GPS World

Tag: crowdsourcing

  • Nexar releases CityStream Live, a real-time mapping platform for mobility

    Nexar releases CityStream Live, a real-time mapping platform for mobility

    Image: Nexar
    Image: Nexar

    The new platform is designed to provide fresh data on nearly every road across the U.S. at a reduced cost

    Nexar, an artificial-intelligence (AI) computer vision company, has released CityStream Live, a real-time mapping platform.

    CityStream Live enables the mobility industry, including connected vehicles, maps, mobility services, digital twins or smart city applications, to access a continuous stream of fresh, crowdsourced road data. Only with real-time data can vehicles really know what’s coming their way, react to varying speed limits, avoid work zones, find parking and someday drive themselves. Thanks to Nexar’s massive network of “eyes on the road,” edge AI and change-detection capabilities, CityStream Live is already available to industry design partners.

    Today’s digital maps often fall short of the freshness and precision that software-driven auto OEMs, autonomous vehicles, and mobility players require. Standard mapping methods — SD, HD and traffic maps — fail to provide accurate, up-to-date and cost-effective solutions, Nexar said.

    To solve this problem, CityStream Live provides real-time mapping technologies at the edge of the network, enabling detection of work zones, road sign changes, potholes and free parking spaces. The platform is designed to provide fresh data on nearly every road across the United States at a dramatically reduced cost.

    CityStream Live uses a crowdsourcing network and edge AI software to provide developers with a live data feed to increase situational awareness, enhance driving capabilities, increase safety, add comfort and help solve everyday mobility challenges.

    More than 700,000 vehicles are in in Nexar’s camera network, which captures 94% of U.S. roads each month. Nexar collects 3 billion miles of road vision data per year.

    A free trial version of CityStream Live can be accessed here.

  • How medium-definition maps help navigate dynamic roads

    How medium-definition maps help navigate dynamic roads

    By Ethan Sorrelgreen
    Chief Product Officer, Carmera

    Ethan Sorrelgreen, Carmera
    Ethan Sorrelgreen, Carmera

    Since the early days of autonomous vehicles (AVs), maps — specifically, so-called “high-definition” maps — have played a critical role in their technology stack. Central to perception, localization and path planning, these highly detailed, highly precise maps provide vehicles a baseline understanding of the world around them, delivering key priors that form the basis of the AV’s navigational decision making.

    These maps come with exacting standards: a 3D network graph, spatial accuracy within 10 centimeters, attribute support in the thousands, and so on. Additionally, with AV deployments becoming more frequent — covering broader, more complex driving domains — these requirements are growing ever more demanding.

    Of particular import is the increased need for temporal accuracy — that is, a map’s ability to represent current conditions (as opposed to conditions at some point in time). Roads — especially urban roads — are highly dynamic environments. Things like construction, repaving, signal upgrades and, now, on-street dining constantly affect the flow of traffic.

    For example, in a summer 2020 survey of New York, Carmera found 88 drive-lane-impacting events (out of a total of 251 road events) over 72 hours in midtown Manhattan alone.

    A map’s failure to reflect such events and changes can have a major impact on an AV’s reliability (Will the autonomous-driving feature remain engaged?), motion-planning (Will the AV safely and smoothly navigate through/around the obstacle?) and/or path planning (Will the AV choose the most efficient route despite the obstacle?). Maintaining a map, however, is exponentially more complicated than creating it. Not only does the data need to be good, it also needs to be fast and cheap to produce.

    The key to solving the fast and cheap legs of this classic “good-fast-cheap” trilemma is simplifying the initial problem, using what Carmera calls a medium-definition map. If an HD map is a map with high feature detail and high spatial accuracy, then an MD map is a map with high feature detail but a slightly lower spatial accuracy. It essentially atomizes the dense, complex HD world into discrete, manageable blocks, or “zones.”

    An MD map of a California intersection showing road features — including control attributes — placed with zonal accuracy. (Image: Carmera)
    An MD map of a California intersection showing road features — including control attributes — placed with zonal accuracy. (Image: Carmera)

    These zones — each a logical section of the road network — become the new unit of fidelity. The MD map catalogs all the features in a zone — a traffic light with a left arrow that controls the left two lanes, a bike path, a solid median, etc. — but not their precise location in the real world.

    This simplified map provides the ideal basis for a system of triaging change, which dramatically lowers the cost — in both time and money — of HD map updates. Indeed, it provides the foundation for Carmera’s change-as-a-service offering — a modular, on-demand feed of road events and map updates that plug into existing consumer or HD maps.

    Because of its lower spatial accuracy, an MD map can be updated with consumer-grade tools — a camera and a consumer-grade GNSS, let’s say — coupled with basic consumer vision algorithms. Contrast that to an HD map, which requires either expensive equipment, like a lidar rig, or — in Carmera’s case — sophisticated algorithms that can convert visual and telemetric data into HD road graphs.

    MD map maintenance, therefore, is relatively cheap, which is good news for those who want to use MD data for next-generation consumer applications, such as natural-language navigation, or to support sub-L4 levels of automated driving (both excellent MD use cases).

    An MD map of the same interaction, showing road features—including control attributes—placed with zonal accuracy. (Image: Carmera)
    An MD map of the same interaction, showing road features—including control attributes—placed with zonal accuracy. (Image: Carmera)

    For HD updates, an additional pass is needed. Think of this as a tip-and-cue system: When a functional change in the map is detected (the tip), data from the identified zone is reprocessed using more complex algorithms to create the new HD vectors (the cue). In some cases — either because of customer requirements or because the change is superficial — a simple MD update may be sufficient. Thus, expensive computing resources are only deployed when needed.

    This approach is equally effective for those using traditional lidar-based methods. There, the MD tip allows for targeted dispatching of lidar rigs, which results in significant cost-savings vis-à-vis the typical practice of sequential resurveying.
    As technology evolves, so too will the role of the MD map.

    Carmera sees a world where an AV’s onboard sensors will become so sophisticated that the HD maps’ utility may diminish. MD maps, however, will still provide vehicles key rules-of-the road relationships, helping optimize route planning and similar beyond-line-of-sight decision making. Employing this new standard now, therefore, not only makes driving safer today, it paves the way for the road ahead.

    Screenshot: Carmera
    Screenshot: Carmera
  • Research Roundup: GPS reveals volcanic activity under Europe

    Research Roundup: GPS reveals volcanic activity under Europe

    Scientists have discovered new evidence for active volcanism next door to some of the most densely populated areas of Europe. The study crowdsourced GPS monitoring data from antennae across western Europe to track subtle movements in the Earth’s surface, thought to be caused by a rising subsurface mantle plume.

    The Eifel region lies roughly between the cities of Aachen, Trier and Koblenz, in west-central Germany. It is home to many ancient volcanic features, including the circular lakes known as maars. Maars are the remnants of violent volcanic eruptions, such as the one that created Laacher See, the largest lake in the area. The explosion that created the lake is thought to have occurred around 13,000 years ago.

    The mantle plume that fed this ancient activity is thought to still be present, extending up to 400 kilometers (km) into the earth. However, whether or not it is still active is unknown. “Most scientists had assumed that volcanic activity in the Eifel was a thing of the past,” said Corné Kreemer, lead author of the new study. “But connecting the dots, it seems clear that something is brewing underneath the heart of northwest Europe.”

    An aerial view of Laacher See, a volcanic caldera lake with a diameter of 2 km in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Created by volcanic activity, maars like this are also found in other parts of Europe and on other continents, but Eifel-Maars are the classic example worldwide. (Photo: bbsferrari/iStock / Getty Images Plus/Getty Images)
    An aerial view of Laacher See, a volcanic caldera lake with a diameter of 2 km in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Created by volcanic activity, maars like this are also found in other parts of Europe and on other continents, but Eifel-Maars are the classic example worldwide. (Photo: bbsferrari/iStock / Getty Images Plus/Getty Images)

    In the new study, the team — based at the University of Nevada, Reno and the University of California, Los Angeles — used data from thousands of commercial and state-owned GPS stations all over western Europe. The research revealed that the region’s land surface is moving upward and outward over a large area centered on the Eifel, and including Luxembourg, eastern Belgium and the southernmost province of the Netherlands, Limburg.

    “The Eifel area is the only region in the study where the ground motion appeared significantly greater than expected,” said Kreemer. “The results indicate that a rising plume could explain the observed patterns and rate of ground movement.”

    The new results complement those of a previous study in Geophysical Journal International that found seismic evidence of magma moving underneath the Laacher See. Both studies point towards the Eifel being an active volcanic system.

    The implication of this study is that there may not only be an increased volcanic risk, but also a long-term seismic risk in this part of Europe. The researchers urge caution, however. “This does not mean that an explosion or earthquake is imminent, or even possible again in this area. We and other scientists plan to continue monitoring the area using a variety of geophysical and geochemical techniques, to better understand and quantify any potential risks.”

    GPS observations of ground movement under the Eifel area. Colors represent contoured vertical motion inferred from GPS station data, and white and black arrows indicate the direction in which the crust is horizontally stretching or compressing, respectively. The highest upward motion of ~1 mm per year is found near the Eifel volcanic field. (Image: Study authors)
    GPS observations of ground movement under the Eifel area. Colors represent contoured vertical motion inferred from GPS station data, and white and black arrows indicate the direction in which the crust is horizontally stretching or compressing, respectively. The highest upward motion of ~1 mm per year is found near the Eifel volcanic field. (Image: Study authors)

    Citation: “Geodetic evidence for a buoyant mantle plume beneath the Eifel volcanic area, NW Europe” by Corné Kreemer, Geoffrey Blewitt, Paul M. Davis. Geophysical Journal International, Volume 222, Issue 2, Aug. 1, 2020, pp. 1316–1332, https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggaa227

  • At-home crowdsourcing and citizen science for mapping enthusiasts

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

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

     

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Image: U.S. Geological Survey
    Image: U.S. Geological Survey

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

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

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

     

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

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

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

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

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

     

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

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

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

     

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

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

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

     

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

  • EU contracting for GNSS interference detection network

    Request for proposals to be issued

    The Official Journal of the European Union (EU) will publish a funding opportunity in the near future for a GNSS “Advanced Interference Detection and Robustness Capabilities System,” according to officials familiar with the project.

    Advance notice of this procurement was first given in August of last year, with an award projected for the first quarter of 2019. Some observers have speculated that the procurement delay was related to a change in how the final system is envisioned. The current version of the notice asks for a crowdsourcing, software and networked-based solution.

    The advance notice calls for the vendor to both establish the system and operate it.

    The purpose of the present tender is to establish a new mechanism to detect interference at receiver and antenna level based on crowdsourcing and sharing information coming from any user (individuals or associated ones) and run the service for a period of two years.

    While for many “crowdsourcing” suggests the participation of large numbers of individuals, this will likely not be part of the scheme. Speaking to a government advisory board, Jean Yves Courtois, CEO at Orolia, said that battery drain on cell phones would prevent this from being practical. “Privacy concerns would also be an issue,” he said. Each individual would have to affirmatively agree to have their location information used continuously. This additional administrative burden would be significant.

    Much easier and preferable would be using Information from already deployed networks of fixed receivers, such as base stations. Unchanging locations and existing network connections make the engineering easier and thorny privacy concerns would be minimized. These ideas are also reflected in the current version of the advance notice:

    The activity shall also focus on identifying and engaging users (such as entities currently monitoring vast networks of devices integrating GNSS receivers) by means of an appropriate enrolment scheme ensuring the provision of the data. The design of the system shall ensure that the sensitivity of the data (GNSS vulnerabilities) is always protected.

    Crowdsourcing and collating such information is seen by many in industry as a relatively straight-forward engineering problem. Representatives from Orolia and Microsemi, for example, included ideas about crowdsourcing disruption data in recent presentations to the U.S. PNT Advisory Board. Both agreed, though, that there are few commercial incentives to do such work without a government customer.

    It is perhaps not a surprise that the EU is taking the lead in this field while other GNSS providers seem to have little interest.

    Unlike GPS, GLONASS and BeiDou, which are first and foremost national security systems, Europe’s Galileo was built and is operated by a civil organization focusing on economic and civil benefits. Interference with signals directly undercuts these benefits and can be easily seen in direct economic costs.

    Many European countries are using GNSS for road tolling, for example. Small GNSS jammers are easy to acquire off the internet and their illegal use is likely costing nations millions of euros in lost tolls each year. Without the ability to regularly detect, sanction, and deter this activity financial losses will continue to mount.

    The interference with tolling problem is not specifically addressed in the EU’s advance notice. It may well be that tolling authorities and others will be expected to install their own application specific interference detectors and then encouraged to link them to the EU backbone and database.

    The European Commission has been aware of this vulnerability for some time. In 2015 it contracted with Nottingham Scientific Ltd. in the UK to lead a multi-nation team and assess the extent of the problem.

    The STRIKE3 project was in operation from February 2016 to January 2019. Its goals were to sample and classify interference events, recommend a standard event reporting scheme, and assess the vulnerability of different types of GNSS receivers.

    The project’s sampling activity in 23 different countries detected nearly 500,000 interference events. Of these, 59,000 were classified as deliberate attempts to disrupt GNSS signals.

    Within the deliberate events the STRIKE3 team were able to identify about 300 jammer “families,” according to Mark Dumville, Co-Founder and Director at Nottingham Scientific. Along with the jammers they were able to classify into groups, there were “some very interesting outliers,” Dumville said. “These are likely evidence of jammer technology continuing to develop and evolve.”

    STRIKE3 is viewed as a very successful project by most everyone in the international PNT community, and certainly within the EU, according to officials.

    The upcoming announcement and future establishment of an on-going interference detection capability are some of the next logical steps to better securing Europe’s PNT services.

  • Diving into digital mapping history with OpenStreetMap

    Diving into digital mapping history with OpenStreetMap

    A European region in 2015. (Image: OpenStreetMap)
    A European region in 2015. (Image: OpenStreetMap)

    A tool developed by Mapbox explores “10 years of OpenStreetMap.” During that decade, hundreds of thousands of people mapped 25 million miles of roads in every country in the world.

    The internet tool uses a slider to show the data change over time. You can see additions and edits as they come online over the decade — a fascinating look at the intricate information that has been compiled. When a user drags the slider to the left, it’s easy to see how scant the information was only a few years into OpenStreetMap’s existence (the image at right shows the same European region in 2009 as the image at the top in 2015).

    The same European region in 2009 as the image at the top in 2015. (Image: OpenStreetMap)
    The same European region in 2009 as the image at the top in 2015. (Image: OpenStreetMap)

    After GPS and GNSS, OpenStreetMap ranks high in the movement to make geographic information accessible. OpenStreetMap is a community-driven project to create the most detailed, correct and current open map of the world.

    When Steve Coast began the project in 2004, map data sources were few, and largely controlled by private companies and the government. Coast changed the rules by creating a wiki-like resource of the entire globe, which everyone could use. Today, 5.2 million people use OpenStreetMap.

    OpenStreetMap democratized mapping: all a contributor needed was time and a computer connection to add data about their country or their neighborhood. Besides GNSS, contributors use aerial imagery and low-tech field maps to verify that OSM is accurate and up to date. Others dedicate their energies to humanitarian projects, including disaster response following the Haiti hurricane and aiding South Sudan and Syrian refugees.

  • Fugro bathymetric maps support global initiative Seabed 2030

    Fugro is supporting NF-GEBCO Seabed 2030, a global initiative to produce a definitive, high-resolution bathymetric map of the entire world’s ocean floor by the year 2030.

    The initiative is being facilitated by the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) project in partnership with The Nippon Foundation as a means to inform global policy, improve sustainable use and advance scientific research.

    Less than 20 percent of the world’s oceans are mapped using modern survey techniques. Accurate seabed measurements (bathymetry) are important for numerous government, scientific and industry applications, according to Fugro.

    “As the world’s largest offshore survey company, Fugro is in a position to help close this data gap, and we are committed to doing our part through the Seabed 2030 project,” said David Millar, Fugro’s government accounts director in the Americas.

    One of the primary ways Fugro is supporting Seabed 2030 is through crowdsourced bathymetry data contributions.

    In 2017 the company devised a methodology for collecting valuable high-resolution bathymetry datasets while its vessels are transiting between survey projects. The approach is made possible through Fugro’s Office Assisted Remote Services (OARS), its proprietary technology that enables safe and efficient data acquisition without the need for dedicated survey staff on board.

    In this way, valuable data can be collected from transiting vessels with minimal effect on Fugro’s standard operating procedures.

    In 2017, Fugro deployed its in-transit data collection methodology on two survey vessels, delivering approximately 65,000 square kilometers of crowdsourced bathymetry data to GEBCO.

    The company has recently expanded that collection capacity to include four survey vessels and intends eventually to incorporate the approach across its entire global survey fleet to make an increasingly significant impact on the Seabed 2030 program.

    “Fugro has displayed exemplary corporate leadership by sharing transit data from two of its survey vessels,” acknowledged Seabed 2030 Project Director Satinder Bindra. “In the coming months we look forward to receiving more transit data from all its survey vessels, which we believe will serve as a shining example to others in the industry and play an important role in helping us map the entire ocean floor for the benefit of humanity by 2030.”

    Along with its own data contributions, Fugro is working with its clients to investigate how their datasets (existing and planned) may be incorporated into the Seabed 2030 program. In some instances, data sharing is straightforward, but in many others, datasets contain sensitive information.

    Reducing the data resolution to a suitable degree and delaying the release of datasets until an acceptable amount of time has passed can mitigate these sensitivities and ensure the integrity of client-owned data.

    The company is also helping to establish a workflow for integrating third-party datasets into the overall Seabed 2030 project database. The workflow will address such things as data formats and metadata standards, with the goal of simplifying and accelerating the rate of crowdsourced contributions and data sharing arrangements.

    “We are proud to continue our support of the Seabed 2030 programme and to lead industry participation in this way,” Millar said. “As an appreciable portion of our work is ocean related, Seabed 2030 provides a perfect opportunity for us to contribute to global society and practice good ocean stewardship.”

  • How GIS — and you — can aid in disaster response

    Whether you are on the helping end of a disaster aiding in the rescue and recovery, or on the receiving end being aided, GIS is supercharging the rescue efforts.

    How can I help you if I don’t know where you are?

    Hurricane Harvey hits. The storm was worsening. Winds were sustained at over 120 mph. Landfall of Hurricane Harvey was expected in 48 hours. Worse, the storm was forecast to stall once overland creating the single worst rain event in United States history.

    Texas Governor Greg Abbott  encouraged people to evacuate, especially those in low lying areas. Mayor Turner had only hours to decide the possible fate of millions. Making the call not to evacuate a category 4 hurricane approaching the city could be political suicide. Consider the fallout after Hurricane Katrina. The models clearly showed the extent of flooding and how many people would be trapped in their cars on flooded roads.

    “You cannot put 6.5 million people on the road,” said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner. The mayor’s ultimate decision not to issue an evacuation declaration was based on geospatial models, and as devastating as they were, it showed a better outcome if everyone stocked up, stayed put, and helped each other out after the storm. At least by staying home we will know where people are after the storm.

    Gov. Abbott fully mobilized the National Guard and another 30 state agencies responded to the crisis. U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) calls to action went out to the Coast Guard and volunteer organizations. Small boats, raised axel trucks and Vietnam-era looking personnel carriers were brought in for support, along with helicopters, drones and search and rescue airplanes.

    First responders were issued full body waders and foul weather gear. Thousands of hypothermia blankets were stockpiled and cargo trucks carrying food, water and cots headed south. Volunteers from the Cajun Navy, Team Rubicon, the Red Cross, Open Street Maps, Samaritan’s Purse and others positioned their able-bodied forces along the periphery of the storm’s path ready to move in as soon as given the word.

    Thursday afternoon the winds and rains began getting increasingly worse. Darkness fell and by 10 p.m. the eye of the storm had made landfall. Rivers and streams began overflowing due in part to the storm surge moving waters upstream. Streets no longer drained the waters. The flooding continued to rise.

    Tremendous thermodynamic forces. Hurricanes aren’t a single, solid storm, though they may look like it from satellite imagery. They are enormous atmospheric depressions like a hole formed in the sky and air masses from thousands of miles around rush in to fill the void. These converging air masses create immense thermodynamic forces extending outward from a central vortex in long sweeping radial bands like blades of an enormous turbine.

    A hurricane is the cumulative fury of these destructive forces storm after storm after in rapid succession. Winds increase and decrease as the radial bands pass overhead becoming stronger and more constant as the eye approaches. Every plank, nail and screw is tested. Immense gusts like giant hammers breaks away loose thing. Strains of timber and steel shriek in the wind. In seconds sounds of groaning trees and the air fills with flying debris. Rain comes down in torrents.

    But in between these spiral bands it slows, sometimes stopping all together, even sunshine or moonlight might break through, but to believe the storm is over would be wrong — maybe dead wrong. Another band will sweep in with gusting, howling wind, thick, heavy clouds and dark skies, and rain, more and more rain, and the rising waters turning into gushing floods. Moments of endless terror turn into hours, the waters rising higher ever higher.

    Finally, 49 inches of rain and three days later the storm ended moving offshore. Its destruction shut down the fourth largest city in the United States.

    “…Texans have suffered a great hardship, their warmth and resiliency is truly inspiring,” said Gov. Abbott. The overwhelming willingness of people and organizations to help once the storm passed brought its own challenges. A convergence of rescue and recovery teams began.

    Leaders needed. It was obvious a coordinated effort needed to happen. Volunteers and organizations needed to work in unison. FEMA had to establish that order. The coordination center was formed, not unlike other disasters, but this time another dimension was added to it. FEMA was aware of social media’s ability to positively impact rescue operations tapping into briefly during Superstorm Sandy, the last large scale disaster to hit the United States, but FEMA lacked the necessary skills and expertise to capitalize on the technology.

    It is times like these that the greatest of all resources is realized. When asked what is the greatest asset, the answers most often given are manpower, money, equipment or supplies; however, even if there are plenty of the above, it is quickly realized the greatest resource is leadership. In times of crises, normal authority is laid aside and given to those who can bring order to the chaos.

    Christopher Vaughn, the geospatial information officer for FEMA, and Adrian Gardner, the chief information officer for FEMA, were those individuals stepping up to the task at hand. They understood getting better data faster and putting it into geospatial context held the answer. Once done that would be the foundational layer. All the other elements could then be added, like imagery, lots and lots of imagery, both before and after; and then overlay crowdsourced data.

    Vaughn, working with his counterparts in the Department of Homeland Security, brought in Homeland Infrastructure Foundation Level Data (HIFLD) layers, along with the Civil Air Patrol and DigitalGlobe’s Open Data Program. Launched in 2017, the program provides before and after imagery. Vaughn understood that the citizen-as-a-censor model provided raw, real-time and relevant information. It had to be tapped into to get control of the rescue operations.

    Sophia Liu, Ph.D., an Innovation Specialist and expert in crowdsource efforts was brought in from the United States Geographic Survey (USGS). Liu was the key to unlocking the crowd. She shared her greatest challenge was the misconceptions around the use of social media and an apprehension to using it without proper approvals from public relations. It took some convincing to change these mindsets.

    What helped tip the scales in her favor was Hurricane Irma coming right on the heels of Hurricane Harvey and then Hurricane Maria. The disasters were coming in way too fast and the detractors were drowned out by the need for information. Once they saw the value of crowdsourcing, there was little resistance.

    Challenges in Puerto Rico. The results spoke for themselves. In Puerto Rico, within only a few weeks of Hurricane Maria’s devastation, 1.4 million homes were analyzed for damage and 24,000 miles of roads were digitized through volunteer groups like GIS Corps and OpenStreetMaps.

    One of the greatest challenges in Puerto Rico was the lack of street addresses. That is more common than one might realize. In many parts of the world there is no established address system and locations are more or less oriented to significant landmarks. It is difficult for Americans to understand, but in other cultures generations of families grow up in the same neighborhoods. Everyone knows everyone else. Location is personal. In the case of disasters this poses a huge challenge, especially when roads and landmarks are destroyed, and people have evacuated.

    The company What3Words (W3W) is tackling this issue. W3W works uses a pixelated Earth system of 3 meter by 3 meter squares. Each grid can be defined by a set of three words. As I write this I am sitting in bump.cans.dome.

    W3W does away with traditional numerical latitude and longitude. It works in any language, in fact, eight countries have partnered with W3W as either the nation’s official addressing system or an alternate system, and the United Nations has it among their disaster reporting tools. Art Kalinski, the former writer of this column wrote an article last year about W3W, what3words: The geospatial advancement of the year?

    In Puerto Rico, since there aren’t addresses except in urban areas, the remainder of the island had to be geospatially configured to communicate “where” something was located. Digitizing Puerto Rico is a huge geospatial effort that would take years through normal government protocols and cost millions of dollars.

    Instead, by enlisting the support of the crowd, it was accomplished in weeks, proving the power if crowdsourcing operations.

    Crowdsourcing to the rescue. The power of the crowd was unlocked even more by using geoforms for filling out damage reports like bridge assessments, damaged roads, debris removal, etc. This allowed navigation apps to route around impassable areas saving time and ultimately lives. No more sending a rescue vehicle out only to find it can’t access the area because a tree is down, a bridge is collapsed, or flood waters are too high. Those delivering food could do so to where the people were.

    Interactive, real-time, geospatial, command and control forever changed dispatching. Instead of waiting for teams to return before retasking them with new assignments dispatching could be of done on the fly as survivors were identified. The nearest rescue craft with available space could be routed to the exact location.

    GIS allowed dispatchers to see where all the rescue teams were and how many survivors they had onboard and how many more they could take on. Data about each survivor was recorded allowing preparations for the arrival of anyone with special needs and the person’s information could immediately show up on a notification board that they had been found and rescued, important for family and friends to know.

    The information also helps with forecasting needs of shelters and the reporting of numbers to those in operational authority.

    Daily coordination calls were conducted over a variety of platforms with all interested and active participants. Important information was posted on a shared cloud drive. Slack, the peer to peer online collaboration platform was used so FEMA and the various groups were able to collaborate and keep the three different hurricane rescue operations segregated.

    Recovery continues. The recovery efforts continue in Houston, Florida, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. In efforts to increase the attention GIS played in mitigating damage from these disasters and the value of crowdsourced information FEMA hosted several events. The final event was held on Saturday, October 21, 2017. It was information about the situation on the ground in the multiple locations and the ongoing operations. It was also a celebration of the successes achieved during these crises; and, a tinge of sadness marked the event bringing to a close to some great working relationships.

    If you are interested, there are still ways to get involved no matter what your skillset or expertise. If you have a desire to help, there are opportunities either on scene in the theater of operation, or remotely working from your computer at home. Check with the organizations mentioned below. Even a couple hours of your time can help.

    What GIS offers next. GIS in the future of disaster response will make greater use of emerging technologies. Drones will fly preprogrammed paths ahead of a disaster if given enough time, and the imagery and the drone’s flight path will be stored. Then, immediately after the event passes drones will fly the same programmed path capturing imagery with the exact oblique and nadir angles as the original dataset.

    Change detection analysis can then be used to find the exact locations of change. This method will become increasingly valuable using high resolution 3D imagery point clouds and used in a change detection system.

    Geospatial artificial intelligence systems will identify the areas of greatest damage and assist by directing other resources such as mobile data signals to direct rescue operations towards possible survivors even using the last reported mobile data signal. It can direct human analysts to those specific areas that are inconclusive or require manual verification. This will increase analysis from several weeks to several days.

    That is in the future, the near future, perhaps next year’s hurricane season, or tornado season, or snowstorms this winter.

    This year, in total, there were 10 Atlantic hurricanes resulting in 431 deaths and an estimated $3.17 billion in damage; which by comparison, is 1/10th the number of casualties from Hurricane Katrina yet nearly twice the level of damage. It just so happens, I went through Hurricane Katrina living along the coast in Bay Saint Louis, Missouri, at the time where the eye the storm passed over. I tried to evacuate but being caught in a 13 hour traffic jam I was unable to outrun the storm. I personally experienced a category 4 hurricane. You may have picked that up in the opening of this article. Those experiences were very real. You might have also picked up my meteorological background from my days in the U.S Navy as a weather analyst.

    By the end of 2017, more than hurricanes had inflicted damage. Wildfires in the western U.S. killed another 36 people and destroyed 6,000 buildings. Now, with winter upon us, there will be snowstorms, and GIS will help with those recovery efforts as well.

    We are lucky to live in this day and age. Whether you are on the helping end of a disaster aiding in rescue and recovery, or on the receiving end being aided, GIS is supercharging the rescue efforts.

    Disaster response agencies and support groups

    Most of the above groups support all types of disaster response efforts and many do so throughout all regions of the world.

  • Qualcomm platform powers TomTom’s plans to crowdsource mapping data for autonomous driving

    Qualcomm Technologies Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, is working with TomTom on using the Qualcomm Drive Data Platform for high-definition (HD) map crowdsourcing for autonomous driving.

    Qualcomm Drive Data Platform collects and analyzes data from different vehicle sensors, supporting smarter vehicles to determine their location, monitor and learn driving patterns, perceive their surroundings, and share this perception with the rest of the world reliably and accurately.

    TomTom’s HD Map, including RoadDNA, is a highly accurate, digital map-based product that assists automated vehicles to precisely locate themselves on the road and help determine which way to maneuver, even when traveling at high speeds.

    Traditional development of maps requires deploying dedicated fleets of vehicles equipped with professional-grade sensors to collect location, raw imagery, lidar and other data, which is then transferred, stored and processed in data centers. Now that cars are increasingly connected and equipped with a range of sensors, new and complimentary approaches become possible.

    Using the precise positioning, on-device machine learning, heterogeneous compute and connectivity capabilities of the Qualcomm Drive Data Platform, which features the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820Am automotive processor, TomTom and Qualcomm Technologies aim to facilitate adding an improved, scalable and cost-efficient crowdsourcing approach to the mix of sources for HD mapmaking.

    The new concept is designed to allow massive numbers of connected cars to see and understand their environment, traffic and road conditions, and support real-time input for map and road condition updates.

    “Feature-rich, highly accurate and frequently updated HD maps are critical to support some of the most advanced applications envisioned in the automotive industry, especially for autonomous driving,” said Willem Strijbosch, head of autonomous driving, TomTom. “We are building the cloud-based platform to make and maintain HD maps using a range of input sources, including crowdsourced data from swarms of intelligent connected vehicles. We’re excited to explore the connectivity and compute capabilities of the Qualcomm Drive Data Platform to help map the world for the future of driving.”

    “Qualcomm Technologies is demonstrating today that an affordable and easy-to-integrate mapping solution for autonomous vehicles is realizable,” said Nakul Duggal, vice president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “The Qualcomm Drive Data Platform is designed to integrate key technologies into a cost-effective edge compute solution required to support safer, highly connected and smarter transportation, and we are pleased to offer this technology for HD Map providers such as TomTom as well as automakers, shared mobility service providers and automotive industry at large.”

    For more information about the Qualcomm Drive Data Platform, visit the Qualcomm booth at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Feb. 27–March 2, Hall 3, Stand 3E10, or go to www.qualcomm.com/automotive.

  • Esri partners with Waze on open data-sharing for governments

    Esri partners with Waze on open data-sharing for governments

    Global mapping company Esri is partnering with Waze to make it easier for governments to begin building intelligent transportation systems in their communities.

    Waze enables users to share and harness the power of anonymous, aggregated data to promote greater transportation efficiency, deeper insight into travel conditions, and safer roads.

    Governments already using the Esri ArcGIS platform can quickly and easily exchange data through the Waze Connected Citizens Program, a free two-way data share of publicly available traffic information.

    Governments that have not already subscribed to Esri technology or joined the Waze Connected Citizens Program can sign up online to start sharing road closure alerts and other information with their citizens right away.

    Waze Esri Traffic Alerts.
    Waze Esri Traffic Alerts.

    “Municipalities can now leverage real-time reports without having to invest in sensor networks or an Internet of Things infrastructure,” said Andrew Stauffer, manager of civic technology at Esri. “Waze allows local governments to share open data with a purpose — in an application that is already popular with constituents, commuters, and tourists.”

    The data feeds allow local governments to merge information into existing enterprise systems, such as emergency dispatch and street maintenance systems, to make their communities operate smarter and safer.

    The partnership also enables communities to extend the reach of the data they map and manage by sharing it with Waze, which has more than 65 million monthly active users worldwide. The public-private partnership allows greater government transparency and collaboration with citizens to help people better navigate their streets and highways.

    “The Waze Connected Citizens Program empowers municipalities to harness real-time driver insight to improve congestion and make better informed planning decisions,” said Paige Fitzgerald, head of new business development and data acquisition for Waze. “With 100 partners worldwide, Waze provides each partner with the same set of free, data-driven tools and resources to foster collaboration and communication between all partners. Working with Esri allows Waze to further scale the program and creates additional opportunities for our partners to collaborate, helping each other incorporate the power of crowdsourced data into their traffic management strategies.”

    In 2014, Waze pioneered data standards for road closure and incident reporting, which are embedded within customized data feeds provided to each partner. Established as a two-way data share, Waze provides partners with real-time, anonymous, Waze-generated incident and slowdown information directly from the source: drivers themselves. In exchange, partners provide real-time, government-reported construction, crash, and road closure data to Waze to return one of the most thorough records of current road conditions.

    For more information on how to get started, visit go.esri.com/pr-waze.

  • INRIX Traffic app learns driver’s itinerary, preferences

    INRIX Traffic app learns driver’s itinerary, preferences

    INRIX Inc., a connected car services and movement analytics company, has released a redesigned version of INRIX Traffic for iOS and Android.

    INRIX Traffic is a next-generation navigation and traffic app that learns user preferences to take the guesswork out of driving. The app integrates with a user’s calendar and learns their driving habits to create a personalized itinerary that includes automatic alerts, anticipated trips, favorite destinations and preferred routes.

    Screengrab: INRIX IncAvailable worldwide now in the Apple App Store and Google Play, INRIX Traffic learns routines and preferences as users go about their day. INRIX Traffic adds favorite places automatically instead of requiring users to spend time inputting destinations such as home, work or school.

    Based on learned activities, it creates a daily, driver-specific itinerary of anticipated trips, as well as frequent and preferred routes. By accessing calendar information on a mobile device, the app also adds events with addresses to the daily driving itinerary.

    Unlike other driving apps that can provide inaccurate traffic and incidents based purely on consumer input, INRIX Traffic uses a massive crowd-sourced network of more than 275 million connected cars and devices to offer accurate map and real-time information.

    INRIX Traffic proactively monitors road conditions to alert drivers of ideal departure times, changes to arrival times and optimal routes to frequent or scheduled destinations based on real-time traffic.

    “We designed INRIX Traffic with one specific vision: To help drivers move through their daily lives as quickly and efficiently as possible. The app uses our advanced traffic science to make even routine trips easier,” said Bryan Mistele, president and CEO, INRIX. “Users want an app that is accurate, personalized and smart enough to work proactively for them — so we’ve integrated several highly advanced technologies into one all-encompassing app.”

    INRIX Traffic uses the crowd-sourced and free OpenStreetMap (OSM) for map data. By leveraging the power of user-generated content around the world, OSM can quickly adapt to the ever-changing road network. Using OSM enables INRIX to bring a high-quality map and turn-by-turn navigation to users at no cost and without advertisements. In addition to reporting incidents along their route including accidents, police activity and road hazards, INRIX Traffic users can send map feedback directly from the app.

    INRIX Traffic is powered by the same technologies the company delivers to its automotive customers such as Audi, BMW, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche. These connected car services include real-time and predictive traffic, off-street parking information and drive-time alerts. INRIX will continue integrating features from its product portfolio into future versions of INRIX Traffic.

    INRIX Traffic is available in eight languages in 16 countries across North America and Europe, including Canada, France, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom and United States, with additional countries coming soon.

    The app is built on Autotelligent, the company’s new software development kit and integrated cloud platform that provides machine learning and route monitoring. Autotelligent can be integrated into products in multiple industries such as automotive, enterprise and mobile.

  • Mapillary raises $8M Series A to map world through photos

    Mapillary, a community-based photomapping platform, has received an $8 million Series A funding round led by Atomico, with participation from Sequoia, LDV Capital and PlayFair.

    Anyone can contribute photos to the Mapillary platform and mobile app (available on iOS and Android) with a smartphone or action camera. The company’s computer vision software automatically extracts geographic information, blurs license plates and faces, and detects traffic signs from each photo uploaded. Then, the photos are meticulously stitched together on the map alongside other users’ photos, creating a digital representation of each location through the eyes of those who have been there.

    Mapillary’s growing global community has uploaded more than 50 million photos and mapped more than 1.2 million kilometers in over 170 countries to date.

    “Mapillary is reinventing the way we map and navigate our world,” said Niklas Zennström, CEO and founding partner at Atomico. “Their ambition is to transform the way we plan our cities, develop transport networks, and understand all parts of the globe. We’re proud to invest in the next phase of their growth and we look forward to working alongside Jan Erik and his team as they advance their technology and scale the business.”

    Cities, corporations, and nonprofits can access Mapillary’s platform through an extensive API, which holds multiple layers of visual data. Mapillary’s ArcGIS integration — built in partnership with Esri — lets governments, nonprofits and businesses see locations evolve in real-time, arming them with insight into infrastructural problems like inefficient public transportation and changes in road conditions.

    Mapillary partners with several nonprofits to help them improve infrastructure in developing countries around the world. The World Bank trains university students and local community members to use Mapillary in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, to create accurate maps of the most flood-prone areas of the city, and the Red Cross has been mapping Haiti so NGOs and individuals can use the data to better respond to crises affecting the area. Mapillary allows nonprofits to allocate resources more efficiently and to empower communities to contribute to the growth and development of their cities and towns.

    From backyards to Antarctica, Mapillary allows anyone to be immersed in places both familiar and unknown. This funding is bringing the company one step closer to accomplishing its goal of creating an open and complete digital representation of the earth to benefit governments, businesses, nonprofit organizations and curious explorers alike.