The DJI Mini 3 Pro is the high-end product of the DJI Mini series
DJI Mini 3 Pro. (Photo: DJI)
DJI has introduced the DJI Mini 3 Pro, its most powerful lightweight and portable camera drone. Weighing less than 249 grams — making it policy-friendly in many regions and countries — it delivers advanced features such as 4K/60 fps video, ActiveTrack, tri-directional obstacle sensing, and 90° gimbal rotation to shoot high-quality vertical imaging for social media. Its flight time extends past 30 minutes.
According to the regulations of many countries and regions, drones under 250 grams have been placed in the safest drone category. At under 249 grams, Mini 3 Pro’s weight, safety and performance is a new resource for content creators and new pilots.
Like its predecessors — Mavic Mini, Mini 2 and Mini SE — the Mini 3 can be folded for packing. Built-in features include enhanced flight performance, camera system, battery life and intelligent features previously available only in the Air and Mavic series.
New structural design. The arms and propellers have been adjusted for more aerodynamic flight, increasing flight time. Forward and backward dual-vision sensors broaden the sensing range for safer flight. A complete gimbal redesign unlocks more camera angles, enabling movements such as tilt-up shots and vertical shooting.
The Mini 3 Pro features tri-directional obstacle sensing, consisting of forward, backward and downward visual sensors. The forward and downward sensors have a wider field of view, providing seamless coverage for better route planning and environmental awareness. These sensors also enable Advanced Pilot Assistance System (APAS) 4.0, which automatically detects and finds a safer path around obstacles during flight.
In addition, these sensors enable the FocusTrack suite, which allows users to select a subject that the drone automatically keeps within the center of the frame during flight while automatically planning a safe flight route.
Amapping service provider birthed during the 2014 Ukraine conflict is tracking the current war through crowdsourced photos, Tweets, posts, news and other channels.
The Live Universal Awareness Mapwas founded by a team of software developers and journalists to inform the world about the Ukraine conflict. By viewer request, it quickly expanded to cover other regions, including Syria, Israel-Palestine and “Islamic State war” news. Today, it covers more than 30 regions and topics, offers translations in several languages, and can be used on mobile browsers via its own Android and iOS apps.
The independent global news and information site is dedicated to factual reporting of important topics such as conflicts, human rights issues, protests, terrorism, weapons deployment, health matters, natural disasters and weather-related stories from a vast array of sources.
Its map-centric approach to the organization of information allows viewers to quickly find relevant stories in geographies of their interest. Events are archived, and can be reviewed for analysis or historical trends. “Through our big-data analysis methods, we aim to help predict and prevent future conflicts, minimize the impact of disasters, and assist travelers around the world in making conscious decisions about their security throughout their journeys,” the service states.
Liveuamap uses proprietary software tools, such as artificial-intelligence web crawlers, to find newsworthy stories. These sources are then forwarded to a group of expert analysts for fact checking. In the final step, editors decide which facts and stories should be displayed on the map to minimize spam.
An improvement under development will enable viewers to create and manage their own maps.
Global reference includes more than 400 people rescued by drones to date
DJI has launched an online reference to track events around the world when a drone helped rescue someone from peril. The Drone Rescue Map shows how more than 400 people around the world have been helped by drones in more than 200 emergencies, and will be continually updated as new rescues occur.
The DJI Drone Rescue Map has been compiled from news stories and social media posts from authoritative sources such as police departments, fire departments and volunteer rescue squads.
Each entry on the map includes the location and date of the incident, a brief description, a link to the original story or post, and an easy way to share those incidents online. To make the map as definitive as possible, DJI encourages public safety agencies to share additional drone rescues so they can be included.
Once a week on average
The map includes rescues recorded in 27 countries across five continents, and shows how drone technology has moved from an experimental concept to standard public safety equipment.
The first drone rescue was recorded in Canada in 2013, the next one was more than a year later, and early examples of drone rescues were as likely to be performed by helpful bystanders as by professionals.
Today, drone rescues are reported about once a week on average, and public safety agencies routinely share those success stories on social media.
“The DJI Drone Rescue Map is now the best global reference for how effective drones are in emergencies, and allows the world to see the tremendous impact drones have had in finding lost people, shortening searches, reducing risks to rescuers and saving lives,” said Romeo Durscher, DJI senior director of public safety integration. “Public safety workers already know how drones are revolutionizing their work, and now the rest of the world can see their amazing stories in one place. The DJI Drone Rescue Map honors the incredible rescues they’ve made, and will allow everyone to see how drones help save people in the future.”
Types of rescues
The map includes instances of drones:
finding people lost in forests, fields and mountains, often in darkness using thermal imaging cameras
dropping life preservers to people struggling in water
locating boaters stranded on remote waterways
helping rescue people who were at risk of harming themselves.
The map does not include incidents when a drone is simply used as part of a larger search process; instead, a drone must have directly located, assisted or rescued a person in peril.
Many of these incidents illustrate how drones can find missing people more quickly than a traditional ground-based search, allowing victims to be brought to safety faster, more easily and with less risk and burden for their rescuers.
In some of the incidents on the DJI Drone Rescue Map, the drone helped accelerate a rescue and allow first responders to operate more efficiently.
In other incidents, the drone clearly made the difference between life and death.
Volunteer rescue
“I know how important drones are for people in distress, because a drone saved my life,” said Jason Mabee, a Maryland man who was injured and near death last year in a local park when he was found by a volunteer drone pilot. “My family and I are eternally grateful that a total stranger was able to use his drone to find me. It’s comforting to know that drones are helping so many other people around the world too, and I hope the DJI Drone Rescue Map demonstrates just why drones are so important in emergencies.”
“Drones have changed the game for finding and saving people lost in difficult conditions, and twice last year drones made the difference for us in finding and saving stranded hikers in dangerous terrain at night,” said Kyle Nordfors, Drone Team Coordinator for Weber County Search and Rescue in Utah. “Drones helped make these rescues possible while reducing risk and strain on our volunteer rescue force. We’re excited to see our successful efforts represented on the DJI Drone Rescue Map, and we hope it shows people all over the world how important drones are for saving lives and protecting the rescuers.”
DJI has previously released two detailed reports on how drones have been used to rescue people from peril around the world. The first, in 2017, counted 59 people rescued by drones, and the second saw the global total rise to 124 by 2018.
PC Tom Shainberg, senior drone pilot of the Alliance Drone Team for the Devon & Cornwall and Dorset police forces in England, said, “The Alliance Drone Team is proud to be a leader in adapting drone technology for police incidents, and we’re glad to see our successful drone rescues — such as finding a vulnerable man huddled near the edge of a cliff — being shared wider, along with similar accomplishments from other public safety agencies from around the world via the Drone Rescue Map.”
“Hundreds of examples now make clear that making drones widely accessible, with low barriers to entry and subject to a progressive set of operational regulations, leads inevitably to saving more lives around the world,” said Brendan Schulman, DJI Vice President of Policy & Legal Affairs. “The DJI Drone Rescue Map is a powerful resource for policymakers to understand the impact drones have on protecting vulnerable people in their own communities, and the detrimental consequences of policies that would restrict or discourage the use of drones, or increase the cost of using them. Regions with less favorable operating rules for drones appear to have substantially fewer reports of drone rescues.”
Seeking submissions
DJI monitors global news coverage, drone-related social media, and other sources to find new examples of drone rescues, but understands that many similar incidents may not yet be recorded on the map.
Anyone who knows of a drone-involved rescue not included on the DJI Drone Rescue Map can submit it through a form at the bottom of the map page.
These submissions will be reviewed for publication on the map, so DJI asks anyone submitting information about a rescue to respect the privacy rights and expectations of the persons involved, and to not share any confidential or sensitive information about agency operations.
As a valued member of GPS World‘s family, we’d like to share with you a short update. COVID-19 is impacting all of us — individuals, businesses and communities — in unprecedented ways. GPS World continues to be here for you, and while working remotely, will deliver the same information resources across our print and web-based platforms. Consider bookmarking GPSWorld.com and GPSWorld.com/gps-world-coverage-of-COVID-19 or subscribe to GPS World‘s free resources, if you aren’t already receiving them.
Along with delivering the most relevant information GPS/GNSS professionals need to run their businesses, we will continue to share ideas and information to keep our industry moving forward. This moment in history affords us the opportunity to look at new ways to operate and stay connected with each other. With that said, we always welcome your inquiries, insights and ideas, so please reach out. We’d love to hear from you.
Sincerely, Marty Whitford Publisher & Editorial Director
The months-long wildfires raging in Australia have killed at least 25 people. Millions — possibly 1 billion — animals have died. More than 2,000 houses have been destroyed. Around 150 fires are still burning in New South Wales and Queensland, with hot and dry conditions accompanied by strong winds fueling to the fires’ spread.
With this conflagration rocking the continent down under, satellite imagery has become important to understanding the scope of the disaster. Here are some of the recent captures.
As seen from the ISS
“Talking to my crew mates, we realized that none of us had ever seen fires at such terrifying scale,” European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano tweeted on Monday, sharing photos taken from the International Space Station.
The astronaut posted images showing what he described as “an immense ash cloud” captured at the time the ISS was flying toward sunset.
An immense ash cloud covers Australia as we fly toward the sunset.
Another social media image, shared widely, was interpreted as a map showing the live extent of fire spread, with large sections of the populous eastern coastline molten red. Because of widespread misinterpretation, the original poster then explained that the image was a 3D visualization and not a photograph of Australia, and showed some areas where fires have been extinguished.
NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey’s Landsat 8 satellite imagery from Jan. 9 shows Kangaroo Island, home to nature reserves. The images were taken using the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8. Using natural-color observations, the images show burned land and thick smoke covering the island, of which at least 156,000 hectares have burned.
Photo: NASA/USGS
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites are also capturing images, including the resulting plumes of smoke.
Maxar collected satellite imagery Jan. 12 of the wildfires in New South Wales (NSW). The imagery shown below focuses on the area near the town of Eden, and demonstrates the value of the shortwave infrared (SWIR) sensor.
In an image taken with Maxar’s normal RGB color imagery, the smoky air prevents a clear view of the fires and the hot spots. With Maxar’s WorldView-3 satellite, however, the team is able to penetrate through the smoke using its SWIR sensor for a detailed look at the fire lines and burned vegetation.
With SWIR imagery, burning areas are apparent and show up in a glowing orange-red. Healthy vegetation shows up in shades of blue, and burned vegetation appears in shades of brown.
Satellite Photo: :ESA
Copernicus Sentinel-3 imagery
Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission has captured the multiple bushfires burning across Australia’s east coast.
In the above image, captured on Nov. 12, 2019, at 23:15 UTC (Nov. 13, 09:15 local time), the fires burning near the coast are visible. Plumes of smoke can be seen drifting east over the Tasman Sea. Hazardous air quality owing to the smoke haze has reached the cities of Sydney and Brisbane.
Flame retardant was dropped in some of Sydney’s suburbs as bushfires approached the city center, and many residents were evacuated. Firefighters continue to keep the blazes under control.
The Copernicus Emergency Management Service – Mapping was activated to help respond to the fires. The service uses satellite observations to help civil protection authorities and, in cases of disaster, the international humanitarian community, respond to emergencies.
Quantifying and monitoring fires is fundamental for the ongoing study of climate, as they have a significant impact on global atmospheric emissions. Data from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 World Fire Atlas shows that there were almost five times as many wildfires in August 2019 compared to August 2018.
Broadcast Date: Thursday, March 28, 2013 Moderator:Art Kalinski, Editor, GeoIntelligence Insider Newsletter Speakers: Eric Gakstatter, Editor, Geospatial-Solutions.com, Survey Scene Newsletter; Dr. Dan Tolley, CEO, Soft Power Solutions; Gen. Edwin “Skip” Vincent (USAF Ret.), Founder, Soft Power Solutions; Bob Dowling, Co-founder, GeoCOP; Steve Lutton, Director, Product Management, Geosemble Solutions. Summary: Experts in this growing field will discuss the basics for those new to leveraging the technology in their GIS operation. Topics will include different kinds of social media, human geography, traits of each, other related public media, and several case studies and examples.
Esri has published an interactive Wildfire Public Information Map and a 2015 California Wildfire Activity Map.
Wildfire Public Information Map
The Wildfire Public Information Map provides continuously updated information about wildfires and their perimeters from the U.S. Geological Survey and other agencies. It provides live weather warnings and wind information from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as live weather radar from AccuWeather. A local perspective on events is available by turning on geotagged social media from Twitter, YouTube and Flickr on the Layers tab.
2015 California Wildfire Activity
This story map provides a detailed look at 15 active fires throughout California. As you scroll through the map, you can view fire perimeters and hot spots for each active fire, and get up-to-date statistics about each blaze, including total acreage, percent containment and damage caused.
IDV Solutions’ Visual Command Center is a physical security and risk visualization (PSRV) software that unites data from external sources, enterprise systems and internal devices into a real-time, common operating picture of risk and security.
IDV Solutions, a corporation that specializes in business intelligence, physical security and risk visualization software, has formed a technical partnership with Geofeedia, producer of a cloud-based social media monitoring platform. Through the partnership, Geofeedia’s location-based social media monitoring data will now be integrated into IDV Solutions’ Visual Command Center Enterprise Risk Visualization (ERV) software.
The companies say the combination of the two technologies enables security, supply chain and business continuity teams to gain instant intelligence from multiple social media networks for a myriad of risk events — from a political demonstration to a natural disaster. The location-based visualization filters out excess noise to show important social media posts in the context of locations of interest, such as facilities, employee locations, supply routes or traveling executives.
“Companies are looking for ways to efficiently gain actionable intelligence from social media,” said Ian Clemens, chief technology officer and co-founder of IDV Solutions. “The immediacy of social media combined with the alerting and locational context offered by Visual Command Center enables organizations to make more effective use of social media to protect employees, facilities and business continuity.”
The Visual Command Center provides a real-time, common operating picture of assets, personnel and operations in relation to potential threats to those assets. It unites information on global sources of risk — such as weather, terrorism and natural disasters — with data from internal data stores and physical security systems on an interactive map and timeline. When a risk is detected near an asset or employee location, the Visual Command Center automatically generates an alert and provides tools to assess whether the risk is a threat and take immediate action to mitigate the impact of the threat.
The Geofeedia integration complements the Visual Command Center’s Twitter Visualization and Alerting Module by providing information from more social media networks and visualizing all posts within a selected area.
Geofeedia enables organizations to filter and analyze social media content by location in real time across multiple sources. Users search for a city, address or location name, draw a virtual perimeter around the specific area of interest,and access geo-tagged social media content from within those boundaries.
“Location resolves the challenge of monitoring the massive amounts of cluttered data to identify meaningful, real-time on-the-ground intelligence when and where it matters most,” said Phil Harris, CEO and co-founder of Geofeedia. “We are thrilled to be able to help more organizations take advantage of our real-time, geotagged social media data to prevent, protect and respond to valuable intelligence.”
IDV Solutions’ Visual Command Center is a physical security and risk visualization (PSRV) software that unites data from external sources, enterprise systems and internal devices into a real-time, common operating picture of risk and security. Photo: IDV Solutions
IDV Solutions, a corporation that specializes in business intelligence, physical security and risk visualization software, has formed a technical partnership with Geofeedia, producer of a cloud-based social media monitoring platform. Through the partnership, Geofeedia’s location-based social media monitoring data will now be integrated into IDV Solutions’ Visual Command Center Enterprise Risk Visualization (ERV) software.
The companies say the combination of the two technologies enables security, supply chain and business continuity teams to gain instant intelligence from multiple social media networks for a myriad of risk events — from a political demonstration to a natural disaster. The location-based visualization filters out excess noise to show important social media posts in the context of locations of interest, such as facilities, employee locations, supply routes or traveling executives.
“Companies are looking for ways to efficiently gain actionable intelligence from social media,” said Ian Clemens, chief technology officer and co-founder of IDV Solutions. “The immediacy of social media combined with the alerting and locational context offered by Visual Command Center enables organizations to make more effective use of social media to protect employees, facilities and business continuity.”
The Visual Command Center provides a real-time, common operating picture of assets, personnel and operations in relation to potential threats to those assets. It unites information on global sources of risk — such as weather, terrorism and natural disasters — with data from internal data stores and physical security systems on an interactive map and timeline. When a risk is detected near an asset or employee location, the Visual Command Center automatically generates an alert and provides tools to assess whether the risk is a threat and take immediate action to mitigate the impact of the threat.
The Geofeedia integration complements the Visual Command Center’s Twitter Visualization and Alerting Module by providing information from more social media networks and visualizing all posts within a selected area.
Geofeedia enables organizations to filter and analyze social media content by location in real time across multiple sources. Users search for a city, address or location name, draw a virtual perimeter around the specific area of interest,and access geo-tagged social media content from within those boundaries.
“Location resolves the challenge of monitoring the massive amounts of cluttered data to identify meaningful, real-time on-the-ground intelligence when and where it matters most,” said Phil Harris, CEO and co-founder of Geofeedia. “We are thrilled to be able to help more organizations take advantage of our real-time, geotagged social media data to prevent, protect and respond to valuable intelligence.”
Two new apps developed at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi use social media to help police officers, news stations, and the public navigate the many incidents and minor emergencies that may occur on a daily basis.
Richard Smith, creator of the two emergency response apps, is collaborating with Michelle Maresh-Fuehrer, assistant professor of Communication at A&M-Corpus Christi, to identify how the apps could aid first responders during emergencies.
“With the combination of SituMap and PhotoSorter, the public can be encouraged to submit photos and videos that may be helpful during an investigation,” said Smith, assistant professor of Geographic Information Science and Geospatial Surveying Engineering at the Island University. “For example, during an active shooter event, photos and videos of the suspect or their location can be taken with a cell phone and easily sent to responders. This could drastically improve response time and ultimately save lives.”
Photo credit: Texas A&M
Smith developed the mapping applications to provide a way for first responders to rapidly, and easily, receive and map information so they could have a more comprehensive awareness of emergency situations. Maresh-Fuehrer is working on extending the use of Smith’s social media mapping applications to enhance communication before, during, and after a crisis.
“A crisis event is typically a time of high stress and increased uncertainty for organizations and responders,” said Maresh-Fuehrer, who studies crisis communication strategies. “The applications developed by Dr. Smith have several features that allow for more informed and efficient crisis response.”
SituMap acts as a tablet-like digital command center that shows officers maps of the crisis area. With the touch of a finger the table-size display can be zoomed, rotated and drawn on. Like a personalized version of Google Maps, officers can search for locations and measure distances. But it goes further than Google Maps. A pin can be created in the application that could represent a person, police car, or groups of people. The pin can be strategically positioned around the area and directions can then be relayed to officers at the emergency location.
“An organization’s crisis team, along with emergency responders, can use SituMap to identify where people should be during a specific crisis,” said Maresh-Fuehrer. “With this application, responders can even view floor plans. This could help to identify safe locations such as fire exits and stairwells.”
PhotoSorter works in tandem with SituMap by allowing emergency responders, crisis planners and community members to share pictures or video of the crisis. Emergency responders can then upload the photos and video into SituMap to help in important decision-making situations.
SituMap and PhotoSorter were designed and developed at the Island University by Smith. The University Police Department is currently using a beta version of SituMap in training sessions.
In today’s digital world, people all over the globe can be connected through social media and, with the touch of a button, information about a major accident can be shared worldwide. With SituMap, important responders, as well as the community, can see real-time information on traffic congestion, roadblocks, and closed roads, which will aid in faster response times. The app also has a weather feature built into it which could be used during severe weather events such as a hurricane.
SpaceCurve, developers of a platform built for organizing and enabling the analyses of large-scale spatial data, will exhibit at the Esri Federal GIS Conference, held Feb. 9-10 in Washington, D.C.
SpaceCurve fuses geospatial, sensor, Internet of Things (IoT), social media, location and other streaming and historical data and makes the data immediately available for analytics and operational intelligence.
SpaceCurve enables Esri users to seamlessly deploy spatiotemporal data analytics initiatives, across billions of records in real-time, within their existing Esri environment. All spatial records can be accessed from a single silo, and without latency, for true real-time queries of those records as they stream in real time, according to SpaceCurve. It also eliminates common PostGIS or SDE geodatabase issues within Esri by speeding up access to that data.
SpaceCurve partners include AirSage, Esri and L-3, and with customers in government, defense, transportation, location analytics and telecommunications.
Pitney Bowes, Inc., and IBM have announced a collaboration on IBM’s codename “BlueMix” platform-as-a-service to develop new hybrid cloud location services that help businesses unearth deeper connections between their customers, their geography, and their networks to deliver more personalized services and contextually relevant experiences.
IBM’s BlueMix is a new development environment that helps clients and developers speed the adoption of hybrid clouds. The initiative combines the strength of IBM software, third-party and open technologies. BlueMix provides DevOps in the cloud — an open, integrated development experience that scales to any level. Pitney Bowes is among the first third-party solutions now available to developers and companies on the new IBM BlueMix Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).
More than 1.2 billion people around the world today use Pitney Bowes location intelligence solutions when they check in or use location-sharing features on major social media platforms. Pitney Bowes’ location intelligence suite of products offers comprehensive capabilities to provide businesses with the ability to visualize spatial data and understand relationships between specific locations. Using advanced, hyper-accurate location data, insurers can improve underwriting decisions, telecommunications providers can better analyze network coverage, and retailers can deliver more targeted promotions to consumers based on when and where they are most likely to buy.
For Pitney Bowes, the partnership provides the opportunity to expose key solutions, such as location-based services, e-commerce fulfillment, Internet postage, and parcel management, through IBM’s API Management to an extended ecosystem of innovators and developers. It also speeds the availability of new services from Pitney Bowes to vast new markets globally.
“Together, IBM and Pitney Bowes are developing a powerful lineup of cloud services around mobile application development and location intelligence,” said Steve Robinson, General Manager, IBM Cloud Platform Services. “This open-platform collaboration will inspire development that accelerates innovation and fosters growth.”
“Companies need tools and expertise to manage and integrate APIs, leverage location intelligence and customer data, and then seamlessly extend their services to reach their customers via the cloud and mobile devices,” said Roger Pilc, chief innovation officer for Pitney Bowes. “We look forward to delivering Pitney Bowes digital commerce solutions on IBM’s BlueMix.”
