Tag: William Tewelow

NASA’s Artemis program will need lunar spatial reference system

We leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.”
—Astronaut Gene Cernan’s closing words, the twelfth and last person on the moon as he stepped back into the Apollo XVII Lunar Module on December 13, 1972.

Apollo was about vision, courage and discovery. Apollo helped unravel the mysteries of the moon — a serene, desolate, and barren place, bleached by the sun, and covered in a pale, gray, abrasive dust made up of microscopic, razor sharp, glass-like shards called regolith that is 60 feet deep in places.

Beneath the regolith is the bedrock of the moon — the Lunafirma.

The next phase of exploration is building a permanent base station on the moon, aptly named Artemis, Apollo’s twin sister. It would be fitting when mankind returns that the next person who steps out onto the lunar surface were a woman.

Figure 1. (Photo: NASA) — **Figure 1.** (Photo: NASA)

Artemis Moon Log/Program Entry Date 42: Earth Day is Tuesday, November 4, 2025The regolith mining operations are proceeding as expected. All operations are 100% solar power until additional mobile thorium reactor units arrive. The only existing thorium reactor unit is the Clavius Crater water extraction operation. Construction of the Selene-1 Moonbase has encountered a setback. No other issues are reported.

The regolith in the surrounding plain is 6 meters deep. The Miners have not experienced any issues. The electrostatic power suits are repelling the abrasive dust better than expected. The Miners have cleared a 50 m2 area down to the bedrock. From the Gateway observation deck, it appears as a small square crater. The Miners are working non-stop on rotating shifts clearing regolith, recharging, replacing parts, or in transit.

Analysis of the regolith reveals a uniform distribution of 21% silica, 13% aluminum, 10% calcium, 10% iron, 5% magnesium, and 2% sodium and titanium. Minor amounts of chromium, phosphorus, and potassium are present. Hydrogen is 0.0027%. The metals are all oxides containing 40% elemental oxygen, which is being separated during processing for later use.

West about 200 km, towards Mare Crisium, the gravitational anomalies increase but within the Selene-1 Moonbase crater the anomalies are negligible. Geospatial analysis of the drill cores show an extensive concentration of lithium beneath a 12-meter-thick layer of basalt east of Ginzel Crater. Towards the south are increased concentrations of titanium and tungsten. Ejection debris discovered during the regolith mining operation showed traces of neodymium. The estimated trajectory of the ejecta points to it coming from the Moiseev Crater complex. An expeditionary rover is in route to collect samples and will arrive in 6 hours. Readings from those samples will be in the next log report.

The Parabolic Solar Powered (PSP) laser torches in the open crater basin are performing as expected. The Constructors are 3D fusing the regolith into silicate glass forms and transporting them to staging areas for later construction. The higher-than-normal content of iron in the regolith is giving the glass forms a reddish hue.

At the south pole, the water extraction operation at Clavius Crater has been operating uninterrupted for 816 hours. The thorium reactor is powering the entire operation. The smelter is distilling volatiles out of the regolith at the rate of 1m3 every 8 hours extracting a liter of water every 24 hours. The operation is on schedule for the two 100-liter tanks of water for delivery to the Selene-1 Moonbase by the due date.

There are five 4G cellular towers around the perimeter of the Selene-1 Moonbase and regolith mining area at 3 km intervals. The cellular array is providing accuracies of 1 millimeter allowing for precision mining, drilling, construction, and transportation. As the operation expands, more towers will be added. Two more towers are stationed at Clavius Crater. The 360° cameras and radar provide continuous surveillance and monitoring.

Testing of the 3D vision and synthetic neural response systems of the robots is complete and all of them are operational. The real-time connectivity with the robots allows controllers onboard the Gateway to remote link into any of the robots using virtual headsets and haptic body suits for full-immersion control. AI is constantly scanning for anything unusual and alerts the controllers to remote in; otherwise, the robots operate continuously and efficiently. The Miners are clearing nearly 5m3 of regolith every 24 hours during light conditions.

Phase I is underway. Miners are leveling off the exposed bedrock to begin construction of the landing pad. Once finished, the Constructors will use the PSP laser torches to begin fusing together the silicate glass blocks to make the landing pad. Afterwards, The Miners will begin Phase II and lay the foundation for the railgun to propel the filled mineral containers back to Earth. Both Phase I and Phase II are on schedule.

The setback encountered during construction of the Selene-1 main base station is due to excessive heat build-up. The Excavators are clearing the floors and shaping the walls within the lava tube. However, the heat from the laser torches is building-up and shutting down the machines prematurely. When the ambient temperatures exceed 160°C the machines shutdown to protect their electrostatic coatings. Having no atmosphere and no wind the heat is not dissipating. The fluid in the heat exchangers is overheating. Until directed otherwise, the Excavators are doing 90-minute shifts and the Torches for 35 minutes. The Torches have to fuse together the support beams and the silicate glass protective layering behind the Excavators to preserve structural integrity. A software update set the laser torches to pulse fire extending the heat build-up for an additional 5 minutes. Only 15 meters have been cleared but the inflatable habitats require at least another 85 meters into the lava tube. The setback pushes back the date for completing the base station by approximately 620 hours. A temporary external module can house the astronauts for their return on April 19, 2026 until Selene-1 is completed.

The above fictional account of a Moon Log entry for the Artemis program is based on NASA’s mid-October announcement selecting Nokia to build a 4G network on the moon.

An in-depth look at the announcement holds interest for the GIS community.

The Artemis program will be heavily dependent on spatial technologies and require a Lunar Spatial Reference System. However, the Moon has significant challenges. There is no constellation of satellites orbiting the Moon to provide precise location data like GPS satellites do on Earth, and it is not possible to develop such a satellite system around the moon because the moon’s gravitational center is lopsided and weighted towards Earth due to tidal lock. This causes orbital decay of lunar satellites until they eventually crash into the lunar surface.

However, there are four orbital inclinations that allow for indefinite low orbits and may provide for a future Lunar Positioning System (LPS). Such a system would be extremely costly, so a less expensive and more immediate LPS will be a ground-based cellular network array; and 4G is preferred over 5G because it offers longer ranges, which is why NASA selected Nokia. NASA is working on other solutions through the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program.

Figure 2: Unified Geologic Map of the Moon https://www.usgs.gov/news/usgs-releases-first-ever-comprehensive-geologic-map-moon Orthographic projections of the "Unified Geologic Map of the Moon" showing the geology of the Moon’s near side (left) and far side (right) with shaded topography from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter. It will serve as a reference for lunar science and future human missions to the Moon. Gravitational mass concentrations are also depicted in the image showing the majority being on the nearside while the farside is void of gravitational concentrations. Check out a video of rotating sphere. https://www.usgs.gov/media/videos/unified-geologic-map-moon (Photo: NASA/GSFC/USGS) — **Figure 2: Unified Geologic Map of the Moon.** Orthographic projections of the “Unified Geologic Map of the Moon” showing the geology of the Moon’s near side (left) and far side (right) with shaded topography from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter. It will serve as a reference for lunar science and future human missions to the moon. Gravitational mass concentrations are also depicted in the image showing the majority being on the nearside while the farside is void of gravitational concentrations. Check out a video of rotating sphere. (Image: NASA/GSFC/USGS)

In a blow to science fiction novels, it will not be humans out on the barren, dust covered lunar landscape, or in the cold depths of crater shadows with pickaxes and jackhammers. It will be robots working prolonged periods in extreme temperatures running on solar power or nuclear power while constantly bombarded by cosmic rays and direct solar radiation.

Accomplishing this will require real-time communication with spatially enabled, artificially intelligent machines able to support fully immersive experiences with 3D vision headsets and haptic feedback systems so controllers at the base station wearing special suits can remote into any robot.

Due to a 2.5-second transmission delay between the Earth and the Moon, Ground Control will be limited to observation and analysis. Autonomous rockets will ferry cargo and supplies between more distant locations on the moon and ferry astronauts back and forth to the Gateway space station.

The ground-based 4G cellular towers will be mobile units with retractable towers about 25 meters high with a circular array of solar panels that will unfurl about 10 meters up from the base of the mast to protect them from the abrasive regolith dust.

Beneath the panels rovers and robots will plug in and charge their batteries as they journey to and from the base station. The towers will have 360° cameras and sensors and will provide data links and a localized spatial reference system.

However, objects in flight, such as autonomous rockets, will require other means to navigate across the moon and between the space-based cargo ships and the base station.

One solution is visual-inertial odometry (VIO). It uses one or more cameras and at least one inertial measuring device. Those components are already standard on almost every smartphone. Position accuracy using VIO is derived by feature recognition — the most prominent features on the moon are craters.

In support of this initiative, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) is sponsoring a software developer’s challenge to create algorithms for identifying circular patterns in imagery. It’s harder than you think. Learn more here.

Figure 3. (Photo: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University) — **Figure 3.** (Photo: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

The base station will be inside a lava tube beneath the moon’s surface to protect astronauts and equipment from solar radiation and micrometeor impacts. Most of the resources for the moon base will be extracted and processed in-situ, which requires spatial analysis of drill core samples to pinpoint where to mine for minerals in the subsurface layers and where to locate scarce resources such as water. The lava tubes on the moon are also valuable for mining operations but navigating an underground environment with autonomous machines poses challenges of its own, some of which are spatial awareness. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently held a developer’s challenge to address navigating in subterranean domains.

“Reaching the Moon by three-man vessels in one long bound from Earth is like casting a thin thread across space. The main effort, in the coming decades, will be to strengthen this thread; to make it a cord, a cable, and, finally, a broad highway.”
—Isaac Asimov

William Tewelow works for the Federal Aviation Administration. He is a graduate of the FAA management fellowship program. He served on special assignment to the U.S. Department of Transportation leading a national strategic geospatial iniative for the White House Open Data Partnership. He is a Geographic Information Systems Professional and a speaker for the Maryland STEMnet Scholar program. He was among the first in the nation to earn a Geospatial Specialist Certification from the U.S. Department of Labor while working at NASA Stennis Space Center. He has degrees in Geographic Information Technology, Intelligence Studies and is completing a masters degree in Organizational Management. William is a 23-year veteran for the U.S. Navy serving as a geospatial specialist, imagery intelligence specialist, a naval aviator, a meteorologist and a tactical oceanographer. He is married, enjoys writing and traveling. His favorite quote is, “A man’s mind changed by a new idea can never go back to its original dimension.” —Oliver Wendell Holmes

January 13, 2021

How public safety GIS saves us when disaster strikes
Tenacity of spirit is one of the great virtues. Supporters of geospatial technology have often had to endure steadfast resolve convincing others of the multi-dimensional value GIS provides. It is a battle best won by seeing and doing rather than by words.

Jack Maple proved the value of GIS to public safety in the early 1990s by using it to fight crime. But, in the context of firefighting and disaster operations, GIS had not been used.

Then, in the early 2000s, due in large part to 9/11, the government’s interest in GIS increased.

It was a necessary evolution. Technologies at the time were rapidly advancing. Computer graphics, computer processing power, the internet, shared databases, GPS, digital imagery, and mobile devices needed to merge. GIS was the only solution to bring them all together.

At the same time, disasters became increasingly destructive. Public safety and emergency management needed solutions, but most of the funding is by the government with tight budgets, so investments into geospatial technologies and specialized staff were limited.

It wasn’t until 2010 that FEMA hired the first Geospatial Information Officer. And, the Geospatial Data Act did not become law until 2018. The need was there but not the resources.

A small group of individuals saw that gap and together they began providing support to the public safety sector. The first organization they were able to work with was the National Association of State Fire Marshalls. Word quickly spread. Soon, other organizations began asking for geospatial services.

Eventually, 11 national organizations came together to provide support, structure and purpose for the fledgling team of GIS volunteers. This group became the founders of the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS (NAPSG) Foundation.

Now, 15 years later, NAPSG has contributed to recovery after every major disaster and many minor ones throughout the United States. Its success extends internationally — NAPSG has helped other countries set up their own public safety GIS support teams.

Image: NAPSG

Membership in NAPSG has grown to more than 65,000. Its members are involved in supporting operations for fires, flooding, search and rescue, earthquakes, storm and tornado damage, health crises, chemical spills, and more. They have become central to emergency management operations, helping coordinate efforts of multiple groups through GIS platforms.

During and after events, NAPSG hosts debriefs to evaluate and improve ongoing and future operations. The result advances the field of public safety. NAPSG also provides education to its constituent communities and makes its training available to the public.

NAPSG and its members are highly valued. Every state GIS council has the group as a point of contact. NAPSG is a trusted entity at the community level up through to the highest levels of the federal government, and they are one of the first calls FEMA makes in a crisis.

Tari Martin

I had the opportunity to interview Tari Martin (GISP), the director of national and federal programs, one of the leaders in NAPSG. Speaking with Tari made me realize that GIS is still early in its adoption phase. Tari is one of the founders of GIS at the state level. Earlier in her career she was the first person in the state of Maryland dedicated to supporting emergency management operations.

She helped build Maryland’s emergency management framework coordinated efforts with the National Incident Management System (NIMS), and she began pulling in federal data such as the Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Dataset (HIFLD) for use in local operations.

Now, Tari serves on the Maryland GIS Council for the Public Safety/Next Generation 911 Subcommittee in addition to her regular duties as a director for NAPSG. Tari also serves as a program manager, working to create a universal symbology for public safety and emergency management.

Maps and map symbology are revered. Map symbology emerged from a long, proud, history of cartography dating back to a time before the Golden Age of Exploration when maps were adorned with beautiful, hand-drawn symbols of wind roses, sea creatures, and exotic plants and animals; including inscriptions, such as that within the cartouche of the Typus Orbis Terrarum (Atlas of the World) by Ortelius in 1573. Therein are inscribed the words from Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, “Quid ei potest videri magnum in rebus humanis, cui aeternitas omnis, totiusque mundi nota sit magnitudo,” which translated means, “For what human affairs can seem important to a person who keeps all eternity before his eyes and knows the vastness of the universe?”

Map symbology has been more an art than a science driven predominantly to support specific purposes, such as navigation, war, surveying, mining, construction and recreation. Additionally, symbologies may not translate across professions, regions or cultures. Even when the symbols are the same, the colors may be different giving symbols different meanings.

Symbols are a visual language, and as the world becomes increasingly smaller and emergency events more international, the need for the language of maps to become universal is necessary. NAPSG has taken on that challenge, coordinating input from multiple stakeholders.

In essence, NAPSG is working with groups like Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) to create the Rosetta Stone of map symbology for public safety and emergency management, and Tari Martin is one of the central figures working on that project. The symbol library is free and publicly available on the NAPSG website.

Tari also reminisced about her early days when she first got into GIS just before Hurricane Katrina, and how many of her co-workers in Maryland mobilized to go down and help out with recovery operations. She stated that was one of the moments in her career that cemented her understanding for the value of GIS in post-disaster operations. Tari now teaches a course on GIS in Emergency Management for URISA.

NAPSG is involved in cutting-edge technologies helping to shape and educate the public safety community. Its members are working with autonomous vehicles, indoor mapping technologies, augmented reality and virtual reality, wearables, and other opportunities as they arise.

NAPSG makes its content available online. Explore its best practices, guidance and standards, education and training, events, qualifications and credentialing, toolkits and more. Become a NAPSG member at no cost.

Prior articles referenced:
William Tewelow works for the Federal Aviation Administration. He is a graduate of the FAA management fellowship program and while on special assignment to the U.S. Department of Transportation William led a national strategic geospatial project for the White House Open Data Partnership. He is a Geographic Information Systems Professional (GISP) and a Maryland STEMnet Scholar Speaker. He has degrees in Geographic Information Technology and Intelligence Studies, and is currently pursuing a masters degree in Organizational Management. He was among the first in the nation to earn a Geospatial Specialist Certification from the U.S. Department of Labor while working at NASA Stennis Space Center.

William retired from the U.S. Navy after serving 23 years as a Geospatial and Imagery Intelligence Specialist, a Naval Aviator, a Meteorologist, and a Tactical Oceanographer. He is married, enjoys writing, traveling, solving problems, and is fascinated by new technology and historical context. His favorite quote is, “A man’s mind changed by a new idea can never go back to its original dimension.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
November 11, 2020
The evolution of GPS satellites and their use today

1960: ARPA launched Transit, the first satellite in what would become the world’s first GPS. (Photo: U.S. Army/DARPA)

Sixty-three years ago, on Friday, Oct. 4, 1957, the Space Age began — most everyone alive today is a progeny. The Soviet Union sent a shiny, metal, beach-ball-sized sphere into orbit. Sputnik beeped every second for 21 days before going silent. Its beeps were heard ’round the world. Using the Doppler effect, a listener could tell whether the tiny satellite was moving toward or away from them. Scientists pinpointed the satellite’s exact location by observing it in a single pass, and realized the reverse could also be true. A terrestrial observer’s unknown location could be derived from the known orbit of a single satellite. That idea turned into the first satellite navigation system.

In 1964, the Navy Navigation Satellite System (NNSS) became operational. The highly classified system called Transit was built to support the Polaris ballistic missile submarine fleet. It operated on a small constellation of less than five polar orbiting satellites. With so few satellites in orbit, it could take more than an hour to get a positional fix. Twenty-meter accuracy could be attained by using specially encrypted signals, but these were restricted to submarines. All other users of Transit could only achieve accuracy within 200 meters.

Accuracy was a challenge. The problem was solved the same way John Harrison’s chronometer solved it 300 years earlier, threading together the past and present. More accurate location required more precisely measuring time (see geospatial-solutions.com/from-the-great-pyramids-to-gis-gps/). The problem was solved by two Timation satellites launched in 1967 and 1969 to broadcast a time reference signal. Essentially, the Timation satellites were space-based chronometers.

Timation improved location accuracy, even though it took hours to achieve sub-meter precision. It proved a success, and as a result, in 1967, Transit became available for non-military users, such as surveyors. In fact, everyone today who has ever worked with a reference system is familiar with WGS 84, which was originally based on “Doppler surveying receivers” called georeceivers, referring to measurements from the Transit system. Transit was also known as NavSat as it became more broadly adopted for civilian purposes such as commercial shipping.

In 1973 the Department of Defense sought to combine the success of Transit (NNSS) and Timation into one satellite system, which evolved into the NavStar-Global Positioning System. The first launches began in 1978 and reached a full constellation of 24 GPS satellites in 1993. Since that time, Russia, Europe, China, India and Japan have all created their own constellations. All of those systems combined with GPS make up the global navigation satellite system (GNSS), which totals more than 120 satellites.

Recognizing GPS’s sustained success and positive global impact, in February 2019 the Queen Elizabeth Award for Engineering went to four of the primary developers of the GPS program for their contribution to the world. These four gentlemen are Engineering Stars. On Feb. 12 of this year, President Trump signed an Executive Order further acknowledging the value of position, navigation and timing (PNT) as the invisible infrastructure of modern society. And, on July 1, Capt. “Sully” Sullenberger addressed the Space-Based PNT Advisory Board, stating how GPS has become a universal part of every facet of our lives including financial transactions, transportation, agriculture, rescue operations, surveying and construction.

The GPS satellites are our own constellation and each of them should be named in honor of a scientist or engineer who helped conceive and develop the Transit, Timation and GPS programs; even though the earlier systems no longer exist, their legacy should long be remembered.

From those Cold War origins of a chirping beach ball traveling through space 63 years ago, now more than 2,600 satellites enhance our terrestrial lives providing better communication, location and understanding. We are all children of the stars, albeit stars of our own making.

September 16, 2020

How the Civil Air Patrol relies on GIS for civil defense

As technology evolves, the Civil Air Patrol will continue to be a platform for implementing new technologies to secure the country in times of crisis.

The strength of this country isn’t in buildings of brick and steel. It’s in the hearts of those who have sworn to fight for its freedom!
—Captain America

Eyes of the Home Skies, World War II-era poster of Civil Air Patrol. (Image: CAP)

If you are someone who likes aviation, GIS and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and computer vision, and you want to fulfill a greater sense of purpose, the perfect time is now.

The Flying Minute Men, so called by Robert Neprud in the 1948 Story of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), serve on the frontlines of national threats and disasters. They are the air wing for first responders.

CAP works with many government organizations including the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Guard, and many others.

CAP works with non-government organizations too, such as the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), the GIS Corps, the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS (NAPSG), and the Red Cross.

CAP also works with youth teaching valuable skills in leadership, community service, STEM and aviation. It has a proud heritage originating in World War II.

In the final days of 1941, the world was in flames. Dark shadows lurked in the waters off American shores. German U-boats attacked ships along the coast. The newly established Office of Civilian Defense understood the importance of aviation for stopping the U-boat threat but lacked the military resources. On Monday, December 1, 1941, six days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Administrative Order 9 was signed creating the Civil Air Patrol, but there would be no celebration. The threat was all too real. The Battle of the Atlantic had begun. Within a few months Germany sank over 230 ships in U.S. waters. American shores were on fire.

A list of known shipwrecks and their locations in U.S. waters can be downloaded from NOAA’s Coastal Survey website. It is not a complete or a clean dataset so some wrangling will be required. A shortcut is using the shipwreck layer in Google Earth. Along the Atlantic Coast, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean Sea there are multiple sunken German U-boats. Most notably are U-85, the first U-Boat sunk by the U.S. Navy in WWII, less than 20 miles off of Nag’s Head, North Carolina (35.885, -75.2829); and U-853, the last one to be sunk in WWII 10 miles off the coast of Rhode Island less than 24 hours before Germany’s surrender (41.2268, -71.4187).

The American tanker SS Harry F. Sinclair burns south of Cape Lookout North Carolina, torpedoed by U-203 on April 11, 1942. (Photo: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command)

During the War, the Civil Air Patrol flew 5,684 aerial escorts for shipping convoys keeping the sea lanes safe and enabling supplies to get to Europe and North Africa. Shortly after the war, on July 1, 1946, President Truman recognized the valuable contribution made by the Civil Air Patrol making them permanent, but once again there was no celebration. On the same day, responding to overwhelming public attention, TIME published “COSMOCLAST EINSTEIN: All matter is speed and flame.” Radios around the world tuned-in as the clock counted down to zero hour. The first post-war atomic bomb was detonated at 22:00 Greenwich Mean Time (5:00 PM Eastern) in Bikini Lagoon (11°36’00” N 165°29’00” E) over a ghost fleet of ninety-five ships in the middle of the Pacific. History’s long shadow fell over the moment. The applause of a grateful nation for the Flying Minute Men was silence.

It is the mark of real heroes, duty is the highest honor, the rewards are personal having the courage to stand in the face of danger and clasp the hand of Victory. It is valor not fame that makes heroes of normal men and women. The Civil Air Patrol rarely makes the front page, but it supports many of the nation’s most significant events.

Photo of Ground Zero taken on September 12, 2001 by Civil Air Patrol. (Photo: CAP)

The first photographs of Ground Zero released to the public the day after September 11, 2001, were taken by the Civil Air Patrol. With the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 the Civil Air Patrol took on a much larger role in homeland security. CAP serves a unique purpose flying a multitude of missions because aircraft can fly for extended periods at optimum altitudes to get the best resolution. CAP imagery is often the most currently available and of the highest quality after an event. The Civil Air Patrol aircraft can carry interchangeable sensor arrays, such as thermal cameras, synthetic aperture radars, lidar, communications equipment, and more. Imagery collected by the Civil Air Patrol is publicly available on the CAP GIS Portal.

In 2017, FEMA hosted a Disaster Crowdsourcing Exchange laying a foundation for working with the Civil Air Patrol to push the imagery out to various crowdsourcing channels. The Red Cross Humanitarian OpenStreetMaps Team (HOT) used it to map road networks. Crowdsourced imagery analysts used it for feature extraction and damage assessments. In 2018, this effort was developed further using Hurricane Michael imagery of Panama City, Florida, for creating artificial intelligence algorithms to identify and extract features.

The Civil Air Patrol captures imagery with the WaldoAir XCAM Ultra 50 by flying in overlapping circles as the aircraft sweeps over a disaster area. The overlapping images allow the system to create high-resolution 3D point clouds. The spatial intelligence algorithms employed with post flight processing conducted by Skyline and GeoX can automate feature extraction of buildings, vehicles, bridges, roads, cell towers, and other structures, and identify structures as destroyed, damaged, or undamaged. The system can begin damage assessments almost immediately. The process used to take several weeks with an enormous cadre of specialists and resources and now it can finish in a few days or less with a handful of specialized staff.

I had the privilege of speaking with the Director of Operations for the Civil Air Patrol, Mr. John Desmarais, or Moose as his friends know him. He is a 33-year veteran of CAP, has a pilot’s license, a master’s degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and is married with two children. Moose shared how September 11th, 2001 changed his commitment and understanding of C.A.P.’s role working with and supporting homeland security missions. He shared with me some of the stories above and gave me an in-depth look into CAP’s future.

Today, the Civil Air Patrol supports important missions. For FEMA CAP does post-event damage assessments after hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, fires, earthquakes, dam bursts, and more. This will be able to get people the assistance they need much faster ultimately saving lives. This year alone, the Civil Air Patrol has saved 91 lives according to the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center. Other examples are providing search & rescue, border protection, homeland security, emergency flight services, remote sensing, humanitarian support, education and training, and Air Force training support to name a few. These initial successes led Christopher Vaughan, the Geographic Information Officer of FEMA, to request the Civil Air Patrol provide GIS support for natural disaster operations. CAP remains very active fulfilling that commitment. Mr. Desmarais said that CAP took close to half a million pictures for the 2018 hurricane season. FEMA hosts all of CAP’s publicly available imagery as part of its GEOPlatform.

GIS has always been a huge part of what the Civil Air Patrol does when looking at it from a basic level of identifying locations, features, and information. Now, GIS is becoming central to the operations of the Civil Air Patrol because it is a force multiplier as in the example above, using spatial intelligence for completing disaster estimates in days instead of weeks with a fraction of the staff. This is powerful and driving the future of CAP towards a more geocentric operation. CAP’s GIS future is in modeling, remote sensing, crowdsourcing, artificial spatial intelligence, and data sharing.

In 2019, the Civil Air Patrol proposed its path forward creating opportunities for its members to gain valuable GIS skills and creating a qualification in GIS Operations. The Civil Air Patrol has recently begun fielding courses with support from its partners to provide training qualifications. Members of CAP can receive the following training courses: GIS for Emergency Managers, GIS Applications for Emergency Management, GIS Specialist and training in HAZUS, a GIS-based hazard analysis tool. This requirement for operations to become geocentric is so great that a call went out for people who are doing GIS work to reach out to the Civil Air Patrol Wing in their local area and consider joining. To find out more get in touch with your local Wing, visit www.GoCivilAirPatrol.com and enter your zip code to find a CAP squadron near you or you can reach out to the CAP National GIS team at [email protected] for more information. The Civil Air Patrol is using GIS more every day for search and rescue operations where CAP members are locating aircraft crash sites using ADS-B and radar data, and locating missing persons using cell phone forensics, and creating situational awareness maps for tracking resources and planning purposes for CAP senior leaders.

The Civil Air Patrol is investing into autonomous aircraft technologies. It has the largest inventory of small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) for civilian/ public safety use in the nation. The great advantages to CAP for sUAS are their low costs to deploy and their ability to collect close-up, high-resolutions imagery with minimal risk to people. In disaster areas flying low level flights are extremely hazardous to piloted aircraft because wires and cables and other smaller objects that have shifted. The use of sUAS will fly alongside emergency responders and CAP expects to have sUAS available for each of its 150 incident command posts across the country by the end of 2020 with over 1,000 trained operators nationwide.

In the future, the high-resolution 3D imagery point clouds will enable the Civil Air Patrol to provide real-time virtual environments and augmented reality enhanced awareness for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations, especially when that imagery is infused with powerful geographic information systems and artificial spatial intelligence algorithms.

In the near term, the Civil Air Patrol will be expanding the number of aircraft it has equipped with FLIR and other high-end sensors and will continue growing its sUAS operations. It will continue its outreach efforts to build working relationships with new partners and bring onboard volunteers interested in supporting GIS and imagery analysis.

As technology evolves, the Civil Air Patrol will continue to be a platform for implementing new technologies to secure the country in times of crisis. The words spoken by Colonel Scott at the First Report to Congress in May 1948 continue to ring true.

“I predict that the Civil Air Patrol will grow immeasurably stronger — it will continue to contribute to the strength and the security of this nation.”
—Colonel Scott, First Report to Congress, May 1948

September 9, 2020

At-home crowdsourcing and citizen science for mapping enthusiasts

The world so close has never seemed so far away. Locked up and adrift, somewhere between the comfort of the past and the anxiety of the future, the present slowly passes by in a procession of nameless days. The living room has become a sundial. Shadows pass from one wall in the morning to the far side by day’s end. Outside, spring has sprung, but inside, winter lingers on.

Alone, we can do so little. Together, we can do so much.
—Helen Keller

Times like these, detached and disruptive, are opportunities in disguise. Ironically, while the world is confined and socially distanced from one another, humanity is more connected than it has ever been. Hard to believe, but smart mobile devices began just over a decade ago; and we are in the midst of a growing tsunami of connected devices, cloud computing, big data and open source. These events, coinciding with the exponential growth of geographic information systems and data analytics, have set the stage for crowdsourcing and citizen science. The era of empowering individual contributors has begun.

It has probably gone unnoticed due to all the political wrangling in Washington, D.C., but over the last two administrations, with bi-partisan support, without recognition or renown, a monument to American ingenuity was christened. Beginning in 2010, the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act was passed. Then, in 2014, the White House elevated homegrown inventors and creators calling it the Maker Movement and hosted the first-ever National Maker Faire. In 2015, the STEM Education Act became law and in the same year the Senate introduced The Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Act. In 2017, the American Innovation Competitiveness Act became law formally coining the term, crowdsourcing. In 2019, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) delivered the first-ever comprehensive report to Congress about federal agencies activities involving crowdsourcing and citizen science (FedCCS). Also in 2019, OSTP along with the General Services Administration (GSA) hosted the U.S. Government Open Innovation Summit.

The OSTP FedCCS report to Congress titled, “Implementation of Federal Prize and Citizen Science Authority,” cites 169 FedCCS prize competitions conducted by 18 federal agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST). However, the number of FedCCS projects is much greater than what is covered in the report. On Challenge.gov the amount of competitions rose from 744 in 2016 to 875 in 2018, and the prize awards ranged from $0 to $20 million with an average payout of $75,000 in FY2018. The next report is due in 2021.

Governments tapping into the resources of its citizens for innovation is not new, but it has never been on this scale and granted such authority. One of the first official attempts was the United Kingdom’s Longitude Prize in 1719 offering a King’s ransom of £20,000 [see article: From the Pyramids to GIS/GPS] to solve positioning at sea. Great Britain still honors the original Longitude Prize using the name for their national grand crowdsource competition. Similarly, in the United States the grand challenge is the X-Prize, the most famous one being the Ansari X prize. You may not know the prize by its name, but as NASA’s Space Shuttle Program phased down, the Ansari X-Prize kicked-off the space race among private companies. Scaled Composites won the $10 million prize in 2004 reaching space in a reusable craft, which became Virgin Galactic.

The term “crowdsourcing” means a method to obtain needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting voluntary contributions from a group of individuals or organizations, especially from an online community.
—15 USC Chapter 63 §3724 (2): Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science

The U.S. Federal Government already relies on the public for information to help improve and maintain its products and better serve the country. The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has had an ongoing cooperative with the U.S. Power Squadrons since 1963 to report safety hazards to navigation and help maintain the information on maritime nautical charts. The agreement to support NOAA was renewed in 2013 for another 50 years.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) accepts reports from the general public, especially aircraft pilots regarding the accuracy of information in the products it publishes which can affect changes to aeronautical charts and flight operations.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has The National Map Corps (TNMCorps), which began in 1994 with the Earth Science Corps and the Adopt-a-Quad program. These two programs consolidated into a single online crowdsourcing effort to support USGS in 2013. TNM Corps helps maintain USGS’s maps and allows private citizens to do feature collection activities. It is easy to join and simple to use making it a way for all ages to join the crowdsource movement. What is also significant about USGS is that Dr. Sophia Liu, Co-Chair of the Federal Community of Practice for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science resides there. Dr. Liu helped stand-up FEMA’s crowdsourcing and citizen science unit in 2007. She is now the coordinator of FedCCS activities and helped co-write the 2019 OSTP FedCCS report to Congress.

Crowdsourcing is about actively engaging people in a certain task, sometimes a very specific micro-task that includes a two-way feedback loop with the public. We need to leverage the human power that is better at understanding, processing, and communicating information.
—Dr. Sophia B Liu, Innovation Specialist, USGS

Some of the most popular sites for GIS enthusiasts to get involved are Open Street Maps (OSM), GISCorps, GeoHIVE and Zooniverse. OSM has more than 2 million contributors worldwide and has been on the front line of international disasters beginning with the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. Through its Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) it has supported operations of the Red Cross, FEMA, and United Nations. Through the power of the crowd, OSM contributors rapidly map transportation networks in disaster areas to show the most accessible routes in order for rescue operations and emergency supplies to reach the most impacted communities.

The GIS Corps, founded in 2003, operates under URISA and coordinates short-term mapping volunteer projects for humanitarian relief, human rights, disaster response, and other important efforts. Over 4,500 volunteers have helped support 195 missions around the world such as Hurricane Katrina, Ebola outbreaks in Sierra Leone, and the Nepal earthquake, in fact, if there is a crisis somewhere in the world, GISCorps is most likely going to have an effort in place to support it.

GeoHIVE (Geospatial Human Imagery Verification Effort) is an imagery based geospatial crowdsource platform which began in 2015 eventually replacing Tomnod in 2018. Digital Globe formed a collaboration with Radiant Solutions, SSL and MDA combining efforts and resources creating a more robust crowdsourcing platform. GeoHIVE’s 3,000 volunteers have contributed to nearly 700 campaigns. Registering for GeoHIVE requires an Amazon Mechanical Turk account, which allows contributors to be compensated for crowdsource tasks.

Zooniverse began as an astronomy site to enable hobbyists to help classify galaxy types but quickly grew into a crowdsource platform that encompasses all sorts of projects in addition to its cosmic origins including art, biology, literature and there are several spatially related projects to be found, as well. With Zooniverse you can contribute to science by studying gravitational waves or categorizing auroras as the ionized plasma washes up onto our cosmic shore.

90% of all the scientists who have ever lived are alive today.
—Steven N. Rader, Deputy Manager, NASA, Center of Excellence

That quote by Steven Rader of NASA is accredited to Derek de Solla Price in 1961 referring to the exponential growth in the number of PhD’s and patents throughout the world. But now, science is in the hands of the Makers — those with 3D printers or those who can program a virtual world, or design an augmented reality, or those who can extract patterns from data and provide meaningful intelligence in geography, demographics, genetics, biology, and every field of study.

Citizen scientists are making a significant mark upon the world. Take for example CeCe Moore, a genealogy hobbyist who became a self-taught expert and now tracks down killers solving several cases using her laptop and open source DNA records. Gary Hug, a backyard astronomer, who built his own observatory in Topeka, Kansas, has discovered over 300 asteroids in near Earth orbits, and in March, Michael Mattiazzo, a citizen scientist astronomy enthusiast, discovered comet (C/2020 F8) SWAN which will make its closest approach to Earth on May 13th inside Earth’s orbit. Then there is Ted Ground, a citizen scientist hero. Ted is a winner in multiple citizen science competitions winning the NASA ideation challenge for the Mars ballast payload, the Bureau of Land Reclamation challenge for identifying insect invertebrates in rivers and estuaries, and the INNOcentive challenge for identifying trace minerals in livestock.

The day before something is truly a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.
—Peter Diamandis, executive chairman of the X Prize Foundation

Challenges are competitions sponsored by governments, private industry, non-profits and international entities. At the end of this article are listed several challenge sites. Agencies of the U.S. government post their challenges on Challenge.gov and CitizenScience.gov. Challenges are opportunities to work on projects for NASA, DOD, EPA, NOAA, FEMA, USGS, DARPA, and a growing list of agencies and companies. Most of these projects can be worked on at home with a laptop. Some challenges are for money or other prizes and some are just for the recognition, but all of them are ways to improve skills, build connections, and enhance a resume.

In closing, the legislation signed into law since 2010 culminating in the America Innovation and Competitiveness Act of 2017 requiring bi-annual reports to Congress directs federal agencies to use Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science. This movement empowers the individual. There has never been a better time for an idea whose time has come.

All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.
—Napoleon Hill, Author of Think and Grow Rich

A final note: The four-part television series, “The Crowd & the Cloud,” sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and hosted by Waleed Abdalati, former NASA chief scientist, can be seen here.

May 13, 2020

Coronavirus: How mapping can stop a pandemic
Birth of an epidemic

Image: William Tewelow. Map data © Google

Men wearing white bio-suits entered the market from the main entrance. A panic ensued at the sight, and a commotion quickly spread through the crowd.

Shop keepers, sensing the worst, hurriedly gathered their belongings. People rushed towards the exits. More armed soldiers in white bio-suits pressed in, sealing off escape. Screams and weeping filled the market with the din of anxiety and fear. The Huanan Seafood Market was under lock down. The order was not to hurt anyone, but no one was to leave. The quarantine had begun.

Empty semi-trucks lined the main road. The trucks entered the parking lot one by one, and masked soldiers guided people into the backs of the empty trucks. Once filled, the trucks drove away until the market was empty. The people were transported to “isolation centers” several hundred kilometers outside the city.

Image: Duncan A Smith, CASA UCL. Data from Global Human Settlement Layer, https://ghsl.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.php

In Wuhan, the situation had deteriorated rapidly. A month earlier videos went viral about a mysterious flu with pneumonia-like symptoms. Most of the information was coming from citizen journalists. People speculated the Huanan Seafood Market was the source of the illness, but no official statements had been made.

Anxiety spread. People began fleeing Wuhan ahead of the Chinese New Year, which is the world’s largest annual human migration. Making matters worse, Wuhan is a major transportation hub in Central China, servicing 400,000 commuters per day through the Hankou Railway Station, a short, 15-minute walk to the Huanan Seafood Market.

Alerting the world

On Dec. 31, 2019, China notified the World Health Organization (WHO) of the infection. The cause was a new strain of coronavirus along the same viral spectrum as the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). The next morning, on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2020, the WHO declared the novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) a public health emergency. It was also that morning that the seafood market was shutdown.

Above: One of the first and only videos coming out of China that covers the outbreak. Copyright: DW News, posted 23-JAN-2020

Twenty-three days after China notified the WHO, the city of Wuhan and the entire province of Hubei were quarantined and cut off from the rest of the world — an area comprising 57 million people, unprecedented in the history of public health.

Still, even with such extraordinary measures, it was already too late. The people moved faster than the system could adjust. Five million people, almost half the residents of Wuhan, had already evacuated. Many traveled to other parts of China to stay with family while others left China altogether, some finding themselves in countries they were banned from entering.

Containment and quarantine

China is now dealing with a containment issue at some level in every one of its provinces. In total, 174 million people in China are under some level of travel restriction. By comparison, that is equal to more than half the population of the United States.

China immediately began leaning on its massive surveillance network and facial recognition technologies to control the outbreak. Using these technologies, Chinese authorities could narrow the search for those most likely to carry the virus. The situation transitioned from a medical emergency to a national security emergency on Tuesday, Feb. 11, when China fired its two highest ranking medical officials in Hubei province, replacing them with a senior Chinese government party official.

Additionally, China continues working with the three cellular phone carriers in the country to gain access to users’ location data. This information will enable China to conduct geospatial analysis at an individual scale to identify those who have come into contact with infected areas. This practice is very controversial, placing privacy and human rights in conflict with public health security.

Roots of GIS in epidemiology

Epidemiology is the study of people, place and disease, perfectly suited for geospatial technologies. Not surprisingly then, the true origins of geographic information systems (GIS) are founded in epidemiology, harkening back to John Snow’s Cholera map in 1854. The location of infected people clearly pointed to the Broad Street water pump as the cause. That changed the scientific understanding of the time from believing cholera was transmitted in the air to realizing it was a waterborne disease.

John Snow’s 1854 map of the London Broad Street Cholera outbreak. (Image: public domain)

Similarly, the scientific consensus of COVID-19 has also changed since it first emerged. When the outbreak began, it was believed to be zoonotic, meaning the virus originated from animals and transmitted to humans. It was then believed the virus could only be transmitted directly from person to person. Now, it is known to be carried through the air or by touching infected surfaces.

Each of these modes changes the transmission rate of the disease. This is known as the reproduction number, written as R0 and referred to as the R-naught number. The larger the R-naught, the more infectious the disease. COVID-19 is estimated to have an R-naught between 1.4 and 6.6, which is similar to its cousin the SARS virus; however, SARS only infected 8,096 people and this virus is already more than 10 times that amount.

In terms of GIS, the higher the R0, the greater the geographic area potentially infected. Narrowing the area to concentrate resources more efficiently requires improved modeling and collecting more data, both of which increase the time required before effective measures can be taken. This creates a dilemma between acting swiftly and acting accurately. This explains some of the images coming out of China showing people forcibly removed from their homes and placed in quarantine.

Image: John Hopkins CSSE, https://systems.jhu.edu/research/public-health/ncov/

Controlling the spread of the virus also requires knowing the source of each outbreak. The originating source, called the reservoir, once discovered can be cordoned off. Afterwards, through a process called “contact tracing,” all potentially infected people are tracked down and monitored or quarantined if necessary.

Probability models based on geospatial analysis use factors such as age, sex, pre-existing health conditions and distance from the reservoir overlaid with data such as population density to create an intensity map showing the areas most favorable to the spread of infection. People in the defined areas can be isolated and monitored, preempting further spread.

Click to enlarge. (Maps: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

In the United States, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) requires data be aggregated at the zip code or county level, which is useful in defining regional trends, such as the CDC maps above of heart disease (red) and the areas of least physical activity (teal). Comparing the two visualizes the premise that exercise and good health go together. However, at this scale the information is not useful in fighting a dynamic and evolving situation like an infectious outbreak.

Ultimately, the goal is real-time feedback at a high-scale resolution. Smartphones and other mobile devices offer unique opportunities to combat epidemics. South Korea is using location information to help contain the outbreak. People use a special number to text where they have traveled. This is to assist in contact tracing if necessary.

Mobile devices can also report location data along with vital signs to monitor overall health and instantly identify individuals who may be a risk. The mobile device can also alert individuals if they are nearing an infected area and show the infected zones on their phones.

COVID-19 reporting via GIS

Systems can be established to report live events like Waze does for reporting traffic hazards, which have proven to report accidents faster than 911 calls. Also, the use of social media live feeds can help identify evolving situations and monitor existing ones.

Perhaps the government, working with mobile application mapping companies, should create a layer specifically for the epidemic that provides critical information, such as healthcare centers, some of which might be established specifically for the care of the disease outbreak.

Also, included in that public health layer would be high-risk areas, prohibited entry locations, areas under quarantine, and more, in order to provide an integrated interface to communicate with the general public. This is similar to how the departments of transportation, public works, and emergency response units provide information to the public to reroute traffic around congestion, accidents or closed-off areas.

Image: Coronavirus story map by Maria Laturnas, University of Potomac

A former U.S. Navy healthcare executive, Ben Boccuzzi, Ph.D., shared his thoughts on the matter with me. “The actual mortality rate of COVID-19 (in the U.S.) is hard to determine until mass testing can be done,” Boccuzzi said. “As of now, the true denominator (all people that would test positive for the virus) we only know of symptomatically and those that died from the disease. So, with these small numbers, the real mortality rate is not fully known. When testing begins on a grander scale, and more people are known to have the virus and do well, the actual rate of mortality will become much smaller.”

It is now more than two full months since the WHO declared a public health emergency. The number of known cases worldwide stands at 105,941 with 3,569 deaths affecting 100 countries.

If you’d like to track the virus, the John Hopkins GIS webmap interface updates in real time as new information becomes available.

Story Maps

Working with the University of Potomac, several students contributed story maps for this article. You can see their full projects at the links below:
Image: Coronavirus story map by Gangesh Khadka, University of Potomac

If you have read this far, thank you. I would like to leave you with the most important information in this article.

When I began covering this story it was early January, the virus was just beginning to make the news. Fear was in the air. I began to worry. As I immersed myself deeper into the topic, I became even more concerned; so much so, I bought two months of supplies preparing for a long-term self-quarantine situation.

If you’ve been watching the news, you may be nearing the same state of mind I found myself in. If so, I’ve got good news for you.

Paradoxically, people are attracted to fear. Fear is a potent biochemical rush. The horror movie industry rakes in $11.7 billion per year. Most media’s primary business is not information. It is using information to increase its readers and viewers, and fear captures people and holds their attention. The media is a profit-driven business. Facts tell. Fear sells.

The following is what is reported by the WHO based on 55,924 laboratory-confirmed cases since the coronavirus began. The study was published on Feb. 28. At that time, there were 86,992 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 2,979 deaths, equating to a mortality rate of 3.4%, but those numbers were mostly in China, specifically Hubei province. Outside of China, the number of cases were only 7,166 with 109 deaths having a fatality rate of 1.5%.

Image: Coronavirus story map by Zaid Alshaboul & Kush Shah, University of Potomac

These numbers do not reflect the whole story. If you are below age 50 and in good health, recovery is 99.1%, so there is almost no reason to be concerned. For those older than age 50 the mortality rate is 1.3%, and over age 60 it increases to 3.6%. For those over age 70 it doubles to 8.0%. The most vulnerable populations are those over age 80 with a mortality rate of 14.8%.

Additionally, those with pre-existing conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or respiratory disease are also at high risk. If you fall into either of those categories, take great care with your hygiene and personal protection. However, if you are below 60 and in moderately good health, there is less than a 1.3% reason to be concerned and more than 98.7% reason not to be concerned.

Unless something significant changes, the virus is a reason for caution, but should not be a cause for panic. The fearmongering has gotten out of control. We may or may not get COVID-19, but for those of us who do, most of us will only experience muscle aches, fever and a dry cough, about the same as catching a bad cold.

Ironically, be grateful in times like these. They give us reasons to take pause, love our family, appreciate what we have, realize life is worth living, and get our house in order. The truth is not the story we are being sold.

Image: wildpixel/iStock/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images
March 11, 2020
A straightforward explanation of oblique

How are oblique views derived from aerial imagery?

Typically, a camera takes a field of view of 120 degrees (+/– 60 degrees either side of centerline). The nadir is straight down +/– 5 degrees either side, but everything beyond is considered oblique imagery.

Overlapping imagery is required to ensure clean images and to reduce the angle of obliquity. Too much of an oblique angle causes parallax, which distorts the image, so it is usual for imagery to overlap by 70% each pass, meaning that 30% either side of center is used, but everything except for a small path considered nadir is double imaged.

However, in the case of stereographic imagery, which is required for building a 3D mesh, the overlap has to cover the centerline of the last flight path, so the flights must be much closer together.

Oblique imagery allows 3D meshes to be created, which is a huge benefit to geospatial analysis. It allows the actual terrain to be measured not in a straight line, but in an actual topographic line that includes elevation changes for point-to-point distance.

Additionally, straight lines work when everything looks flat, but in reality straight lines are rare, and point-to-point measurements often have to take advantage of the existing terrain, avoiding steep terrain and aiming to stay on the highest ground to avoid marshy areas.

Oblique imagery also allows for mensuration, which is the measurement of the vertical based on the trigonometry of the sensor’s position and height compared to the target’s angle. More than one oblique image of the same target area allows for stereographic imagery for building the 3D meshes and seeing in 3D. Without the magic of oblique imagery, GIS would be a 2D science.

August 1, 2019
Closing the horizontal/vertical BIM divide

Written by William Tewelow, GISP and Co-written by Jon Gustafson, GISP

Significant focus on infrastructure asset delivery and lifecycle must become a priority so that architects, engineers and construction (AEC) can leverage BIM systems for design, construction and management solutions.

Innovations in BIM applied to infrastructure construction projects will enable “smart” solutions. This article explores BIM for infrastructure insights and brings attention to closing the BIM divide between the vertical (buildings) and the horizontal (linear) infrastructure industries, such as roads, bridges and pipelines.

For smart systems to be applied to infrastructure, CAD needs to evolve to the point where those multi-dimensional models can integrate with geographic information systems (GIS). The larger the project, the more necessary it is for a seamless data transition from the local engineering scale to the municipal, regional or national reference systems.

Autodesk defines building information modeling (BIM) as an intelligent 3D model-based process that gives architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) professionals the insight and tools to more efficiently plan, design, construct and manage buildings and infrastructure.

It is like a GIS in many respects, but applied locally to a structure. It is able to do many common geospatial calculations. It is still an evolving technology, but it is clear that soon it will do for AEC and facilities management what GIS did for surveying and cartography.

A smart move

Systems have evolved augmenting our abilities with built-in applications that can integrate connected data and systems to enhance and extend our capabilities. These systems are termed smart, which has become the newest marketing buzzword.

Everything is getting the smart label. Along with the label is an expectation that the lines between the physical and the digital worlds are blurring as we slip ever nearer the veil wherein we will simultaneously co-exist in both worlds.

Smart also infers it is connected to the digital cloud, that seemingly infinite expanse measured by petaflops, into which artificial intelligent algorithms augment everything with contextually aware information overlaid atop our own experience of the world.

Of course, this view has its pitfalls and cautionary tales, and every step we take into the future we lose some connection with the past. For example, everyone can use a calculator, but are times tables even taught anymore? Automation leads to complacency.

When CAD was unimaginable

Let’s take a brief look backward. The year was 1978, my second year of high school. I took drafting class as an elective and would end up doing so for the rest of the time I was in high school, accumulating enough credit hours to graduate with a vocational degree equivalent in architectural design. Those were the days of drafting tables, slide rules, French curves, triangles, keen eyes and steady hands.

The last year of school, there was talk of something called computer-aided drafting or design (CAD) that would make all we were doing obsolete. It seemed impossible at the time. Especially after I took a brand-new summer course called computer programming. Computers were large, heavy, clunky things that had limited abilities. They were basically responsive text machines. Program something in BASIC, save it, and then from the DOS command window, run it over and over again.

I remember reams and reams of green and white paper two foot wide fed by geared teeth, and pages of pages of our coded programs that we would have to pour over looking for the mistake in the line of code. And, this long and lengthy code was merely to archive and sort information or make the computer draw a cat or some other object using “X”.

We would all stand around the dot matrix printer as line by line the image took shape on the printed page. There was that wondrous feeling of success creating something having first conceived it in the mind then, like digital-smiths, forging it in a non-physical space and holding it in our hands. But I could not understand how that blinking white cursor on a black screen could ever replace the rich colors and smoothed lines of the beautiful architectural drawings I had spent years learning.

I felt confident the stories of our trade being overtaken by CAD were greatly exaggerated. That lesson taught me that change is inevitable and far beyond our rational ability to comprehend what is possible based on our current understanding. I watched as computer-aided design did take over, giving engineering and architectural drawings multidimensional context.

Horizontal lags behind

Now, let’s jump back into the present. The horizontal industry is behind the vertical industry with respect to project management deliverables. In part, this disparity will be aided by the Geospatial Data Act which was passed into law on Oct. 5, 2018.

The linear model is approximately 10 years behind the vertical model, especially for above-ground assets and facilities. However, recent technology advancements — augmented reality (AR), unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), indoor lidar and modeling software — and influential advocacy initiatives (such as public agency innovation programs like smart cities) are starting to enable digitally integrated management of asset information more holistically. Indeed, there is urgency for these linear systems to be adequately captured.

The Feb. 6 explosion from a ruptured gas line in San Francisco showed the dangers of not having an adequate map of the subsurface infrastructure. Fortunately, no one was injured, but damage from subsurface infrastructures can be deadly like the San Bruno disaster in 2010.

Gas line explosion damage in San Bruno, California. (Image: U.S. Department of Transportation)

The “Call Before You Dig” law was enacted for this very reason. At the very least, problems with linear infrastructure can negatively impact a city’s quality of life and budget such as a water main break or a broken sewer line.

Looking ahead 5-10 years, horizontal infrastructure designers and installation companies will use 3D modeling tools as standard practice in an open data sharing environment allowing other networks to access the information and add it to their own projects.

Imagine a county’s 811 system, the universal number to call before you dig, and instead of calling, it is an app on a users’ phone. A requester submits a short form and receives a text when the application is approved, usually within minutes, and is then able to view an augmented reality overlay of the subsurface infrastructure in the vicinity beneath the ground where the requester’s project is taking place.

This approach has economic benefits, providing faster turn-around times, increasing citizen engagement and improving the safety of communities. Over time, it is a “collect once and use many times” system — it will reduce demand on city staff and billable hours, saving cities money.

The same technology is also available for construction projects, providing schematics to see pipes, ducts and wires in walls, floors and ceilings. This is not science fiction. Existing condition data is already being collected in 3D, so it is logical to anticipate engineering design will be prompted to support ongoing 3D collection efforts and begin doing work in 3D.

Using BIM from the outset of a project builds this into a system that can be accessed later. However, the use of these advanced augmented reality technologies are limited to certain geographic areas with enough funding and technical capabilities. This is primarily in large urban areas, new growth areas, and redeveloping areas of a city; however, large infrastructure projects such as pipelines, railroads, highways, bridges and hyperloops will have to develop high-resolution models that will capture some of the surrounding areas and benefit all communities along the routes helping to bridge the disparity of the BIM divide.

In time, as costs come down and the technology improves and becomes easier to use, all communities will benefit from and incorporate this emerging technology.

Photo: Krauchanka Henadz/Shutterstock.com

BIM for intelligent infrastructure: sensors and structures

Critical to BIM for smart infrastructure is the fusion of sensors, data and infrastructure. Sensors will be embedded within and affixed to physical assets for the purposes of collecting data and self-monitoring for machine learning, maintenance and repair. Networking internet-enabled devices that actively and passively sense is at the core of the internet of things (IoT). Data from these IoT devices will improve physical asset management, creating unique opportunities for agencies, especially when considering how machine learning can discern patterns in data to detect anomalies, and improve safety such as self-aware systems that can heat road surfaces when precipitation is detected in below-freezing temperatures.

The digitizing of the physical world will take place with greater demand for higher resolution capabilities. Physical structures will require an exact computerized replica, referred to as a Digital Twin. An effort is underway by the Open AR Cloud Organization (OARC) to create an open standard for this digital twin of the world, so that applications and innovation will not be hampered by proprietary systems.

Yohan Baillot, CEO of ARcortex and founder of the Open AR Cloud, explained if there is no open standard, something developed in one system may not align with applications viewed in another system. This could be costly and disastrous for transportation and construction projects. Point in case would be the above example of Call Before You Dig,if a gas pipeline is incorrectly depicted and a work crew ruptured it.

This Digital Twin is both a high-resolution GIS and a basemap for both vertical and linear BIMs to connect into. Knowing the location of subsurface assets is foundational to the increasing investment into smart cities, which is forecast to become a $3.5 trillion industry within the next seven years.

David Rouse (2017) defines smart cities as cities that use information and communication technologies to increase operational efficiency, share information with the public, and improve both the quality of government services and public well-being. Using smart devices, communication among the devices and with the entities managing those devices provide deeper insight on device behavior and the ability to develop algorithms to change device parameters using other sensors in close proximity.

All of this data can be used to optimize asset performance over time. In the U.S., San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston and San Jose all have active smart city projects advancing connectivity (Nominet 2018).

Intelligent infrastructure augments users’ abilities by the multiplicity of sensor arrays (self-monitoring devices, RFID, Wi-Fi, GPS receivers, cameras, etc.) communicating with decision-support systems as well as other sensors — the internet of things (IoT). For instance, high mast cameras combined with artificial intelligence algorithms for object recognition deployed along a stretch of highway allows stakeholders to extract important insights of that physical asset (such as surface condition, traffic flows and vehicle counts) and provide that information in real time to emergency response crews, police and security, maintenance vehicles, network-connected vehicles and others.

Digital integrations

Intelligent transportation systems are entering the next generation enabling vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) interactions. The U.S. Department of Transportation (2018) website states,

V2I technologies capture vehicle-generated traffic data, wirelessly providing information such as advisories from the infrastructure to the vehicle that inform the driver of safety, mobility or environment-related conditions. State and local agencies are likely to install V2I infrastructure alongside or integrated with existing ITS equipment.

The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) endeavors to provide open standards and certification to make connectivity easier, more reliable and more secure by bridging IoT ecosystems.

Specifically, OCF specifications can be used to develop vehicle data model translators that enable remote fleet management for autonomous vehicles, OBD device interactions (vehicle performance monitoring) and crowdsourcing of data models for continued development (Open Connectivity Foundation 2018). Currently, many transit agencies are seeing growth in equipping rolling stock with IoT devices including GPS, Wi-Fi and traffic light preemption, which improves fleet optimization and data accessibility, and enables better congestion management as well as increased system performance (American Public Transportation Association 2018).

Crowdsourcing data from web-based and mobile applications is a popular public engagement mechanism. Crowdsourcing at its most basic level is the aggregation of (big) data from a large group of people. From an asset management perspective, leveraging the general public’s direct and indirect collection of data brings deep insight into asset performance and condition.

The data collected provides the ability to better plan transportation systems with demand modeling, predictive analytics, event response times to identify those impacted and determine where additional capacity is needed, and to provide personalized services (such as through email and text) including weather-related events impacting the commute.

Applications such as Waze empowered the public with the ability to report hazards, construction zones and other concerns on the road and shoulder that DOTs can use to dispatch resources to address the situation/issues quickly. Furthermore, Alavi and Buttlar (2019) identified sensing capabilities of smartphones and their crowdsourcing power for monitoring several distinct civil infrastructure systems such as pavement.

Conclusion

In summary, BIM for infrastructure overlaying a robust GIS plays a critical role for supporting advanced technologies for integrating dynamic IoT and crowdsourced data.

Infrastructure asset owners are encouraged to recognize the importance of BIM-oriented policy and practices and invest in required initiatives that make incremental progress towards a smart infrastructure vision.

BIM is the foundation of intelligent infrastructure and defines the backbone of smart cities.

References

Alavi, Amir H., and William G. Buttlar. 2019. “An overview of smartphone technology for citizen-centered, real-time and scalable civil infrastructure monitoring.” Future Generation Computer Systems 93: 651-672. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2018.10.059.

American Public Transportation Association, 2018. 2017 Public Transportation Fact Book. Washington D.C.: American Public Transportation Association, 50. http://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/Documents/FactBook/2017-APTA-Fact-Book.pdf.

Lambert, Chris, Will Holmes, Jeremy Gould, and Vineet Kumar. 2016. “Wrestling “Crow Sourcing” & Other Live Feeds Using Hadoop & GEP for Network Awareness.” AASHTO GIS for Transportation Symposium. AASHTO. 73. http://www.gis-t.org/uploads/631%20KYTC%20Crow%20Sourcing%20etc%20GIS-T%202016%206_3_1.pdf

Nominet. 2018. List of Smart City Projects. https://www.nominet.uk/list-smart-city-projects/.

Open Connectivity Foundation. 2018. Open Connectivity Foundation Home Page. https://openconnectivity.org/.

Rouse, Margaret. 2017. Definition: Smart City. July. https://internetofthingsagenda.techtarget.com/definition/smart-city.

U.S. Department of Transportation. 2018. Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) Resources. https://www.its.dot.gov/v2i/index.htm.

About the Author

Jon Gustafson, PS, CFedS, PMP, GISP is a management consultant with one of the world’s largest professional services companies, WSP (https://www.wsp.com). He is an accomplished business-oriented technical professional consistently recognized as an industry leader in multi-jurisdictional land surveying practice, geospatial policy development and program/project management. He helps his clients address infrastructure technology deployment challenges by developing effective recommendations/guidelines focused on advancing civil integrated management practices and innovations. Some recent projects include developing data governance strategies for major infrastructure programs, conducting applied research on digital project delivery initiatives, advancing UAS integration, and formulating geospatial technology strategies for a public agency.

April 9, 2019
Augmenting reality with geospatial information

Geographic information systems and augmented reality are a part of our daily lives, so much so, we hardly notice them. GPS World columnist William Tewelow explores how these technologies will continue to change our lives.

Geographical information systems (GIS) and augmented reality (AR) have become a part of our daily lives, so much so that we hardly notice them. Those of us in the profession make our living by them; millions, soon billions more in the consumer world benefit from them without even realizing they are there.

The world is filled with data. Using AR, that data can be draped in front of us in a tapestry based upon our individual needs and interests. Applications multiply daily. Many physical tools now in use will become virtual tools; workspaces, living spaces and the commutes between them (if they even exist at all) will change almost unrecognizably.

The world is poised to become an amazing and magical place.

Before we jump whole hog into the future — something that AR assuredly enables us to do — a glance back at the past can fill out our understanding of these great tools, GIS and AR — each great in and of its own, but virtually invincible when combined. Come with me down the corridors of history . . .

When Great Swords Clash

World War II was a fight against global domination — mankind’s greatest struggle for survival. Tyranny or freedom hung in the balance. The greatest minds raced to harness the powers of nature and science, plying them towards victory. This culminated in the invention of the ultimate weapon, The Great Sword, able to lay waste entire cities and ending the Second Great War in 1945, the year the world returned to peace. Freedom reclaimed the throne, euphoria spread — but the celebration was short-lived.

Kazakhstan. (Map: CIA archives)

In the summer of 1949, the world split in half. In the United States, families gathered around the radio for comedy and drama before putting the children to bed, but on the other side of the world, deep in the center of a faraway, unknown land, on a cool Monday morning as the sun lazily rose over a barren terrain, a second blazing sun rose into the sky. The Soviet Union unsheathed and brandished its own Great Sword, making remote Kazakhstan the center of the world in that brief moment. The sound of the bomb was heard in Washington, D.C., and phones throughout the city rang into the night. Russian spies had stolen America’s atomic secrets. Nuclear annihilation was a reality. The Cold War had begun.

The threat of nuclear weapons in Soviet hands was too great a risk. The United States had to know the extent of the threat. Satellites did not yet exist. Airplanes had limited capabilities. The only way to know what was going on inside the Iron Curtain was intelligence assets on the ground, but the Soviets controlled the ground.

Play Your Aces High

Penetrating the skies over the Soviet Union became the top priority. In 1954 Operation AQUATONE began to build the first U-2 spy plane to fly at an altitude above the limits of enemy air defenses.

U-2 spy plane. (Photo: U.S. Air Force)

But Operation Aquatone was only half the challenge. In the vacuum-tube and wet-film era, building a camera small enough to fit on the U-2 and able to take pictures at the required resolution from so high an altitude was needed. These two efforts took place simultaneously on opposite sides of the country. Operation Aquatone took place in the Mojave Desert at what is now famously known as Area 51, and Operation HTAUTOMAT, the photogrammetry and photo-interpreters effort took place in Boston, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. Both programs came together successfully in 1956 and the U-2 made its first reconnaissance flight over Eastern Europe.

Almost immediately, the demand for photo intelligence skyrocketed. In 1957 the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first manmade satellite to circle the Earth. Sputnik’s beeps could be understood in every language. Each of the beeps said, I am here above you no matter where on Earth you are, ultimately asking the question, What if I was a nuclear warhead? This elevated the need to surveil Khrushchev’s nuclear weapons capabilities. The Space Race had begun.

Five of a Kind Beats a Straight Flush

Satellite imagery from Discoverer XIV. (Photo: National Reconnaissance Office)

The U-2 flew unimpeded anywhere in the world for four years. But that ended in May 1960 when Captain Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot was shot down 300 miles east of Moscow. In August that same year the world sat transfixed watching the Soviet show trial of the captured U-2 pilot. President Eisenhower took full advantage of the diversion to launch the Discoverer XIV satellite, the first fully operational reconnaissance satellite under the CORONA program. A day later the satellite dropped its first payload, a 20-pound capsule of film. It was retrieved over the Pacific by a C-119 Flying Boxcar. It contained 1.6 million square miles of Soviet territory, providing more imagery than the entire U-2 program combined.

The Photo Interpreters Division (PID) was established to deal with the huge volume of imagery. It was renamed the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC). NPIC used an ALWAC III computer, advanced for its time, but it ran on vacuum tubes and punch cards. It could calculate size and distance in imagery. Over 12 years, the CORONA program collected 2.1 million feet of film, but its processing could not keep pace with the flood of incoming imagery.

Development of the TX-2 computer in 1959 altered this picture, but two problems persisted. First, computers’ limitations prevented an analyst from working directly with imagery. Additionally, finding something noteworthy in an image was only half the problem; the other half was piecing together where on a map the feature belonged. Interior maps of the Soviet Union were vast, featureless, and not well developed.

Let Your Wild Horses Run

MIT graduate student Ivan Southerland solved the first problem, inventing a graphical user interface (GUI) on a TX-2 computer for his doctoral thesis, thereby revolutionizing computer graphics, computer-generated imagery (CGI), and computer-aided design (CAD). Southerland soon found himself heading the government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) to further develop the GUI. His innovations greatly advanced programs such as NPIC, allowing photo-interpreters to work directly with imagery displayed on a computer screen.

A visionary, Southerland saw computer-generated synthetic worlds merging man and computer; he created what became known as the Sword of Damocles, the first augmented-reality (AR) headset. It was so heavy it had to be suspended from the ceiling on cables in a big swindling contraption, hence its name. The Sword of Damocles evolved into the helmet-mounted display that military pilots use today, and became the foundation for development of Google Glass, Oculus Rift, Microsoft’s HoloLens and Meta.

Several years later, Southerland went to Harvard as an associate professor, continuing his work with computer graphics. During his tenure, a student working in Southerland’s computer graphics and spatial analysis lab saw the potential of combining CGI and CAD with his own knowledge of environmental science and landscape architecture. That student was Jack Dangermond, who created Esri in 1969.

Solitaire Takes Two

Thanks to Jack Dangermond and Ivan Southerland, GIS and AR are a part of our daily lives, so much so, we hardly notice them. They have changed how we watch sports. Long gone are the days of John Madden with an electronic pen scribbling out plays with great wit but terrible penmanship. Now, football shows a red scrimmage line on every play and the first down line in blue. We wonder why they have to take out the chains to measure the down because we can clearly see it on screen, but on the field they don’t have the luxury of AR.

Game highlights show a player encircled in a column of light for the commentator’s in-depth coverage. Live imagery projects the commentator into the image of the replay as if he or she is on the field in the midst of the action. Further back, advertisements appear on sideboards of the stadium stands, but only to television viewers. To those physically present at the game, the advertisements do not exist. You can observe this during an instant replay. Take notice of the sideboards during the game and then look at them during the replay. It is a blank, green board — same with baseball.

AR makes it easier to watch a hockey puck with a blurred red tail as it zips across the ice. In golf, a light green glow surrounds the ball on long drives enhancing our entertainment experience.

AR works by knowing where the observer is and where the observer is looking and integrating that information with line-of-sight data. Smartphones provide that capability, ushering in the age of personal AR apps. My personal favorite is FlightAware to track airplanes by aiming a phone’s viewfinder at the aircraft to know the altitude, speed and other information.

For identifying celestial objects, SkyMap helps find a planet, star or constellation. Real-world AR gaming is upon us, the most famous being PokemonGo. A more interesting game is Ingress, which uses real-world landmarks (featured in Nov 2017 article, Game-based learning improves training, engagement). MapBox has a location-based AR platform to support gaming.

Figments of Imagination

Museums consider AR the next frontier. Imagine putting on a pair of AR glasses and seeing things come alive. Stand on the Moon or Mars, or fly in the cockpit of an X-1B, the first supersonic aircraft. Go to an art museum and step into Van Gogh’s painting, Starry Night; the world around you becomes iridescent, globular, and thickly swirled in bold colors. (See Alex Mayhew’s exhibit, ReBlink at the Art Gallery of Ontario).

Walk through a park and statues become human, blink their eyes and speak to you. Dinosaurs, typically static monoliths, roar to life. It is no longer imagination. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History has an exhibit using your phone to do that very thing. It might seem as if AR is the future, but it is also revealing the past. Archaeology is using AR to see ancient cities as they once were. Those experiences enhance our learning, but what about more practical daily uses?

The world is filled with data. Using AR, that data can be draped in front of us in a tapestry based upon our individual needs and interests. That data can be passive, like location information such as place names appearing in the field of view as icons helping guide you where to go. No more looking down at a smartphone trying to figure out which way to walk. A light blue transparent dotted walking path will lie before you, leading to the icon above the door of the place you are going. Active AR, on the other hand, try to engage you, such as advertisements. A box will seemingly glitter and glow mesmerizing a person into buying it. Another will have tiny figures dancing on it enticing a customer. Look at a menu and the items will appear real for you to inspect before you order. The world is about to become an amazing and magical place.

How about workstations? They’ll be a thing of the past. No need for a monitor in the physical sense. It can be created as large as needed and placed anywhere as well a virtual keyboard. Interface directly and more naturally with the world around you.

Many of the physical tools now in use will become virtual tools, such as a measuring tape, a ruler, a laser level, a GPS receiver, and even pen and paper to some degree. They will just be apps in your smartglasses, call it AR-ware — mere programs, what we used to call figments of our imagination. Grab an AR-ware pen and paper and the handwriting appears perfectly normal but it is just digital text: save it, email it, or print it. Make up new tools or download tools as we do apps on our smartphones. Imagination will be the limiting factor.

Upload CAD blueprints and schematics into an AR generator and look around the house with x-ray vision and see inside or through walls and floors. A plumber can see pipes in the wall, their sizes and what they are made of. An electrician can see the wiring, frames, and pass-through holes. An insurance adjuster can look at damage, take notes in AR then pass everything along to the company who passes it on to the contractor.

Take that same scenario and scale it up to the size of a city. AR allows companies to see the vast network of utilities and assets hidden in the subsurface. The water company can know exactly where its water and sewer lines are located, as well as what other utilities are nearby? Contractors can see exactly where to dig, and just as importantly, where not to dig. INTUS Inc. is a leader in the rapidly growing field of subsurface assets using GIS and AR technology. INTUS’s CEO, Dimitris Agouridis, calls it “intelligent infrastructure.” He goes on to say the technology supports the Call Before You Dig law, and helps avoid costly mistakes that can destroy property, the environment and people’s lives. It saves time, money and resources, and reduces outages due to repairs that inconvenience residents. It also increases a city’s resiliency after a disaster.

The fascinating reality ahead of us is mere moments away measured in months and years. We will walk into museums and experience them in new ways. We will stand in an ancient place and see it reconstructed to its former glory from eons ago. We will work using smartglasses in ways we can only begin to imagine. Road crews will do precision repairs. One day, I will write this article, but not on a laptop, and instead sitting in a world part real, part virtual tied together by a perfect symmetry of place and time. A magical future awaits us created by merging GIS and AR.

My next column, coming in March, will go further into augmented reality and other emerging technologies that rely upon geographic information to build the next generation of intelligent infrastructure.

William Tewelow can be reached on LinkedIn.

January 16, 2019
Geospatial Data Act will bring huge changes to America, and the world
Photo: iStock.com/Jirantanin Chanachaiviriyakul

“The benefits of geospatial technology are truly untold. However, when our federal agencies use geospatial data, different agencies can acquire duplicative information and waste precious taxpayer resources in the process. I am glad House leadership listened to industry stakeholders and included the Geospatial Data Act in the FAA Reauthorization Bill of 2018. This will streamline the collection of this data across the federal government while saving money, improving information accuracy, and providing a more modern system for collecting and sharing geospatial data.”

— Rep. Bruce Westerman, Arizona, introducing the Geospatial Data Act to the House of Representatives, 115th Congress

On Oct. 3, I was at a crowded after-hours event with friends in Washington, D.C., standing in a darkened corner of the room where I could both see and hear the speaker. A man approached me, a featureless silhouette in the dark tapping me on the shoulder. He introduced himself as an employee of the U.S. Geological Survey, and said he heard I was with the Federal Aviation Administration.

He asked if I knew anything about the FAA Reauthorization Bill because it had language from the Geospatial Data Act in it. His mention was the first I had heard of it. It came as a surprise. I expected a few passages from the Bill but nothing more; and, in fact, I did not expect it to even come up for a vote this year because of the divisive political atmosphere.

Two days later, on Friday, Oct. 5, President Donald Trump, along with 11 high ranking officials, signed the FAA Reauthorization Bill into law with overwhelming support. The Senate passed it 93-6, and the House passed it 398-23. The bipartisanship of this bill should have made the news – both sides of the contentious isles coming together to pass so important a piece of legislation. It happened without fanfare or recognition aside from certain circles, but within H.R. 302 was contained the entire Geospatial Data Act 2018.

An email from the Maryland State Geographic Information Committee (MSGIC) alerted me. Not even the FAA sent an email praising the aspects of the bill beyond what immediately applied to the FAA. If the stranger from USGS had not forewarned me I would not have been keen to the press release and overlooked its significance.

Most people are unaware that the Geospatial Data Act (GDA) is now law. Even fewer realize that the GDA applies not only to the FAA, but to all government agencies except for the Department of Defense and the intelligence community.

The Long and Winding Road of the Geospatial Data Act

Attempts at creating a unifying federal geospatial policy can be traced to shortly after the Civil War. There was no powerful, central, national unifying authority before then. The states were sovereign entities with their own maps, and place names did not have to be agreed upon between states.

This is visible today in the names of Civil War battles, many of which are named differently by each warring side; for example, the bloody Battle of Antietam is the same as the Battle of Sharpsburg, and the Battle of Bull Run is the same as the Battle of Manassas. Upon those hallowed grounds so many died that the dual names exist because they were paid for in blood.

War drives the need for intelligence. Geography is of paramount importance for generals. The 1860s was a boom time for surveyors and cartographers because of the Civil War and the American Indian Wars.

Additionally, in the 1860s Alaska was purchased from Russia and America built the first transcontinental railroad. Those geopolitical events changed the country, and the government needed to inventory the emerging nation.

Many companies were employed to do the work, but they were not coordinated, costing excess amounts of money. This prompted the establishment of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in 1879 to oversee the survey companies.

Roosevelt on a digging machine during construction of the Panama Canal, circa 1908. (Photo: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Problems were identified among the many maps created. Place names and spelling changed from map to map. The country needed a coordinated effort to deal with these discrepancies. President Benjamin Harrison addressed this with Executive Order 28 (27-A) in 1890, establishing the Board of Geographic Names.

In 1906, during the middle of building the Panama Canal, President Theodore Roosevelt — who had direct experience with survey and mapping companies — signed Executive Order 493 renaming the Board of Geographic Names to the U.S. Geographic Board and adding to its purpose reducing duplicative survey and mapping efforts.

In 1956 the National Interstate and Defense Highways Bill was signed, beginning the interstate network we enjoy today. Building the interstates was a huge expense, and like before, many survey companies were involved. Anticipating these challenges in 1953 President Eisenhower, the Office of Management and Budget wrote Circular A-16, which identified better coordination acquiring geographic information and reducing duplicate efforts as ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

In 1990 during the months leading up to Gulf War I, which showed geospatial precision’s awesome power and forever changed the face of war, also brought changes to OMB Circular A-16 for more domestic purposes. The circular was revised, reflecting the influence of the digital era and establishing the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) to promote the coordination of geospatial data.

Recognizing the importance of geospatial information systems (GIS), on April 11, 1994, President Clinton signed Executive Order 12906: Coordinating Geographic Data Acquisition and Access: The National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI). The executive branch continued to lead the government’s efforts to advance a unified geospatial policy.

When 9/11 Happened

Seven years later, in June 2001, Congress attempted to pass its first federal geospatial policy, but Sept. 11 changed everything. The greatest terrorist attack in U.S. history made everything else pale by comparison. National security and intelligence became the focus.

Congress tried again in 2003, the same year the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) changed its name to the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), but Gulf War II and the Global War on Terrorism stole center stage.

In 2005, Congress tried again, but to no avail. The bill changed names several times. The contents evolved. Attempts to introduce the bill went dormant until 2012 when it stalled again without support. Proponents continued reintroducing the bill under various names in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

In 2015 it made a second debut with the name Geospatial Data Act (GDA) and maintained that name going forward. The GDA was reintroduced in 2016, twice in 2017 and again in 2018. In total, the bill was introduced more than a dozen times since 2001. Finally, 139 years since the founding of USGS, a federal geospatial policy is now the law of the land.

You Have an Opportunity

“This legislation will significantly address how location intelligence is organized and disseminated and will foster continued strength in our industry’s partnership with government users.”
— Jack Dangermond, Esri founder and CEO

It takes courageous leadership to get legislation passed. We can all breathe a sigh of relief. This great “tech-tonic” shift happened during our working lives. We can all say we were there when the world changed. This is a golden opportunity. Knowledge is power; however, knowledge is only potential power — real power is action. Step up, volunteer, and lead the change. Your agency needs you. The country needs you. Don’t let this opportunity pass you by.

Your first step is to read the Geospatial Data Act 2018 contained within the FAA Reauthorization Act, Title VII, Subtitle F: Geospatial Data, Sections 751-759. Become familiar with the GDA. Learn who the points of contact are for your agency. Make yourself known. Be a leader. When others see chaos, leaders see opportunity.

Economic Impact of the Geospatial Data Act 2018

“The economic benefits of smart infrastructure investment are long-term competitiveness, productivity, innovation, lower prices, and higher incomes, while infrastructure investment also creates many thousands of American jobs in the near-term.”
— White House, National Economic Council and the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, July 2014

Since Roger Tomlinson first created a geographic information system in the 1960s, GIS has become a multi-billion dollar global industry. By 2020, it is forecast to be nearly a half-trillion dollars annually. The global GIS market is expected to double in seven years.

GeoBuiz estimates that GIS influences 20 percent the world’s entire $80.7 trillion global annual production. According to the Countries Geospatial Readiness Index, the United States leads the world in GIS. What is amazing is that all these estimates were made prior to the passage of the GDA — the gale force winds that have thus far blown will soon become a hurricane.

The sweet spot of opportunity is the forward edge of a growing industry. In the mid-90, the growth of the geospatial industry was led by state and local government (See GeoIntelligence Insider: In Jack Maple’s Steps – Fighting Crime with GIS, May 2018). In the mid-2000s, growth accelerated due to the intelligence and military communities. The next big boom in GIS begins now as the federal government complies with the GDA. There will be an even longer growth trend internationally as other countries make their own conversions.

It is a common adage that forecasts usually overestimate the near term and underestimate the long-term, especially in regard to technology. Consider how one man’s idea to sell books online in 1995 made him the wealthiest man in the world 23 years later, or how a simple search engine in 1998 is now a global behemoth. Of course, those references are to Jeff Bezos of Amazon and to Google.

And, consider the impact GPS has made since May 1, 2000, when President Clinton discontinued Selective Availability, opening GPS to the masses. Four years later, in June 2005, Google Earth was launched. The iPhone came out two years later. Then, a year later, Google Maps with real-time navigation was released.

Businesses like Uber that depend on GPS and GIS began in 2012. Now, industries such as drones and autonomous vehicles are on the verge of exponential growth.

Apply a similar trajectory to GIS and combine it with smart technologies like the internet of things (IoT), open data, data science, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and other emerging technologies and the growth potential is unprecedented, not to mention the infrastructure rebuild of America about to take place.

An Economic Analysis of Transportation Infrastructure Investment – White House, July 2014, National Economic Council and the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. (Image: WhiteHouse.gov)

Smart technologies will play a huge role in rebuilding the United States infrastructure like sensors, advanced materials, self-aware neural networks, IoT devices, energy recapture systems, smart lighting, and more; many such technologies will be connected geospatially.

This will require an advanced 3D Smart Grid Reference System (3D SGRS), a term I coined in 2015 when I worked at the Department of Transportation and began developing a crowdsource application for the National Address Database. I saw it becoming the framework for a 3D SGRS, enabling pinpoint accuracy of locations in X-Y-Z.

I can cover the 3D SGRS in a future article. I write about it here because it will be required in order to modernize America’s infrastructure.

Before passing any infrastructure bills, it is necessary to have a sound geospatial policy to avoid the misspending identified by the previous administrations mentioned earlier. The GDA, in essence, is the first step to modernize America. A brief overview of proposals sitting before Congress is an indicator of the economic tsunami about to be unleashed now that the GDA has been established.

Legislation has been introduced for establishing infrastructure bonds and banks for investing in infrastructure projects. Individual bills are for railroads, land, air, and sea ports; intermodal freight transfer stations, highways, critical infrastructure, rural development and stormwater systems, including water retention ponds and reservoirs that make up a large part of city and suburban green space. There are bills to fund pollution prevention programs.

Infrastructure cybersecurity is also addressed. There are bills for job creation, including employing disabled veterans in transportation. There is even a bill for proclaiming a National Infrastructure Week.

Once these legislative efforts begin getting passed, a tsunami of economic growth will be released unlike few alive have ever seen.

The Geospatial Data Act – A Matter of Necessity

“The Geospatial Data Act will save taxpayer dollars, increase government efficiency, and unlock innovation in the public and private sectors.”
— Congressman Seth Moulton, Massachusetts, co-signer of the Geospatial Data Act to the House of Representatives, 115th Congress

Rebuilding America is one of the boldest, grandest and costliest undertakings the country has seen. Being one of the costliest, one has to ask where the money is going to come from.

The GDA will create entrepreneurs, new products and services, and job growth, which will generate revenue. Many infrastructure-related bills have tax incentives built into them. Money will come from the economic restructuring of trade deals currently taking place with many of the United States’ trading partners. Money will also come from America’s oil and gas renaissance.

Outline of the Geospatial Data Act 2018

This article put the Geospatial Data Act into context, but it would not be complete if it did not at least outline the major provisions of the new law.

These are the primary tenets of the GDA:
- It establishes the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC)
- It establishes the National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC)
- It establishes the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI)
- It establishes the National Spatial Data Asset data themes (NSDI-dt)
- It establishes GeoPlatform as the clearinghouse for geospatial data
- It sets Geospatial Data Standards.
Senator Orrin Hatch, who introduced the bill to the Senate four times since 2015, called it, “…a good-governance bill that will bring structure and Congressional oversight to federal geospatial data spending, accounting, and usage. The GDA will:
- Dramatically reduce duplicative spending and, according to the Government Accountability Office, save the federal government billions of dollars;
- Bolster federal emergency response capabilities by enabling smarter, more efficient disaster relief;
- Improve infrastructure planning nationwide by providing state and local governments with access to higher-quality, more robust data.
The bill is supported by over 65 universities, industry groups, trade associations, companies, and state and local stakeholders, including the National Association of Counties and National League of Cities.”

Some of the stakeholders Sen. Hatch referred to are Bert Granberg, president of the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC), who stated, “From transportation, to natural resources, to homeland security, map-based digital information has quietly become mission critical to how work gets done and to future economic growth. We need an efficiency and accountability framework to build, sustain and share geographic data assets for the entire nation. The GDA delivers just that, and our members appreciate Representative Westerman’s leadership.”

Molly Schar, executive director of NSGIC, shared her thoughts, saying, “The Geospatial Data Act has been a top legislative priority for NSGIC for several years. We have worked with state governments, Congressional offices, federal agencies, and many other stakeholder groups committed to building more resilient communities by ensuring they will have access to the consistent high-quality data they need to do their jobs,”

And, after the bill’s passage she proclaimed, “It was a big win for the entire geospatial community and quite a team effort!”

For more information

This report has given you the background and the context of the Geospatial Data Act. To become intimately familiar with the GDA, I highly recommend reading the Congressional Research Service Report about GDA 2018, released Oct. 22.

Also, it also goes without saying, you should read the GDA 2018 contained within the FAA Reauthorization Bill, Title VII, Section F, paragraphs 751 – 759.
November 14, 2018
An inside look at fighting crime with GIS

Screenshot: NYPD CompStat 2.0

June’s Geointelligence Insider article on Jack Maple was the human interest article. One of the readers of June’s article had the opportunity to meet Jack Maple. I appreciate the feedback. This month’s article is based upon the recommendation of Geospatial Solutions Managing Editor Tracy Cozzens to cover the technical side of GIS and crime fighting.

Recap

Fighting crime with GIS sounds simple enough — map where the crimes are happening and where the bad guys are and send in the cops. That would be a gross over simplification. As always, there’s more to the case.

The first CompStat was founded in the pre-internet days of 1994 on a Commodore 64, harkening back to the days of 128-MB floppy disks and MS-DOS, a Jurassic period of computer evolution that marked some of the first steps into crime fighting’s digital era. The graph above is the current CompStat 2.0 from the NYPD. It is a GIS-based system, interactive, user-friendly and available to the public. Take note of the highlighted number.

Since CompStat was introduced, crime has fallen precipitously. As of this writing (Aug. 25, 2018) New York City has 183 reported murders year to date. By comparison, in 1990, prior to CompStat, there were 217 murders per month on average. More murders were committed per month in 1990 in New York City than what it will experience in all of 2018. Murders have dropped nearly 90 percent. In other words, nine out of 10 who would otherwise have been killed are alive to return to their families, parents, classmates and colleagues, and friends. The difference is staggering, providing tangible proof geospatial science is a benefit to humanity.

The arsenal of geospatial applications available for the crime fighter is enough to make any superhero envious. The list of these high-tech, integrated intelligence systems push the limits of science fiction.

The underlying strength of these systems is the robust GIS/GPS platform they are built on. Security cameras are geospatially connected to the network with dynamic mapping capabilities. This allows the surveillance video to be overlaid on GIS software in order to interact with more information and create actionable intelligence.

Cameras use a host of software algorithms that are able to recognize aggressive behavior, patterns, anomalies, change detection, biometric features, objects and text. Systems can integrate real-time information like social media feeds as well as live video, including facial recognition software scans for wanted individuals in real time. This information is shared with police officers in the field.

Police cars are becoming mobile command centers outfitted with a suite of sensors, and will eventually include drones. Police officers wear smart glasses augmenting information about who they are looking at in an intelligence and location-based context.

The police officer’s belt is Bluetooth enabled, connecting all these devices, as well as monitoring the officer’s vital signs. The officer’s gun is also Bluetooth enabled, reporting when it is drawn, the direction it is pointed and if it fired. The gun also comes with a chip for tracking purposes and to ensure only the officer it belongs to can fire the weapon.

The vest-worn camera is woven into the seamless geospatial network of sensors and records the officer’s experience from a first-person perspective.

Imagine this scenario. A crowd gathers at an intersection triggering an anomaly detection sensor due to the number of people gathering in that location at that time. Out of the thousands of security cameras being monitored at the Command and Control Center (C3), this video scrolls around and flashes yellow, bringing attention to the possible situation. Other mounted cameras that have that intersection in the field of view automatically align along the edge of the main security video projecting their imagery onto a 3D data model of the area. Police officers in the field nearest to that location are simultaneously alerted. No action is taken at this point except the police begin heading in that direction. Facial recognition software scans the video images for faces of known suspects. Social media and texts scroll next to the video and geospatially link to those in each frame of the video. Colored sentiment indicators showed levels of concern. Boxes outlining people in various colors correspond to threat levels determined by datamining multiple databases. Semi-persistent motion trails lag behind each box showing the speed and direction of people in the video. Pattern identification looks for convergence, divergence and synchronous movements.

Video analytics identify several people converging on a car that just pulled up. The license plate reader linked to the security camera reports the car as stolen with two traffic violations. Based on this preliminary information, the situation is elevated. A police officer is dispatched but before arriving, a drone launches from the police car outfitted with a true color camera and a stereographic infrared camera. The stereographic imagery pair is streamed live to the police officers entering the area of interest through their smart glasses and to a team of imagery specialists at the C3. The video analytics of the police drone are seamlessly integrated with the security camera videos focusing on the car and the individuals as it arrives on scene and surveils the area. Object recognition identifies three possible weapons on the persons of interest. The boxes around those individuals turn red. They are tagged for persistent surveillance by all security cameras in the area. The order is given to apprehend them for probable cause. More police officers are called in and before they arrive they know who they are looking for, where the person is located, and that they may be armed and dangerous. In less than a minute, the police arrive. The suspects flee. The drone follows one of them up the street into an alley. Two of the officers pursue him. The other two suspects jump into the car and drive away. License plate readers and security cameras track the car on a map showing the vehicle’s route and speed with corresponding real-time video as the vehicle passes into view of each camera. As the vehicle travels south a police officer steps out from a cross street and shoots an electromagnetic dart into the speeding vehicle, disabling it. The police officers approaching the car shine a disorienting laser light weapon called a dazzler at the suspects, preventing their eyes from focusing. The occupants are apprehended without incident. They are searched for probable cause and arrested for carrying handguns without a permit.

The other suspect fled on foot. The drone followed him relaying live imagery to the police officers’ smart glasses. Their smart glasses showed a real-time map of their locations and the suspect’s. They cornered him in a fenced area. Guns drawn, the smoky red light of the laser cutting through the air pointed at the suspect. He surrendered. No gun was found on the suspect but the drone video the gun being thrown into a dumpster. One of the officers went back and retrieved the gun.

Gun traces were run on the three confiscated weapons and one was identified as stolen, matching a description of a gun used in a recent homicide. One of the suspect’s fingerprints match those found on shell casings at a nearby location reported by gunshot acoustic sensors. Based on this information, there is probable cause and a tap and trace is approved electronically by a special task force judge. The phone records of the three suspects are searched linking them to the el Diablo gang. Several unknown numbers are also in the call logs. Those numbers are added to the case file to be investigated later.

Only one of the suspects has a known address. The other two have no known location. Activity extracted from phone records show their whereabouts over the preceding days pin pointing their main locus of operation. Search warrants are issued. Within hours of arresting the suspects, the locations are raided and searched. Officers discover a cache of weapons, drugs, laptops and other useful information.

Everything described above is already available — it is only a matter of time and money. And, if Dubai is any indication of things to come, police could soon be arriving on hoverbikes.

The police arriving within minutes is key to the success of preventive policing. Time saves lives. The goal is to intervene before crime happens. But how is it possible? Before answering, let’s look at some numbers.

By the numbers

In 2017 almost 84 percent of the population of the United States was considered urban residing within 106,400 square miles. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports there are only 758,854 sworn officers in the United States. Maintaining the same 84 percent ratio as the population means only 634,847 officers cover those urban areas. Specifically, it breaks down to six police officers per square mile. It is one police officer for every 431 residents except that police, like all of us, work 40 hours a week, have days off, take vacations, etc., so, only one out of every six police officers is on duty at any given time. That is one police officer for every 2,153 residents; however, police often operate in pairs, so 4,306 residents depend upon two brave souls to protect them from danger.

Victims of violent crime are 2.1 percent of the population. In a sampling of 4,306 residents that equals 90 victims of violent crime every year. In the top 10 cities it is far worse. Police officers have an incredible responsibility placed on them and they rightly deserve our praise, support and respect for the dangers they face every day.

Why not more officers you ask? Police protection comes at a cost of $100 billion annually. Our relative safety is not cheap. Crime is a huge expense. Jails, trials, public defenders, prosecutors, judges and incarceration all cost money. Safety is expensive. Budgets are stretched thin. The answer for increased safety and security isn’t more police. The answer is integrated and intelligent technology systems leading to increased efficiency. Technology has benefitted most other professions. Now, the field of law enforcement and crime prevention are benefitting. Cost is the driving need. These efficiencies are being realized on a grand scale. Making matters more urgent is the worldwide mass migration as populations move towards cities. It is imperative to manage crime now rather than later.

Enter predictive policing — putting the power of open data, cloud computing, machine learning, geoscience and artificial intelligence in support of law enforcement and prevention. Basically, cities are broken up into grid patterns, typically 500×500 feet. Within each grid, crime data is compiled using multiple factors and resources, such as historical data, 9-1-1 calls, recent crime reports, and residences of known offenders and parolees. Even considerations such as the time, day of week, celebrations and cyclical events are taken into account. Information derived from security cameras, license plate readers, social media and financial transactions help the algorithm. The algorithms take into account information collected by authorized wire taps, call logs and other confidential sources. The goal of the algorithms are to include all available resources to develop the most complete and reliable dataset upon which the heatmaps base their probabilities. This helps police departments allocate their resources, know what to prepare for and, most importantly, know where to be to protect the public at large.

University of Montana, Research and Training Center (Data: U.S. Census Bureau)

Police tighten their patrols around the hotspots. Throughout their shifts those hotspots are subject to change depending upon new data. Mobile units simply focus their patrol efforts accordingly. Once a threat is reported, automated navigation routing systems show police the fastest route to the incident and their expected time of arrival. Officers continue to receive intelligence about the incident while en route to anticipate the situation prior to arriving. Knowing where the areas of highest probability are expected to occur focuses non-human assets too, such as geofencing the areas of interest and monitoring more closely for key indicators. This technology is not too different than numerical weather forecasting models predicting what and where weather events will occur in the next hour, three hours, six hours and so on. Numerical models continue to evolve making forecasting more and more reliable. And, although the past does not predict the future, it is a strong indicator. The disclaimer would be similar to the ones most have seen before, “Past performance does not guarantee future returns.” Sometimes preventing a crime is saving a life, sometimes it’s protecting property and almost always it is stopping someone from doing something they will later regret. All crime cannot be prevented but for every crime that is prevented there is a family spared from tragedy.

Preventive policing does more than help keep communities safer. It improves economic viability. Crime has an inverse relationship with a community’s vibrancy. As crime increases, prosperity decreases. Real estate values go down, the tax revenue goes down, employment opportunities go down, and safety, happiness and well-being go down. Crime is a societal disease. Reducing crime reverses those affects. Home values, employment, affluence and the quality of life all go up, which correlates to increased tax revenues. Thus, reduce crime and the city’s revenues increase. That means politicians can divert money into other programs to benefit the citizens. For these reasons there is bi-partisan support for computer based policing.

If you do the research you will see opposition efforts against artificially intelligent systems to fight crime, but those opponents are not well supported. Communities want to feel safer. Politicians want to be able to say they are using the latest technologies to keep the community safe. Companies want to prove their systems work in decreasing crime and capturing criminals. Crime prediction causes the greatest concern because it borders on Minority Report, but it is the echo of Jack Maple and William Bratton putting police where they need to be to support the people they need to protect. It is the essence of community based policing.

This article only touches on the front side of GIS and law enforcement, but there is another world on the back side piecing crime scenes together with forensics in artificially replicated environments. That too is a fascinating topic to explore.

Do yourself and your neighborhood a favor. Thank the police officers in your community for the job they do. They are foundational to the fabric of our society.

September 12, 2018