EagleView Technologies is actively flying to acquire post-storm imagery in Florida following Hurricane Irma. With more than 20 planes staged or in the air, EagleView is continuously capturing high-resolution aerial imagery to enable rapid assessment and response to Hurricane Irma relief efforts.
EagleView is a provider of aerial imagery and property analytics for the government, insurance and commercial sectors.
Using both fixed-wing aircraft and drones, EagleView imagery supports post-hurricane insurance claims adjusting, property assessment, public safety and land surveying professionals.
“With these hurricanes affecting so many Americans, we’re putting our planes in the air as soon as possible to begin the image capture process,” said EagleView President Rishi Daga. “From our unique high-resolution post-event imagery to our industry-leading machine learning capabilities, EagleView’s technology can massively accelerate recovery efforts and because of this, we find it crucial to take flight immediately once permitted into the airspace.”
EagleView’s historical image library, dating back to 2002 in Florida, offers insurance carriers, first responders, non-profit organizations and local government agencies the ability to analyze the impact of the storm on homes, commercial buildings and infrastructure by comparing previously captured imagery with the latest post-event images.
Image capture and processing post-Hurricane Irma will take place continuously over several weeks, with EagleView making constant updates to its nearly four-petabyte imagery and data library.
“We have access to an impressive amount of resources in Florida and the surrounding areas, allowing us to provide the largest post-storm image capture capabilities to our clients,” said Jay Martin, senior vice president of operations for EagleView. “Our team is working around the clock to deliver imagery to those who need it most following these devastating weather events.”
EagleView is capturing varying types of aerial imagery throughout Florida. This includes its ultra-high-resolution (UHR) imagery, also known as Reveal imagery, which is the highest resolution aerial imagery available on the market today.
Icaros Inc., a provider of aerial remote sensing services and software, has announced that Harris Geospatial Solutions, a division of Harris Corporation, will offer the Icaros OneButton family of image processing software as a front-end complement to its ENVI geospatial analytics solution for users extracting information from manned and unmanned aerial sensor data.
“Together, OneButton and ENVI create a complete image processing and analytics workflow for aerial image data,” said Tom Bosanko, Icaros CEO. “Both packages are highly customizable to meet the needs of specific vertical market applications.”
Icaros developed the OneButton family for geospatial end users to easily and automatically generate precise, fully orthorectified 2D maps and 3D models from frame-based aerial imaging systems. Originally engineered for manned aircraft sensors, the OneButton software has been modified to accommodate the collection conditions of unmanned aerial systems (UAS).
“The combination of OneButton and ENVI provide best-of-breed, application-specific image processing and analytics, that enable customers to solve challenging problems related to everything from agriculture and forestry to utilities and city planning,” said Beau Legeer of Harris Geospatial Solutions.
OneButton automatically processes raw raster imagery with onboard GPS/IMU data to stitch the individual scenes together into a seamless, color-balanced orthomosaic meeting photogrammetric standards.
Outputs include digital elevation models (DEMs), true color 3D point clouds, multispectral mosaics and controlled oblique imagery — all ready for ingest directly into the ENVI software environment.
OneButton comes in both Standard and Professional versions. The Standard package asks the end user to specify the application and terrain type for the project at hand. The software then intuitively sets parameters of the photogrammetric engine to perform the mosaicking to the level of precision required. For example, the processing algorithms would handle flat agricultural fields different from a rolling urban landscape.
“The Professional version is more customizable, allowing end users to adjust the processing parameters themselves based on the precision they need, and then edit the resulting mosaic to remove anomalies, like an airplane moving down a runway. OneButton Professional was specifically designed to generate results with the efficiency and accuracy necessary for large scale projects and survey-quality results,” Bosanko said.
OneButton is platform and sensor agnostic, and processes raster image data from small-, medium-, and large-format frame sensors capable of capturing visible RBG, multispectral, near-infrared and thermal infrared data.
The OneButton solution for ENVI is available now to existing and new customers, and both companies expect further technology integration in the near future around cloud enablement of the UAS data processing and analytics workflow.
Geospatial data is everywhere. Many times I’ve shown the following photo I shot at the Esri User Conference several years ago. At the Field Technology Conference in November, I talked about this. Actually, I believe I’ve talked about the topic at nearly every Field Technology Conference since the inaugural event in 2010. Geospatial data long ago left the user domain of thousands and is rapidly headed toward billions.
One of the many developments driving that growth was the appearance of Google Earth in 2004, sprung from Google’s acquisition of Keyhole. Suddenly there was easy-to-use software to visualize geospatial data. At about the same time, Navteq (now HERE) and TeleAtlas (now TomTom) — two of the premiere geospatial data companies at the time — were gaining tremendous momentum in the exploding GPS car navigation market because they were, and still are, the two companies that provide the vast majority of the map data to the Garmins and TomToms (and others) of the world.
Professional Mapping
Today, Google Earth and Google Maps are still the defacto standard for “desktop mapping” by the general consumer. Google Earth Pro, the company’s offering to the high-end mapping market, formerly available on a subscription basis, will soon be free, as of January 2016. Previously the user received the following, and one supposes the same will continue to hold true:
Advanced measurements: Polygon area measurement. Determine affected radius.
High-resolution printing: Print images up to 4800 x 3200 pixels.
Pro data layers: Demographics, parcels, traffic count.
Import spreadsheet data: Import up to 2,500 addresses at a time.
Import Esri and MapInfo-formatted data: Import .shp and .tab files.
Make HD movies: Make Windows Media and QuickTime HD movies.
Trimble offers another cool geospatial tool that was once part of the Google portfolio. SketchUp is a powerful software for creating 3D visualizations (think 3D structures and objects).
Building that was modeled in SketchUp and overlaid in Google Earth
Both free SketchUp and fee-based SketchUp Pro versions are available. If your work includes generating renderings for clients, the latter can be valuable. You can download a free trial version here.
SketchUp pro is designed for architects, engineers, and design and construction professionals, as well as members of the global maker community. Its capabilities include:
Professional Drafting: Using a 2D drawing and documentation tool, users can manage drawings and display data from their information models, applying object classifications and accessing that info with an annotation tool.
Modeling Tools: With a 3-point arc tool, users can draw arced edges four different ways. A rotated rectangle tool allows for drawing precise rectangles unbound by default axes.
3D Warehouse: Models of popular brand-name building products are among a broad free content offering, more than 2.5 million models.
Integrating with Other Geospatial Tools
In coordination with Google, Esri has prepared a transition offer to ArcGIS for Google Earth Enterprise and Google Maps Engine customers and partners. ArcGIS provides 2D and 3D mapping and analysis in desktop, server and hosted environments. The system provides an infrastructure for making maps and geographic information available throughout an organization, across a community and openly on the Web.
Among its features:
Geoprocessing: a 3D analyst incorporating a LAS dataset toolset and visibility toolset; and conversion, data management, multi-dimension and spatial analyst toolboxes.
Geodata: connections to read-only databases or geodatabases in Oracle.
Extensions: 3d analayst and spatial analyst extensions.
Esri will provide no-cost software to replace Google Earth Enterprise or Google Maps Engine technology, and will include no-cost training in ArcGIS.
Realizing the value and momentum of Google Earth to reach the consumer users of geospatial technology, Esri has also announced ArcGIS Earth, and its website says it is accepting beta testers.
At Play in the Fields of Google Earth Pro
For just a quick-and-dirty exercise, I imported some unsmoothed, 1-foot contour lines generated from a UAV flight and overlaid them in Google Earth Pro.
Planimetric view
Then, in true Google Earth fashion, I zoomed in to have an oblique ground view (with Mt. Hood in the background, some 74 kilometers in the distance).
Zoomed in oblique ground view
Finally, following is the UAV imagery overlaid in Google Earth Pro.
Screenshot of the UAV imagery overlaid in Google Earth Pro
Actually, the Google Earth Pro imagery looks pretty good, but you start to see the differences as you zoom in. It’s hard to beat UAV orthophoto resolution.
Google Earth imageryUAV imagery shot with a 12-megapixel camera at 200 feet AGL (above ground level.)
Last month, I wrote that I’d post the presentations from the Field Technology Conference. Well, they aren’t quite ready, so we’ll have them for next month. There’s a great mix of presentations on GPS/GNSS, mobile devices, UAVs for mapping, laser rangefinders, various sensors and GIS software.
Happy Holidays and cheers to a prosperous New Year!
EagleView’s historical image library, dating back to 2002 in Florida, offers insurance carriers, first responders, non-profit organizations and local government agencies the ability to analyze the impact of the storm on homes, commercial buildings and infrastructure by comparing previously captured imagery with the latest post-event images.
