Where are all the windmills on Earth? Or oil derricks? How about baseball stadiums?
You could scan through the millions of satellite images snapped by hundreds of satellites now circling the planet. Or you could try Descartes Labs’ demo search engine.
Satellites are snapping images of the Earth every day. Alongside Planet Inc. and DigitalGlobe satellites, imaging constellations are planned from companies such as Urthecast and Astro Digital (the latter launched its first pair of satellites in July). But how do we make use of all of that data in an organized, searchable way?
New Mexico startup Descartes Labs has created a cloud-based supercomputing platform to apply machine intelligence to massive data sets, using satellite imagery to model complex systems on the planet.
While Descartes started by focusing on forestry and agriculture, its new Geovisual Search tool allows users to find similar-looking objects of any kind all over the globe. Just click anywhere on the map and a red tile appears, enabling users to search for similar objects. Descartes was inspired by a team at Carnegie Mellon University, who applied the principles of visual search to seven cities around the world in a demo called Terrapattern. Descartes has built three demo maps on three different scales: The continental United States, China and the entire world.
A number of geospatial intelligence companies are exhibiting at the GEOINT 2017 Symposium, which is taking place June 4-7 at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas.
Hosted and produced by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), the annual GEOINT Symposium is the nation’s largest gathering of industry, academia, and government to include defense, intelligence and homeland security communities as well as commercial, federal, civil, state and local geospatial intelligence stakeholders.
The event annually attracts more than 4,000 attendees from all over the world, with more than 250 exhibiting organizations and more than 50 hours of training sessions for attendees.
The theme for GEOINT 2017 is “Advancing Capabilities to Meet Emerging Threats.”
Companies planning to exhibit:
TerraGo will be demonstrating its R3 mobile app, customized for the missions of reconnaissance, response and recovery and built entirely using TerraGo Magic, a zero-code platform that enables customers to build apps tailored to their unique operations with web services, custom map products, imagery, forms and workflows.
Red Hen Systems will showcase its surveillance technology. The company’s Digital Mapping Reconnaissance Toolkit Exportable (DMRT-EX) and MediaMapper Mobile Android app have been used by law enforcement military and civilian members around the world for anti-narcotics operations, vegetation management and other surveillance missions.
Visit Booth 333 at GEOINT to see the company’s equipment in action.
Descartes Labs Inc., a cloud-based geospatial analytics company, will unveil its global-scale machine learning platform. The platform powers geographic and temporal analysis of remote-sensing data to identify objects, forecast change and deliver high-performance intelligence solutions.
GEOINT attendees can learn more about Descartes Labs at booth #1325 in the GEOINT Exhibit Hall. Descartes will also present a Lightning Talk at GEOINT Forward on Sunday, June 4, and a training workshop on Tuesday, June 6.
The Polaris TLS by Teledyne Optech
Teledyne Optech will showcase the advanced capabilities of the award-winning ALTM Galaxy T1000, now featuring a 1-MHz laser PRF, PulseTRAK and SwathTRAK technologies for a universal sensor that surpasses larger systems with consistent, ultra-dense data and measurement precision and accuracy.
In addition, visitors will see the new Polaris Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS) for ground-based survey applications. With an integrated high-resolution camera, inclinometers, compass, GPS receiver, and weather-proof housing, the Polaris can be deployed in many environments and orientations.
Visit Booth 1767, where sustaining USGIF Member Teledyne Optech will be joined by Teledyne DALSA, Teledyne Imaging Sensors, and Teledyne Brown Engineering to represent a broader range of Teledyne’s capabilities and solutions for GEOINT/ISR applications, including lidar, EO, IR and hyperspectral imaging.
Esri will be showcasing mission-focused enhancements using the ArcGIS platform for defense, intelligence and national security workflows.
ArcGIS provides high-performance 2D and 3D analysis for defense, intelligence, and national security. It is a complete and open platform for managing, analyzing, and sharing data and data products. ArcGIS leverages big data, web technologies, and integrated apps to make location-based data easy to use, more accessible, and collaborative.
“GEOINT and geographic information system [GIS] technologies have never been more important to the intelligence community,” said Ben Conklin, Esri head of industry, defense, and intelligence. “We are looking forward to the annual GEOINT Symposium, since it gives us a great opportunity to demonstrate the latest advances in GIS technology. The event also gives analysts access to tools that provide quick, responsive, and interactive experiences for increased productivity and support of decision-making and operations at every level.”
Esri will offer the following demonstrations at Booth 615:
Advancing The Science of Where
Reveal Deeper Insight through Analytics
Unlock Your Data with Apps
Open Platform for Intelligence
The Esri Presentation “Geospatial Intelligence Using a Web-Enabled GIS” takes place Tuesday, June 6, 2 p.m., 007C River Level.
East View Geospatial (EVG), a provider of content-rich cartographic products, continues to enhance the accuracy of automated feature identification using its newly developed training data sets in supervised machine learning applications. The early results pertained to automated recognition of building structures in an ongoing pilot project in Papua New Guinea (PNG).
“Our goal is to create a state-of-the-art process that produces the highest quality training data available for the users and developers of supervised machine learning technology,” said Rod Buhrsmith, business eevelopment at EVG. “In just a few months, we have made significant progress and expect to push the accuracy even higher.”
EVG will be available to discuss the PNG pilot in private meetings at GEOINT (contact Rod Buhrsmith at [email protected] or Mark Knapp at [email protected] or call 1-952-252-1205.)
