pervasive.
Collaborate and share
information
Tim Trainor
Chief, Geography Division,
US Census Bureau
As an active member of
the federal geographic
data community, we collaborate and share information with all those who use
or produce geospatial data.
Part of that effort comes together in the form of geospatial platform, which is being
able to put all that data in
one place. We aim for maximum participation because
Census data has the potential
to drive several decisions. If
you know how many schoolage children are there in a
community, you can prepare
for the number of schools
you need. And if you see a
downturn in that, you can
again adjust that to ensure
that you are not spending
more money on something
you need elsewhere because
your senior population may
be growing instead of your
younger population.
Data visualization makes
comprehension easier
The US Census Bureau
has an active partnership
program. In the US, there
are about 40,000 functioning
governments. We have to
understand what their needs
are and that we work collaboratively with them to ensure
that we are doing as much
as we can to support them.
That is the benefit of our
partnership program. People
are realizing that if you have
good quality geospatial data
and can visualize that data on
a map, it is easier to comprehend and see trends. But that
only be done if you have the
geospatial framework and
statistical data that blends
together to make that picture
come to life.
their own solutions but we
are focused on connecting
networks, connecting business practices, harmonizing
policies, using frameworks
in a consistent way.
Information sharing is a
journey, not a destination
I
nformation sharing
and information safeguarding are two sides
of the same coin. The
things that improve
safeguarding also improve
sharing. For instance, things
like strong and effective
modern federated identity
and credential access management. A great example
of converting the various
data feeds into meaningful information would be
the National Information
Exchange Model. It’s a federated framework which acts
as a bridge between different
communities, such as, law
enforcement, homeland security, intelligence, defense,
foreign affairs, etc. It is like a
Rosetta Stone, with the ability to bridge concepts across
these domains of different
activities.
Connecting networks,
business practises
ISE’s [Information
Sharing Environment]
mission is government-wide terrorism-related information sharing
across the entire federal
government, with our state
and local partners. We knit
the information together in
a coherent architecture —
sometimes at the classified
level, sometimes at the censored but unclassified level.
Our partners do further
analysis to disseminate the
information for the frontline
law enforcement agencies.
Our mission came out
of the tragic events of
9/11. We have seen major
successes in the last decade,
but there is still a lot more
to do. We have started
initiatives like the nationwide suspicious activity
reporting, or the neighborhood watch for the nation.
This network has come into
play to help in a real-time
basis many times, like in
the Chattanooga, Tenn.,
shootings of 2015.
We get a lot of demand
internationally, asking us to
share the best practises of
how we share and safeguard
Bottom-up and
outside-in approach
information in the United States. The fact that
we can demonstrate and
point to specific examples
where are aligning national
activity with international
standard organizations in
an open and transparent
way generates a lot of buzz
and excitement with our
international partners.
Inherent in what we do
is coordination on frameworks in a distributed
and decentralized way.
Everybody builds
The key issue we face is not
even about the technology
or what the best practices
are but about organizational transformation issues.
The approach we take is
bottoms-up and outside-in.
It means working with
partners outside the federal
government and bringing
that voice back into the
federal national policy
process. We are getting a
lot of adoption both on the
framework side, as well as
with agency partners.
Kshemendra Paul
Program Manager,
Information Sharing Environment, US
Policy Pulse
Businesses want geospatial
answers to their questions
I
t is quite a complicated chain of activities that start with
change happening in
the real world, and
our job at Ordnance Survey
is to capture the change and
make it as real and quick as
possible. What we are most
particular about is maintaining authoritative quality
— how do you signal the
quality level of the data that
we are presenting to our
customers? That is something we are thinking about
since this is a source of data
that we are not tapping into
at the moment.
There is no point in
having great content and
then not liberating it. I think
the number of geospatial
answers that can be provided
is growing exponentially.
We want to participate in
that and we want to be an
innovator and a pioneer.
And to do that, we want to
work with innovators and
pioneers who are also thinking through what the next
10 years are going to bring
in terms of change on the
planet and how collectively
we can help people make
sense of that change.
Good geospatial
infrastructure
There have been a number
of studies done internally in
terms of public investment
and public return that show
a significant benefit from
having a good geospatial
infrastructure. On a global
level too, there have been a
number of studies to find
out the impact of a good
geospatial infrastructure
on a country’s economy.
One of the most recent
surveys that we participated
in found that, in the UK
alone, there are businesses
worth around £26 billion
in annual revenues that
are dependent on having
a geospatial answer to
their questions — insurance to transport or
even government
delivery. Across
the entire planet,
there could be
businesses worth
trillions in
revenues that
are dependent
on trusted geospatial systems
sitting underneath them.
Geospatial is a big business and highly relevant
to many other businesses,
and you quickly get a very
big number in terms of the
industry which is dependent on us. Another thing
which came out of the
survey is how innovative
these businesses are. So,
people doing the survey
looked at the percentage of
revenue driven by products
which have been launched
in the last 1-2 years. And
the percentage inside the
geospatial industry was
very similar to the gaming
industry and the mobile
industry. There are a lot of
innovations going on. If
you look around the room,
you can see that. So, it’s a
very exciting industry to be
a part of right now.
Nigel Clifford
CEO, Ordnance Survey, UK
Location-based information empowers
industries and governments
I
f I talk about how we
enable national security around geospatial
technology, we have
to first understand that
national security is made of
economic security, border
security and environmental
security. And technology
underpins everything.
Aligning of data allows
analysts to explore and
understand how the analysis
can be differentiated by new
data. Technologies come
together to give analysts the
ability to share data amongst
themselves and help them
understand how that data
can differentiate their answer
and empower people who
are asking the questions.
Users are becoming
demanding by the day
They are demanding increased content, as well as
increased time windows. As
we start to run more quickly,
the users are asking the
systems to work together in
order to solve tougher and
tougher problems. People
have started to recognize
what is now in the realm
of possibility. This has put
new requirements back into
the standards processes.
The data has to get better
in order to feed the system.
Government agencies as
well as businesses are all
dealing with location-based
information. And this
location-based information
is what empowers the industries and gives the government, with support of tax
payers, newer capabilities.
Location enables quick
decision making
Whenever there is a human
disaster around the world,
countries try to respond
quickly. And the teams
that are responding need
to access and assess a lot
of information quickly.
Much of that information is
location-based. And what
matters is our ability to
provide data as the first part
of that response and allow
the first responders and the
policy makers to get a clear
understanding. Whether it is an earthquake in
Haiti or Nepal or a volcanic
eruption, these responses
are important to allow us to
quickly ascertain what the
problem is and determine
a path forward. Our ability
to quickly move data and
allow people to share their
common understanding — whether regarding
water purification, tents or
medical services — is based
on an integrated response
coming in. This can only
be empowered by
geospatial
technologies. We believe
that having a sharable transparent data allows a shared
understanding that provides
a response. That said, each
government may bring different datasets to the table.
Some can easily be shared,
some not as easily. But the
fabric that is constructed
allows for a dialogue to take
place and allows us to move
forward.
Jeffrey Harris
Chairman of Board,
USGIF & OGC;
CEO, JKH Consulting
Policy Pulse
There has been a global push for a more
relaxed remote sensing data policy
C
ountries
across the
world are
making
satellite
imagery data free, and we
see this as a very positive
development. For long,
the Indian Space Research
Organization has been
trying to convince various
government departments
about the benefits of space
technology. Some of the
departments have, in fact,
reaped its benefits as well.
But, the response from a
majority of departments, at
best, has been lukewarm.
However, now that Government of India is pushing for
better utilization of space
technology, 60 departments
have come on board, and
we are trying to meet the
demands of their varied
programs. This also means
that the private industry
also needs to get involved.
Data policy & security
There has been a push for a
more relaxed remote sensing
data policy. We may blame
India for limiting the data
release, but one has to be
careful with national security
issues. I have to agree that
making data accessible in
certain forms does need to be
restricted. The end product
should be made available
for whatever purpose it is
going to be used, but that
doesn’t mean that you have to
provide the original data in
all its forms.
This year, we will send a
couple of satellites into the
orbit to improve the resolution from 0.8 meters to 0.6
meters. We are also working
on CARTASAT 3, which will
provide a resolution of 0.25
meters. But, that will take at
least two or three years more.
One of the things we are
working on is to make image
data available for the users
with the help of around 200
servers stationed at various
locations.
Collaboration is the way
All space agencies are
currently dealing with
fund issues. This is driving
everyone to work together
and find out common programs. Megha-Tropiques, a
collaborative effort between
ISRO and the French CNES
[Centre National d’Etudes
Spatiales], is providing
useful data for weather
forecasting. The NISAR
[NASA- ISRO Synthetic
Aperture Radar project] is
another interesting program.
One of the key capabilities
of this satellite, which will
cover the globe once in 12
days, will be repeat pass
interferometric observation
capability in both L and S
bands. NASA is working
on the L band portion and
ISRO on the S band. The
payload integra-
A.S. Kiran Kumar
Chairman, Indian Space
Research Organization, India
tion will happen at NASA’s
JPL, following which ISRO
will launch the satellite.
The SAARC satellite
concept is also an interesting
development in the international cooperation area.
We are also working with
JAXA and a large number
of other space agencies. It
is a continuous process and
more and more interaction is
happening on this.
#SpatialChat
No such thing as ‘too much information’
Want more? Ask us and our community!
@geoworldmedia
Product Watch
THE
WISHLIST
As you plan your business moves
for 2016, get updated on some of
the most promising products and
services from top companies
Autodesk
Autodesk BIM 360 Docs is a comprehensive, Cloudbased service for the construction industry that provides
a virtual workspace to create, access, maintain, markup and share 2D and 3D project documents, plans and
models. Formerly known
as Project Alexandria,
Autodesk BIM 360 Docs
will help to save time,
reduce risk and errors in
construction
projects.
BIM 360 Docs is designed
to ensure that the entire project team is building from
the correct version of documents and plans. Autodesk
BIM 360 Docs connects construction project team members through collaborative, real-time access to construction documents throughout the project lifecycle. The
product is expected to come to market in early 2016.
Virtual workspace for
construction industry
Key Features:
→ Linked 3D and 2D experience, allowing users to
interact with models in 2D views and visualize them
in 3D on the same page, and vice-versa
→ Permission-based access control and approval
processes to manage the updating and release of
documents, preventing project teams from using outof-date information
→ Blazing-fast viewing experience for large-format PDF
design documents, optimized for Apple iOS devices
→ Automated organization of original and updated
construction docs into sets, including highly accurate
and customized optical character recognition (OCR)
of title blocks
Bentley
With ContextCapture, users can quickly produce even
the most challenging 3D models of existing conditions
for infrastructure projects of all types, derived from
simple photographs. Without the need for expensive,
specialized equipment, users can create and use highly
detailed 3D reality models to provide precise real-world
context for design, construction, and operations decisions for use throughout the lifecycle of projects. Easily
produce 3D models using photos taken with an ordinary
camera, resulting in fine details, sharp edges, and geometric accuracy. Access and share rich reality models of
existing conditions for use
in any CAD or
GIS workflow.
ContextCapture will also easily and consistently share
information, consumable and accessible, on desktop
and mobile devices, in many formats.
3D reality models made easy
Key Features:
→ Unrivaled 3D mesh creation and optimization from
ordinary photographs, with high-quality texture
mapping and optimal aerotriangulation accuracy
→ High performance, through multi-core support and
optimization for use with general purpose graphics
processing units
→ Extensive scalability through sophisticated tiling
mechanisms and “grid computing” support
→ Robust and flexible publishing capabilities to produce
and publish 3D visualization-ready models through a
variety of formats and viewer apps with the required
level-of-detail – in a way that maintains the highest
quality but minimizes hardware requirements
Topcon
The Topcon rotary-wing unmanned aerial system (UAS)
Falcon 8 — powered by Ascending Technologies — is a
new mass data collection solution designed for inspection and monitoring, as well as survey and mapping applications. The Topcon Falcon 8 is well suited for smaller
mapping projects up to 85 acres
and/or construction sites that require high-resolution imaging for
documentation, progress monitoring and volume calculations.
Rotary-wing UAS expands
mass data collection line
Key Features:
→ AscTec®Trinity technology, an autopilot safety feature
that provides three levels of redundancy for protection
against performance drop or loss of control
→ Two models available — the GeoEXPERT for surveying, modeling and mapping projects, and Inspection-
PRO for industrial inspection and monitoring apps
→ Easy operation with real-time video and data monitoring capability and navigation software
→ Photo-tagging and desktop software to quickly generate high-quality material
Product Watch
Riegl
Riegl’s new VZ-400i 3D Laser Scanner is the evolution of
its VZ-400 ultra-versatile terrestrial laser scanner. It combines an innovative new processing architecture, Internet
connectivity, and a suite of MEMS sensors with RIEGL’s latest laser scanning engine technology. Real-time data flow
is enabled through dual processing platforms: a dedicated processing system for data acquisition, waveform processing and system operations, and a second processing
platform which enables real-time data
registration, geo-referencing, filtering
and analysis to be executed simultaneously. The VZ-400i harnesses this power
by streaming it in real-time via the integrated 3G/4G/LTE modem, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Ethernet communications hardware. With its
integrated gyroscope, accelerometer, compass and barometer, the scanner’s 1200 kHz pulse repetition rate can
be utilized in nearly any environment and orientation.
Laser scanning becomes
smarter, faster
Key Features:
→ Ultra high speed data acquisition
→ Real-time registration and processing
→ Cloud connectivity via Wi-Fi and 4G LTE
→ 1.2 MHz laser pulse repetition rate
→ Range up to 800 m; survey-grade accuracy 5 mm
Microsoft
In 2016, the Microsoft UltraCam team will continue its
innovative software roadmap with several new releases of the single, most efficient aerial workflow package
UltraMap for generating higher-value data products
from aerial imagery. Supported by the world’s first simultaneous nadir and
oblique color balancing
and de-hazing engine,
seamless
radiometry
will add even more value to users’ data across
multi-mission aerial projects. One of the key innovations will be a 3D city engine, capable of generating extremely dense, colorized point clouds as well as textured
3D meshes at unmet geometric quality.
UltraMap v5 to come with
3D city engine
Key Features:
→ Create textured 3D meshes at unmet geometric quality
→ Novel oblique and nadir color balance
→ Increased radiometric quality based on the de-hazing
module
→ Flexible radiometric adjustments through interactive
user guidance
Esri
Building GIS apps can be challenging in the face of tight
timelines, restricted budgets, and scarcity of GIS developer resources. But, ArcGIS users can easily build native
apps that run on any device without any coding, using
AppStudio for ArcGIS, an innovative tool from Esri. Any
app that you build will run on iOS, Android, Windows,
OS X, and Linux devices. And if you are
already using ArcGIS, you can convert
your maps directly into apps that are
ready to use. These native GIS apps can
be shared with the public through all
popular app stores, or shared within an enterprise.
Build GIS apps in a snap
Key Features:
→ AppStudio is designed to enable anyone with GIS
skills to configure out-of-the-box templates without
coding, so users can leverage existing GIS resources
→ Whereas GIS departments previously had to build a
separate app for each platform they supported, they
can now build one app for all platforms and achieve
dramatic time and cost savings
→ Organizations can also customize apps, leverage advanced GIS functionality, or device hardware such as
graphics processing units (GPUs), RAM, cameras, microphones, and accelerometers
→ AppStudio comes with Qt Creator, a cross-platform integrated development environment, and provides the
source code for its templates to save developers time
Hexagon Safety & Infrastructure
Intergraph NetWorks from Hexagon Safety &
Infrastructure is a comprehensive GIS data collection and integration solution that leverages Web
services to enhance operational insight, customer
satisfaction and data quality for utility and communications companies.
Key Features:
→ Realize greater value from their existing GIS
data/investment through wider access to
data and support of new uses
→ Improve the currency, accuracy and completeness of enterprise records
→ Deliver applications that are more user- and
task-oriented
→ Support more agile, affordable and sustainable
integration and development
Collect and integrate GIS data
→ Reduce costs in terms of enhanced staff productivity
and lower IT costs
Product Watch
FARO
FARO’s powerful high-speed laser scanner Focus3D X 30
is ideal for a wide range of scanning applications such as
architecture, BIM, civil engineering, facility management,
forensics and accident reconstruction. The ultra-portable
Focus3D X 30 enables fast, straightforward and accurate
measurements of interiors, such as small architectural
façades, complex structures, production and supply facilities and accident sites. Combining high precision scanning
technology with true mobility and
ease-of-use, the new device offers
reliability, flexibility, and real-time
views of recorded data. As the
whole range of laser scanners from FARO, the Focus3D X 30
grants highest safety with a class 1 “eye-safe” laser.
High-speed laser scanners for interiors
Key Features:
→ Ultra-portable and high-speed scanner
→ Real-time views of recorded data available
→ Choice between short-range Focus3D X 30 (30 meters),
mid-range Focus3D X 130 and long-range Focus3D X 330
(330 meters)
Luciad
Luciad has been leveraging the power of GPUs to provide
high performance 2D and 3D visualization in its desktop
and server product LuciadLightspeed. Now the company has brought the same capabilities to the browser with
LuciadRIA V2016.
LuciadRIA is a pure
WebGL, HTML5 and
Javascript solution
that allows developers to build beautiful 3D geospatial
apps in any modern browser. It enables hardware acceleration using WebGL technology.
High performance visualizations in the browser
Key Features:
→ Support for 3D globes and elevation data with detailed terrain visualization
→ Automatic draping of user imagery and vector data
are on the terrain with the same API used for 2D
visualization
→ Shapes in 3D including points, lines, extruded shapes,
etc.,
→ Labeling and dynamic label de-confliction in 3D
→ 3D Navigation to preview a flight plan or to re-play a
recorded flight from the point of view of the pilot
→ 4D Trajectories visualized and replayed by the
thousands
Teledyne Optech
Teledyne Optech has launched the Galaxy airborne LiDAR
sensor with PulseTRAK™ technology. Galaxy achieves high
emission rates at high altitude without sacrificing uniform
data density across time-of-flight pulse transition zones.
Collecting uniform point density in high-relief terrain has
plagued LiDAR surveyors for years. With a fixed field of view
(FOV), the data swath narrows as it approaches a mountain peak and widens
when it approaches a
valley. SwathTRAK™
and its in-air dynamic
FOV solves this problem by dynamically changing the scan
FOV to maintain a fixed-width swath over the ground.
Dynamic field of view for airborne LiDAR
Key Features:
→ Equipped with in-air dynamic field of view
→ Requires fewer flightlines
HP
→ Maintains more consistent point density and XY
distribution across the dataset
→ Significant cost-savings achieved by dramatically
reduced collection time
PageWide Technology consists of more than 200,000
nozzles on a stationary print bar and spans the width of
the page. The portfolio consists of three products:
HP’s PageWide XL printer range promises the fastest
large-format monochrome and color printing with up to
50% savings in total production costs. These printers allow users to grow with GIS map and point-of-sale (POS)
poster printing to generate new revenue streams. HP
HP PageWide XL 8000 Printer
→ Print up to 30 D/A1 pages/minute
→ Ultra-fast processor, native PDF management
→ Print on a wide range of media up to 40 inches
→ Low cost of operation in monochrome and colour versus LED printers
→ Deliver mixed monochrome and color sets in 50% of
the time with a consolidated workflow
→ Free up the operator — production stacker/online
folder, up to 6 rolls, dual ink supplies with auto-switch
→ HP PageWide XL pigment ink for dark blacks, vivid
color and moisture/fade resistance
→ Up to 8 D/A1 pages/minute
monochrome and color
→ Quick 30-second first page out
→ Available multifunction device
with integrated 1200 dpi scanner or printer
For high-quality prints of complex
spatial images
Product Watch
East View
Available in e-book, print and database, Terrain Analysis of Syria and Lebanon contains 47 color topographic
maps supplemented with locally sourced reports on
demographics, roads, terrain, soils, hydrology, vegetation and climate. It provides simple and easy access to
once-classified geographic intelligence covering these
entire countries. This publication has been prepared
for use by peacekeeping forces, humanitarian organizations, embassy personnel, local authorities and international business investors.
Terrain analysis of Syria and Lebanon
Key Features:
→ Maps
originallyproduced by Soviet national mapping authorities using on-site surveys, local knowledge and long-term
observations
→ Detailed terrain and geographic reports translated
and printed on the reverse sides of 1:200,000-scale
topographic maps
→ Terrain geometry and place names shown in vivid
detail
Handheld
Handheld Group’s ultra-rugged tablets carry high IP
ratings and meet MIL-STD-810G standards for withstanding water, dust, shock and extreme temperatures.
Nautiz X8
The ergonomic Nautiz X8 is a front-runner in the new
→ Written analyses offer geographic insights, such
as when a river freezes, which off-road areas
are traversable in different seasons, and which
construction materials are used in local houses
→ Accessible on computers, tablets and smartphones
generation of handheld computers. It delivers the largest, most brilliant capacitive touchscreen in its class,
along with an unprecedented combination of processing power, connectivity and field ruggedness.
Algiz RT7
The brand-new Algiz RT7 ultra-rugged Android tablet
delivers powerful performance for fieldworkers at an
excellent value. With a super-fast processor, long battery life, total ruggedness and a host of built-in features,
the Algiz RT7 offers heavyweight field performance in a
lightweight tablet package.
Algiz 10X
The powerful Algiz 10X rugged tablet PC can withstand
rough weather and harsh handling, and serves as a perfect
match for today’s mobile workforce. It is designed for field
performance and has the power for critical operations.
The Algiz 10X comes with Windows 8 and optional LTE
and boasts a
quad-core
processor.
Rugged computers for tough environments
TerraGo
The TerraGo Edge solution allows organizations to easily
collect data and share field information on their smartphones and tablets. It is an open GPS data collection and
collaboration platform capable of high-accuracy data collection, seamlessly utilizing any GPS receiver while integrating with any platform including GIS, CAD and other
enterprise systems. The latest version
(3.8) of the platform features the new
TerraGo Edge REST API, auto-recording
functions and other enhancements.
Collect data and share field information
Key Features:
→ Integrate apps directly with TerraGo Edge Server functionality using simple HTTP methods in JSON format,
with any programming language, on any platform,
and utilizing Auth 2.0 protocol for authentication
→ Automatically record GPS lines and polygons (also
known as “streaming”) on a mobile device using the
TerraGo Edge App, to improve the efficiency of field
data collection
→ Configure TerraGo Edge to record any level of accuracy required, from the on-board location services of
iOS and Android devices, to the real-time centimeter-accuracy of Bluetooth-connected GPS receivers
RMSI
RMSI’s ConflateX is a scalable data conflation solution
that addresses the key business challenges of improving
spatial accuracy and data integrity of network assets by
aligning them to a more precise and accurate real world
system. ConflateX has industry specific workflows that
can be further customized, utilizing both automated
and interactive conflation techniques to achieve operational objectives. The main industries benefitting from
this solution include gas distribution, electric, telecom,
water and sewer, and transportation. It helps to maintain network
data integrity to support business
workflows. Other key drivers include
optimizes performance of network monitoring systems
and improved operational efficiency for emergency and
outage management.
Solution to optimize spatial investments
Key Features:
→ Integrated workflows to handle large volumes of
datasets. Platform independent, supports industry
data formats
→ Conflates network to target landbase, and/or aerial
imagery
→ Business rules driven, highly customizable solution
→ Programmatically-driven links to ensure higher
precision & relative accuracy
→ Dynamic cell based transformation, to ensure no data
distortion
→ Comprehensive audit trails and in-built quality
reporting tools
Product Watch
Pix4D
Pix4Dmapper software automatically converts images
taken by hand, by drone, or by plane, and delivers highly
precise, geo-referenced maps, mosaics and 3D models.
These products are customizable, timely, and compliment a wide range of applications and software. Users
can take images or video with any camera and
lens, at any angle. For
precise georeferencing, users need to include geotags,
image orientation and ground control points. Users will
be able to assess the data quality at any stage, even while
still on-site. Moreover, automatic generation of georeferenced orthomosaics, DSMs, DTMs, contour lines, 3D
point clouds and textured mesh models is also possible.
From images to 3D models and mosaics
Key Features:
→ The rayCloud editor combines the 3D point cloud
and images used to generate it for a completely new
viewing and annotating experience. Assess the quality and improve the accuracy of your results, as well as
measure, edit, and automatically classify for GIS and
CAD integration
DAT/EM Systems
To support the increase in UAS data collection, DAT/EM
Systems International has come out with Summit UAS
(SUAS), a set of tools to critically analyze or extract planimetric and topographic information from UAS data.
3D stereo visualization for UAS
→ The Mosaic editor empowers you to improve the quality of automatically-generated orthomosaics in just
a few clicks. With a real-time local update for faster
targeted editing, it’s the easiest seamline editing tool
on the market
→ The Index calculator enables you to create custom
vegetation maps, such as NDVI, using multi-spectral
imagery with radiometric accuracy. Interpret the
maps and produce actionable outputs for direct application in both agricultural machinery and software
Summit UAS is built upon the Summit Evolution and
LandScape technologies, which include 3D stereo visualization for precise vector feature collection. In 2016, stereo
viewing also comes to Summit UAS. The ability to visualize UAS imagery in 3D stereo while drawing vector objects
will enable innovative ways to interact with UAS data. The
industries for merging 3D Stereo & UAS data processing
include farming, forestry, surveying, mineral extraction.
conservation and utilities.
Key Features:
→ Uses pre-processed UAS orthophotos and DEM from
popular UAV processing systems
→ Use SUAS tools to generate stereo mate images
→ View the generated stereo in the SUAS view
→ Control the cursor in 3D
→ Collect 3D vector objects
→ SUAS functionality present in all Summit Evolution editions
Leica Captivate
See beyond the data
Simplify how you work in the field and office with Leica
Captivate’s easy-to-use apps and familiar touch technology.
Turning complex data into realistic and workable 3D models,
you have complete control of any work site. Go further than
the data to make the best decisions.
Leica Geosystems AG
Heebrugg, Switzerland
www.leica-geosystems.com
Be Captivated
Visit www.leica-geosystems.com/becaptivated
to find out more and request a demonstration.

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