Esri has released ArcGIS 10.3.1, bringing new capabilities.
Smart Mapping is an innovative approach for creating maps that is available through ArcGIS Online. Users can quickly style the features of a map to create useful and visually stunning maps every time, Esri said.
3D Web Scenes allow users to view, create, and share 3D web scenes in a browser. Available in ArcGIS for Server and Portal for ArcGIS, users can share these scenes within their own infrastructure or make them public.
With the ArcGIS 10.3.1 release, ArcGIS for Server with Portal for ArcGIS can now host web scenes and layers that include multipatch–based 3D models and symbology, such as photo-realistic buildings, trees, and visibility domes.
Great view of the Pentagon while departing from the U.S. Hydro conference held in Washington, D.C.
I’ve attended five conferences in the past couple of months; Esri Water Conference (first one!), Esri Partner Conference, US Hydro 2015, APSG (Association of Petroleum Surveying & Geomatics) and the Esri Petroleum User Group (PUG) conference. It may look Esri-heavy, but the fact is that Esri is doing a really good job of organizing vertical market GIS conferences, and people are showing up. Even with crude oil prices in the cellar (relatively speaking), 1,200 people still showed up at the PUG.
There were a lot of good presentations at these conferences, and I’ll post links to some of them below. Not surprisingly, drones are a major topic of discussion at most GIS conferences. There was even a drone demo (I missed) at the Esri Partner conference showing Esri’s workflow in working with drone-collected data.
If you don’t follow me on Twitter, you might consider it. Twitter is easy and free. When I’m at a conference, I send tweets (most with a photo) in near real-time when I see something of interest. For example, I tweeted when Jack Dangermond showed up at the Esri PUG (he usually doesn’t, but did this year because it was the 25th annual conference) and had something interesting to say (read below). You can sign up for Twitter here, and then choose to follow me at https://twitter.com/GPSGIS_Eric. I get that you may be hesitant to invest any time in this, but it looks like Twitter is becoming the standard for near real-time news (as opposed to other social media such as Facebook or LinkedIn.)
Of all the new technology I’ve heard about over the past few months at these conferences, two subjects continue to excite me.
Drone Mapping. Of course, one of them is drone technology for mapping. It seems like I’ve beat this horse to death over the past few months, but it continues to get juicier and juicier. Technology development in this industry is moving really fast. It seems like new drones are being announced as frequently as new smartphones, maybe more so.
Other ancillary technologies are being developed to support commercial drone operations. For example, in my hometown (Portland, Ore.), a company called Skyward just raised $4+ million in venture capital funding to provide “professional services for UAV operations.” Essentially, the company’s software helps drone operators stay within FAA regulatory compliance.
Last year, the Oregon Unmanned Systems Business Enterprise was formed “with a two-year $882,000 state grant from the Oregon Business Development Department and the Oregon Innovation Council and will be working to match the government money with private investment and other grants.” The organization will award grants up to $75,000. The point is, the money is flowing and it’s a wide-open market.
The drone market is so wide open, in fact, that most drone companies are just buying common airframes and associated parts, putting their brand name on them, and selling them. Perhaps oversimplified, but the point is there’s not much “special sauce” (technology) being added. The manufacturers that aren’t innovating and adding valuable “special sauce” will eventually disappear. Essentially, following are the parts needed for a fixed-wing drone for mapping:
Aircraft components:
Airframe (off the shelf)
Motor (off the shelf)
Servos (off the shelf)
Propeller (off the shelf)
Radio (off the shelf)
GPS (off the shelf)
Autopilot (off the shelf)
Batteries (off the shelf)
Camera trigger (off the shelf)
Camera (off the shelf)
Ground compoments:
900-MHz controller (off the shelf)
Battery chargers (off the shelf)
Mission planning software (off the shelf)
Propeller balancer (off the shelf)
As you can see, all of these components are available off the shelf. You can order each component (maybe all of them from Amazon!), have them shipped to you, and assemble your own UAS for mapping. That said, someone who has gone through the process of building, flying and producing a valuable deliverable that you can make decisions from can add value. But, as competition increases, there’s no doubt that the companies that don’t offer much added value will not be able to operate a sustainable business.
Finally, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is being surprisingly nimble, approving “333 Exemption” requests at record pace and moving towards using a “summary grant” process to issue bulk approvals of 333 Exemption requests for commercial operations.
UAS presentation from Texas A&M University, one of six FAA-designated UAS test sites.
You may want to take a look at some of the other presentations at the APSG meeting. They were very good. Here’s a quick summary of each by Jon Stigant, long-time member of APSG:
This was a primer in LiDAR technology and methodology — while most of the paper is well understood in the survey community, it is and excellent overview. A reminder for some and a way to fill in the gaps for those not so close to this technology.
Integration of UAVs into O&G Operations — Stacey Lyle, BP (presentation forthcoming)
Stacey provided a valuable summary of the direction in which the FAA is going to regulate the emerging UAV technology. A “must read” for any company that intends to either provide or use this technology. As with most government regulation there is a lot of detail, the devil is in them. Stacey recommended that the APSG engage by developing some standards for the oil and gas industry.
Ron Hughes theme is massive data and managing it — also something of a common theme for all the talks. He focused on automating data processing and recommended a concept of doing this in an automated way with 80 percent of the data. This requires careful procedural development in collaboration with a given client’s business workflows. He gave an example of a large utility company, and how the development of an enterprise metadata server had functional impact for individual business units, but also had the knock on impact of improving inter-functional/inter-community collaboration within the enterprise.
Mike provided input on Geiger mode LiDAR, differentiating Harris’ approach from the more regular LiDAR methodology. The major difference is in data density, data frequency, volume and speed used from higher flying aircraft covering a larger area faster. Providing 10-cm accuracy and expecting 7-cm acuracy development using a/c at 25,000-ft height. Focus on fast processing of immense data volumes (pedabytes) – 24-hour delivery using Harris proprietary processing. Achieve higher density at lower cost.
Mark introduced developments in GIS associated with Common Operating Picture (COP), focusing on the combining of video and data in GIS system. DPFOS mnemonic: Data Management, Planning & Analysis, Field Mobility, Operational Awareness, Stakeholder Engagement. A new SIMOPS (SIMultaneous OperationS). The key is a single source of approved data. Examples of data required in COP from specific disciplines are provided — ROVs, shore clean-up, life of field data, asset and material tracking, live/recorded video, RT data and weather integration, “in the field’” vessel implementation.
GIS, Geospatial, Geomatics…Organizational Capability Evolution — Brian Boulmay, BP (presentation forthcoming)
Rethinking Geospatial Data Management at a major operator. One Map program — not physical, one-way provision. Focus on users vs. geospatial specialists. Users business driven, specialists IT and S driven. Geospatial data integrity and analytics – people, processes and technology. ID goals — massive deployment worldwide — has to be automated. Federated system — regions only have to deal with their own regional data, not be overwhelmed by whole enterprise on their doorstep. IT has the role of providing/maintaining a worldwide solution.
Update on Spring 2014 APSG meeting — All major networks launching satellites. Very soon will have 30 live in-view satellites (U.S., Russia, Europe and China). RTK coverage in China is the best due to BeiDou, supplemented by both Indian and Japanese systems SBAS. $100 RTK on cell phone giving centimeter accuracy eventually, and changing the commercial dynamic!
Set up for managing and analyzing LiDAR data in Global Mapper. Workflows: terrain modeling, visibility, biomass (change monitoring); asset: inspect and maintain pipelines, as-built modeling, simulation. High-accuracy at relatively low cost, outpacing regulatory management. Much public data available — earthexplorer.usgs.gov. xyz values — minimum height threshold, dense RGB point cloud (almost photographic).
Automated dashboard approach, reducing pilot distraction risk, speeding up RT transfer and operational activity reporting.
Esri Conferences
Here are a couple of neat things from the Esri conferences.
First, Jack Dangermond was his usual visionary self at the Esri PUG conference, making his appearance for the 25th annual PUG. He is a master at communicating his GIS vision.
The Evolution of GIS.
In speaking about the evolution of GIS, Mr. Dangermond spoke about the far-reaching impact of email and stated that eventually web-based GIS will be deployed organization-wide, just like email. I agree with this vision. I believe the only question is timing. Is it two years from now? Five years from now? 10 years?
Onto the less visionary and more tactical tidbits…
Of particular interest to me is high-precision GNSS in the Esri environment. A lot of people I talk to are screaming for this. What does high-precision GNSS in the Esri environment mean?
support for high-precision metadata in ArcGIS Collector (ArcPad already supports this).
support for high-precision horizontal (eventually vertical) datum transformations in ArcGIS Collector.
This is important because Esri is supporting ArcGIS Collector across all mobile platforms (Android, iOS and eventually Windows), and people want to use their smartphones and tablets. ArcPad will never run on iOS or Android, so Collector is the GIS collection tool of choice, at least for the Esri environment. It needs to support high-precision GNSS, and by the looks of the following slide, it will. It’s just a matter of timing…
ArcGIS Collector to support high-precision GNSS.
The other potentially neat product Esri announced was Navigator for ArcGIS. Imagine trying to guide a work crew to a buried valve across town (or in the next neighborhood). Displaying a system or region-wide map of valves would not be an efficient way of driving your way across town to find the valve. However, giving a crew turn-by-turn street directions to the street-level, then displaying the valves on that street section, might be a very efficient way of finding the valve.
Data Reviewer for Electric Utilities provides more than 40 out-of-the-box checks that users can run individually, group into batch jobs (as .rbj files), or run as a scheduled service.
Esri has released a Data Reviewer for Electric Utilities. It provides the preconfigured ArcGIS Data Reviewer for Desktop to be used to validate, maintain and improve the integrity of electric distribution data.
Data Reviewer for Electric Utilities provides a set of tools to simplify many aspects of automated and visual data quality control. The solution provides more than 40 out-of-the-box checks that users can run individually, group into batch jobs (as .rbj files), or run as a scheduled service.
“As utilities continue to collect more information about their electric network, it’s imperative that this information be validated to ensure accuracy and completeness of the overall content,” Esri solutions team lead Patrick Dolan said. “The release of Data Reviewer for Electric Utilities allows utilities to automate the way they validate and measure the overall health of their electric distribution network, providing them with greater insurance that the electric network is accurate and complete.”
Esri and Safe Software have paired to develop and openly share a Common Information Model (CIM) template for data exchange. The template demonstrates one approach to translating network data from an Esri ArcGIS database into CIM XML format. The XML can then be shared with other enterprise systems.
“The power behind a CIM is to provide a common language to share messaging among an electric utility’s information systems,” said Bill Meehan, Esri director of utility solutions.
The CIM comes in the wake of power industry deregulation and smart grid emergence. Utilities now share core network data more frequently than ever, and a CIM facilitates this. With a common format, a utility can share information internally across its enterprise systems, externally with other utilities, and externally with organizations such as regulators and independent system and regional transmission operators.
A CIM is based on the International Electrotechnical Technical Commission (IEC) family of standards, IEC 61970.
The Esri-Safe Software model also promotes faster decision making internally when data can be moved quickly from geographic information system (GIS) technology — the system of record for network data at many utilities — to destination enterprise systems, such as DMS, AMI, SCADA, OMS, and WMS, the companies said.
Users can download the template and test CIM XML data structures with their own data or a sample dataset that Esri and Safe Software provide. “With this template, we are providing another way for electric utilities to leverage their investment in Esri technology,” Meehan said.
The template works off of Esri’s ArcGIS (version 10.1 service pack 1 [SP1] or higher) and Safe Software’s FME software (version 2013 or higher). The sample template consists of an FME workspace; an ArcGIS Data Interoperability extract, transform and load (ETL) tool; and a sample dataset to guide users through testing how the translation process works. All the tools are provided as open source so users can adapt them to their needs.
“Utilities can use the template as a starting point for understanding how to translate data from an Esri database to the CIM XML structure to share with other enterprise systems,” Meehan said.
After exploring the sample dataset, users can also work to configure the template to work with their own network data.
Users will learn how to configure the templates based on their own content, and then deploy them to support common inspection workflows.
After viewing the seminar, users will understand how to
Organize your content for field inspections.
Collect inspection information while in the field.
Summarize inspection results for reporting.
GIS managers and analysts who use ArcGIS software and need to learn how to prepare, collect, and summarize inspection information will find this seminar useful.
Participants will need a broadband Internet connection and an Esri account to watch the live training seminar. Esri accounts can be created at esri.com/lts. click Login at the top right, and register name and e-mail address.
The unmanned drone RQ-4 Global Hawk in flight in 2007 (Image credit: U.S. Air Force photo by Bobbi Zapka)
By Art Kalinski, GISP
For more than a decade, the military has been struggling with cataloging and retrieving its huge libraries of full motion video (FMV). The video, captured by both manned and unmanned aircraft, rapidly reached unmanageable levels. If you have ever tried to organize vacation photos after returning home from a long trip, you know that it’s easy to lose track of where each photo was taken. Date/time stamps help, but the effort is still difficult if your vacation took you to numerous locations.
The manned U.S. Air Force Beech King Air 350 and 350ER MC-12W Project Liberty Aircraft are designed for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR).
Now imagine trying to retrieve several critical minutes out of thousands of hours of video of barren land or repetitive-looking villages, and you get a sense of the magnitude of the problem. Without some way to catalog the video, critical details can be lost, because finding the right video clip becomes impossible in a reasonable period of time. Everyone agreed that the solution to the problem is to index the video clips by date/time and location, preferably with an exact georeferenced footprint. This is now possible with tools from Esri, Hexagon Geospatial and others.
Several years ago, at the USGIF GEOINT Tech Days, Sarnoff (SRI) demonstrated a system that pinned aerial video to its geographic footprint and maintained that registration despite the movement of the aircraft. It was an achievement that impressed everyone in the audience. I changed jobs soon after that conference and lost track of developments in the FMV field. At the February Esri Federal Users Conference, I was thrilled to see Jack Dangermond briefly demonstrate the same kind of FMV georeferencing capability in ArcGIS 10.2 during his opening plenary session. I learned that Esri developed the capability in 2013, and later learned that Intergraph (Hexagon Geospatial) also developed a similar capability in 2010.
MISB: The Critical Improvement
The key technical development that made this possible was NGA’s creation of “Motion Imagery Standards” and the Motion Imagery Standards Board (MISB). The MISB developed standards for a consistent way to capture and record telemetry data during the video capture as metadata that becomes part of the video stream. This “Open Standard” metadata includes information such as the accurate xyz location of the aircraft, attitude, tilt, camera angle, and camera characteristics. This information travels with the individual video frames and permits the GIS/viewing software to perform the georeferencing.
This process is very similar to the oblique imagery capture system used for years by Pictometry, which at 20 FPS was technically FMV. MISB like Pictometry requires accurate GPS and IMU data to continuously capture and record the metadata. The MISB also gets involved with video compression standards such as the newer H.264 used on Blu-Ray discs and streaming video. H.264 has, for the most part, replaced MPEG2 and older MPEG4 as the video compression standard of choice. Much of the video captured by low-end small UAVs is just a simple video stream with no MISB telemetry data. However, I’m sure that lower prices, increased capability and smaller size of sensors will fix that with time. Sorry, no one has yet figured a way to “hack in” the metadata for legacy video captured without the MISB telemetry data. The one exception is those videos that contain usable telemetry data that was burned into the video and can be read with OCR. It might be possible to insert that information as MISB-compliant data.
The ArcGIS Full Motion Video Add-In
The ArcGIS Full Motion Video 1.2 Add-In (for ArcGIS 10.1, 10.2 and 10.3) is a free tool for ArcGIS users. It permits users to play georeferenced live or previously recorded video files in the map view. The screen capture below shows several features of this tool and is from an online video.
The re-sizeable smaller window displays the video as it runs. The map view shows a changing footprint (green trapezoid) of the video as the aircraft flies over the site. The short green line shows the flight path of the aircraft. Demonstrating the interconnectivity of the two data sets, the user in the demo video drew a light blue polygon on the map view. Note that the Esri Intersect function re-projects and displays the same polygon correctly in the video view.
Frames from the video can be extracted as single georeferenced images or groups of images and stored as a mosaic dataset. Playback of time-stamped video data can be synchronized with other time-enabled data and played together on the map. Features can be digitized directly on the video player and will appear on the map and vice versa.
The extension supports playback and management of multiple simultaneous video feeds. The Add-In also allows you to record the sensor, frame center, and footprint data in a geodatabase so the Bookmark Manager can perform searches for bookmarked video scenes. For more information regarding the Esri FMV tool, visit this ArcGiS site.
Hexagon Geospatial GeoMedia Motion Video Analyst Professional
Another robust FMV system that takes advantage of MISB telemetry is GeoMedia Motion Video Analyst Professional (MVA) from Hexagon Geospatial. The Hexagon Geospatial system includes tools to catalog videos as geospatial features with attributes extracted from the metadata, and has some elegant graphic selection tools that help an operator search and retrieve needed video clips.
In the screen capture below, you can see the map view with the geo-registered color video overlaid on the black-and-white ortho base image. As the video plays, the georeferenced video footprint continuously moves to the correct location as the tracking graphics in red show the position of the aircraft. The transparency of the video can be adjusted so an operator can compare features between the base image and the video and digitize directly in the map window.
MVA also includes a full set of tools for placing clipmarks as geospatial features with attributes and linked to the cataloged video, extracting snapshots and videos clips, on-the-fly enhancements, stabilization, registration and more. The system also facilitates rapid report generation so as an operator searches and plays appropriate video clips, the same operator or a partner can rapidly generate reports as documents or PowerPoint presentations in minutes. Another feature of the system is a “de-hazing” tool that removes a surprising amount of haze or smoke.
See a very good video overview of GeoMedia Motion Video Analyst Professional on this Hexagon Geospatial page. Like the Esri video, both are far better at explaining the capabilities than I can in this short column.
Other defense contractors are taking advantage of the MISB metadata, so check with your provider. Although these systems found their first home with military analysts, the Esri and Hexagon Geospatial reps indicated that many other users are finding the capability valuable in their work. Emergency operations centers come to mind first, but more mundane uses include rail and utility property management, the news media and video used in court proceedings. So, if you shoot lots of aerial video and need to catalog and retrieve video clips quickly, consider using MISB in your capture process.
Integrated Tracking (iTrack) Solutions Loki Gen 6 is a web-based mapping software derived from a series of other Loki software products focused on asset tracking for large fleets of vehicles.
The maps are provided by Bing, but custom mapping can also be used with the support of Esri ArcGIS REST services and shapefiles.
iTrack Solutions is based in Calgary, Canada, and provides GPS tracking, mobile data communications and display software. The Loki Gen 6 features are listed below.
Home Home is a configurable dashboard showing plans, schedules, calendars and other details.
Live View Live View shows the live BING map from anywhere in the world, which includes maps, satellite and aerial imagery as well as maps provided by the user. Video streams are supported, and a 3D viewing feature is provided from Cesium. A user can add or draw features on the map to share with other users.
Photo: Integrated Tracking Solutions
Communication With this feature, users can communicate one-to-one or through a chat room, which includes video chat functionality.
Management An administrative user can assign tracking devices to vehicles, assign vehicles to subgroups, assign subgroups to larger groups or drivers to vehicles. An administrator also can set privileges for individual users.
Access to data Users can generate and view a replay on the fly as well as generate reports for vehicle tracking, hours in service, mileage, stop location and speed.
Observations, Analysis The forum feature provides a place group discussion, which becomes part of the Loki database, is searchable and can be linked to reports and replays.
Esri and RouteSmart Technologies, Inc., are collaborating to help postal organizations deliver packages reliably, efficiently, and accurately. The companies provide comprehensive dynamic routing solutions based on Esri’s ArcGIS platform.
National postal and global and regional parcel delivery services, including Whistl, Posti, and Swiss Post, are among the customers that leverage these routing solutions. Most customers have experienced cost savings of 15 percent, on average, through reduced working hours, mileage, and new vehicle acquisition. Customers also report growth opportunities through opening new lines of distribution business to support the burgeoning e-commerce delivery segment.
“By integrating location-based analysis with a postal organization’s traditional business systems, such as sorting machines and address management systems, we are solving territory planning and route management challenges these organizations are facing,” said Chris Walz, vice president of sales and marketing for RouteSmart Technologies. “With our help, they can align to the new realities of postal and parcel distribution economics brought on through the growth of e-commerce shipping volumes and declining letter volumes.”
Esri and RouteSmart will share how they are helping postal organizations continue to be drivers of innovation in transportation and operational efficiencies at the European Post and Parcel Services Conference in Vienna, Austria, March 24–26.
“One of the biggest upcoming challenges for the postal industry will be the adoption of fully automated vehicles for deliveries,” Hall said. “With our partner RouteSmart, we provide a path for migration with the help of advanced location intelligence, optimization, and analysis tools.”
TerraGo is partnering with RazorTek, a GIS and remote-sensing consulting firm specializing in design, development and automation of complex systems for spatial data display and analysis. RazorTek will deploy TerraGo Edge for customers looking to replace GPS handhelds with a mobile app that integrates directly with Esri’s ArcGIS.
“We see a great opportunity to help our customers utilize TerraGo Edge for field data collection on their smartphones and tablets,” said Dan Rodriguez, CEO, RazorTek. “The nice thing about TerraGo Edge is that it replaces proprietary GPS handhelds with a simple mobile solution at a fraction of the cost, and it works seamlessly with Esri ArcGIS out of the box.”
“RazorTek is an industry expert for deploying advanced remote sensing and GIS solutions,” said John Timar, vice president, TerraGo. “TerraGo Edge gives the RazorTek team a cost-effective mobile solution that can deliver cm-level accuracy or whatever the RazorTek customer needs, while leveraging their existing ArcGIS investment.”
RazorTek is an authorized reseller of TerraGo products and also offers a range of geospatial technology software and services including GIS services, aerial photography, satellite imagery and LiDAR.
Lockheed Martin and Esri have deployed commercial software to the Amazon Web Services Commercial Cloud Services (C2S) environment for the first time with an intelligence community customer, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). The move enables government agencies to better share geospatial intelligence.
The deployment of the portal for Esri’s ArcGIS geographic information system (GIS) provides a single environment for analysts to securely organize and share data throughout the intelligence community and Department of Defense. It’s also the foundational step in consolidating multiple geospatial intelligence portals into the single NGA-provided portal, resulting in technology and license cost savings.
This is NGA’s second pioneering step in the cloud, after the agency moved its Map of the World application to the C2S environment late last year.
“Deploying Esri’s Portal for ArcGIS to a commercial cloud environment securely organizes existing data and facilitates collaboration across intelligence agencies,” said Jason O’Connor, vice president of Analysis and Mission Solutions for Lockheed Martin. “This cloud implementation also further shapes the government’s processes for architecting and implementing enterprise class services within a cloud environment.”
ArcGIS connects users to maps and geographic information. Users can create and view maps, compile geographic data, analyze mapped information and share geographic information in a range of applications.
“Working with Lockheed Martin and the NGA on this strategic implementation for national security is particularly meaningful,” said Jack Dangermond, Esri president. “It recognizes the importance of consolidating geospatial intelligence information into a single portal to facilitate rapid situational awareness and response by our intelligence community.”
Lockheed Martin and Esri have partnered for eight years on the Geospatial-Intelligence Visualization Services (GVS) program, which helped NGA and the Intelligence Community achieve this cloud migration milestone. The Total Application Services for Enterprise Requirements (TASER) GVS contract vehicle, which was originally awarded in 2012, conveys geospatial visualization context and analytic capabilities to warfighters, intelligence officers and policy-makers through classified and unclassified computer networks.
ClearTerra‘s Jeff Wilson gives a snapshot of the company’s Locate XT software while at the 2015 Esri Federal GIS Conference, held Feb. 9-10 in Washington D.C. The LocateXT software extracts unstructured textual documents into structured spatial output for GIS and spatial viewing platforms, including Esri ArcGIS and Google Earth.
Esri Managed Cloud Services (EMCS) has achieved Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) compliance at the moderate level, Esri president Jack Dangermond announced during the Esri Federal GIS Conference in Washington, D.C.
EMCS is the first program tailored specifically for a GIS to offer a cloud environment compliant at the FedRAMP moderate level, meaning it satisfies the stringent security requirements that federal agencies must meet before operating in a cloud computing environment.
“We look forward to continue working with vendors like Esri who have demonstrated FedRAMP compliance through the CSP Supplied path,” said Matt Goodrich, FedRAMP director. “This approach facilitates federal agency security authorization demands as the complete security package for Esri Managed Cloud Services is available in the FedRAMP repository today.”
EMCS provides ready-to-use instances of ArcGIS in the cloud. Customers can adapt it to best suit their needs, either as an alternative in their own infrastructure or in conjunction with their own servers. The scalable, secure environment is supported by experienced GIS professionals to ensure GIS data and services are available whenever needed, Esri said.
FedRAMP is a government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services. Being FedRAMP compliant means a cloud computing system has established and documented a highly secure environment that has withstood comprehensive, rigorous review before federal agencies are authorized to engage the system. Currently, compliance can be met at either the low or moderate level.
EMCS is the first geospatial cloud-service provider reviewed under the latest FedRAMP and NIST 800-53 Revision 4 security controls. This expanded set of security controls represents the most comprehensive update to the government security controls catalog since its inception in 2005 to better address the increased frequency and persistence of today’s cyber attacks.
With Esri Managed Cloud Services, customers can use ArcGIS Online, Esri’s online GIS platform, as their primary discovery mechanism and easily supplement it with Esri’s FedRAMP-compliant GIS hosting tools, ArcGIS for Server and Portal for ArcGIS, to meet more advanced security needs. The program provides a standardized, demanding security protocol that customers can review themselves and that federal agencies can use for the government assessment and authorization process to expedite compliance.
EMCS also supports federal agencies seeking to comply with the White House Cloud Computing Strategy. Adopted in 2011 to save money, the Cloud First policy requires federal agencies to evaluate safe, secure cloud computing options before making any new investments.
Because EMCS was designed from the ground up to meet the needs of federal customers, it can also meet the robust security demands of users from other sectors such as law enforcement, health care, and retail, Esri said.
GIS users are moving to the cloud in large part to take advantage of the flexibility and potential cost savings it provides. Using EMCS helps users reduce risk, speed deployment, improve performance, and reduce operational costs in a secure environment.
