GPS World

Tag: Indiana

  • NV5 Geospatial maps North American shorelines and riverine environments

    NV5 Geospatial maps North American shorelines and riverine environments

     NV5 Geospatial has mapped more than 26 million acres of North America’s shoreline and riverine environments across more than 200 projects.

    The projects have spanned from the Nuyakuk River in Alaska, Lake Tahoe in California, the Rio Grande in Texas, the entire coasts of South and North Carolina, the Achigan River in Quebec, Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and the Florida Keys.

    In 2022, the company mapped and acquired topobathymetric lidar data for 14 projects including the Yellowstone River, Wyoming; Hells Canyon, Indiana; Revillagigedo Island, Alaska and Iles de la Madeleine in Quebec.

    NV5 Geospatial first mapped these environments in 2012 using high-resolution bathymetric lidar and natural color imagery. The company mapped 34,051 acres of shoreline along the Sandy River, located in northwestern Oregon, to study the ever-changing basin geomorphology.

    NV5 has also signed a two-year contract with the National Geodetic Survey of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to provide topobathymetric lidar, 4-band imagery and mapping of 3,115 sq miles of the Maine shoreline.

    “For a decade we have been helping local, state, and federal government agencies as well as commercial and private entities gain the insights they need to solve some of their most challenging nearshore and riverine projects through our mapping technologies including topobathymetric lidar,” Kurt Allen, vice president of NV5 Geospatial, said. “Whether it be mapping the shoreline after a hurricane, updating the national shoreline, assisting water boards with flood planning, or hundreds of other possible use cases, we are constantly improving our technology and scalability to always be at the ready for our customers.”

  • Seen & Heard: Can GPS forecast rain?

    Seen & Heard: Can GPS forecast rain?

    “Seen & Heard” is a monthly feature of GPS World, traveling the world to capture interesting and unusual news stories involving the GNSS/PNT industry.

    Image: Licence plate, Reviver
    Image: Reviver

    Digital license plates gone wrong

    A security research team has gained administrative access to Reviver, the only company in California that sells digital license plates, which has allowed them to track the physical location of all of Reviver’s customers. With this vulnerability, anyone could remotely update, track and delete someone’s Reviver plate. The access also enabled the researchers to change a section of the text at the bottom of the plate, designed for personalized messages, to anything they want, according to Vice.com. California launched the option to buy a digital license plate in October 2022, and Reviver has since addressed the license plates’ security vulnerability.

    AirTag. (Image: David Peperkamp/iStock / Getty Images Plus/ Getty Images)
    Image: David Peperkamp/iStock / Getty Images Plus/ Getty Images)

    Bill makes secret tracking illegal

    Indiana state legislators have filed a bill that would make tracking someone with a GPS-based device without their knowledge a crime, reported WTHR of Indianapolis. The bill is in response to the growing number of criminal cases involving Apple AirTags and other GPS-based tracking devices. Tracking someone secretly is not currently a crime in Indiana; however, laws vary from state to state. Under the proposed bill, the penalty would be increased from a Class C misdemeanor to a Class A misdemeanor if the person tracked is under a protective order. The penalty could be enhanced for someone convicted of using a tracking device when committing a felony. Similar incidents are on the rise around the United States involving the use of AirTags and other tracking devices for criminal purposes.

    Image: big-dan/ iStock / Getty Images Plus/ Getty Images
    Image: big-dan/ iStock / Getty Images Plus/ Getty Images

    Cellphones cause demise

    On New Year’s Day, six rockets were launched from a United States-made Himars rocket system at a vocational college in Ukraine, killing at least 89 Russian soldiers. Russia is blaming this on illegal cellphone usage by Russian soldiers, defying a ban. Ukrainian officials say 400 Russian soldiers were killed and another 300 were wounded, contradicting Russia’s report. However, this is the largest number of deaths Russia has acknowledged during the war. Russia says that the obvious cause of the attack was the use of mobile phones, as the enemy was able to locate and determine the troops’ coordinates for the strike. Two of the rockets were shot down before reaching Makiivka in the occupied Donetsk area of Ukraine. 

    Image: Angelo F-/ iStock / Getty Images Plus/Getty Image
    Image: Angelo F-/ iStock / Getty Images Plus/Getty Image

    Can GPS forecast rain?

    Researchers at the Department of Marine Geology and Geophysics at the Cochin University of Science and Technology in Kochi, India, say that heavy rainfall can be detected more than six hours in advance using GPS signals, reported The Hindu. During rainy seasons, as GPS signals pass through the atmosphere, how much they are delayed depends on the amount of water vapor present. By using continuous GPS signals and rainfall data collected in Thiruvananthapuram, the study showed that any heavy rainfall could be detected using this delay. 

  • Indiana bill makes secret tracking illegal

    Indiana bill makes secret tracking illegal

    Image: WTHR
    Image: WTHR

    Indiana state legislators have filed multiple bills that would make tracking someone with a GPS-based device without their knowledge a crime, reported WTHR of Indianapolis. The bills are in response to the growing number of criminal cases involving Apple AirTags and other GPS-based tracking devices.

    Tracking someone secretly is not currently a crime in Indiana; however, laws vary from state to state. Under one proposed bill, the penalty would be increased from a Class C misdemeanor to a Class A misdemeanor if the person tracked is under a protective order. The penalty could be enhanced for someone convicted of using tracking devices when committing a felony.

    Similar incidents are on the rise around the United State regarding the use of AirTags and other tracking devices for criminal purposes. In December 2022, two women in California filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple for privacy concerns after being stalked by ex-partners using AirTags.

  • Indiana city increases citizen engagement with user-friendly GIS program

    Image: Geographical Technologies Group
    Image: Geographical Technologies Group

    In 2019, the City of Hobart Sanitary and Stormwater District (HSD) in Hobart, Indiana, recognized the benefits of geospatial technology and location intelligence to transform the city. HSD reached out to Geographic Technologies Group (GTG) to write and implement a geographic information system (GIS) strategic plan.

    GTG is one of the world’s leading local government GIS companies, working to advance the science of location intelligence and geospatial technology. GTG built a GIS strategic plan for HSD using high-resolution aerial imagery from Nearmap to help build on the city’s need to deliver geospatial data to customers.

    “Our content integrates easily with GTG’s applications and acts as a valuable component to their strategic planning services,” said Karl Terrey, director, Global Alliances at Nearmap. “Our imagery is refreshed multiple times per year and when combined with GTG’s technology allows governments to make decisions based on conditions in their communities in near-real-time.”

    Image: Geographical Technologies Group
    Image: Geographical Technologies Group

    Before GTG, HSD was maintaining a GIS viewer web app that was not user friendly, and thus underutilized.

    HSD leaders recognized the need for an interface that would serve the district as well as other city departments while being easy to navigate. Nearmap’s technology corrected this, by equipping users with controls that were customized to address all the needs of its users.

    Image: Geographical Technologies Group
    Image: Geographical Technologies Group

    “Our goal has always been to solve problems, and introduce a new kind of decision support for our clients,” said James Kelt, VP of Corporate Software at GTG. “Our clients love the imagery and the more we worked with Nearmap, the more we’ve been able to provide this added value to our customers.”

    With the help of the user-friendly ArcGIS Hub, where citizens could access GIS tools, and GTG’s new program, the city of Hobart gained greater citizen engagement that allowed them to find information for themselves. 

  • High-quality aerial imagery brings city added $60K; webinar shows how

    Located in low, gently rolling hills just north of Indianapolis, Carmel, Indiana is one of the fastest-growing communities in the country. It has nearly tripled in population since 2000 and now numbers 91,000 inhabitants.

    Considering the growth expected for 2017 and 2018, the City of Carmel needed a visual tool better able to manage the city’s expansion projects across several government departments.

    After years of using low-resolution aerial imagery provided by the county, the City of Carmel realized it needed something better for analyzing and displaying accurate information.

    The Carmel Storm Water Department turned to Nearmap to provide high-quality aerial images that are frequently updated to integrate with its existing applications, including ArcMap and ArcGIS.

    Nearmap now supplies the city with high-resolution imagery that aids data accuracy, verifies customer claims, educates developers, enforces compliance, and prepares presentations for internal government meetings. As an unexpected bonus, since implementing Nearmap, the department has collected $60,000 more in revenue in 2017.

    Shane Burnham, a GIS technician, and John Thomas, storm water administrator, both with the City of Carmel Engineering Department, will give a presentation on the city’s use of aerial imagery in a webinar on Thursday, January 18.  The webinar is free, but attendees must pre-register.

    Burnham provides GIS services for City of Carmel’s Engineering and Planning departments. He serves as departmental Cityworks Administrator and asset management specialist and has published custom GIS web applications during his career. Thomas focuses on impervious surface analysis using aerial imagery and GIS data in support of storm water administration and billing.

    “Truth on the Ground is Best Seen from the Air: How aerial imagery is propelling government and commercial organizations to higher levels of operational efficiency” will also feature speakers from Black & Veatch, an engineering, consulting and construction company with more than 100 offices worldwide, specializing in infrastructure development in power, oil and gas, water, telecommunications, government, mining, data centers, smart cities and banking and finance markets; and from Nearmap, an international provider of high resolution aerial imagery.

    Carmel Courthouse. (Photo: City of Carmel, Indiana.)
    Carmel Courthouse. (Photo: City of Carmel, Indiana.)

    Carmel was named Number 1 among Niche’s “Best Places to Live in 2017”. Niche is a website that analyzes public data sets and reviews to produce rankings, report cards, and profiles for every K-12 school, college, and neighborhood in the U.S.

    More about the free webinar:

    Advances in aerial imagery including high-resolution maps and a streamlined process to capture, manage and deliver imagery in the cloud is transforming the way governments and businesses operate. In this webinar, you will:

    • Learn about the latest advances in aerial imagery including how imagery is supporting a variety of government and business applications today.
    • See real-world use cases of imagery in telecommunication, engineering and city government to improve operational efficiency.
    • Understand how imagery can be used standalone and within GIS and CAD products.
    • See the latest demos of Nearmap imagery including vertical, panorama and oblique views.

  • Ohio/Indiana UAS Center Receives Another FAA Approval

    The Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Center has teamed up with the University of Cincinnati to conduct research and development on systems necessary to execute precision flight control algorithms for small UAS. Outcomes from this research are targeted to help emergency responders but may also be leveraged for other industrial purposes. The small UAS leased by the UAS Center is a rotocopter that weighs 15 pounds and has a payload capacity of 10 pounds.

    The FAA granted a two-year Certificate of Waiver or Authorization to the Ohio/Indiana UAS Center and Test Complex. Testing of the aircraft will take place at Wilmington Air Park in Wilmington, Ohio.

    “We will continue to support safe and cost effective research and development efforts across the state in partnership with the FAA, providing the foundation for this rapidly emerging industry,” said Ryan Smith, UAS director for the State of Ohio.

    Once this technology is developed, the University of Cincinnati plans on transitioning it to industry. “The type of research being conducted right here in Ohio is what will help the UAS industry grow. Interested Ohio businesses can leverage this technology for commercial purposes,” Smith said.

    The Association of Unmanned Vehicles Systems International (AUVSI) estimates the UAS market in Ohio is projected to be a 2 billion dollar industry with a potential to create 2,500 jobs over the next 10 years.