The Smart Energy Catalyst. The project showcased how a smart home, smart electric vehicle and smart energy system can work together in an IoT ecosystem with location as a key interaction point.
Geospatial technology company Esri was honored at the TM Forum Catalyst InFocus event for the company’s contributions to developing solutions for a more connected world. TM Forum, a global industry association for digital business, presented Esri and partners with the Most Innovative Catalyst Award.
“We’re driving toward the ultimate Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem where you can bring different applications together that are going to make our lives safer, more energy efficient, and much better in the future,” said Randy Frantz, telecommunications solutions director at Esri.
Esri’s telecommunications team collaborated with Orange and BearingPoint on the award-winning proof-of-concept project called the Smart Energy Catalyst. The project showcased how a smart home, smart electric vehicle and smart energy system can work together in an IoT ecosystem with location as a key interaction point.
The multiphase project examined the infrastructure necessary to support a smart energy ecosystem. With the latest iteration of the Catalyst, the project team demonstrated how geofencing in homes and cars can work with Esri’s geographic information system (GIS) technology. When the consumer leaves home or work, mobile devices trigger the GIS to initiate a series of notifications and actions. For example, lights in homes automatically turn off, security systems are enabled, and users are notified that their electric vehicle needs charging.
“Location provides context to the IoT network. It transforms raw sensor data into useful, actionable information,” Frantz said.
TM Forum’s Strategy Committee gave the award to the Smart Energy Catalyst team based on several criteria, including having a compelling and inspiring demonstration; growth potential and business value; and potential for humanitarian or other positive effects on society.
Nearly 200 industry leaders attended the Catalyst InFocus conference, where they explored the organization’s 11 project demonstrations.
TM Forum’s Catalyst program connects diverse companies from across industries, facilitating collaboration and fostering the cocreation of innovative solutions to pressing telecommunications business challenges. Catalysts are member-led projects and demonstrations that both inform and leverage TM Forum best practices and standards including TM Forum Frameworx.
The organization announces Catalyst Awards biannually. Winning teams leverage proven technologies, competencies, and investments. Teams have six months to develop proofs of concept that outline digital solutions.
In addition to his work on the Smart Energy Catalyst, Frantz accepted a position earlier this year as colead of TM Forum’s IoT work stream. The endeavor explores how location, advanced sensor and device data, and powerful industrial and consumer solutions can change social norms and bring business into the modern technology framework.
TM Forum includes more than 900 member organizations and 85,000 individual members.
Two flights were conducted at 120 meters and 100 meters to gather data to help the Peruvian government protect the site from erosion and wear from tourism. (Photo: Trimble)
High up in the Peruvian Andes Mountains lies Machu Picchu, an Incan citadel built in the 15th century, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In the fall of 2014, Trimble demonstrated its UX5 Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) — along with the Trimble Business Center and Inpho UASMaster processing software — at the famed archaeological site.
Machu Picchu is under the threat of landslides and erosion — plus the site experiences heavy rains known to wash away roads. It has also seen an increase in tourism over the years.
As a consequence, the preservation of the landmark is a growing concern for the Peruvian government. Data captured by a fixed-wing UAS is expected to help the many organizations that govern and preserve the site to visualize and monitor the location.
Getting to Machu Picchu is a challenge in itself. A 3.5-hour train ride from the city of Cusco takes visitors almost 8,000 feet above sea level. When a Trimble team visited the site, access to Machu Picchu was arranged well in advance by its distribution partner Geosystems and the Peruvian Ministry of Culture.
Orthophoto of the Macchu Pichu site. (Image: Trimble)
The day of the flight, a small area on one of the terraces was cleared of tourists (but not local llamas) for the flight. Two flights were conducted at 120 meters and 100 meters for enhanced data. Along with Trimble and Geosystems representatives, local archaeologists and surveyors from the Ministry of Culture attended the flight, which went off without any challenges.
With the flight complete, Trimble and Geosystems went to work processing the data immediately in Trimble Business Center and Inpho UASMaster. Trimble Business Center allowed the data to be quickly processed into high-quality point clouds and orthophotos while Inpho UASMaster offers feature-rich photogrammetry workflows.
The following day, Trimble and Geosystems presented government officials with orthophotos and a 3D point cloud model.
Esri Inc. is working with Microsoft to integrate location services and spatial analytics to the Microsoft Azure IoT (Internet of Things) Suite.
The collaboration will rapidly enable IoT scenarios by offering customers and partners a set of highly capable platform services as ready-to-use, preconfigured solutions. The forthcoming integrated offering is the next step in Microsoft’s and
Esri’s long-standing alliance to spatially enable the enterprise, Esri said in a press release.
Smart city concepts and innovations in the automotive industry are examples of how data from many sources increases understanding. Governments and businesses use that data to improve safety features, reduce air pollution, and mitigate traffic congestion.
Scope of Project: The 3D mapping project encompasses all of Singapore — more than 700 square kilometers.
The Singapore Land Authority (SLA) is engaged in a 3D mapping initiative to create and maintain a high-resolution survey-accurate 3D national map. Denmark and Switzerland have national 3D maps, and Hong Kong has mapped its central business district.
3D virtual environments support city planning, decision-making and risk management. SLA’s project involves capturing vast amounts of data and creating 2D and 3D datasets in several formats. The project began in April 2014 with airborne data capture and modeling; the modeling of buildings is expected to be completed this month. Mobile data capturing and road modeling is expected to be completed by the end of 2016.
The 3D models of buildings and road infrastructure are being created from high-quality images and laser-scanning data. The 3D data is stored in the open information model CityGML, which allows for 3D spatial analysis, simulation and visualization.
The project has employed multiple rapid mapping technologies such as oblique imagery, airborne laser scanning, mobile laser scanning and terrestrial scanning, resulting in more than 500 terabytes of data in multiple formats.
Using Bentley Map software, the project team created, maintained and disseminated 3D information directly from the Oracle Spatial database platflorm. In November, Bentley Systems awarded the 3D mapping project the 2015 Be Inspired Award for Innovation in Government.
Building Level of Detail 2: The Singapore project will model up to LOD2.The five levels of detail (LOD) in CityGML are LoD0 (terrain model), LoD1 (block models with no roof structures), LoD2 (explicit roof structures), LoD3 (detailed architectural models) and LoD4 (interior modeling).
Census data tries to describe for us what the homeless population looks like across the country. Typically the numbers contained in this data are considered to be low, as not all homeless individuals and families are “visible” so getting an accurate count can be challenging.
An interesting interactive map has been created by Movoto that allows the user to look at the number of homeless per 100,000 people in each state. But Geographic Information Systems (GIS), community involvement, and app builders are helping gather and utilize data to truly make a difference.
MOVOTO offers an interactive map.
It’s not surprising to note that most of homeless shelter users have goals, both short and long term. Kelly A. Schwend , Maureen Cluskey , and Michael Cordell of Bradley University explored these in a study released early this year titled “Lifestyles and Goals of Male Homeless Shelter Users.” While most participants short term goals are focused on employment, almost all of them had medium to long term goals involving housing.
The questions raised are several. How do we move the homeless from the streets into some kind of housing ladder, and who will assist them? GIS is helping to answer these questions in some of the larger population centers around the country. These programs are merely examples of what can be done elsewhere on a larger or smaller scale.
San Francisco
Over 10 years ago, then mayor of San Francisco Garvin Newsom promised that the worst of the homeless problem in one of the richest cities in the world would be gone. Ten years later, the city has moved nearly 20,000 homeless of the streets, but this hasn’t made a dent in the population. It seems that when one individual is helped, another takes their place.
Photo Credit: CartoDB
San Francisco Open Data contains information on the homeless population, counted by supervisory district. Taking this data, Bill Levay then overlays a San Francisco neighborhood shapefile. This not only shows where the homeless populations are concentrated, but by also adding in mapped locations of public and affordable housing locations, reveals if the resources are located near those in need. You can view the interactive map above here.)
Photo Credit: CantoDB
For instance, we can see on the map showing the intersection of this data that while a large portion of the homeless population is located near downtown and the South of Market area where there are only a few scattered public housing locations, there is much more public housing clustered together in Chinatown. While this issue has yet to be corrected, this information can be used to inform future decisions when locating resources.
Los Angeles
San Francisco is not the only populous city dealing with homelessness. Los Angeles is dealing with one of the largest homeless populations in the nation. A biennial survey taken in January, said to be the most rigorous and accurate so far according to City Labs, reveals 44,359 people sleeping on the streets, in their cars, and in shelters.
A Los Angeles Survey shows an estimated a homeless population of 44,359, a 12% increase since 2013. (Credit: Los Angeles Times)
A map created by the Los Angeles Times shows where this population ends up at night. Efforts are spotty at best, although the County’s Housing for Health program wants to have 10,000 permanent housing units created by 2018. Although Mayor Eric Garcetti says ending homelessness is a primary goal, and calls for funding for affordable housing, the problem continues to grow.
It is hoped that mapping the concentration of the population to help resource teams know what locations to target, the revision of laws prohibiting sleeping in public, and discouraging police raids on homeless encampments will help.
Baltimore
Baltimore’s homeless population is smaller than that of Los Angeles, but still significant. The city is using both mapping and a survey taken every two years to locate the homeless and target resources.
They’ve added another weapon to their arsenal, the Homeless Management Information System, (HMIS) spearheaded by the group The Journey Home and the Mayor’s Office for Health. Using this data, and a new web survey form, the city has obtained a more accurate picture of the homeless population, its location, and the resources still needed.
The survey, called the Point in Time (PIT), this year counted 2,796 homeless, 88% of whom were housed in shelters. The survey also looked at Housing Information Count (HIC). The study showed some progress and some setbacks, and revealed growth in the category of unaccompanied youth.
Photo Credit: Esri.com
The map above shows the population, and the location of resources all within a one and a half mile radius. The program not only uses mapping, but employs other technology to attempt to create long term, sustainable, and creative solutions to the city’s homeless issues.
New York City
Perhaps the most innovative mapping program in the country involves several apps being used in New York City. Launched in early August the new app called NYC Map the Homeless lets users take a picture of the homeless which is tied to their location, and use hashtags like #man or #sleeping to categorize individuals. They can even choose #violent to let authorities know about individuals perceived to be dangerous.
Photo Credit: NYC Map the Homeless
The idea, according to the developer, is to “gather as much data as possible to make sense of the homeless issues we’re seeing.”
He’s far from the first to try to use technology to address the increasing homeless issues in New York City, Homeless Helper, Feed it Forward, and WeShelter. WeShelter, provides direct assistance to the homeless, and wants create a behavior change from doing nothing to doing something, even if the user is not sure what to do.
The app lets users donate money to the homeless at the tap of a button, and also send location information to WeShelter, which helps them send outreach teams to areas with the most need.
Unlike Map the Homeless, WeShelter does not allow users to take pictures in the interest of privacy. it also keeps the location data it gathers closer to the vest, only making it available to homeless outreach groups.
Regardless of the location or the methodology, it is clear that mapping the locations of the homeless population and the resources available to them is a step in the right direction. GIS plays a large role in aiding social action.
Want to be a part of the solution? The Journey Home has some answers, but you can also get involved in your own community using the skills you have to aid in the eradication of homelessness. As WeShelter states, it’s all about a change in behavior from doing nothing to doing something.
Topcon Positioning Group’s DS-200i direct-aiming motorized imaging station is now compatible with the new Autodesk BIM 360 Layout app for the Apple iPad.
The DS-200i is the second total station solution that Autodesk and Topcon have collaborated on for contractors, following the Topcon LN-100 Layout Navigator.
The DS-200i has an electronic distance measurement (EDM) range of up to 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) without the need of a prism, and 5,000 meters (26,240 feet) with one. The built-in wireless WLAN connects the iPad with the BIM (building information modeling) 360 Layout app.
The collaboration provides contractors the ability to connect a coordinated model to the field layout process, helping to increase job-site productivity while improving the accuracy of staked or installed building components, according to a Topcon news release.
Additionally, the DS-200i offers an excellent reflectorless solution for quality assurance and quality control workflows — verifying items in the field are installed correctly as compared to models.
The DS-200i features real-time video imaging with a 5 MP camera. The controller’s touchscreen video and arrow keys are designed to let remote operators view what is being measured, Topcon said, similar to looking through the telescope.
The Autodesk BIM 360 Layout app is available through the Apple App Store.
Smart cities, hybrid architecture, and flocks of small imaging satellites are among the trends predicted for 2016, according to a blog by Boundless, which develops software for enterprise spatial IT applications.
Earth imaging satellites: “Gone are the days of waiting 7-10 days for a satellite to revisit and collect a new image over a location on Earth. Today, flocks of small, inexpensive satellites are now imaging the entire earth many times each day.” Both DARPA and NASA are planning on launching more imaging satellites. Fortune magazine discusses the trend in a recent article, and a new conference is devoted to them.
Hybrid architecture: “While open source continues to gain momentum, many organizations still leverage their investment in proprietary software and systems,” writes Anthony Calamito. “Building a hybrid platform can help an organization reduce risk and add value by avoiding single vendor lock-in, reducing costs associated with licensing, and promoting interoperability with existing software.”
Other trends outlined by Calamito include streaming data and the Internet of Things, which is leading to “smart cities” — “cities and their governments who have maximized data collection, data mining, and data-driven analytics for the betterment of their constituents,” Calamito writes. “Forbes magazine believes ‘smart city’ is a term we are going to be hearing a lot more of in the coming years as it’s thought that by 2020 we will be spending $400 billion a year building them.”
Esri chief scientist Dawn Wright gives honors lecture at AGU Fall Meeting.
Dawn Wright, chief scientist at Esri, delivered a named honors lecture at the 2015 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, Dec. 14–18, at the Moscone Convention Center, San Francisco, Calif. The AGU Earth and Space Science Informatics Focus Group designated Wright to represent Esri in delivering the Leptoukh Lecture.
AGU is among the world’s most well-respected Earth science scholarly organizations. Its Fall Meeting is the largest Earth and space science meeting in the world. The Leptoukh Lecture award recognizes achievement in computational sciences, data sciences and informatics that leads to advancements in the domain sciences.
“This is a great honor and opportunity for Esri,” Wright said. “It allows us to describe how Esri’s continuing progress helps advance both data science and Earth science. Given the host of pressing issues facing the planet, such as the impact of climate change on human systems and the natural environment, Esri’s involvement with the scientific community is now more important than ever.”
The Leptoukh Lecture award was named for the late Greg Leptoukh, an Earth scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He was involved in many projects related to data quality and data provenance. The honors lecture’s purpose is to raise awareness of the often-overlooked computational and data advances that enable breakthroughs in domain science. It also fosters exceptional individuals to make continued contributions in informatics and data science.
The AGU Earth and Space Science Informatics Focus Group addresses an array of research questions and projects. This year’s session topics range from large-scale data management within global cyber infrastructures or virtual observatories, to intelligent systems theory, semantics, and handling of near-real-time data streams, to issues of “dark data,” data transparency, reproducibility and more.
The aim of the lecture is to build, in part, on these themes but to consider more broadly how we might push the boundaries of informatics knowledge more along the lines of use-inspired science — responsive to the needs and perspectives of society while still being fundamental and cutting edge.
Mahon Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada, is one of the many sites that Fugro will survey this winter.
Fugro has been awarded new task orders by the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) to conduct airborne lidar bathymetry (ALB) surveys in Eastern and Central Canada, Fugro announced in a news release on Dec. 15. The task orders, which have been issued under a supply arrangement Fugro holds with the CHS, are in support of their nautical charting programs and involve the survey of multiple sites along the coasts of Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Central Canada.
Fugro’s ALB systems will be used to acquire hydrographic survey data and seabed imagery in shallow coastal waters, where the acquisition of similar information by traditional vessel-based acoustic methods is inefficient, expensive and unsafe. The data will fill gaps in shallow water and junction with existing deeper water data that have been acquired previously by CHS vessels. All data will be acquired to International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) Order 1B, an international standard for conducting hydrographic surveys, and will ultimately be used to update CHS’s nautical charts.
Fugro provides ALB products and services worldwide to public and private sector clients as a rapid and cost-effective solution to nearshore hydrographic survey needs where scale of the project, time constraints and user safety are of primary concern.
The OGC CF-netCDF 3.0 encoding standard has emerged as a widely used and well supported data model and encoding for domains such as atmospheric science, oceanography, climatology, meteorology and hydrology. It supports multi-dimensional data representing space and time-varying phenomena.
The new extension to the OGC CF-netCDF standards suite specifies how CF-netCDF datasets are encoded to conform to “OGC Implementation Schema for Coverages.” Coverages are data such as the output of weather and climate forecast models, weather station and ocean buoy observations, balloon soundings, ground-base radar, satellite imagery, digital elevation models and lidar point clouds. This extension specifies how these complex multi-dimensional CF-netCDF data are encoded as OGC coverages for use in GIS or other geospatial systems.
The documents for the OGC netCDF-GMLCOV Standard are available online.
The OGC is an international consortium of more than 515 companies, government agencies, research organizations and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless and location-based services and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled.
This release of ArcGIS, planned for 2016, expands the existing native integration with SAP HANA and allows customers to run SAP Business Suite and ArcGIS applications within an architecture based on SAP HANA. The companies said they will further enhance the SAP HANA platform by more deeply integrating advanced ArcGIS geospatial capabilities and content across SAP’s broader application portfolio.
The collaboration between SAP and Esri is expected to provide the ability to run both GIS workloads and advanced spatial analytics on a single SAP HANA geodatabase. The companies stated that customers will be able to apply sophisticated business rules and relationships to spatial data directly in SAP HANA, define advanced georelational models such as topologies and networks, and permit both GIS and enterprise business users to work within the same multiuser access and editing environment.
“We’re very excited about the enterprise geodatabase support for SAP HANA,” said Jack Dangermond, Esri’s president. “It will bring our customers speed, simplicity and better integration with their enterprise information. For SAP customers, it delivers a complete platform for mapping and geospatial intelligence. By synchronizing our platforms, our respective customers will benefit across the enterprise. We’re doing the work to make sure that GIS and mapping is available to all — not just traditional mapping experts.”
SAP and Esri have been technology partners for a number of years, providing integration of their respective platforms, SAP HANA and Esri ArcGIS. Companies invested in Esri and SAP can immediately create maps populated with data from SAP HANA and instantly access those maps anywhere on any ArcGIS client, as well as in SAP or custom applications. Today users of SAP HANA can access ArcGIS for geospatial data and geoservices and perform analytics, while Esri users can similarly access, analyze and query both spatial and nonspatial data directly in SAP HANA. Esri supports deployments of SAP HANA with query layers and features services for customers that want to dramatically increase spatial query performance by running SAP HANA side by side with ArcGIS.
“Our customers represent a new generation of data stewards requiring an in-memory computing platform that performs at scales unseen before — including large-scale geography,” said Daniel Schneiss, senior vice president and global head, SAP HANA Platform and Databases, SAP. “As we enter a world of exponential data growth and the Internet of Things, the need to geospatially analyze Big Data will only increase from this point forward. We look forward to teaming with Esri to address this need by integrating the full power of ArcGIS technology with SAP HANA.”
Visual Technology Services, owner of the PDF3D brand, has received a patent for point cloud simplification, supporting large point cloud reduction and report generation implementations in the PDF3D software systems, the company announced in a news release. The Grant of Patent GB2521452 for Point Cloud Simplification was awarded by the United Kingdom’s Intellectual Property Office, and the technology is used for geospatial environmental survey, laser scanning and civil engineering.
“With the expanding use of terrestrial, UAV and airborne lidar, the volume of acquired 3D point cloud data is expanding rapidly,” said Ian Curington, CEO and co-author of the new patent. “Encoding point clouds into 3D PDF requires simplification to allow collaborative communication and email distribution. The granting of this critical patent strengthens our position as leader in 3D technical publishing technology using the 3D PDF standard.”
The patent covers methods used to reduce the number of samples in a large 3D point cloud, which results in optimum sample selection, minimizing distortions and preserving most feature relevant subsets of the original samples or by representative new point locations and attributes. The method achieves accuracy with computational expense compared to previous methods, the company said. The software implementation of this method is currently licensed to laser scanner manufacturers, 3D point cloud processing system vendors and to commercial survey companies.
“The company’s intellectual property strategy is very well aligned with commercial software license activities,” said Ian Bingham and Vicki Salmon, the founding partners of IP Asset LLP. “The IP strategy is closely following agile and responsive R&D as the 3D PDF use cases expand into new vertical markets. We look forward to further news of the growing PDF3D patent portfolio.”
