GPS World

Tag: GIS software

  • GEOINT Coverage, Day 2: Keynotes, Airbus, Skyline

    GEOINT 2013* — Day Two

    Today was the official start of the GEOINT 2013* Symposium. Attendance was estimated at 3,500.

    Keynote speakers included James Clapper, director of National Intelligence (DNI), LTG Michael Flynn, director, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and Lettitia Long, director, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

    The full conference guide and videos of many keynote speeches will be available through the GEOINT 2013 website in about two weeks. The full conference guide is available now as a downloadable PDF.

    I had an opportunity to attend a separate press briefing by Director Long (watch below).

    Included is a large exhibit hall, and today I started touring the booths. In the video below, I talk with Matt Harrison of Skyline as he demonstrates the company’s technology to generate 3D models from oblique imagery.

    Also, AirBus demonstrated its global DEM data set.

  • Esri Offers Interactive Map of Landslide Risk

    Aerial photograph of the Oso mudslide, taken by the Washington State Patrol.
    Aerial photograph of the Oso mudslide, taken by the Washington State Patrol.

    The March 22 mudslide in Oso, Washington, has drawn national attention to the danger of landslides. So far, the Snohomish County Medical Examiner’s office confirmed that 39 people had died and seven people remain missing.

    Esri provides an interactive map for users to see where the risk of landslides is low, moderate, or high in the United States.

    The map shows landslide suspectibility and incidence data from the USGS, which says this 1982 map was not intended to show landslide areas. Areas with low landslide incidence have been omitted.

    Users can click any feature on the map for detailed information about the people living in that area.
     Esri-Landslide-map

  • Esri Offers Interactive Map of Landslide Risk

    Aerial photograph of the Oso mudslide, taken by the Washington State Patrol.
    Aerial photograph of the Oso mudslide, taken by the Washington State Patrol.

    The March 22 mudslide in Oso, Washington, has drawn national attention to the danger of landslides. So far, the Snohomish County Medical Examiner’s office confirmed that 39 people had died and seven people remain missing.

    Esri provides an interactive map for users to see where the risk of landslides is low, moderate, or high in the United States.

    The map shows landslide suspectibility and incidence data from the USGS, which says this 1982 map was not intended to show landslide areas. Areas with low landslide incidence have been omitted.

    Users can click any feature on the map for detailed information about the people living in that area.
     Esri-Landslide-map

  • CompassData Certified by FAA to Collect Data for Aviation Mapping

    CompassData, a worldwide provider of geospatial data and services, has received DO-200A certification by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for collection and processing of survey and ground control data used in the creation of Airport Mapping Database (AMDB) products.

    “DO-200A certification enables CompassData to provide Ground Control Points (GCPs) for generation of digital aeronautical products, such as Airport Moving Maps, used by pilots in the cockpit to navigate on the ground at airports worldwide,” said Hayden Howard, CompassData Vice President. “This certification applies to custom ground control collects and to many of the GCPs that exist in our worldwide archive available off the shelf for immediate purchase.”

    In addition, CompassData has been approved to use its GCPs and Accuracy Analyst map tool to verify the accuracy of satellite or aerial imagery used in creation of AMDB DO-272C aviation products. This means CompassData may orthorectify a high-resolution DigitalGlobe satellite image, verify that the orthoimage accuracy meets sub one- and five-meter specifications, and provide the image to an aeronautical mapping firm or avionics system developer to generate commercial products.

    DO-200A standards were developed by FAA to assure the quality of data used in the preparation of aeronautical mapping, navigation and situational awareness products and systems. Prior to certification, CompassData completed a rigorous examination procedure in which FAA reviewed every step in the firm’s methodologies for collecting, processing and managing GPS-surveyed ground control to ensure the data is accurate, timely, complete, and traceable.

    FAA has granted only six LOAs (Letters of Acceptance) in the Denver ACO Region and only 24 globally. CompassData is the first in the world to receive certification for verification of data sets used to create Airport Moving Map data.

    In March, CompassData purchased the assets of Spatial Information Solutions (SIS) in Starkville, Mississippi, and announced the continued sale and support of the popular Accuracy Analyst and Topo Analyst Map Accuracy Tools. These software applications are relied upon by geospatial end users to automatically verify the accuracy of orthoimagery and digital elevation data sets, often with CompassData GCPs.

    CompassData will discuss the FAA DO-200A certification and demonstrate Accuracy Analyst and Topo Analyst Map Accuracy Tools in booth #2063 at GEOINT 13* being held April 14-17, 2014, in Tampa, Florida.

  • Trimble Offers Software Updates to Simplify Geospatial Analysis

    Trimble announced today comprehensive updates to its powerful suite of geospatial office software, including Trimble Business Center, RealWorks and Trident solutions. Together, these updates provide increased data interoperability between Trimble office software platforms, enabling users to easily combine data generated through traditional survey methods, laser scanning and mobile mapping workflows, to produce richer and more intuitive deliverables, the company said.

    “Data interoperability across Trimble software platforms provide users with seamless and efficient workflows and the flexibility to focus first on the output needed for each job,” said Alain Samaha, business area director of GIS and software for Trimble’s Geospatial Division. “Whether it is a stakeout design or a precise as-built model, users can select the best software environment to get the job done right and deliver that information in the most useable format.”

    The announcement was made at SPAR International 2014, a conference for 3D data capture, processing and delivery technologies.

    Trimble Business Center Version 3.20. Geospatial professionals now have access to an improved processing and analysis experience. With an integrated and powerful new point cloud engine, users can visualize and edit large point clouds while simultaneously working with high- resolution imagery. Combining these rich data sets into a single workflow saves time and potential conversion errors.

    Trimble RealWorks Version 8.1. The latest release of Trimble RealWorks provides surveyors and laser scanning professionals with enhanced tools that make it easier to visualize and interpret scan data. Point clouds can now be easily colorized using high-resolution and High Dynamic Range (HDR) images from professional grade external cameras, significantly reducing measurement and modeling times.

    Trimble Trident Version 6.1. Mobile mapping professionals can now combine the rich datasets captured using spherical cameras with laser scanner and inertial measurements from the Trimble MX2, to easily determine the location of surveyed features and automatically classify imaged objects.

    The new office software versions are expected to be available in April 2014 through Trimble’s worldwide Geospatial distribution network.

  • Esri Issues Help to Fight Heartbleed Bug in ArcGIS Products

    heartbleedEsri has issued guidelines for users to protect themselve against the Heartbleed Bug, officially named OpenSSL Vulnerability CVE-2014-0160 (Heartbleed).

    The Heartbleed Bug is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. This weakness allows stealing the information protected, under normal conditions, by the SSL/TLS encryption used to secure the Internet. SSL/TLS provides communication security and privacy over the Internet for applications such as web, email, instant messaging (IM) and some virtual private networks (VPNs).

    Some 17 percent (around half a million) of the Internet’s secure web servers certified by trusted authorities were believed to be vulnerable to the attack, allowing theft of the servers’ private keys and users’ session cookies and passwords.

    Since learning about the vulnerability, Esri staff have been performing maintenance to validate, secure, and patch Esri servers and infrastructure to close this vulnerability and ensure Esri customers are protected.

    Esri suggests its customers read its Knowledge Base Technical Article to determine the action required for their particular ArcGIS products and services. As an extra precaution, users may want to change their passwords.

  • Tax Day Mapped: How Do States Tax Residents?

    Esri has provided an interactive state taxes story map. Using the map, you can view tax rates by state for income tax, sales tax, and property tax to see how each state raises money from its residents. You can also explore demographic information in the popups to see whether the state’s population and relative wealth affects how it chooses to tax its citizens. See below:

  • Trimble Delivers 3D Scanning Extension for SketchU

    Trimble Business Center Version 3.20

    Trimble has released the Trimble Scan Explorer Extension for SketchUp Pro, what it calls a powerful, easy-to-use tool enabling architects, engineers and geospatial professionals to create models from 3D scanning data.

    The new software connects the high-resolution field data from Trimble scanners with intuitive and powerful professional modeling software, to simplify the process of creating, accessing and sharing precise 3D models of the real-world environment.

    The Trimble Scan Explorer Extension dramatically reduces the time required to generate a SketchUp Pro 3D model from scan data, the company said. Streamlined tools and one-touch features allow users to quickly extract construction points and lines that are used as a guide to simplify and expedite the modeling process. Automated plane extraction tools further increase modeling efficiency, particularly when modeling building interiors and facades.

    For improved visual references when working with point clouds, the extension includes a simple-to-use edge extraction tool, allowing users to easily decipher important cues from the scan data directly into their model building space. Structural edges are brought into SketchUp as guidelines, and one button push displays the shell of the structure.

    “By seamlessly integrating powerful tools across our broad range of best-in-class solutions, Trimble is helping transform the way our customers work and accomplish more every day. The integrated workflow provided by Scan Explorer brings the accessibility of 3D modeling to more users for as-built analysis and design changes,” said Alain Samaha, business area director of GIS and Software for Trimble’s Geospatial Division. “Professionals can now easily create visual 3D models that provide a true representation of the environment they are working in—improving the communication, collaboration and quality of deliverable that they can provide to their clients.”

    “SketchUp’s enormous popularity as a design tool is rooted in its capacity to make many complex processes easier and more efficient,” said Chris Keating, director of the Architecture Division within Trimble Buildings Group. ”The Trimble Scan Explorer Extension for SketchUp Pro reinforces our mission to deliver SketchUp’s benefits to new users and for new uses.”

    The release was announced at SPAR International 2014, a conference for 3D data capture, processing and delivery technologies.

    Trimble Scan Explorer Extension for SketchUp Pro is available through Trimble’s Geospatial distribution network and online.

    Trimble RealWorks Version 8.1 Bridge Clearance

    Trimble Trident Version 6.1

  • LizardTech to Showcase Express Server at the GEOINT

    GeoExpress Previewer with Infrared.
    GeoExpress Previewer with Infrared.

    LizardTech will conduct defense-oriented demonstrations of its recently launched Express Server software product next week at the GEOINT 2013* Symposium in booth number 4079. The symposium will take place April 14 – 17 at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida. LizardTech is a provider of software solutions for managing and distributing geospatial content.

    Express Server is image-delivery software for compressed raster imagery, including multispectral imagery. The latest version includes the ExpressZip web application for browsing, finding, and exporting imagery straight from the web browser. Users can view all of their collections and query by location, by keyword, by projection, and more. If users need to take their imagery on the go, they can use the built-in selection tools to export regions of interest. The ExpressZip application is open source and customizable.

    “We look forward to sharing Express Server 9 with the intelligence community at GEOINT next week,” said Jon Skiffington, director of product management at LizardTech. “Most LizardTech users know MrSID and how it can be used to drastically reduce image sizes while retaining visual quality. What they may not be aware of is that  Express Server is the fastest, easiest, and most stable way to distribute compressed, high-resolution raster imagery via standard protocols. And now with ExpressZip, our customers will be able to access all of their collections in one place and export imagery straight from the web browser.”

    LizardTech will also showcase its GeoExpress software for compressing and manipulating satellite and aerial imagery, and its LiDAR Compressor software, which turns giant point cloud datasets into efficient MrSID files.

  • Scene Sharp USA to Unveil Fuze Go V2.0 Image Fusion Software at GEOINT

    Scene Sharp USA will introduce Version 2.0 of its Fuze Go universal image fusion technology April 14-17, 2014, at the GEOINT 13* Symposium in Tampa, Florida. Scene Sharp will be hosted in Global Marketing Insights booth #2091 where it will demonstrate the new Fuze Go MS Sharp and Fuze Go SAR Sharp image fusion processing tools.

    Scene Sharp is  division of PraEis Ltd., a geospatially focused technology transfer organization with offices in Ohio and New Hampshire USA.

    “Fuze Go is a fully automated technology that enables users to quickly and easily fuse data sets to add color to non-colorized satellite and aerial imagery with just a few mouse clicks,” said Scene Sharp CEO Ian Lucas. “By colorizing image data, GIS users can visualize and extract richer information content from remotely sensed data to make better informed decisions.”

    In one simple step, the Fuze Go MS Sharp software fuses high-resolution panchromatic image data with lower-resolution multispectral data to generate a high-resolution color image. The full information content of the multispectral bands is retained in the fused image. More importantly, Fuze Go MS Sharp is the only fusion software capable of simultaneously merging up to 30 bands of multispectral data with a panchromatic image.

    “Fuze Go MS Sharp runs at least five times faster and yields more consistent results than pan-sharpening applications that can only process four bands of data,” said Lucas. “As is true with the entire line of existing and planned Fuze Go products from Scene Sharp, no expertise in GIS or image processing is needed to use Fuze Go MS Sharp.”

    As a universal image fusion tool, Fuze Go MS Sharp can handle data formats from any commercial image processing and enterprise GIS software packages. In cooperation with Exelis Inc., Scene Sharp created a Fuze Go MS Sharp plugin for the popular Exelis ENVI 5.0 and 5.1 image processing package.

    “The plugin enables ENVI users to access the Fuze Go MS Sharp tool either within the ENVI workflow or outside of it so that fusion can be performed as a stand-alone application, freeing up the ENVI software license for other image processing activities,” said Lucas. “We are developing similar plugin capabilities for other major GIS and image processing packages.”

    Fuze Go SAR Sharp was designed by Scene Sharp for more effective exploitation of data captured by satellite-based synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensors. Fuze Go SAR Sharp fuses gray-scale radar data with optical multispectral bands to colorize the SAR data set. This image fusion presents the unique SAR data, which is captured through darkness and clouds, in a color context that greatly enhances the user’s ability to interpret the radar data and extract actionable intelligence from it.

    Fuze Go MS Sharp and SAR Sharp are available for purchase for an annual license fee. Batch processing versions of the software packages are also offered to perform automatic fusion of multiple optical or SAR scenes.

    “The ease of use and attractive pricing of Fuze Go software products make them far superior solutions to any other applications in the geospatial market today,” said Dr. Shawana Johnson, President of Global Marketing Insights. “With their seamless integration into existing image exploitation workflows, Fuze Go products can have immediate impacts in defense/intelligence, homeland security, mining, agriculture, forestry and oil & gas applications.”

  • SuperGIS Engine 3.2 Released for Customizing GIS Applications

    SuperGIS-Supergeo

    Supergeo Technologies, a global provider of GIS software and solutions, officially released SuperGIS Engine 3.2 to assists GIS developers in customizing GIS applications to meet diverse requirements of each project.

    Developed by Supergeo through integrating mapping and GIS technologies, SuperGIS Engine 3.2, as the COM-structured development component, provides developers with complete GIS core components. The developed applications can be seamlessly embedded into programming language in Windows developing environment and integrated with other systems for strong system development, Supergeo said.

    SuperGIS Engine 3.2 offers complete development resources. GIS programmers or developers are allowed to efficiently develop applications with GIS functionalities such as Display Layer, Edit, Query, Access Spatial Database, etc. Hundreds of GIS-related objects, diverse controls, comprehensive developing samples and object diagram are given to technical users, to effectively build programs and deploy to multiple end-users.

    A variety of new components are contained in SuperGIS Engine 3.2. For example, “Internet Connection Component” for Proxy Server settings and “Data Exclusion” for excluding specified vector data for better map display are newly supported. In terms of mapping, point symbols can be rotated and resized according to their attributes for more flexible displaying effect.

    To know more information and download the free trial, visit www.supergeotek.com/ProductPage_SE.aspx.

  • National Map Corps Celebrates One Year of Crowdsourced Mapping

    Status map showing the location and density of volunteer submitted structure edits.
    Status map showing the location and density of volunteer submitted structure edits.

    This April marks the one year anniversary of the transition of the USGS’s The National Map Corps (TNMCorps) from a small regional pilot project in the heart of Denver, Colorado, into a successful nationwide project. During the past year, civilian volunteers in every state have increasingly provided accurate mapping data to the National Geospatial Program’s publicly available application called The National Map.

    Using crowdsourcing techniques, TNMCorps’ Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) project engages citizen scientists to collect man-made structures data including schools, hospitals, post offices, police stations and other important public buildings.

    Over the past year TNMCorps has achieved the following significant milestones:

    • 1,422 – volunteers
    • 42,009 – contributions (counts each person’s edit per single point)
    • 33,698 – unique points edited (individual structures)
    • 50,696 – total number of edits (the sum of all edits made by volunteers)
    • 50  – number of states involved
    • 18 – number of volunteers who have earned more than 500 points
    • 4,691 –  state with largest number of edited points; Colorado

    “This project has proven that we can count on volunteers to provide quality information to be included in authoritative government databases,” said Kari Craun, director of the National Geospatial Technical Operations Center. “The people that have contributed their time are performing a community service by ensuring key structures data are available publicly.” 

    To volunteer, go to The National Map Corps project site. The project is seeking anyone with access to the Internet willing to dedicate some time editing map data. Participants can earn badges and public recognition by a series of points.

    While some familiarity with the area that a volunteer chooses is helpful, volunteers don’t have to live near a particular place to contribute. The tools on TNMCorps website, along with ancillary information available on the Internet, are generally sufficient to edit a distant area.