GPS World

Author: Art Kalinski

  • Qur’an Burning Riots: How Geospatial Tools Helped Calm Waters

    By Art Kalinski

    Few of us fully appreciate the significance of the Qur’an burning in Afghanistan by our troops several months ago. The best analogy I can think of is burning of an American flag. As any Boy Scout can tell you, the proper way to dispose of a worn American flag is to burn it in a dignified manner, however burning that same flag at a protest launches quite a different reaction. The same occurred when our troops burned Qur’ansthat had been desecrated by prisoners. Writing in a Qur’an is considered a desecration and the desecrated Qur’an is supposed to be burned. Our soldiers didn’t understand that there is a ritual associated with the burning, similar to American flag disposal, and thus the uproar heavily fueled by activists throughout the Mideast.

    Between emails and phone calls, I personally haven’t had the time northe interest in Tweets, Facebook or texting, so I didn’t appreciate the impact that social media has in many Mideast countries. Most third world countries haven’t gone through the technology progression of newspapers, phone lines, broadcast and cablewe have but instead jumped directly to cell phone and wireless technology. In many countries wireless social media is a dominant method of communication although in many rural areas the high illiteracy rate and limited number of wireless users place those users in strong positions to limit or distort the information they receive.

    Soon after the social media fueled Qur’an burning incident, two small US businesses were able to have a surprising impact calming tensions by using human geography and personal action. The effort was possible thanks to the work of retired Air National Guard Brigadier General Edwin (Skip) Vincent. Throughout his military career, including 23 combat missions in F4’s, KC 130’s and 135’s, General Vincent was constantly at the “tip of the spear” involved in combat or support missions. He also built strong personal relationships with military leaders throughout the Pacific Rim including retired Pakistan Army General Azam Effendi.

    General Effendi and General Vincent had been working together for a while on economic development and disaster preparedness issues through General Vincent’s business, Soft Power Solutions (www.soft-power-solutions.com). Their efforts included discussions of GIS support for disaster response and recovery efforts along with efforts to stage emergency response supplies and equipment in the event of natural disasters.

    Soon after the Qur’an burning incident, General Vincent and General Effendi decided to see what they could do as a grass roots reconciliation effort. They teamed up with Catherine Dunlap, President of a Virginia based firm, Halcyon Group International (www.halcyongroupinternational.com) to formulate a simple but effective plan.Halcyon Group International provides expertise in counterinsurgency, stability, and influence operations in regions of conflict or transition for the United States Government and partner nations to achieve strategic, operational, and tactical level objectives. They used their knowledge of cultural geography and local contacts to identify and analyze the situation.

    Soft Power Solutions used geospatial tools such as GeoCOP and TACTweet (www.GeoCOP.com) to analyze thousands of social media messages. The software scanned public access social media that addressed specific topics and identified the source locations. These tools permitted them to get a clear picture of the spheres of influence and their specific geographic locations. Understanding the “human terrain” they were able to formulate a relatively low key response to the massive protests.

    geocop

    Although the burning occurred in Afghanistan and the protests originated in Bahrain, geospatial analysis determined that northern regions in Pakistan and adjoining Afghan regions were the key areas of influence and starting point to hopefully quell the riots. Together, the Generals formulated a relatively simple reconciliation plan to provide 5,000 Qur’ans with letters of condolence to be delivered to local tribal leaders and clerics. Using the many friends and contacts that they had previously made the effort turned into a public/private partnership that involved over 220 leaders with 22 presentation ceremonies in 16 regions. The regions included four in Pakistan and 12 in Afghanistan. Using her extensive knowledge of Pashtun culture and local customs, Catherine Dunlap helped draft a letter of condolence. Letters, regarding the misunderstanding of the proper way to burn Qur’ans, were worded in a way to open doors and quell resentment.

    Shown here are hundreds of the gift Qur’ans. On 29 February visits to distribute the 5,000 Qur’ans and letters of explanations were started. Although this was a non-governmental effort, word of the action spread and the participants received safe passage through the Khyber Pass escorted by both Pakistani and Afghan troops. Despite threats of retaliation from the Taliban, all the meetings were peaceful and warmly received by local leaders.

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    By March the 2nd there was growing participation of local leaders and clerics including radio and TV coverage. One of the clerics was a very well-known and respected imam who was a direct descendent of Muhammad. He responded enthusiastically to the gesture by issuing a Fatwa calling for peace and forgiveness. This was a significant game changing event since a Fatwa issued by the imam carried significant weight in the world Muslim community.

    By March 7, monitoring of social media indicated a positive reaction from local populations and as of the publishing day of this article, no further protests or killings related to the Qur’an burning had been reported.This effort ultimately spawned a massive grand assembly or “Loya Jirga” of tribal leaders. This was the first Loya Jirga in 167 years that originated at the grass roots leveland not government initiated. Discussions ranged from the war, to economic development and even included women in the discussions. One can hope that this leads to bigger and better things.

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    As a GISP, I’ve neglected one aspect of my GIS continuing education, human terrain and human geography. I’ve seen increased use of “crowd sourcing” from social media for marketing, disaster response and even politics. Programs such as GeoCOP made the effort by the two Generals possible. The impact of this public private effort with a total cost of only $25,000 has focused my mind sharply and I’m going to work to fill this education gap.

    When one considers the size of the vehement protests and deaths of over 23 NATO forces and demonstrators, it’s quite amazing and should be a source of pride that two small companies and two retired Generals could accomplish so much using their knowledge of the culture, geospatial tools, social media analysis and the simple distribution of 5,000 Qur’ans. We’ve all heard the term “asymmetric warfare” but this was a clear example of an “asymmetric peace effort.”We’ll never know for sure, but I can only imagine how many of our soldiers would have come home in flag draped coffins had it not been for this rapid grass roots peace effort.

  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Past, Present and Future Impact on GIS

    By Art Kakinski, GISP

    My first exposure to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) was in 1972, serving as a young Ensign on a WWII class destroyer. The UAV was called DASH(Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter). It was a small, counter-rotating rotor drone helicopter used to extend the anti-submarine warfare (ASW) reach of a destroyer. It carried Mark46 torpedoes but could also carry nuclear depth charges. The disappointing characteristic of DASH is that it had a nasty habit of either disappearing over the horizon never to be seen again or, worse yet, crashing into the superstructure of its mother ship. 1970s technology just wasn’t up to the complex task of controlling such a vehicle.

    Enter 2012, and UAV technology looks like science fiction. My recent participation at the USSOCOM TNT exposed me to some new developments in military technology and UAVs in particular. Most of you are familiar with the better known UAVs such as the Predator, Global Hawk, or smaller Shadows, but the number of UAVs has grown exponentially with some of the most interesting developments occurring in small UAVs and persistent surveillance. With more than 100 UAVs in today’s market, it’s impossible to do a comprehensive column about UAVs, but just like the blind men looking at an elephant, the following is one GIS guy’s view of this growing market.

    Hot New UAV Systems

    Building on early lessons learned with vehicles like DASH, the Boeing A160 is a UAV helicopter, but the similarity to DASH ends there. Its design incorporates new technologies not previously used in helicopters, allowing for greater payload, endurance, and altitude than any helicopter currently in operation. The experimental program has ambitious goals of a 2,500-mile range and 24-hour endurance with a 1,200 pound payload. The 35-foot helo flies autonomously rather than relying on real-time human control with speeds over 140 knots.

    A reoccurring theme that has been presented at GEOINT and other ISR conferences is that many UAVs currently in use are proving to be almost as expensive to operate as manned aircraft. Because of this, engineers have been looking into alternate technology, including persistent surveillance. One example is the Long-Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) a hybrid blimp and aircraft.

     

    The Lockheed Martin vehicle shown here will be tested in-theater this year. It is designed to operate unmanned and untethered at 20,000 ft. for weeks at a time carrying a 2,500-lb. intel payload. On first glance the LEMV looks like a sitting duck, but based on actual tests the low static pressure, lighter than air, aerodynamic lifting body is very survivable. At GEOINT, Maj. Gen. James O. Poss, USAF, said that if you are lucky enough to hit it from the ground with small-arms fire, it might come down next week.

    UAVs at TNT

    There were numerous UAVs at TNT, but the two that particularly caught my attention and imagination were two inexpensive vehicles that I believe could be game changers for the GIS community.

    One was a very light weight UAV from a small Ohio company called UAVision.They were flying UAVs that on first glance looked like toys, but the composite skins and advanced electronics quickly shattered that first impression. The vehicles are battery powered and almost silent in flight with loiter times of about 30 minutes. Weighing 4-8 pounds, they were easily hand launched and fly autonomously once in the air.

    The operator programs the flight path into a GIS display and the aircraft follows the programed path, ultimately doing a soft landing on to the grass next to the operator. Shown here is the live video feed from the camera on the UAV overlaid with the programed flight path (orange polygon). The resolution of the video was excellent and the image was surprisingly stable. They were also testing the ability to locate, identify, and track RFID tags from the air.

    This vehicle is designed to ultimately meet new UAS standards that are included in a recent FAA Bill. The bill, signed by the President February 14, includes important provisions regarding the integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) into the national airspace system. One provision could have a very rapid impact on the GIS community. It allows government agencies and first responders to fly very small UAS (4.4lbs or less) within 90 days if they meet certain requirements. The goal is to permit law enforcement and firefighters immediate access to these small systems for lifesaving purposes and to increase public safety. Some believe that this technology may be readily available for surveying and mapping within three years.

    Although 4.4 pounds doesn’t sound like a lot, UAVision’s current aircraft already has shown the ability to capture and geo-reference the imagery. 4.4 pounds seems to be a safety benchmark that puts the UAV in the same category as birds. Statistically, most manned aircraft can survive a collision with birds up to 4.4 pounds, so the low-flying UAV would pose a minimal hazard to manned aircraft. Unlike current big UAVs that have six- and seven-figure price tags, a complete UAVision system can come in as cheap as $30,000. I could easily envision GIS operations using these systems for surveillance or even low-cost imagery capture.

    The second vehicle that caught my attention was a hybrid air system from Sofcoast. Sofcoast created an aerostat the combines the benefits of a tethered balloon with the stability and directionality of an aircraft with control surfaces. This could be the most elegantly simple and low=cost solution to persistent aerial surveillance I’ve seen.

     

    The operator launches the aerostat silently using a modified fishing rod and reel. Once in position, the clear vehicle is very unobtrusive. It silently monitors the area below and has the added benefit of being almost invisible at night. I can easily see this being used for security during large public events or in response to natural disasters as a survivor search tool or to catch or deter would-be looters. To get an idea of the quality and stability of the video feed from the system, click on the following video:

    Future Systems

    There are numerous articles on the Internet that explain some rather exotic UAVs in development.

    The Propulsive Wing is a new patented aerodynamic platform that integrates an embedded, distributed cross-flow fan propulsion system within a thick wing. It looks like a fat flying wing but has the potential to carry very heavy payloads with very stable flight characteristics and short takeoff and landing.

    The Nano Hummingbird or Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) is a tiny remote-controled aircraft built to resemble and fly like a hummingbird, developed under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The Hummingbird is equipped with a small video camera for surveillance and reconnaissance purposes and, for now, operates in the air for up to 11 minutes. It can fly outdoors, or enter a doorway to investigate indoor environments.

     

    Honeywell completed delivery of an initial order for 90 RQ-16 T-Hawk “hover and stare” micro air vehicle (MAV) systems to the U.S. Navy in December 2011, for use in detecting roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Zephyr is a lightweight solar-powered UAV which was originally designed and built by the United Kingdom defense firm Qinetiq. The carbon-fiber aircraft uses sunlight to charge a lithium sulfur battery during the day, which powers the aircraft at night. It holds the current UAV endurance record with an 82-hour flight at an altitude of 61,000 feet.

    On the really creepy side are rumors of Nano UAVs the size of insects. Following is a video clip from the University of Pennsylvania showing a swarm of UAV quad copters flying in formation and showing an almost collective intelligence.

     

    The “fly on the wall” may soon be a reality, controlled by your GIS technician.

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  • Bringing Visualization to Transportation Research Board Meeting

    By Art Kalinski

    Two weeks ago I gave a presentation, at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) annual meeting. This is one of those mega-meetings attended by almost anyone involved in the transportation related professions. TRB is part of the National Research Council jointly administered by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. TRB’s active members include more than 7,000 engineers, scientists, and other transportation researchers. The program is supported by state transportation departments and federal agencies including the U.S. Department of Transportation.

    The TRB annual meeting is huge — 11,000 attendees spread out among eight D.C. area hotels in four main venues. TRB is involved in every possible aspect of transportation: public transportation including highways, mass transit, aviation and marine, and freight movement by rail, water and pipelines. With more than 4,000 presentations, it reminded me a lot of the ESRI Users Conference — absolutely impossible to see and hear it all.

    The presentations ran the gamut from political and financial, engineering and construction to advanced research into safety, human factors, energy and the environment. As you would expect there were many presentations that were Greek to me, as I’m sure some of the geospatial ones were Greek to other attendees. There were a lot of engineering/construction-related sessions. A significant number of advanced research presentations dealt with statistical analysis of factors related to highway safety, including a heavy emphasis on the mind-eye interaction. Even the poster sessions were tough to comprehend, with a lot of statistical analysis covering human factors related to safe highways. Although I had calculus and calculus-based statistical courses, it hurts my head to see a lot of integral signs in a poster. The learning curve to understand the work is just too tough in a “drive-by” viewing.

    Several sessions dealt with FAA GIS and the NextGen air control system in particular. See the column on Airport GIS for more details and to understand where we are headed in aviation. The GIS-related presentations were concentrated in a track under the broader concept of Virtual Design and Construction (VDC). These sessions were organized by Lance Parve, MSCE of the Wisconsin DOT, Charles Hixon of Bergmann Associates and Kevin Gilson of Parsons Brinckerhoff. They did an exceptional job of tying together visualization, GIS, CAD and BIM with a focus on interoperability in final construction.

     

    My attendance was prompted by a presentation I did in August at the once-every-5-year TRB Visualization Symposium. The conference committee invited three presenters out of 120 to speak at the TRB Annual Meeting, so I was pleased to be one of the three. I spoke about the benefits of oblique imagery and related 3D models for planning, public safety and public involvement meetings.

    I wrapped up my presentation by highlighting the superb example of a 3D web application for public involvement visualization built by Fairfax County under the leadership of Tom Conry.

    Visit the Fairfax County visualization website to experience this interactive site first hand.

     

    Combining GIS and GPS technology, David Brown of Delcan explained how his firm kept track of quality control inspection results using Trimble GeoXT GIS GPS Data Collectors. His team of inspectors recorded each inspection point and inspection results in a GIS. The collection and creation of the GIS database was accomplished quickly and efficiently using the GeoXTs to capture the location and inspection values in one step. They also used cameras to record problems and bar codes/readers to speed data entry. At left is a GIS plot of all the data points. The GIS analysis tools helped identify clusters of poor samples that signaled the start of quality issuesso they could be corrected early in the construction process.

    There were sessions on LiDAR point cloud captures and converters to 3D models. A very impressive example was TopoDOT by Certainty 3D is a MicroStation application for extracting topography and digital models from point clouds. The system tool suite extracts ground topography quickly and accurately from airborne, mobile or terrestrial point clouds and calibrated images. It then extracts breaklines, elevations, cross-sections, and other DTM componentsaccording to project requirements.

    Not surprising is that the common thread was a path to BIM models. Civil engineers have adopted BIM models aggressively and all this technology has led to VDC (Virtual Design and Construction) a technology wave that is revolutionizing the construction industry. In March 2011, I wrote about how even Granite Counter Tops were being measured, digitized and the digital design models fed directly into the digital controlled stone cutting machines to fabricate the tops quickly and accurately. The same kind of process is revolutionizing civil engineering.

    Back in the Paleozoic era, when I was in college, I worked part time in a machine shop. Traditional machining was done by moving rotating cutting tool across metal blanks to create objects described in mechanical drawings.The machinist did this by manually turning operating wheels that adjusted the cutting tool to fabricate the part according to the design blueprint. Early automation at that time, called Numerical Control, used digitally controlled motors to move the same cutting tools according to predefined paths to make the same parts. There was considerable time spent manually programming the machines to do the jobs. Current technology, just like the granite cutting system, goes directly from the digital design to fabrication of the finished product.

    The same process is being done on a mega scale with bulldozers and other heavy earth-moving machines. You may remember that a number of years ago farmers started using aerial CIR imagery to map soil and water conditions of their land. They then used GPS to do precision farming by metering the optimal distribution of fertilizer based on mapped water content and the location of their tractor relative to the GIS data. The same kind of GPS machine control has been perfected by companies like Trimble and John Deere.

    On the right is a bulldozer that is accomplishing its work no differently than a machine shop milling machine or precision farming tractor. There are GPS receivers mounted on each end of the dozer’s blade. The operator in the cab can be guided by the CAD image or turn over steering and blade depth control to the automated system. There is no longer a need to place wood marker stakes and constantly survey the progress of the excavation. The bull dozer operator is clearing the land at double speed guided by GPS and a GIS/CAD/BIM 3D model.

    It’s strange seeing this kind of automation and precision in heavy earth moving equipment, but this type of technology is making inroads into all phases of construction. So next time you pass a major construction site, see how many GPS receivers you can spot and appreciate the GIS link.

  • Ecobuild America: GIS, CAD, BIM and More

    By Art Kalinksi, GISP

    In December I attended the “EcoBuild America” conference organized by the National Institute of Building Sciences. Ecobuild America and its co-located events provided education and resources to build smarter and improve our built environment. Specific areas of interest included: building information modeling (BIM), geographic information systems (GIS), green technology, high-performance building, sustainable design, energy efficiency, and security and smart buildings. My key interest was to understand how the playing field was evolving with regard to CAD, GIS and BIM.  Most of you already know that BIM technology is a merging of GIS and CAD into topological 3D models. If you aren’t familiar with BIM technology, see my 2008 article that explains the basics (“BIM, Son of CAD” August 12, 2008).

    There was early optimism that BIM technology would supercede both CAD and GIS, but time has shown that the realities of the technologies are re-painting a different picture. What users have determined is that even though BIM models are topological feature linked databases, there are many operations that are better handled by a traditional GIS. The best analogy I’ve heard uses Microsoft Office. Even though you could use PowerPoint to compose and print a letter who wouldn’t prefer to use Word for word processing. Likewise you could use Word to create slides but PowerPoint is designed to do that task better.

    ESRI / Woolpert

    I talked about the BIM – GIS play with the staff at the ESRI booth, including John Przybyla, senior vice president of Woolpert, who is an ESRI industry partner. Part of the problem is that the concept of a BIM is the entire life cycle management of facilities from construction to ultimate demolition. BIM models can become extremely complex, especially if every detail of the facility is included. Adding details of every window or every piece of hardware can result in databases that are huge. Although that extreme level of detail is necessary during construction, carrying that overhead detail can be cumbersome in doing traditional geospatial analysis.

    John gave me an overview and insight that brought clarity to this complex environment stating that:

    “BIM and GIS are really complementary technologies, each focused on the information management needs of specific life cycle phases of real property. With today’s GIS products, organizations can create full 3D models of their facilities or entire campuses that include all features above the ground (think airspace for airports), on the ground (transportation, landscape, etc.), under the ground (buried utilities), and inside the buildings — and it can all be stored in a single relational database.

    “This opens the door to a world of capabilities — proximity/adjacency analysis, space and tenant management, asset management, way finding, routing, and tracing contaminants, to name just a few — that are no longer constrained by artificial boundaries in our data. The benefits that result from such capabilities are huge and often greater than anticipated.

    “Organizations today typically manage multiple separate versions of their infrastructure data — some in scanned drawings, some in CAD, some in GIS, some in proprietary databases. There are huge inefficiencies that typically occur when data is managed in multiple locations — duplication of data, incomplete data, and old or inaccurate data. The operational savings from integrating all the data into a comprehensive GIS often justify the cost of implementing a singular infrastructure database.

    “But the real cost to an organization is that storing spatial data in multiple environments makes it impossible to achieve integration with other information systems. This is where GIS excels — because of its open architecture, its underlying relational database structure, and its server-based nature. For most organizations that manage real property, the real power of GIS is in its ability to spatially enable information from other (nonspatial) information systems to be integrated to achieve a result that was never possible in any other way.

    “You may be thinking, ‘If this is such a great idea, then why hasn’t it happened before?’

    “This is where BIM comes in. The cost and effort to create a 3D database of a facility from scratch has been so prohibitive that it has not been practical up to this time. But with new facilities being designed in BIM (and, because of the power of BIM, being built as designed), a building owner now receives a complete 3D model of every new building. Recent developments in 3D laser scanning have made it possible to create a 3D BIM-like model of an existing building at an affordable cost. Laser scanning is now becoming a commonly accepted practice to document as-is conditions prior to renovations. Over time, more BIM models will become available, and at some point it will make sense for organizations to use laser scanning to build models of their remaining stock.

    “For some organizations, this scenario may be some time in coming. In the meantime, scanned and CAD drawings can be converted into 2D GIS datasets and, in most cases, extruded to form passable 3D GIS models that will provide the foundation for all the benefits described above. Once all your infrastructure data is in a single repository, the options are unlimited.”

     

    BIMPAGE

    Two growing problems that many BIM users are experiencing is storage and easy access to BIM models for collaboration and follow on use. BIM models can get very large, but much of the detail is not used very often once the building is constructed. A potential solution is the patented BIMPAGE and online BIM storage and cataloging system. I spoke with patent holder David Ways who has developed the system that stores BIM models, with varying degrees of detail, combined with real estate data, GIS layers and imagery all easily accessible online.

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    BIM Storm

    Speaking of collaboration, an Expo area was devoted to BIM Storm. BIM Storm is a very robust virtual online collaboration environment that takes full advantage of the visual nature of BIMs. Participants in remote locations were able to participate in the common BIM model and instantly see changes to the project as they are suggested. There was a team of people on laptops in the Expo area as well as other participants in other parts of the country as well as overseas.

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    Lights and Roofs

    Although BIM-centric, many booths in the Expo were related to the overarching theme of building smartly. Several lighting firms showed the latest in LED lighting. I believe that LEDs are the silent revolution that may save our rear ends with regard to energy usage. Although the feds are pushing compact fluorescents, LEDs are sneaking up as a safer and more efficient light source. LEDs have been extremely expensive, but thanks to free-market pressures, prices continue to drop while light output continues to rise. Many local governments have changed traffic lights to LEDs and the trend is continuing even with street lights.

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    Another trend that seems to have evolved is using turf as a roof covering. Turf roofs promised significant energy savings and longer roof life but early attempts fell short. Companies like LiveRoof have solved many of the problems by selecting a mixture of vegetation that is tailored to the local geography and growing seasons. The patented modular growing trays make for easy installation and low water use. You can even select areas of edible plants so you can eat your roof during hard times.

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    Photos: Art Kalinski

  • USSOCOM Camp Roberts: Where Engineers and Operators Meet to View New Technology

    image001Four weeks ago I attended a USSOCOM and Navy Post Graduate School event known simply as Camp Roberts TNT. Located in a remote part of the California Central Valley near the town of Paso Robles, the best way to describe Camp Roberts is that it’s like a Boy Scout Jamboree for engineers, scientists, and military operators. However, Camp Roberts focuses on the serious business of Special Operations that was made even more somber by the loss of 30 Navy SEALS the day before the start of the event.

    Sunday, as I was packing to go to Camp Roberts, I couldn’t help but reflect on the loss of the Special Operations team that day. I knew that throughout the country there were 30 Navy and Marine Corps officers putting on their dress uniforms to personally deliver the most horrific news a family can get. Each officer held a message that would turn into a dagger which would penetrate and twist in the heart of a mother, wife, or children. At Camp Roberts many attendees had personal connections to the lost troops but everyone hunkered down to the business at hand.

    The USSOCOM Camp Roberts TNT (Tactical Network Testbed) was well attended with more than 850 registered attendees. Camp Roberts is about 15 miles from the charming wine country town of Paso Robles. The camp is mostly dirt roads and gravel, 42 degrees in the morning up to 98 by noon. There are two primary buildings (double wides): a large briefing room that was designed for about 80 but packed with 200, and the TOC (Tactical Operations Center) with numerous flat screens showing different displays depending on who was demonstrating.

    image003Unlike trade shows, TNT is mostly live equipment demos, outside, in the dirt with very informal discussions. But unlike contract delivery testing, perfection was not expected since some of the equipment was still in the development stage. Uniform of the day was khakis, jeans, T-shirts, polo shirts, caps and water bottles. Lunch was a vendor tent with hot dogs, chips and drinks. TNT has become so popular, that other COCOMs are looking to start their own.

    Every morning there was a group meeting led by Dr. Buettner (NPS, retired Navy) who heads up the TNT effort. The staff reviews the plan of the day, demos, weather, safety (heat, snakes, foxes, elk, moving equipment, etc.) and logistics. Each participant quickly explains their demo, time, and location. I highlighted my 30-minute lunch time session on oblique imagery. Dr. Buettner, who has a dry sense of humor, interjected that I may or may not be there in November with a live aircraft demo if the audience gives me a thumbs down. I had good attendance at my presentation and closed by asking for a show of hands if we should come back in November for a live aircraft capture demo. Fortunately all hands went up, which I was quick to point out to Dr. Buettner. He muttered something about old Navy guys being mission focused.

    The majority of demonstrations focused on communications equipment ranging from very secure high bandwidth line of sight to satellite up and down links. Although there was a schedule, the schedule was done primarily to prevent frequency interference so demonstrators had a clean hour or two. Most of the demos went on all day as attendees walked from one tent to another or to remote locations on the base.

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    Ball Aerospace highlighted geospatial technology. Ball had helicopter flying overhead carrying its Flash liDAR system downloading imagery and 3D data.

    For those of you not familiar with Flash LiDAR, it is what the name implies. Rather than a raster point scan the Flash LiDAR shoot all points at once. That permits the union of other data such as full-motion video with the 3D data of the Flash LiDAR. Therefore, 3D video on the fly. Their field of view is was a relatively narrow but engineers are working to widen it.

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    Outside the two main buildings were numerous companies set up under pop-up canopies ranging from Lockheed Martin and Harris with high-end communications gear.

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    Shown here are two battery powered UA’s. The helos with installed video cameras have loiter times of up to 45 minutes. There were many examples of wireless handheld com gear and high bandwidth Line of Sight transmission devices such as the example below.

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    There was a demonstration of paint-on antennas that turn trees or wall into an antenna and very compact fuel cells shown here.

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    ITT had a field demonstration of a two-way audio/video link designed for corpsman operating in remote locations. The corpsman wore a vest that contained mics, earphones and a video camera (the white device on this man’s vest). The entire system was very light and unobtrusive. It permitted multiple corpsmen to communicate directly with mobile field locations or even a specialist in a hospital. The doctor could see exactly what the corpsman was seeing and give the corpsman directions real time and hands free. This also permitted the doctor to make advance preparations to receive the patient when he was medevaced.

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    All during the field exercise each corpsman was tracked via GIS on an image base map. The tracking and communications were never lost even though the corpsmen were traveling behind hills with no line of sight to the mobile bases. This was accomplished through a system of local and satellite communications that reached back to Reston, Virginia. I could see that this would be beneficial for domestic first responders as well as the military. The quality of the video being sent from the corpsman was extremely good and the GIS display at the mobile base station tracked their movements very accurately.

    Camp Roberts is unique in that it’s not a “sound clip” marketing bombardment like most trade shows. Since attendance is by invitation only, marketing is discouraged. What does happen are informal and in-depth discussions between field operators and engineers. Attendees get a chance to see equipment in action and exchange ideas freely. I felt lucky to be invited and hope that I can do some small part to help our troops accomplish their missions.

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    Photos: Art Kalinski

  • Special Operations – SOFIC 2011

    SOFIC 2011, the Special Operations Industry Conference held in Tampa, Florida, received a lot of attention this year for several reasons. First, the apprehension and death of Osama Bin Laden by the Navy SEALs was a national attention grabber. Second, as irregular warfare becomes the norm, there is a growing need for unconventional operations. As a result, the Special Operations community is seeing their budgets increase while other military activities are seeing cuts. SOFIC was extremely well attended with over a one-hour-long line for late on-site registration. Thankfullly I pre-registered early.

    The conference was what one would expect with all the major defense industry players showing off some of their latest technology. Boeing was highlighting its A160 Hummingbird Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, a helicopter that can reach high altitudes, hover for long periods of time, go great distances, and operate much more quietly than current helicopters. It features a unique optimum speed rotor technology that enables the Hummingbird to adjust the RPM of the rotor blades at different altitudes and cruise speeds. One of its proposed GIS-related missions is as an ISR platform.

     

    Lockheed Martin was demonstrating HULC, a sci-fi looking exoskeleton that was surprisingly unobtrusive and intuitive for the user. HULC (Human Universal Load Carrier) is hydraulic powered, permitting users to carry loads of up to 200 pounds for extended periods of time over all terrains. The design permits deep squats, crawls, and upper-body lifting. HULC senses what users want to do and augments their ability, strength, and endurance. See the following video which does a better job of explaining its features and capabilities. For those of you doing field GIS data collection in remote locations it may be of interest as a way of carrying heavy gear over rough terrain. Click on the image below to view the video.

    Also on display was information about the new line of dirigibles for persistent surveillance and ISR data collection such as this Northrop Grumman Long Endurance Multi Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV). These airships are a hybrid blimp and ridged aircraft that have aerodynamic lift, designed to hover at high altitudes for long periods of time, up to 21 days. They can be manned or unmanned. One would think that these large slow vehicles could be vulnerable to small arms fire but the high altitude combined with a semi-ridged tough skin and low helium pressure make them almost immune to ground attack.

    GIS-related exhibitors included ESRI, BAE with the new version Socket GXP for imagery analysis and exploitation, and TerraGo showing GeoPDF creation and add on tools. Although there was no direct information about geospatial participation in the Bin Laden raid, experience teaches us that GIS played a part in mapping and reconstructing the compound using aerial and ground-level imagery with GPS guidance throughout the operation. In conversations with some attendees, we guessed that the compound was reconstructed to the last detail including construction using the same types of building materials so the teams could practice how tough penetration would be and the level of protection walls would provide. But remember, even at this SOFIC conference, those who really know won’t talk and those who talk don’t really know.

    One guess I’m confident about is that they practiced every possible scenario over and over again. In my personal experience during my Navy career, I was the Weapons Officer of the USS Forrest Sherman DD-931 which was part of the Iranian hostage rescue attempt in 1980. In 1980 carriers and large combatants didn’t operate in the Persian Gulf because everyone thought the waters were too shallow and the Gulf too small for carrier ops. As a result, we were the only combatant in the Persian Gulf and our job was to act as a ”horse’s twitch” attracting the attention of the Iranians in the northern Gulf while the helicopters came in from the south. The key lesson learned from the helicopter crash and failed attempt was practice, practice, practice and plan for every contingency.

    At trade shows I always like to hit the small booths because that’s where the innovation shines. Several smaller vendors had items of interest to us GIS people. One example that may be of interest to GIS field operators, especially emergency response command centers, was a very portable satellite dish antenna that is a precision inflatable ball. GATR Technologies makes the four-pound antenna that can be carried in a backpack and set up in minutes to provide 1.2-meter high-bandwidth communications. The entire equipment package is less than 50 pounds and the inflated ball was surprisingly stable, even in heavy winds, according to the GATR rep.

    Another high-tech GIS based technology was a robot swarm capable of performing many hazardous tasks. The science-fiction-like swarm, built by Solstice, can operate autonomously or as directed by an operator. The individual robots use GPS and IMUs to move to target locations and report back their position and data collected in the field. The location of the bots can be displayed on a GIS along with the data attributes collected. One example of their use was rapid combat airfield inspection. Dozens or more robots are sent out to inspect a proposed landing site for potholes or FOD (debris that can pose a jet engine intake hazard). Then the bots can line up and provide approach and runway illumination.

    You probably have seen toy remote control helicopters sold in specialty gift stores. The Shadow and Dark Shadow are serious versions designed for surveillance and data collection. Built by BCB of the United Kingdom, the remotely piloted four rotor helos have a 2.5 lb. payload and a 70-minute flight duration on internal battery power. They can easily carry still or video cameras.

    The booth that tickled me the most was a young inventor’s new design for a lowly tent stake. When I saw it I wanted to do a Homer Simpson “D’oh, why didn’t I think of that?”  Eric Simonson, shown here, inventor and president of ToughStake, solved the annoying problem of tent stakes not working well in sand.

    He realized that the reason stakes pull out is that the load pulls the top of a traditional stake which pulls it over then out easily. Eric came up with a design that is genius in its simplicity. He built a flat metal shovel-like stake that has a steel cable and ring running from the bottom of the stake up to the load. Since the pressure is applied to the bottom the stake it is not pulled ove
    r but actually drives deeper. At his booth, Eric had a simple test box filled with dry sand so attendees could try it for themselves. I tried it and with the force of one arm I couldn’t budge it.

    His stake works equally well in normal soil, dry sand or snow. I could see this stake solving a lot of field installation problems such as setting up remote antennas towers, data collection gear, tents, and protective canopies. Well done to Eric for solving such a basic problem that has plagued many military field operations with such an elegant solution.

    And of course I have to end with a big “Bravo Zulu” (Navy talk for well done) to Navy SEAL Team Six.

     

  • Alabama Tornadoes: This Editor’s Personal Experience

    Wall cloud approaching.
    Wall cloud approaching.

    Four years ago my wife and I moved to Lake Guntersville as our ultimate retirement location because it seemed to have ideal factors we were looking for — mountains, lakes, great fishing, mild weather, low taxes, low cost of living and genuinely nice people. This inland location had navigable water to the Gulf of Mexico and even to the Great Lakes. We liked the small town atmosphere away from coastal hurricanes, panicky road clogging evacuations, blizzard, earthquakes or big tornadoes. Well, so much for that plan as we had a front row seat to one of the biggest tornado events of the decade with one of the tornadoes passing 500 yards in front of our windows.

    Just like in the movies, on Wednesday morning, April 27, the winds started to pick up, tornado alarms sounded, and debris started flying, including outdoor furniture. The boathouse next to us had the shingles stripped off the roof like a deck of cards, and then big oak trees started toppling over. The lake looked like it was boiling violently as winds in Guntersville reached 130 mph. We could see countless power lines and transformers arcing green and then going dead. Many buildings and trees were okay while others were totally demolished.

    Downed trees caused much of the damage.
    Downed trees caused much of the damage.

    My visual estimate was that at least 10 percent of the power poles and lines were damaged or toppled. It’s now six days after the storm. Although utility crews have been busy putting in new poles and lines, much remains to be done and I’m doing this article on battery power from my car charger.

    This tornado event was unusual in that Alabama rarely gets more than one tornado at a time with most being the smaller F-1/F-2 storms. Tuscaloosa got the worst of it with an F-4 that stayed on the ground for 70 miles.

    Concrete block walls were no match for the 130 MPH winds.
    Concrete block walls were no match for the 130 MPH winds.
    This was a TV repair shop in downtown Guntersville.
    This was a TV repair shop in downtown Guntersville.

    Our county, Marshall County, was lucky with only 10 tornadoes during the 8 hour period. I don’t think any were over an F-2 but Marshall County still had 5 fatalities. Alabama had over 200 tornadoes that day with fatalities nearing 300.

    One thing that really impressed me about the people in Alabama is their resilience and willingness to help their neighbors. There was no hand wringing waiting for the government to help. Almost immediately after the first tornado you could hear the sound of chainsaws as neighbor helped neighbor dig out and clear the roads. This helped the city and county get most roads passable within a day.

    People helping people.
    People helping people.

    Local businesses helped also. Within 12 hours T.L.’s Barbeque and our favorite seafood restaurant, Crawmama’s, had a catering service set up in downtown Guntersville providing free meals for the National Guard, emergency workers and anyone who needed a hot meal. Crawmama’s is one of those hidden gems that serve seafood comparable to the best restaurants in New Orleans.

    After the tornadoes, NOAA captured ortho imagery of the affected areas using a King Air at 5000 ft. The imagery can be seen at the NOAA website. Pictometry is providing low altitude high resolution ortho and oblique imagery and there are stunning video clips of the Tuscaloosa tornado on youTube.

    The first tornado came and went so fast that I really didn’t have much time to ponder the event. However the unexpected surprise was news media reports that we could expect numerous tornadoes during the 8 hours following the initial tornado. The tornado alarms sounded again and again throughout the day and I can tell you from first-hand experience that getting through this was much easier thanks to the location based GIS services of my iPhone. Here is why.

    When the power was still on we had the luxury of watching the television news with Doppler radar and all the detailed graphics. Once the power went out all we had were tornado alarms, a portable radio and my lowly cell phone.  The tornado alarms were nerve racking since they went off so often. I later learned that the alarms are linked county-wide so a tornado threat anywhere in the county will cause all the alarms to sound. Radio stations were helpful but it was difficult to form a clear picture of the moving storms.

    IMG_1482The iPhone proved to be wonderful. It continued working even after power was lost so we could communicate with family members. From the first power outage until now the cell phone service continued un-interrupted. The service did slow and show weaker cell tower signals as the system switched to battery power and standby generators.  But it did continue to work.

    Most important, the iPhone radar mapping application from the Weather Channel provided us with a video loop of weather bands and their path on a Google map so we could see for ourselves how the storms were moving and if we would be affected. This really put our minds at ease most of the time despite numerous tornado alarms.  Throughout the day as we dodged other tornadoes, I thought about all the man-hours I and my colleagues spent in the early ’90s digitizing street centerline data and addresses ranges to build the digital street databases and other maps that are now the backbone of location based services.

    I never could get really excited about the tiny screens of smart phones but this tornado event and even more mundane applications such as navigation are making me appreciate these little devices. My iPhone has replaced my cell phone, camera, calculator, notepad, and now my GPS. I liked the navigation and Google maps of my iPhone but many times, such as in DC traffic, it was hazardous looking at the screen. So I was very pleasantly surprised with an application that turns the iPhone into a full featured car navigation system including voice navigation and real time traffic. The MotionX GPS Drive  is one of the hottest selling applications for the iPhone and I’m a convert. I bought a mounting bracket that lets me mount the iPhone on the AC vent of any rental car and I now don’t bother packing my old GPS. The only downside is that it uses up the iPhone battery so I have a 12v adapter to keep it charged when using navigation.

     

    That little iPhone and GIS keep making my life better. So for all the hand wringers nearly panicked that their iPhone tracks their location and worried about their privacy, my vote is for more and better location-based services.

    Photos: Art Kalinski

  • Nano Hummingbird

    The concept demonstrator has a wingspan of 6.5 inches and weighs just 19 grams – a little less than an AA battery. The bot carries onboard a motor, video camera, network communications and a battery, and the whole thing is housed in a light weight plastic humming bird-esque disguise. Image Credit: AeroVironment, 2011
    The concept demonstrator has a wingspan of 6.5 inches and weighs just 19 grams – a little less than an AA battery. The bot carries onboard a motor, video camera, network communications and a battery, and the whole thing is housed in a light weight plastic humming bird-esque disguise.
    Image Credit: AeroVironment, 2011

    By Art Kalinski, GISP

    U.S. military archives hold 24 million minutes of video collected by Predators and other remotely piloted aircraft that have become an essential tool for commanders. But the library is largely useless because analysts often have no way of knowing exactly what they have, or any way to search for information that is particularly valuable.

    To help solve that problem, the Air Force and government spy satellite experts have begun working with industry experts to adapt the methods that enable the NFL and other broadcasters to quickly find and show replays, display on-field first-down markers and jot John Madden-style notations on the screen.

    “The NFL has the technology so you can pull an instant replay of any Brett Favre touchdown over his career,” said Carl Rhodes, a researcher with RAND Corp. “The idea is maybe the Air Force could use similar technology to look at what has happened at a particular corner in Afghanistan in the past week or past year.”

    Sports television broadcasters mark video with embedded text “tags” that later can be searched to find footage of a particular player or play. Such tags can help editors compile a highlight reel of the day’s most exciting home runs, or a retrospective of the year’s best dunks.

    The military is seeking to use similar technology to track possible insurgents in theaters thousands of miles away.

    Drones are used by the CIA to attack suspected insurgent sites in Pakistan’s tribal areas along the Afghan border. In Afghanistan and Iraq, they are operated by the military, and are used more for spying and observation.

    “We are used to having the cutting-edge technology: reconnaissance satellites and unmanned vehicles,” said Maj. Gen. James Poss, who helps oversee the Air Force’s reconnaissance programs. “And this is the first time industry is really way ahead of us.”

    Unmanned aircraft have been used for reconnaissance since the 1990s. The first armed drones were rushed to Afghanistan with a minimum of testing days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

    The military is still refining the aircraft, but more than 7,000 drones of all types are now in use over Afghanistan and Iraq. The Air Force is spending $3 billion a year to buy and operate the aircraft, and is training more pilots to fly unmanned than manned vehicles.

    Pilots can fly them remotely from bases in the U.S., with others in the theater of action handling takeoffs and landings. The pilots are assisted by camera operators — some of them technicians as young as 19 or 20 — and intelligence coordinators.

    They may be called upon to watch over a U.S. military vehicle stranded in the Afghan desert until help arrives, or launch a missile strike. Mistakes can be deadly. Results of a U.S. military investigation released last month criticized a drone crew based in Nevada and ground commanders in Afghanistan for misidentifying civilians as insurgents. Using their information, a helicopter airstrike was authorized. As many as 23 civilians were killed.

    The CIA does not publicly acknowledge the existence of its program in Pakistan, but officials say it received permission two years ago to launch attacks on the basis of “pattern of life” analysis — without knowing the names of its targets. Officials say that they may conduct surveillance for days before deciding they have enough evidence to launch an attack, and that they gather so much detail that they can watch for the routine arrival of particular vehicles or the characteristics of individual people.

    The military once stored Predator video in much the same way it handled photos from a U-2 spy plane or a satellite: It chopped the video into short clips and filed it by date and location.

    But new technologies developed by firms such as Harris and Lockheed Martin record the observations of analysts who monitor the video feeds, creating a database of terms and footage that can later be searched.

    For instance, every time a white truck appears on video, an analyst will type “white truck.” The observation automatically tags that portion of the video. Later, if someone wants to find all the white trucks that passed by a particular building, all they need to do is designate the area of interest and the time frame and search for “white truck.”

    The Air Force hopes that eventually, such emerging technology will automatically give people, places and vehicles more unique identifiers. Then the database will be able to search for specific white trucks, such as one with a dented fender or any other unique mark.

    In addition to improving archives, the new tools also may help analysts combine live video feeds with other sources of intelligence to better understand the situation on the ground.

    Analysts soon may be able to view Predator video feeds alongside intercepted phone calls from the area under surveillance. They also could view area maps or other information.

    “We are creating situational awareness in real time,” said John Delay, a director of strategy for Harris, a defense contractor that also equips broadcasters.

    The drive to change began in earnest four years ago, when Michael O’Neal, a civilian working for the Air Force, went to the National Association of Broadcasters symposium in Las Vegas, a trade show where companies that help the television industry manage video exhibit their products.

    Some businesses thought the military would be too small of a market. Harris, however, showed an interest, and O’Neal began working with the firm’s executives.

    Two years later, Harris had a working version of its technology, the Full-Motion Video Asset Management Engine, or FAME.

    An early version of the system, developed by Lockheed Martin and Harris, is being tested in Afghanistan on a limited number of smaller unmanned planes flown by the Army. The Air Force hopes to do its own tests with larger Predator and Reaper planes.

    It is not known whether the CIA is using the technology yet, but it is likely to eventually employ some version of it. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has established standards for the new archiving technology so that all surveillance video can be easily searched.

    In addition to news and sports technologies, the Air Force has examined video applications used by reality TV. At the request of the Air Force, one RAND Corp. analyst spent time last fall on the set of a reality show to see what lessons the military might glean from its production techniques. The think tank is prohibited from disclosing which show it visited.

    Reality television is of limited usefulness because the setting is a “controlled environment,” said Poss, the Air Force major general. The range of expected actions on a reality show set is far more limited than that of possible insurgents in Afghanistan.

    But it is instructive: Instead of monitoring a single camera that captures a range of images, television editors can use a variety of cameras and angles to track a single subject.

    “In reality TV, there could be 20 cameras. Instead of each person watching a camera in each room, you have a camera following each individual around,” said Rhodes of the RAND Corp. “That doesn’t exactly translate to the Air Force’s job, but there are things they can learn.”

    Read more about it.

     

  • Granite Countertops and GIS

    By Art Kalinski, GISP

    In the early 1990s when ArcView 2 hit the street, I was at the ESRI Users’ Conference in Palm Springs. I was walking through the poster session area and saw a map that changed my thinking about GIS. In this sea of parcel maps, land use maps, and road network displays I saw a map that “tweaked” my head. It was a map of the human circulatory system that someone did using ArcView 2 – Network Analyst. Network Analyst doesn’t care if the network is an eight-lane-wide interstate or a two-millimenter blood vessel. A network is a network.

    That stuck with me and I’ve always enjoyed seeing people think out of the box with regard to spatial technology. This week I saw an example that reminded how far and how broad geospatial technology has come. I use the broad term “geospatial” since I see GIS and computer-aided design merging into the broad world of BIM and geospatial technology. (See my BIM, Son of CAD and GIS article, August 2008).

    I’ve been building a mountain cabin that is near completion, needing granite counter tops for the kitchen. Over the years my wife and I had granite tops installed in two other homes, so we were familiar with the process. Since granite is very heavy and difficult to modify on-site, careful measurements are needed. The finished stone, which is fabricated at the factory, has to fit perfectly. Previously, I saw the measurements made by craftsmen fabricating plywood templates, which were then taken back to the shop for actual stone cutting. It was a tedious two-man process as 4-inch strips of thin plywood were cut and glued to form a rigid template.

    But things have changed. This time one technician showed up carrying a tripod and small steel box with a computer in it. It was quickly apparent that this was a digitizing device that permitted the technician not only to measure the counter quickly and precisely, but the digital file was then used back at the shop to drive the computerized high-pressure water saw to cut the granite. This reduced what used to be hours of work to minutes.

    The digitizer, a Proliner manufactured by Prodim International, was fascinating in its elegant simplicity. Shown here measuring a reception desk, the Proliner principle was a simple process of measuring with a wire. It has a measuring head that rotates in three dimensions with a wire that can be stretched out for several yards. At the end of the wire is a metal measuring stylus. With this measuring stylus a user simply marks the relevant points. The device senses the angle of the wire and length of extension. Simple internal geometric calculations convert these points into a digital CAD file. With the Proliner, a user can measure straight, curved, or complex 3D shapes quickly and with an accuracy of 0.5 millimeter.

    I saw examples on the company website of the device being used to measure complex manufacturing projects such convex auto glass, spiral staircase railings, even canvas boat canopies that went straight from measurement to xy plotter/cutters that cut the fabric for a perfect fit. Users can measure any object in horizontal, vertical, or slanting position.The digital drawing can then be fed directly into any CNC-machine or plotter, and the production runs in minutes. In the GIS community, we are doing a similar type of automated measurement using GPS/laser technology to collect field data. At the 2010 ESRI User Conference is saw a demonstration of the TruPulse 360 laser rangefinder with a built-in compass and GPS manufactured by Laser Technology, Inc.

    A user can measure the slope distance, inclination, and azimuth to anything, and position any remote feature with just one shot. This unique laser can be pitched or rolled in any direction, and it will still measure the correct azimuth within one degree. Here is just a partial list of measuring applications in use for this technology:

    • GIS map feature capture
    • Complex infrastructure inside facilities (ladders, agitator blades, etc.)
    • Outdoor river/stream monitoring
    • Waste water treatment
    • Stockpile height
    • Molten metal level
    • Positioning and detection
    • Overhead crane
    • Crane avoidance
    • Distance between vehicles (mounted in vehicle)
    • Steel slab detection and positioning
    • Pipe/tree length cutting system
    • Camera focusing
    • Surveillance detection and camera focusing
    • Vehicle profiling
    • Fixed point traffic monitor (speed, profiling, length, DBC)
    • Truck loading system
    • Parking garage system (open spots, illegal parking)
    • Bridge height clearance
    • Ship docking
    • Targeting systems
    • In-flight refueling

    How does the less sophisticated Proliner get the interest of a GIS professional? Both devices use angle and distance to measure and define points, one with a laser and one with a wire. But what got my attention is “heads down digitizing.” I’ll bet that a lot of you don’t know that the term “heads up digitizing” came from the unused term “heads down digitizing.”

    When I started working in GIS everyone was taking their paper maps and getting them into a GIS by digitizing the maps using a digitizing table. This was a table that had a wire grid array imbedded in the table. A user traced the paper map features with a mouse-looking device called a puck. The puck sensed its position based on the underlying grid and sent the digital translation to the GIS computer.

    Many of you have never used a digitizing table because by the mid ’90s digital ortho-photography became practical and dominant. Map creation quickly transitioned to digitizing features on an image displayed on a computer screen in a “heads up” position rather than slouched over a table “heads down.” In fact the transition has been so complete that very few GIS operations now have the heavy and bulky digitizing tables in their inventory.

    With the kind of accuracy I saw with the Proliner I thought that it might be a way to digitize old paper maps. I called the Proliner USA rep in Florida who indicated that this had been done by several users. So I confirmed that the small tripod-mounted box can be used to trace and digitize paper maps. What would you do if by chance you needed to get an old historic paper map into your GIS? One option could be to call a local granite shop and ask to borrow their Proliner.

  • GIS and Transportation 1930-2011

    By Art Kalinski, GISP

    Looming budget cuts, the uproar against grossly overpaid “public servants” such as in Belle, California, and the growing number of accidents involving elderly drivers have encouraged me to get up on my soapbox in hopes that some of you in the GIS and transportation communities can advance an old idea that may now be right for our time. How are the three events related? They are related to a suggestion I proposed at a planning meeting while serving as a GIS manager at a Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) – Jitneys.  To my surprise, I was dressed down for suggesting such a heretical idea. Below it the write up I submitted.

    Jitneys Are a 2-8% Solution to SOVs (Sep 2006)
    Jitney (jit’ne) n.  An operator-owned vehicle that carries one or more passengers for hire, from and to multiple door-to-door locations using the most economical variable route based on the needs of the different passengers and the skill of the driver to meet those needs. The word “Jitney” is an old English slang term for a nickel, which was the cost of a ride when Jitneys became popular in the 1930s. In other countries Jitneys are called: dabas, domus, jeepneys, tap taps, and many other names.

    Pundits say that we are in an environmental crisis, driven by use of single occupant vehicles (SOVs). We want clean air, easy commutes, low taxes with sustainable economic growth. We struggle with encouraging alternatives to SOVs (mass transit, grid road systems, land use mandates, HOV lanes, bike paths) but let’s face facts: The “genie is out of the bottle.” Most cities have evolved into regions shaped by SOVs and nothing short of draconian measures will change that. Perhaps it is time to reconsider an old transportation alternative that could reduce SOV trips 2 to 8 percent — Jitneys.

    Jitneys sprung up in major cities in the 1930s. Typically they were four-door sedans driven by the owner with only the word “JITNEY” painted on the door. Anyone who had a vehicle could become an entrepreneur transporting one or more people for a modest fee. It became a convenient and affordable way for many people to get around. Jitney impact was so significant that special interest groups lobbied to have them outlawed. In 1931 jitneys reduced Los Angeles trolley car use by 25 percent. The trolleys were ultimately displaced by highways and SOVs, which then evolved into the familiar picture of SOV gridlock.

    A major impediment cited by most users to the use of mass transit is getting to and from the transit stop. In high-density locations such as New York City, almost everyone is within two blocks of a transit stop. That is not the case in most other cities, and everyone agrees that it may take decades to change. Most cities have transportation gaps that are being inefficiently filled by SOVs. Low-density communities are not suited for mass transit, and our cul-de-sac and shopping center neighborhoods force the use of SOVs for even the smallest errands. Since most of us have no alternative to SOVs, Jitneys might be able to fill that niche.

    Jitneys could fill the gaps efficiently with no additional taxes needed for new roads or transit. They could solve an Economic Justice (EJ) issue by providing affordable transportation for low wage workers or the elderly. The collective efficiency of jitneys carrying 2-4 passengers (the ultimate car pool) would reduce pollution and the total number of cars on the road. The use of jitneys is a self-correcting system that requires no overarching management system, just natural, local supply and demand. A side employment benefit would be the small business opportunities that would be created for jitney owner/drivers.

    JITNEY SYSTEM PROS

    • No taxes needed for additional mass transit or additional roads.
    • Very efficient since the Jitney system works on supply and demand with a driver who is motivated to minimize wasted seats, mileage, gas, and idle time while maximizing his profit and service to the customer.
    • Should reduce SOV traffic 2 to 8 percent.
    • As a small-scale feeder service, Jitneys may increase the use of mass transit such as commuter rail and bus rapid transit.
    • Should reduce air pollution.
    • Should reduce the need for CBD additional parking.
    • Could eliminate the need for second or third cars in many families, which may have a corresponding effect on mortgage qualification.
    • Would solve some EJ issues, providing convenient transportation that is affordable for low-income workers and empowering those that are most dependent.
    • Jitney drivers become recognized members of their local community by providing personalized service, such as helping the elderly to the car, which fosters a greater sense of “community.”
    • Jitneys already operate successfully in many cities such as San Diego, Miami, the Hispanic community in Atlanta and New York where a jitney (gypsy cab) ride costs $1.
    • Since service is door-to-door there is a greater perception of safety, especially at night.
    • Jitneys provide a safe and convenient transportation alternative for the elderly who at some point should not drive and/or who can’t walk 3-4 blocks to a bus stop.
    • Since jitneys are ideally scaled for neighborhoods and side roads, use of jitneys could free up buses to provide better service on more heavily traveled main routes.
    • Cell phones make contact with the local jitney cheaper, easier, and more efficient than the old mobile radio dispatch system or hand wave flag-down system.
    • Jitneys can respond quickly and organically to changes in demand such a concerts and sports events.
    • Even if jitneys only have a 2 perecnt impact on SOV traffic that would be significant, and there would be little if any financial risk.
    • A network of jitneys could provide quick emergency transportation for large numbers of people in the event of natural disaster or homeland security event

    JITNEY SYSTEM CONS and (ANSWERS)

    • A well-established system of jitneys may compete with mass transit. (Since the percentage of mass transit riders is small, the impact should be minor compared to the impact on SOV users. Jitneys may actually increase the use of mass transit since they are a small-scale feeder service.)
    • Jitneys may not be as safe as a bus. (True, but can we afford to have large buses driving around with four passengers surrounded by dozens of SOVs?  We can’t make life totally risk free and we must ultimately weigh the costs verses the benefits.)
    • Jitneys may reduce pedestrian and bike traffic. (Since the number of walkers and bikers is small, the impact will be minor compared to the impact on SOV users.)
    • Some drivers may be unprofessional. (Licensing could help, but poor drivers would soon develop reputations that would lead to fewer calls and their business would dry up.)
    • Liability and safety issues (Legislation and thinking would have to change permitting jitneys to operate with the understanding that passengers ride at their own peril. This does not mean that there would be zero liability. If a driver drove in a clearly reckless manner or committed a crime he would be liable for damages. To keep insurance at a level that is reasonable, there would have to be some shared risk by the passenger. For instance, a passenger could not sue the driver for injuries sustained in a true traffic accident, or a passenger could not sue for frivolous reasons such as spilling their own hot coffee in their lap.)
    • Sharing a ride with several sweaty strangers may not be comfortable. (This is
      not transportation for everyone; it is an alternate choice for those who have few choices.)
    • Jitneys will take business away from taxi cabs and mass transit. (That could happen but can we afford to “subsidize” systems that are not efficient?  Many believe that jitneys would actually increase mass-transit use by acting as a small scale feeder service.)
    • Jitneys won’t work (It will cost almost nothing to try the concept. There are too many cases where it does work to say that it won’t work without trying it. A big federal program is not needed to solve every problem; give the free market a chance.)
    • Jitneys are flagged down by riders which won’t work in the suburbs (The ubiquitous cell phone changes the model. The driver can be easily called fora pick-up. As for the cost, we already have a working model in our suburbs. Consider the pizza delivery driver using his own vehicle as a jitney for pizzas. The drivers do well financially for the skill level needed.  Just substitute people for pizzas and see how it works.)
    • The term “jitney” sounds low rent, third-worldish. (We can come up with a new name if that’s important to people. Try cellular dispatched cars – CDC, free market transport – FMT, micro van pools – MVP, neighborhood vans, etc.)

    It is folly to think that the American public will fund and then cheerfully switch to mass transit or bikes in significant numbers during the foreseeable future. Jitneys may not be “the” solution but past history shows that they can have a measurable impact reducing the number of SOV trips, perhaps in the range of 2 to  8 percent, and that could buy us some time. Most important – no additional taxes, just permission. With one action we empower our citizens, make them less dependent, reduce SOV traffic, help the elderly, help the poor, create jobs, and create taxpayers.  

    2011 Jitney

    In 2011 there are more jitney-like services springing up under the radar. If we have another gas crisis, I believe the services will explode. I can envision an interesting GIS analysis project mapping jitney tracks compared to SOVs and mass transit while comparing the efficiency and benefits of each. Two organizations are promoting jitneys focused on the needs of the elderly:
    ITN Portland, Maine, is a 10-year-old volunteer organization that has provided transportation alternatives primarily for senior citizens. The organization has a system of vehicles, and paid and volunteer drivers. They have a car donation program and families can set up travel accounts for elderly parents that provide free transportation.

    The Beverly Foundation is a national non-profit that promotes senior transportation and mobility.

    The TRB (Transportation Research Board) has numerous papers and a subcommittee devoted to Jitneys and private cabs. As budgets tighten perhaps jitneys will gain some traction. As a leading-edge member of the baby boomer generation, I hope jitneys will be available when it’s time for me to turn in my license.

    My dressing down was accompanied by an explanation that our job was to get our hands on as much federal funding as possible and this “jitney idea” was a non-starter since it required no federal funding and might actually conflict with the long-range regional transportation plan. Even the chairman of the local Urban League was all for the idea, until he realized that it could compete with the mayor’s goal to build a light rail system.

    As a paid public employee I naively thought our job was to serve the best interests of our citizens. At the risk of sounding Pollyannaish, I gravitated to military service, GIS, and Pictometry because all personified the philosophy of doing the right thing. I also believe in the GISP Code of Ethics and I know that most of you do also. I now believe that the days of wasteful government projects are over and we need to try something different like “Doing the Right Thing.”

    Well, that’s my New Year’s rant. Please contact me regarding your opinion and experience.

    P.S.  I’m going to be at the TRB Visualization Symposium this Summer, date/location TBD.

  • Rocket City GIS and I/ITSEC Conferences

    Two Seemingly Unrelated Conferences Linked by GIS and GISP

    By Art Kalinski, GISP

    In November I attended the Rocket City GIS Conference and the seemingly unrelated Interservice / Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC).

    Rocket City GIS

    The Rocket City GIS Conference was organized by Joe Francica of Directions Media. As Conference Chairman, Joe picked an impressive venue, the U.S. Space and Rocket  Center, Huntsville, Alabama. The facilities are quite extensive, housing the Saturn and other boosters, the shuttle, and countless historic artifacts including space capsules, space suits, and all manner of test equipment, even a real SR-71. The Rocket Center holds Space Camp for youngsters as well as a team-building program for adults and corporations.

    SaturnHuntsville is the home of the original rocket scientists led by Werner von Braun, and home to the NASA Marshall Space Center and Redstone Arsenal. The city has become an extensive technology center with the Rocket Center as a focal point. If you visit, plan on a full day to see it all.

    Although not a large assembly, the Rocket City GIS Conference was very well organized and the meeting facility at the Rocket Center was superb. The keynote speaker for the conference was David DiBiase, the director of the John A. Dutton E-Education Institute for the online GIS program at Pennsylvania State University. In addition, David is a URISA board member and president of the GIS Certification Institute.

    In his opening, David cited two interesting facts. First, according to Forbes magazine, Jack Dangermond, founder of ESRI, is the 164th richest person in the United States. Donald Trump is 153rd. Second, according to the Bureau of Labor there are now 857,000 geo-spatial employees in the United States with expected growth of an additional 350,000 over the next eight years. No one guessed the number was that high.

    In 2003 I was in the first group of GIS professionals to receive the GISP certification. Like many other GIS professionals, I participated in the planning and formulation of the GISP program. I felt that it would help hiring managers in the GIS community by identifying GIS professionals who had achieved a certain level of education and experience. I also felt that it would help URISA since the conferences and courses offered by URISA would take on greater importance as candidates looked to build their professional point totals. The program has proven itself over the past seven years, but some believe that it may need to evolve.

    David caused a bit of a stir by presenting his desire and others to have an exam for future GISP candidates. He indicated that his opinion was not shared by all board members, but there was a growing interest in the prospect. In 2002 we considered an exam as part of the GISP process, but the general consensus was that it would be impossible to come up with an exam that was comprehensive, fair, and a good indicator of a candidate’s qualifications. I’m not sure that the situation is much different in 2010, but I’d like to hear the pros and cons. Time didn’t permit that, and without further discussion I don’t have an opinion yet.

     

    I/ITSEC 2010
    The I/ITSEC conference was held in Orlando and is fairly large. As I reported last year, I/ITSEC continues to evolve from training and gaming technology to much more sophisticated modeling and mission-rehearsal technology. This is a large conference with participation by all the big players such as Lockheed, Boeing, BEA, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and many others.
    VRSIM Display
    The Keynote speaker, Air Force General Edward Rice, summed up the prospects for the training and simulation community. Even with feared budget cuts, funding expectations looked good since modeling and simulation are proving to be so cost effective.
    Most of us think of flight simulators training pilots, and those are still key systems, but other skills are proving equally cost effective. The general cited fuel-boom operators as one example. There is a real art to operating an in-flight fueling boom, and it takes hours and hours to train operators. The new simulators are so realistic that 95% of training leading to qualification is done on simulators with only 5% actual in-flight time need to qualify operators.
    ESRI had a good-size booth demonstrating work of partners such as Precision Light Works 3D models and systems such as Geoweb 3d. The growing evolution from training to actual mission planning and mission rehearsal is driving the need for accurate geospatial data and GIS environments. It’s no longer good enough to just “look good;” the systems also have to reflect reality in a way that wasn’t even attempted a few years ago.
    As a retired naval officer and ship handler, I couldn’t resist testing the Navy bridge simulators by CSC. The navigation charts, GPS, radar, out-the-window graphics, physics, and response were dead-on accurate as I piloted a destroyer through Narragansett Bay. Even the small boat simulators by Kongsberg had hydraulic systems that simulated the motion of the small boat through moderate seas. The only thing missing was the salt spray in the face.
    Sythetic bodyRegrettably, realism of medical simulators had also evolved. They want medical personnel to get over the shock factor of real injuries so they can react efficiently during real emergencies. Some were so realistic with spurting blood and missing limbs that the exhibits were not for the faint-hearted. Here is an example of one company that manufactures realistic bodies to train surgeons.
    GIS is found in medial simulators as well. The spatial and topological tools of GIS are seeing their way into medical simulators that mimic the circulatory systems and other networks.
    At large conferences I always like to visit the small perimeter booths for two reasons. The exhibitors in the outlying sections generally don’t have the budgets that the big companies have, so I try to give them their money’s worth by providing some traffic and visibility. But more importantly, this is where the new technologies are being introduced and some of the booth are quite interesting. One example is this paint booth simulator by VRSim, Inc. The trainee holds a spray gun and wears a helmet with a 3D video display. Using the gun, the trainee sees paint being applied, but even more important, the simulated surface is mapped to later show how heavy the paint was applied. Red = too heavy, Blue = too light, Green = just right.

    Paint booth simulator by VRSim. The user holds a spray gun and wears a helmet with a 3D video display.
    Paint booth simulator by VRSim. The user holds a spray gun and wears a helmet with a 3D video display.
    The simulated surface is mapped to later show how heavy the paint was applied.
    The simulated surface is mapped to later show how heavy the paint was applied.
    Here again spatial data mapping is the basis for the system, and the cost to train an operator is a fraction of the real thing, not to mention wasted paint and fumes.
    Orator Plus, Inc. had as robust multimedia data fusion software that permits the simultaneous display of GIS, PowerPoint, video, live web links, imagery, etc. in one elegant environment that also has a common “whiteboard” annotations and sharing capability. The company even developed a portable hardware display to optimize its system. The display is a rear projection multi-touch screen of light-weight Plexiglas. It’s difficult to explain how nice the system works.  You need to see it in operation.
    Orator Plus's multimedia data fusion software permits the simultaneous display of GIS, PowerPoint, video, live web links, and imagery.
    Orator Plus’s multimedia data fusion software permits the simultaneous display of GIS, PowerPoint, video, live web links, and imagery.
    The second keynote speaker was Dr. R. Bowen Loftin, president of Texas A&M University. His degrees are in physics and he worked extensively for NASA developing virtual environments. His keynote topic was a desire by many to create a certification system / institute for modeling and simulation professionals. This sounded a lot like our GISCI and the GISP program.
    I spoke with Dr. Loftin briefly after his session to see if he was familiar with our GISP certification program.  He was and had used it as one example for discussions.  I later thought to myself that the one advantage we had with the GISP program was our starting point. Although the GISP qualification was not ESRI centric, the common ESRI environments that most of us were operating in created a sense of community and a good foundation for GISP.  There is no such common operating environment for the Modeling and Simulation people, not even close.  There are many competing companies with no over-arching system, which is a big hurdle.  Wait until someone suggests a qualification exam.

     

  • GEOINT 2010

    By Art Kalinski, GISP

    It’s not what you look at, it’s what you see. (Thoreau)

    GEOINT is “the” conference of the year for geospatial intelligence professionals. This year’s attendance was even stronger than last year, with more than 3,3000 attendees and 225 exhibitors.

    Originally scheduled for Nashville, the significant flooding of May third caused severe damage to the Gaylord Opryland Conference Center. The damage was so extensive that the facility will not reopen until late November, too late for the originally scheduled GEOINT 2010. The nimble USGIF staff did a rapid about-face and rebooked GEOINT at the Earnest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. The conference and all related activities went off without a hitch, a testament to the hard work of the folks at USGIF.

    GEOINT Awards Ceremony.
    GEOINT Awards Ceremony.

    There is no way to cover the entire conference in this column, but there is extensive coverage available online from USGIF.  One of the useful features of GEOINT was the publication of a timely and professional-looking show daily that was authored by KMI and USGIF during the day/evening, printed overnight, and slipped under hotel room doors of attendees each morning. The daily laid out the schedule and highlights for the day as well as summaries of key speakers the day before. Reading the show daily publication online is a good way to review the conference for those of you that weren’t able to attend. Following are links to the show daily.

    GEOINT – Show Daily Day One

    GEOINT – Show Daily Day Two

    GEOINT – Show Daily Day Three

    GEOINT – Show Daily Day Four

    GEOINT – Show Daily Wrap Up

    USGIF also produced a daily video show that played on hotel room TVs. This was yet another way to view topics that may have been missed due to conflicting schedules. I always found it frustrating to attend large conferences with competing exhibits and multiple-track break-out sessions. The combination of video shows, daily news, and online information helped mitigate this frustration. You can view the GEOINT TV presentations by clicking here.

    USGIF videographer.
    USGIF videographer.

    Describing the conference title, GEOINT 3.0 in the opening session, K. Stuart Shea, CEO of USGIF paraphrased a definition of geography that I first heard from Dr. Jerry Ingalls of UNCC. He stated that old geography merely focused on locating features, but with analytic tools such as statistics and GIS, new geography had evolved into a broad definition simply stated as “why what is where.” And knowing that, one could then perhaps predict “where the next what would be.”

    That summed up my general take on the conference. GEOINT is rapidly evolving to meet the needs of warfighters. Without going into detail, you could “smell” the difference in just one year. There was a greater emphasis on integrating GIS, imagery, multispectral, FMV (full motion video), SIGINT (signals intelligence), HUMINT (human intelligence), human terrain, and crowd-sourced and open-source information into a cohesive temporal picture that could be quickly and easily visualized and understood by troops in the field.

    There was a sense of urgency, as explained by General Koziol who heads up the ISR Task Force. He spoke of the rapid evolution of enemy tactics driving the need for faster response to ISR requirements. He detailed needs for software with deliveries in less than 30 days and hardware deliveries in less than one year. Any longer means that the solutions will be obsolete by the time they get implemented.

    One example that demonstrated the rapid intel environment was explained in a FMV breakout session. One of the indicators of a potential suicide bomber was the observation that frequently two vehicles were involved, a lead vehicle carrying the explosives with a suicide bomber and a trailing vehicle with a remote detonator. Seems like many of the suicide bombers are not volunteers that will self detonate, so the trail vehicle makes sure the act is carried out. If the driver “chickens out,” the vehicle is detonated anyway, and the driver’s family receives no reward money, just shame. You can easily see how time-critical identifying a similar event and acting on it can be.

    There was a general consensus among the speakers that sharing data rapidly with our coalition partners was critical to success. Our tendency to over-classify and restrict our data makes the perishable data less useful. However, that opinion was tempered at this conference with the yellow flags sent up by WikiLeaks.

    General Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, was the opening keynote speaker. Having held every key position in the intelligence community including NIMA director during 9/11, he showed a keen understanding of geospatial technology. He indicated that GEOINT was the most integrative environment to visualize and understand the complex data sources we have. He also felt that GEOINT would be equally valuable in the emerging cyber threat arena by mapping the virtual environment coincident with real physical locations and acting as a visualization tool to understand and combat the threat.

    General Clapper seems to have a wry sense of humor with little patience for games. During his interview with the president, he stated that with “one foot in assisted living” he didn’t have the time nor desire for a lot of “Oval Office carpet time.” This must have been quite off-putting for most politicos within earshot. General Clapper also indicated that the SECDEF efficiency review was going to affect all defense communities with the possibility of seeing similar cuts that we saw in the early 90’s, in the range of 20%. He further elaborated that “What I’d look to do is profit from what happened to us in the 1990s, and lay out a strategy for this and absorb the pain smartly.”

    The new National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency director, Letitia A. Long, shared her vision for NGA. She stated that “I want to put the power of GEOINT directly in the hands of our users.” She wants to change the user experience by providing online, on-demand access to GEOINT data. She also wants to expand the analytic capabilities by providing contextual analysis of geographic features and imagery enhanced with temporal and human terrain geography.

    The expo was quite extensive, with elaborate booths by all the major players. The show daily did a good job highlighting new products and capabilities of the majors firms. One thing I like to do at conferences is look at the small booths on the fringes of the exhibit hall. There is always a gem or two to be found with these small emerging companies. One example at GEOINT 2010 was GCS research with TerraEchos. This company was demonstrating a simple underground sensor that was covert, sensitive, and could accurately detect sounds, foot, or vehicle traffic while mapping the location on a GIS. The device, based on early U.S. Navy passive sonar work, consists of a ¼-inch rubber cable housing a thin fiber-optic line fed with a laser. The cable is buried 6 to 18 inches below ground, could be thousands of feet long, and displays the vibrations though micro distortion of the laser-illuminated fiber optic line.

    GCS Research Display.
    GCS Research Display.
    TerraEcho2
    GCS Research Display.

    USGIF also announced and presented a well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award to Esri’s Jack Dangermond. The only surprise was that it didn’t happen sooner.

    In several years of attending GEOINT, the environment is clearly getting more complex and “squishy” with the integration of many different intel sources in a rapidly changing world and a greater need for speed. Intelligence and the need to understand and act rapidly is paramount. A quote by Henry David Thoreau used by one speaker was spot on describing what the GEOINT community is tasked with accomplishing: “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”