The latest version of the TerraGo Edge includes enhanced polygon and polyline capabilities, enriched mapping features, expanded GPS receiver integration and adds KML import and export formats. View the video above for an on-demand demo of the latest features in TerraGo Edge v3.6.
Visit terragotech.com to learn more.
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SimActive Inc., developer of photogrammetry software, has purchased the Correlator3D software by Altoa from French Guiana. The software will be used to process images and lidar data for the production of orthomosaics.
“Following our recent acquisition of two digital cameras including the Phase One color and infrared, we needed precise, powerful, and versatile photogrammetric software,” said Walid Mostafa, manager of Altoa. “After analyzing the available tools, we decided to choose Correlator3D.”
“We are pleased to see an important company in South America such as Altoa adopt Correlator3D,” said Philippe Simard, president of SimActive. “Their use of Correlator3D demonstrates the software’s ability to adapt to different production environments and to integrate a lidar sensor with a camera.”
For a live demonstration at Commercial Unmanned Show Asia 2015 (June 30-July 1, Singapore), visit booth B10 or send an email to [email protected].
Defense and security company Saab and DigitalGlobe Inc., a global provider of high-resolution earth imagery solutions, have created the joint venture Vricon Inc. to produce photo-realistic 3D products and digital elevation models for enterprise and government geospatial markets.
Vricon combines Saab’s 3D technology and know-how with DigitalGlobe’s archive, which contains billions of square kilometers of high-quality commercial satellite imagery. Together, the Vricon joint venture will establish high-scale production capabilities that will make highly accurate photo-realistic 3D products and elevation data of the earth accessible via its visualization platform and standard- based data formats.
Vricon serves the entire professional geospatial market, with an initial focus on defense, security, and infrastructure. Vricon’s technology enables imagery content to accurately represent all visible objects on the earth in 3D, and its products provide customers with value and utility, superior coverage relative to aerial-derived elevation models, and superior fidelity and availability relative to other satellite-derived models.
DigitalGlobe and Saab will combine their strengths to both support and own Vricon. Under the agreement, Vricon will be headquartered in Reston, Va., with ownership set up as 50 percent DigitalGlobe and 50 percent Saab. “Our customers will benefit from global access to geospatial data of unprecedented quality. It is a win-win situation with long-term value creation for both parent companies, which will give us a market position ahead of competition,” said Magnus Brege, Vricon CEO.
“By combining DigitalGlobe’s unrivaled imagery archive with Saab’s leading edge technology, we will deliver the globe in 3D at a scale never before possible,” said Jeffrey R. Tarr, DigitalGlobe President and Chief Executive Officer. “By delivering this breakthrough product to our customers, this collaboration will drive growth and shareowner value creation.”
“The establishment of Vricon is another great example of Saab’s ability to leverage innovation and transform it into business value,” said Dan Jangblad, head of Saab business area Industrial Products and Services. “Together with DigitalGlobe, we are taking our revolutionary new 3D technology and applying it to benefit our global customer base. At the same time, we also take another step forward on our long-term path for growth in the United States.”
Top national security officials and authors will be delivering keynote addresses at the GEOINT 2015 Symposium, sponsored by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF).
USGIF’s GEOINT Symposium is the largest intelligence event in the U.S., uniting the defense, intelligence, and homeland security communities for a week of knowledge sharing, discussion, training and education, technology demonstrations, business opportunities and networking. The GEOINT 2015 Symposium will be held June 22-25 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.
Confirmed keynotes for GEOINT 2015 include:
Kaplan and McChrystal’s books will be on sale throughout the week at GEOINT 2015. Both authors will sign copies of their books directly following their respective keynote addresses.
Both Cardillo and Clapper have spoken at past GEOINT Symposia, while this is Kaplan, Lettre, Lumpkin, McChrystal and Schiff’s first speaking engagement with USGIF. Visit GEOINTv.com to view videos from the GEOINT 2013* Symposium, including keynote addresses by Clapper and Cardillo.
More keynotes are expected to be announced in the coming weeks. To learn more about GEOINT 2015, view the agenda, or to register for the event, visit geoint2015.com.
Access to satellite images and GPS data has allowed scientists to document the collapse of the Bárðarbunga caldera, a volcano beneath the Vatnajökull ice cap in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Mark Simons, a professor of geophysics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), traveled to Reykjavik with 15 students and two faculty members on Aug. 16, 2014, to lead a tour of the volcanic, tectonic, and glaciological highlights of Iceland. That day, earthquakes occurred — the seismicity was related to the Bárðarbunga caldera.
Simons is one of the leaders of a Caltech and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) project known as the Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) program, which aims to use a growing constellation of international imaging radar satellites that will improve situational awareness and response following natural disasters, according to Caltech. Under the ARIA umbrella, Caltech and JPOL, managed for NASA by Caltech, had formed a collaboration with the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to use its COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) constellation — consisting of four orbiting X-Band radar satellites — following such events.
CSK used an interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) technique to gather images of the surface of the glacier above the caldera. By the evening of Aug. 28, Caltech says the first interferogram showed that the ice above the caldera was subsiding at a rate of 19.685 inches a day.
Simons took the data to researchers at the University of Iceland who were tracking Bárðarbunga’s activity on Aug. 29.
“At that point, there had been no recognition that the caldera was collapsing. Naturally, they were focused on the dyke and all the earthquakes to the north,” Simons said. “Our goal was just to let them know about the activity at the caldera because we were really worried about the possibility of triggering a subglacial melt event that would generate a catastrophic flood.”
The flood never occurred, but Caltech says the researchers at the University of Iceland increased their observations of the caldera with radar altimetry flights and installed a continuous GPS station on the ice overlying the center of the caldera.
The Icelandic researchers published a paper in December 2014 in Nature about the Bárðarbunga event, largely focusing on the dyke and eruption. Simons and his colleagues have developed a model to describe the collapsing caldera and the earthquakes produced by that action. The new findings appear in the Geophysical Journal International.
Bryan Riel, a graduate student in Simons’s group and lead author on the paper, used the interferogram of the Bárðarbunga area, along with four others collected by CSK in September and October, to show that the earthquakes were not the primary cause of the surface deformation inferred from the satellite radar data.
“What we know for sure is that the magma chamber was deflating as the magma was feeding the dyke going northward,” Riel said in the article. “We have come up with two different models to explain what was actually generating the earthquakes.”
“Because we had access to these satellite images as well as GPS data, we have been able to produce two potential interpretations for the collapse of a caldera — a rare event that occurs maybe once every 50 to 100 years,” Simons said. “To be able to see this documented as it’s happening is truly phenomenal.”
Sixty seconds may not sound like much, but if given advance warning of an earthquake, people could take cover, trains could stop, and oil rigs could be shut down before the shaking hits.
The earthquake early warning app QuakeAlert, by Early Warning Labs, aims to provide that extra time. The app, with new technology developed in partnership the United States Geological Survey (USGS), will be tested by the USGS, the California Institute of Technology and other university researchers.
QuakeAlert is designed to alert users with a countdown to when shaking will strike their exact location, and tell the user how severe the intensity is expected in their location. The app simultaneously delivers important safety instructions to the user on how to respond if indoors, outside or in a moving vehicle. QuakeAlert will be provided to users free of charge.
The QuakeAlert app uses USGS seismic sensor network data, an Esri GIS backend and the Microsoft Azure cloud to deliver earthquake early warnings. The app is currently in private beta testing with university researchers at CalTech and USGS scientists, and will be available to the public for free once the USGS receives full funding of its early warning program and approves the technology for the public.
Early Warning Labs (EWL) is an Earthquake Early Warning technology developer and integrator in Santa Monica, Calif., and an official research and development partner with the USGS. Early Warning Labs is collaborating with university partners including Caltech, Berkeley and the University of Washington, as well as Esri.
More than 11 inches of rain fell in areas of Texas and other nearby states on May 25-26, inundating homes and highways and bringing the southeast Texas city of Houston to a standstill.
Esri’s U.S. Flooding Public Information Map provides continuously updated information from the National Weather Service showing:
Specific information provided includes flooding height and severity, and features can be identified with the stream gauge and weather watch layers.
Scene Sharp USA has integrated its Fuze Go MS Sharp image fusion tool into the ERDAS IMAGINE Spatial Modeler software. Exhibiting at HxGN LIVE Las Vegas 2015, Scene Sharp will demonstrate how Fuze Go MS Sharp enhances the analytical recipes scripted in Spatial Modeler for automated applications such as Change Detection.
“Scene Sharp is honored to be selected as partner, building upon IMAGINE Spatial Modeler,” said Kevin Marasch, Director of Business Development of Scene Sharp USA. “Our Fuze Go MS Sharp functionality can now be used as a key ingredient in the analytical recipes within Spatial Modeler.”
The Fuze Go MS Sharp “lossless” satellite image-processing tool fuses visible and near-infrared multispectral data with high-resolution panchromatic data to produce images with unparalleled visual quality, sharpness and fidelity. MS Sharp pansharpens up to 30 bands of satellite image data consistently and accurately without losing spectral information.
Part of the Hexagon Geospatial Power Portfolio, ERDAS IMAGINE is a full-feature raster image processing package, Scene Sharp said. The IMAGINE Spatial Modeler provides users with the tools — or ingredients — to build functions and create geospatial workflows — or analytical recipes — to extract information from raster image data. Spatial Modeler users may integrate Fuze Go MS Sharp into any custom analytical recipe built with the software.
“We are impressed with the advanced image science Scene Sharp brings to our customers.” said Steve du Plessis, director of Remote Sensing at Hexagon Geospatial. “The IMAGINE Spatial Modeler provides the perfect vehicle to incorporate the algorithms into value-added workflows. The resulting enhanced images provide the best of both the spectral and spatial information contained in the data, improving interpretation, classification, change detection and many other analyses.”
With version 2.2, Scene Sharp enhanced MS Sharp to improve the overall visual quality of the resulting imagery products even beyond their already impressive standards. In addition, Scene Sharp tweaked the many capabilities within MS Sharp that make it the most accurate and one of the fastest automated image fusion packages on the market today.
Scene Sharp will be demonstrating Fuze Go software features within the IMAGINE Spatial Modeler in booth #213 at HxGN LIVE, the Hexagon International user conference being held June 1-4 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Three new sets of maps detail the offshore bathymetry, habitats, geology and submarine environment of the seafloor off the coast of San Francisco, Drakes Bay and Tomales Point.
Critical for resource managers, the maps are part of the California Seafloor and Coastal Mapping Program, a series of maps published by the U.S. Geological Survey with support from the California Ocean Protection Council, NOAA and 15 other state and federal partners. The maps are designed to be used by a large stakeholder community and the public to manage and understand California’s vast and valuable marine resources.
“OPC is proud to be a partner in this interagency effort,” said California’s Secretary for Natural Resources and OPC Chair John Laird. “These maps are critical to the state’s innovative approach to coastal resource management. USGS’s products form the foundation for assessing the performance of our Marine Protected Area network and preparing for climate change impacts such as sea-level rise.”
“NOAA is pleased to be partnering in this integrated ocean and coastal mapping project. By working with partners from across federal, state, academic, and private sectors, we are able to combine data resources and maximize our efficiency in applying a ‘map once, use many times’ approach that benefits all,” said Rear Admiral Gerd F. Glang, director NOAA’s office of coast survey.
The program was initiated seven years ago with the goal of comprehensively surveying and mapping all of California’s state waters. The vision was tremendously ambitious — comparable mapping on this scale has not been attempted anywhere else in the world, the USGS said. Each of the three publications includes 10 map sheets, a pamphlet and a digital data catalog.
The maps and mapping data have a large range of applications. They provide:
The new “Offshore of San Francisco” maps document the complex submarine environments along the inlet to San Francisco Bay formed by strong tidal currents, including spectacular sand waves, a deep scour pool beneath the Golden Gate, and the dynamic offshore San Francisco mouth bar and “Potato Patch” shoal.
Sediment distribution maps reveal only a thin sediment cover offshore of the Ocean Beach (San Francisco) erosional hotspot (a pattern extending south to San Gregorio), indicating that today’s present coastal erosion will be a continuing problem, likely to be exacerbated by continuing sea-level rise.
Geologic maps incorporating subsurface data document the location and geometry of the San Andreas, San Gregorio and Point Reyes fault systems, and show how their interactions led to uplift of Point Reyes and development of a deep sediment-filled basin.
The Drakes Bay and Vicinity, and Offshore of Tomales Point maps reveal the diverse and complex range of seafloor habitats typical of the California coast, ranging from the rugged granitic bedrock along the high-energy west coast of Point Reyes, to smooth sand and mud in the more protected Drakes Bay environment that includes the Point Reyes State Marine Reserve.
“There is a ‘WOW!’ factor to the new high-resolution datasets and maps,” said Sam Johnson, the USGS project lead. “They’re allowing scientists to pose new questions and are having a significant role in stimulating research. We’re also seeing a positive impact on public education and awareness.”
To date, 12 map sets and catalogs have been published. Ten additional map sets are now being formatted for publication, which will complete coverage in the Santa Barbara Channel (Oxnard to Gaviota) and from Marina northward to beyond the Russian River.
The maps are created through the collection, integration, interpretation, and visualization of swath sonar data, acoustic backscatter, seafloor video, seafloor photography, high-resolution seismic-reflection profiles, and bottom-sediment sampling data.
The California Seafloor and Coastal Mapping Program is a collaborative effort supported by the USGS, the California Ocean Protection Council, NOAA, California State University at Monterey Bay, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, and other academic, government, and industry partners.
Maps: USGS
As hundreds of thousands of tourists flock to the Washington, D.C., area for their summer vacations and residents join them on city streets and at public gatherings, the Federal Aviation Administration has a clear message for everyone: Leave Your Drone at Home.
The FAA has announced a public outreach campaign for the region around Washington, D.C., to reinforce the message that the city itself, and communities within a 15-mile radius of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, are a “No Drone Zone.” The effort includes furnishing outreach materials to federal, state and local partners around the National Capital Region. The agency wants to ensure residents and tourists all understand that flying an unmanned aircraft in this area for any purpose is against the law.
The push follows two incidents when drones entered the no-fly zone around the White House. The most recent was on May 14.
Rules put in place after the 9/11 attacks establish “national defense airspace” over the D.C. area and limit aircraft operations — including unmanned aircraft — to those with an FAA and Transportation Security Administration authorization. Violators may face stiff fines and criminal penalties.
The bottom line: Enjoy your visit to the nation’s capital. Bring your family, your cameras and plenty of sunscreen. Just don’t bring your drone.
For more information, visit the FAA’s No Drone Zone webpage.
The U.S. Geological Survey National Geospatial Program is developing the 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) to respond to growing needs for high-quality topographic data and for a wide range of other three-dimensional representations of the nation’s natural and constructed features.
To expand awareness of 3DEP status and plans, as well as provide an open forum for 3DEP stakeholders to communicate and coordinate potential Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) proposals, the USGS is offering numerous state and regional coordination workshops.
The meetings will be held throughout the U.S. from now until June 30. The workshops will include in-person and virtual participation options.
The primary goal of 3DEP is to systematically collect 3D elevation data in the form of light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data over the conterminous United States, Hawaii, and the U.S. territories, with data acquired over an eight-year period. Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (ifsar) data will be acquired for Alaska, where cloud cover and remote locations preclude the use of LiDAR in much of the state.
The 3DEP initiative is based on the results of the National Enhanced Elevation Assessment that documented more than 600 business uses across 34 federal agencies, all 50 states, selected local government and tribal offices, and private and nonprofit organizations. A fully funded and implemented 3DEP would provide more than $690 million annually in new benefits to government entities, the private sector and citizens.
3DEP is a “Call for Action” because no one entity can accomplish it independently. 3DEP presents an opportunity for collaboration between all levels of government to leverage the services and expertise of private-sector mapping firms that acquire the data, and to create jobs.
“When partners work together, they can achieve efficiencies and lower costs so that 3DEP can become a reality,” the USGS said in a press release. “When 3D elevation data are available to everyone, new innovations will occur in forest resource management, alternative energy, agriculture, and other industries for years to come,” the USGS said.
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.
For more details about what’s new in ArcGIS 10.3.1, visit the ArcGIS blog.