Wingtra has officially launched the WingtraOne PPK high-precision mapping drone. Wingtra said its drone, which features vertical take-off and landing, is designed to set a new benchmark for large-scale surveying and mapping applications.
WingtraOne PPK offers large area coverage, ultra-high accuracy and brilliant image resolution. It features an advanced PPK module and high-quality cameras like the 42-megapixel full-frame camera Sony RX1RII, it is now possible to reach down to 1-centimeter absolute accuracy in aerial mapping.
To prove this accuracy claim, the Wingtra team performed test flights in a gravel quarry. The process was documented and is now explained in a white paper on the company website.
Conventional drone mapping on centimeter accuracy requires ground control points (GCPs) to correct the final map. Besides requiring additional surveying equipment and being extremely time consuming, setting up GCPs might be downright risky or just not possible in the area of interest.
More advanced solutions achieve similar levels of accuracy by using GPS correction technology for the georeferencing of the aerial imagery: namely RTK (real-time kinematics) or PPK (post processed kinematics).
RTK requires real-time base station connectivity and corrects GPS signals during the flight, while PPK corrects them after the flight and therefore offers greater robustness and consistency.
Moreover, PPK is independent from base stations or base station networks. It is highly reliable, accurate and time saving to use, Wingtra said. Neither special flight preparations nor intensive post-processing steps are required to achieve down to 1-cm accurate aerial maps.
Esri will be hosting the 21st annual Esri Federal GIS (FedGIS) Conference March 20-21 at the Walter E. Washington Center in Washington, D.C. All federal government agency workers are invited to join an anticipated audience of 3,000 attendees and share their experience in collaborating, innovating and connecting their work using spatial analytics technology.
Esri founder and president Jack Dangermond will discuss how location intelligence can be used to derive a deeper understanding of complex issues through data, as well as how it enables collaboration to develop innovative solutions for government.
He will be joined on the main stage by representatives from several leading organizations, including the following:
U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA APHIS) — “Protecting Plants and Animals to Feed Our Country and the World”
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office of Inspector General — “Fighting Fraud, Waste, and Abuse through Spatial Analytics”
American Red Cross — “Connecting and Helping Volunteers, Partners, and Citizens in Need”
On Wednesday, March 21, Dangermond will lead a thought-provoking conversation with the Honorable Susan M. Gordon, principal deputy director of National Intelligence at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on the importance of connecting intelligence agencies through spatial analytics.
“It is always inspirational to attend this conference and hear how location intelligence has helped federal workers share information across agencies and connect to citizens,” said Jeff Peters, head of the national government sector at Esri. “Attendees will get a chance to hear directly from top government and technology leaders as they share their experiences collaborating, innovating, and connecting using spatial analytics.”
The conference is the site for announcements about the innovative use of Esri’s ArcGIS platform in federal, state and local government. The latest enhancements to ArcGIS and ArcGIS Pro, along with updates on desktop and enterprise mobile app environments, will be shared.
Other organizations will be providing use cases and best practices during workshops throughout the two days of the conference. Learn more at esri.com/events/federal.
“The blockchain cannot be described just as a revolution. It is a tsunami-like phenomenon, slowly advancing and gradually enveloping everything along its way by the force of its progression.” — William Mougayar *
A kidnapping in Kiev
War-torn and ragged, the once glistening jewel on the Dnieper River adorned in Christmas lights bustled with Yuletide celebration. But further from the city center, the streets were quieter, more demure as the dark night settled in. A black Mercedes Benz pulled up and parked along a poorly lit street. In the car sat four men wearing facemasks and carrying Kalashnikovs. In the cold Kiev night, they waited.
Across the street a large, husky man pulled shut the security curtain, turned out the lights and locked the front door of his store. He turned, his briefcase hanging at his side, and walked a few steps toward his car.
The four men crossed the dim street, forming a semi-circle as they moved toward the man. He slowly raised his hands. He was Russian; his accent gave him away. One of the four men placed a thick black bag over the Russian’s head. With gun barrels pointed into his back, he followed their orders, climbing into the back of the Mercedes Benz.
The four men got into the car and sped away into the cold, dark Kiev night. The man was Pavel Lerner, a blockchain expert and owner of a digital currency exchange in the Ukrainian capital. His captors demanded a ransom of $1,000,000 paid in Bitcoins, the highest valued cryptocurrency.
Three days later, on Dec. 29, 2017, safe and unharmed, Pavel’s abductors released him along an unmarked road in the middle of nowhere.
Cryptocurrencies and crime. Crimes involving cryptocurrencies have been increasing; perhaps the most widespread is hackers using ransomware demanding payment in Bitcoins. The worldwide WannaCry virus is the most pernicious of these attacks, costing hundreds of billions of dollars.
Other crimes of the more traditional variety are also on the rise such as kidnapping, as in the case of Chloe Ayling, a British glamour model held for $500,000 payable in Bitcoin.
Blackmail and money laundering are also on the rise; all of them are using Bitcoin as the currency of choice, as are black markets lurking on the darknet.
The fall of the dark web marketplace Silk Road netted unexpected surprises, capturing two rogue FBI Agents and a DEA agent found to be peddling in the underworld’s vast enterprise. Silk Road’s net worth when it was shut down was 614,305 Bitcoins.
As December 2017 came to a close and Pavel Lerner paid his ransom, the value of one Bitcoin peaked at $19,843, making Silk Road worth $12.2 billion and the Dread Pirate Roberts the second wealthiest criminal in history. Ross Ulbricht, the creator of Silk Road, is serving a life sentence.
The 2015 documentary Deep Web describes the government’s takedown of Silk Road. View the trailer below.
When currencies fail
Governments have always been slow to act, or at least slow to comprehend. Such is the case with cryptocurrencies. The government sees the phenomenon as a mechanism supporting criminal enterprise, but the trending use in digital currencies represents a seismic shift in the way people think about money and where they are placing their trust.
There is a decline in the faith of fiat currencies as the countries backing them fall into mounting debt. Concern is fueled by the instability of national and international politics and the threat to the U.S. dollar by the unraveling of the petrodollar.
As well, the euro has been hit by wave after wave of bad news by the economies of Greece, Italy and Portugal and the so-called Brexit, as the United Kingdom withdraws from the European Union. What does that spell for the future of the euro?
Plus, with sanctions, Russia’s Ruble has lost 50% of its value since 2013. The farcical worthlessness of a Zimbabwe 50 trillion dollar note proves there is no limit to the loss in value a fiat currency can suffer when it implodes.
Photo: iStock
Venezuela’s currency collapse. And now, Venezuela is in a plummeting currency death spiral, officially falling in value from a par of 10 Bolivars to equal one U.S. dollar to 25,000 bolivars, all in the month of February. Unofficial reports are that the value has sunk to 230,000 bolivars to the U.S. dollar.
As of Tuesday, Feb. 27, in a desperate attempt to salvage itself, Venezuela announced an initial coin offering (ICO) for a national cryptocurrency called the petro. The irony in this is that the digital currency will probably survive because it’s on the blockchain, but Venezuela will not.
If anyone wants to learn about what happens when a nation’s currency collapses, Venezuela is a terrifying case study. It is no wonder people around the world seek refuge in an asset that promises freedom from government meddling. It is also no wonder governments are terrified of blockchain’s potential, yet fascinated at the same time, like so many other technologies holding great power for both good and evil.
There is a stalemate of sorts, a stand-off between those early adopters with the courage to invest and risk it all for the hope of great fortunes, and governments who hold the power to regulate, fine, confiscate and imprison. Tension separates both sides. Who will budge?
The United States and Europe have so far been measured in their response, while China and South Korea are cracking down on cryptocurrencies. Most people, curious and cautious, sit waiting it out. These stories represent the darker side of bitcoin, blockchain and the rise of cryptocurrencies, but there is another side, the more benevolent, useful and hopeful side.
What are cryptocurrencies?
Unlike gold, which has traditionally been considered a store of value, cryptocurrencies have no physical existence. They are digital assets held in a digital wallet. They are an asset with a finite number of tokens. They are driven purely by supply and demand. If there is a greater supply than there are traders, the value is next to nothing as there was in 2009 when Bitcoin first came into existence.
May 22, 2010, marks the milestone when a digital currency first purchased something in the physical world. Two pizzas sold for 10,000 Bitcoins. Now, there are more traders than tokens, and the demand has driven the value to unprecedented heights. One Bitcoin was worth $19,499 on Dec. 15, 2017.
Bitcoin is the most explosive financial instrument ever created. But Bitcoin is not the only digital currency. In all, there are more than 1,800 cryptocurrencies. The term “crypto” implies they are secretive and have a layer of anonymity, but there is an irony. Cryptocurrencies are based on blockchain technology.
Blockchains have an unalterable integrity system built into them, leading to the adage “What happens on the blockchain stays on the blockchain.” That creates a conundrum and begs the question, just how is it that what provides a veil of secrecy also holds the promise of open transparency?
Blockchains
Image: iStock
To answer that question, we need to explore blockchains. What exactly is a blockchain? A blockchain is a digital, decentralized, distributed, open and immutable ledger. Each transaction has a string of characters called a hash. Each hash includes a date/time stamp, a unique ID, a code linking it to the previous hash, and a private key identifying ownership, albeit anonymously.
Each transaction is another link in a chain that can be traced backwards to the previous link, all the way back to the origin of the entire chain, called the Genesis Block.
What makes the blockchain decentralized is no single computer or entity controls it. Hundreds and thousands of computers make up a blockchain network. Each computer is called a node. A blockchain is distributed because all the nodes work together in a peer-to-peer network. Nodes on a network record each transaction, and these transactions are mirrored on every other node throughout the network.
The transactions can be accessed and downloaded from any node on the network. This makes a blockchain an open and distributed ledger. When a node is out of sync with other nodes on the network, it is rejected until it is reset to match the other nodes. That makes it impossible to alter any records, making a blockchain immutable.
For these reasons integrity, is built into the blockchain. Anonymity is provided by a private key that ties it to a digital wallet that can only be accessed by the owner. The digital wallet connects to the owner, but not the blockchain itself. As a result, a blockchain identifies what, when and who about each transaction. A blockchain does not provide where the transaction occurred.
At this time, blockchains lack a geospatial capability.
“Anytime there’s some data that needs to maintain its integrity, blockchain is definitely there. Essentially, what you would do is get the hash and you would have a hash key and then any changes or alterations are made fully aware at all times.” — Reem El Seed **
Geospatial blockchain benefits
Image: FOAM
A company called FOAM is working to change that, creating a geospatially enabled blockchain using a crypto-spatial coordinate (CSC) system. Location in a FOAM blockchain doesn’t just record a specific time, it also validates proof of location and gives a spatial context that regular blockchains lack.
This functionality creates an immutable digital connection to the physical world. Kristoffer Josefsson, CTO of FOAM Inc., confirms this, saying, “We can securely connect offline spaces to online assets.”
If digital currencies based on blockchain technology are going to be considered a safe and viable medium for conducting business, they must include location. Blockchain’s abilities are what the world needs to curtail crime and corruption and be able to follow the money trail from whom and to where it flows.
“This is what we are working on at FOAM and believe that such a system is needed as a crucial infrastructure in our decentralized future and can open new marketplaces of privacy preserving location data.” — John Ryan King, CEO, FOAM Inc.
Adding a geotag to a blockchain is like adding ribonucleic acid to a cell bringing it to life. Something can’t exist until it exists in time and space. A blockchain with a geospatial tag makes that possible and allows mapping of events in a temporal sequence. This inhibits criminal activity.
If a crime were committed using a geotagged blockchain, the location of the crime would immediately be known. The hash code from the blockchain would be extracted with a date/time/location stamp and would be flagged on the network to all the nodes, making that hash code “hot.” A hot blockchain means that particular hash in the chain would be monitored. If it were involved in a transaction, an alert would be broadcast throughout the network, focusing on the location.
Security cameras and other assets would converge, putting eyes on the target, and the transaction would be rejected. Authorities would then be able to trace the digital wallet’s owner like running license-plate tags for a car, and, shortly thereafter, descend on and apprehend the offender.
Did George Orwell dream the dream we are now living, “Big Brother is watching you,” while he himself mocks us from his eternal sleep?
Empowerment with location. Mansour Raad, senior software engineer and Big Data advocate at Esri, sees location-enabled blockchain opening up opportunities for people to interact with their representatives. He is excited about the prospects saying, “We can envision dozens of potential use cases in geospatial contexts, from fine-grained citizen engagement in smart-city initiatives through to activity-based military intelligence applications.”
Certainly, this is a more empowering view. Some of the largest companies in the world are also exploring uses for blockchain and geospatially tagged ledgers. This mass effort and focus on innovation will have some magnificent results.
Mansour goes on to add, “The influx of companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin and forward-thinking communities like Dubai are searching for blockchain-based solutions to their problems.” This will drive innovation. Both ends of the spectrum are there, from the frontline developers to the back-end buyers with large pockets.
Latitude and longitude has been the backbone of location and navigation for more than 2,000 years, when people navigated primarily by landmarks and the stars. That worked well for those not venturing beyond their familiar locales; but as knowledge of the world expanded and monarchs ruled larger and larger empires, and trade spread to further and further regions, and wars and conquest extended to unknown realms, maps were necessary. A grid system for maps was created by Hipparchus, another of those great Greeks upon whose shoulders the world still stands. That coordinate system, known as latitude and longitude, has served well for two millennia, but the digital age demands another solution.
And so it is with change. It happens over many years, but the transformation happens all at once. The change has been taking place for years with location-based formats such as the Military Grid Reference System (MGRS) and the more universal digital Degrees Minutes Seconds (DMS) supporting GPS-based systems, as well as the more novice friendly what3words (W3W), which is especially useful for disaster-relief operations. All of these serve their purpose, but fall short of providing a concise code that is critically important to make geotagging a blockchain possible. That is of great value considering blockchain’s potential in logistics and transportation, both of which are dependent upon precise location data.
Photo: Port of Rotterdam
Add the growth of IoT (the internet of things) and one gets a sense of the demand for a location-based blockchain and how enormous such a system would be. The Port of Rotterdam, Europe’s largest shipping facility, is testing blockchain for logistics. Companies like Ford, IBM and PwC also are looking at its potential.
Mansour Raad adds, “Some data scientists see a benefit to utilizing an addressed reference system such as the Open Geospatial Consortium Discrete Global Grid System (OGC DGGS), due to its holistic ability to fit into existing hashing algorithms. This also turns map algebra into map-set mathematics with drastic advantages to speed, computational resource usage and distribution.”
Get ready! Blockchain is a disruptive technology. It is so powerful that it is difficult to predict its impact, but it will touch everything.
“The old question ‘Is it in the database?’ will be replaced by ‘Is it on the blockchain?’” — William Mougaya
Governments will be more accountable to the people tracing where their expenses are actually going. The government could post an annual tax bill for each person online that could, in theory, show each taxpayer where each dollar was spent. This is an empowering new model for transparency.
A digital wallet is virtual, but it can be connected to the physical world through a smart key, like a SIM card. And, if the blockchain were geospatially enabled, it would create a layer of security preventing any use if the owner of the digital wallet were not nearby. That’s automatic two-step authentication.
A geospatially embedded blockchain could make that possible. Cash can transfer hands and no one is any wiser about where the money came from, but transfer a blockchain-based currency and the new owner is part of the permanent record.
Tough on crime. What would that do to crime? How would it affect blackmail, kidnapping, human trafficking? Perhaps the smart key is attached to the owner’s cellphone, or a smart watch, or a smart ring? Most likely it would be a smart chip implanted in the owner’s arm or thigh.
A smart chip implant. (Photo: Escape Alert, LLC)
The technology would also be useful for password tokens, building access security cards, passports, etc. It holds great promise for warding off theft and increasing security.
Uses for a blockchain extend beyond currency and are not necessarily associated with financial transactions. Transactions are events: a download is a transaction; clicks on a webpage are transactions; passing through a checkpoint is a transaction; an image capture is a transaction; IoT-triggered events are transactions; and electronically signing a document is a transaction. Blockchains can be coded into software to track downloads of digital copies such as songs, movies, audio, video, images, programs and documents. The obvious implications are copyright protection.
Blockchains can also provide information security for trade secrets, military secrets and even national secrets. Companies that contract to the government would be able to lock their trade secrets from hackers and spies by controlling digital copies with a blockchain. A geocoded blockchain could encrypt data outside of geospatially approved areas or if accessed by anyone other than approved private keys. The contents of secure packages could never fall into the wrong hands even if the package was intercepted. The encryption could not be unscrambled without being in the proximity of the smart key.
Additionally, every download would record what, when, who and where any attempts at access occurred. Blockchain technology also enables smart contracts such as medical records, land ownership records, shipping manifests and notaries. Blockchains can be made a part of physical inventory.
Geocoded-embedded blockchains make asset management more secure, restricting transactions to within specific locations. This would be beneficial in a store for controlling inventory, or at a facility for tracking movements of assets, whether the facility is a military installation, an industrial complex, a government facility, a school campus or a penitentiary. In the case of a penitentiary, the prisoners themselves can be tracked.
Closing Thoughts about Blockchain
“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” ― George Orwell
Elections. In a free republic, the integrity of elections must be protected and made fully transparent. Geotagged blockchain election ballots would be an immutable record of the election. A little geospatial analysis could easily detect locations with multiple votes making it highly suspect for voter fraud. Add the requirement to have a private key associated with each voter and voter fraud would be eliminated.
One of the benefits would be eradicating the months of post-election bickering wasting time, tax dollars and sanity. It’s hard to argue with a transparent, decentralized, distributed and immutable ledger; so, no matter which side of the political divide someone is on, removing reasons for conflict should benefit everyone.
Immutable record. If you look at the non-stop news cycle about the government missing texts, missing emails, possible collusion, a dossier, possibly two, and who knew what, and when did they know it, all of that could be resolved with blockchain technology. An immutable record would make it nearly impossible for anything to come up missing, and a geospatially tagged blockchain would show exactly who knew, what they knew, and where they were when they learned it. Deception would be made much more difficult.
Blockchain has the potential to sterilize corruption in politics. The ideal for an open and transparent political system is worth holding on to.
Learn about blockchain, because it will become more and more prevalent in conversations, on television, in movies, and on the news. I hope this article helped shed some light on the technology and its future and the advantages of adding a geospatial component to a blockchain.
* William Mougayar is the Voltaire of the blockchain revolution. He applies his visionary intellect to the merits of a trust-based, information-sharing system prescribing it a cure against the ills of business, politics and society. Mougayar is stoking the coals of the digital transformation just as Voltaire helped light the torch of the French Revolution.
** Reem El Seed is the coordinator of the Blockchain Users Group for the Washington, DC Chapter. She is a prodigious and enthusiastic proponent of blockchain and cryptocurrencies and a well-known figure in the Washington, D.C., area.
Through the agreement, students and faculty at USGIF’s 14 accredited schools will have DigitalGlobe imagery at their fingertips, with access to high-resolution, high-accuracy imagery and better answers to their research questions.
USGIF’s Collegiate Accreditation Program prepares students with the necessary knowledge and skills for entering the professional geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) workforce.
USGIF-accredited GEOINT programs include Fayetteville State University, George Mason University, James Madison University, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Northeastern University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Utah, the U.S. Air Force Academy, the University of Missouri of Columbia, the University of Redlands, the University of South Carolina, the University of Southern California and the U.S. Military Academy.
“DigitalGlobe Foundation’s partnership with USGIF on promoting the geospatial tradecraft creates a force multiplier in our common objective to reach out to educational institutions worldwide,” said Kumar Navulur, DigitalGlobe Foundation president. “Under this partnership, students in USGIF-accredited academic institutions are now able to access DigitalGlobe’s vast library of processed global imagery.”
“Imagery access helps faculty, researchers, and students map and analyze trends in infectious disease, threatened ecosystems, crop yields, or archeological sites,” said Camelia Kantor, USGIF’s Director of Academic Programs. “Our collaborative efforts bring the academic community into a new era of innovation in which high-quality imagery products will allow students enrolled in GEOINT programs to make educated decisions and provide solutions to a wider range of problems.”
USGIF has had a long-standing partnership with DigitalGlobe Foundation, and USGIF CEO Keith J. Masback is a member of DigitalGlobe Foundation’s Board of Directors.
The GEOINT Symposium, hosted annually by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), returns to Tampa, Florida, April 22-25.
The annual symposium gathers the defense, intelligence and homeland security communities as well as other users and producers of geospatial information for keynote speakers, panel discussions and breakout tracks offering the opportunity to learn from senior leaders and subject matter experts.
Confirmed keynote speakers include:
Robert Cardillo, Director, NGA
The Honorable Susan M. Gordon, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence
Dawn Meyerriecks, Deputy Director, CIA Science and Technology Directorate
Gen. Raymond A. Thomas III, Commander, USSOCOM
A complete list of GEOINT leaders who will be speaking throughout the event can be found here.
GEOINT 2018 is expected to draw more than 4,000 geospatial professionals and well in excess of 200 exhibitors. For complete symposium details, visit www.geoint2018.com.
UPDATE: Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 took home the Oscar for Achievement in Visual Effects on March 4. Visual effects supervisors John Nelson, Paul Lambert, and Richard R. Hoover, plus special effects supervisor Gerd Nefzer, took the stage to accept the award.
Framestore, a visual arts studio in Montréal, Québec, has received an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects made possible, in part, by Esri CityEngine.
Designers at Framestore used the software to create a detailed futuristic city based on present-day Las Vegas for the movie Blade Runner 2049.
“We were tasked in creating a futuristic Las Vegas for the year 2049. We had to fly over the main strip of Vegas on a long sequence shot,” said Didier Muanza, lead environment TD, Framestore. “CityEngine seemed to be the best choice to help us generate a modern-day model of Vegas, which was used as the base for the futuristic version.”
Esri CityEngine is a sophisticated 3D modeling software used in professions such as urban planning and architecture as well as film and other entertainment industries. Esri is a global spatial analytics company.
Framestore designers used CityEngine for only one month, yet generated a set that was 6.759 kilometers long and 4 kilometers wide and included more than 1,400 buildings. Realistic textures were based on aerial and oblique photos of the Las Vegas main strip.
Blade Runner 2049 has already received the BAFTA award for Special Visual Effects. The 2018 Academy Awards ceremony takes place Sunday.
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.”
Q: What is the “killer app” for professional use of drones? What UAV market sector will most powerfully drive adoption and influence new regulations?
Jan Leyssens Product Manager, SeptentrioA: The mapping market is opening up. On construction and mining sites, surveyors walk between dozers and dump trucks to create digital terrain models, a time-consuming and dangerous job, which drones can do more efficiently and safely. These jobs are performed in non-public areas, without significant risks or privacy concerns, facilitating public acceptance. Subsequently the potentially larger inspection market will open up. Drones provide an easy, safe way to inspect wind turbines or other installations that are difficult or dangerous to reach.
Tony Murfin Contributing Editor, Professional OEM & UAV, GPS WorldA: The agriculture industry seeks even greater Improvements in crop yields. GNSS systems in the cabs of combines/harvesters have already helped significantly, but drone use for crop-growth monitoring, data collection and pesticide-prescription application is the big breakthrough — once rules for large-scale low-level drone flight over farmland are approved. Ag will push for published rules just as hard as the movies, real-estate and all types of aerial survey for construction and utilities.
Eric Gakstatter Contributing Editor, GIS & UAV, Geospatial SolutionsA: Amateur photographers and hobbyists are where the volume is. The world’s largest UAV manufacturer now exceeds $1B annual revenue. Its growth is being driven by the hobby market. Commercial use of UAVs is a very small piece of the worldwide UAV market. The UAV market will be very similar to the GPS receiver market, just not at the same scale. The volume in the UAV consumer market will drive the technology (sensors, motors, software) that will benefit commercial UAV manufacturers.
Ira Marcus of Pictometry describes the company’s new developments. He was interviewed by GeoIntelligence Insider columnist Art Kalinski for geospatial-solutions.com at the Esri Federal GIS Conference, held Feb. 24-25 in Washington, D.C.
Kurt Schwoppe of Esri describes Drone2Map for ArcGIS software, which converts drone captured imagery into georeferenced ortho-mosaics, 3D meshes and 3D models. He was interviewed by GeoIntelligence Insider columnist Art Kalinski for the Geospatial Solutions website at the Esri Federal GIS Conference, held Feb. 24-25 in Washington, D.C.
Last week, Esri held its 36th International User Conference in San Diego. With 15,000+ attendees from 130 countries, it is the largest gathering of geospatial professionals in North America.
The general plenary presentation on Monday morning is always an interesting event. Founder Jack Dangermond leads the plenary and presents his vision for the year, and years, to come. Here’s the opening Plenary video (3 minutes):
The message of this year’s Plenary was “Applying Geography Everywhere” with the central theme was Web GIS. Here is a video of Mr. Dangermond’s GIS vision (12:42 minutes):
For the past few years, he’s spoken quite a bit about the democratization of geography by making GIS capability available to an audience other than the GIS professional by expanding its impact across an organization at many levels. Here’s a slide he’s presented in the past, and I think it’s consistent with where he sees GIS heading; a global awareness and global usage of GIS apps and data.
Esri thinks that Web GIS is an enabling technology that will be a catalyst for the democratization of GIS across all of an organization’s departments.
How GIS has evolved. (Credit: Eric Gakstatter)
During the Plenary, Bern Szukalski outlined Esri’s take on the current trends in Web GIS:
Portals. The windows into GIS. Thousands of public and private portals serve up GIS data and services.
Content. A collection of authoritative and curated content that Esri calls a living atlas, with some data being updated daily or even hourly.
Analysis tools. For the non-GIS professional to answer simple (or complex) queries such as emergency services coverage in a particular municipality, leveraging the living atlas content to use the most up-to-date data.
Smart mapping. New data-driven web cartography functionality and data exploration that leverages the right tools presented at the right time. Think of it like Google search that shows you relevant web sites based on your past web surfing.
Story maps. A combination of Web GIS and rich media to tell a compelling story. A new and unreleased type of Story map presented by Bern is the Story map Cascade, an immersive experience as you advance through the story and interact with map, amplifying the value of GIS.
If you want to view Bern’s plenary presentation on Web GIS trends, see the following 9-minute video:
Esri Product Roadmap
I get the feeling that ArcGIS Pro will be Esri’s premiere desktop product. When you buy ArcGIS, in addition to ArcMap, you also get a concurrent license for ArcGIS Pro (and ArcGIS Online), and you can see from the following slide that ArcGIS Pro incremental upgrades follow ArcMap. The following slide also shows the timing for the ArcGIS 10.4 release.
Another product Esri is going to release later this year to further promote the democratization of digital geography is a product called ArcGIS Earth. Just by the name, you can imagine the type of product it’s going to be. It’s all about 3D visualization.
Lastly, many of you may have missed the discussion about a new Esri Mobile GIS app called Survey123. There wasn’t a big announcement made, but it seems to be a powerful little app. For those of you who think Collector is a bit too structured, Survey123 might be the app for you. You can easily author smart forms following the XLSForm specification and quickly set up data-collection workflows. This is a really neat feature of Survey123, because you can create your mobile GIS data-collection pick lists and use form logic in an Excel spreadsheet instead of having to create it in the Esri environment.
It might end up being my favorite Esri mobile GIS app. But, you’ll have to wait to give it a spin because it’s not slated for release until later this year.
In other mobile GIS news at the conference, it appears as though Microsoft is concerned about Android and iOS dominating the mobile device space, so much so that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates made a recorded presentation at the plenary. Even more interesting is that Mr. Dangermond suggested that perhaps Mr. Gates might make a live appearance at the Esri UC sometime in the future.
Bill Gates delivers an address to the Esri plenary audience. (Photo: Eric Gakstatter)
On the technical side of Microsoft, it looks like the end is in sight for the separate software development platforms for Windows Desktop and Windows Phone. With Windows 10, I heard that the software development environment for Windows Desktop and Windows Phone (or whatever it’s going to be called) is going to be the same, so you should start seeing Windows devices pick up some momentum next year.
Geospatial Solutions‘ and GPS World‘s Art Kalinski is reporting live from the 2015 Esri Federal GIS Conference, held Feb. 9-10 in Washington, D.C. Check back on our websites for more video updates, or follow GPS World (@gpsworld) and Geospatial Solutions (@GSS_NCM) on Twitter.
Wingtra has officially launched the WingtraOne PPK high-precision mapping drone. Wingtra said its drone, which features vertical take-off and landing, is designed to set a new benchmark for large-scale surveying and mapping applications.
