Breaking Defense is reporting that DigitalGlobe has requested that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) relax the 41-cm limit currently in place.
Walter Scott, DigitalGlobe’s founder and now executive VP and chief technical officer, tells Breaking Defense there is “significant demand” for quarter-meter resolution from the international market. And that’s why the company applied for a change to the resolution they can be licensed for from half a meter to a quarter meter.
NOAA is responsible for managing remote sensing satellite licenses in the U.S. View the Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs website here.
Current NOAA license holders (per NOAA website) are listed below:
Watch EarthCam’s time-lapse movie of the construction progress for one of the largest ARRA (American Recovery and Restoration Act) funded projects in our nation’s history.
More than 42,000 hours of construction can be seen in just four minutes with the release of EarthCam’s official time-lapse movie for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. After many years of construction to retrofit and transform the Bay Bridge, project teams and contractors will be celebrating all of their hard work at the opening of the updated bridge today, September 3.
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) relied on 12 EarthCam construction cameras to document progress for the $6.4 billion bridge. In 2008, EarthCam installed a combination of live streaming video cameras and high definition time-lapse systems, all carefully documenting progress from several unique perspectives. Strategically located on the project site, each camera captured a specific view of the progress, archiving footage from 42 preset angles. During the life of the project, views of progress, as well as important information about construction-related lane closures, were made available on the Webby award-winning public web page.
EarthCam’s construction cameras captured nearly six years of progress, a powerful testament to the hard-working and dedicated bridge teams. The EarthCam Time-Lapse Production Team pored over the staggering number of images captured over the past 59 months and spent months hand-editing the archived imagery into a professional time-lapse movie.
Autodesk, Inc. announced the launch of Autodesk FBX Review for Microsoft Windows 7 and Windows 8 enabled devices. The standalone app gives professional artists and animators a powerful, lightweight tool to conduct detailed reviews of a wide range of 3D assets, including detailed 3D models, environments and character animations.
“We’ve consistently observed our customers’ need to speed up project iteration, while maintaining high-fidelity assets that are faithful to the original design,” said Chris Bradshaw, senior vice president, Autodesk Media & Entertainment. “FBX Review streamlines the asset review process, providing greater flexibility for mobile, decentralized creative teams.”
Intuitive, Full-Featured Asset Review
According to the announcement, modern workflows include numerous internal and external clients and stakeholders, many in different locations. Autodesk FBX Review allows any user on a Windows device or platform to view 3D assets with a robust feature set, without using commercial 3D animation software. For example, an artist working in Autodesk Maya can send an animation file to anyone who has installed FBX Review, and the recipient will have a full menu of features with which to view the assets.
By supporting a wide range of open 3D file formats, from popular digital creation formats like .fbx, .3ds, and .obj to .dxf, an Autodesk AutoCAD format, FBX Review gives artists the freedom to use their favorite 3D tools. Reviewers can then choose to view assets with various shading options, animations, cameras or lighting options in the Microsoft DirectX 11 enabled viewport. Supported viewing options include:
Static and Dynamic Tessellation
Displacement and Vector Displacement Maps
Skin Deformations and Animation
Real-Time Shadow Maps
Reflection Maps
Light and Ambient Occlusion Maps
Image Based Lighting
Ground and Sky Ambient Color
To evaluate animations and scenes, FBX Review offers easy-to-use controls to cycle through animation takes and different camera angles to quickly play, pause and scrub-through animations. Scenes can be viewed with the cameras and lights native to the file or with the in-app perspective and orthographic cameras.
Mobile-Friendly Design
Autodesk FBX Review’s mobile support provides a near seamless way to continue the production cycle away from the workstation. Developed from the ground up for the Windows 8 platform, the mobile app incorporates the same full feature set as the desktop app, with a simple user interface that leverages the touch screen display, such as a multi-view camera that allows reviewers to pan, circle or zoom in on assets and touch sensitive animation playback and lighting controls. The mobile app simply requires Microsoft Windows 8 OS, 50 MB of disk space for installation and only 4GB of RAM. For optimal asset viewing, mobile devices should also include a graphics card that supports Microsoft DirectX 11.
Trimble announced it has entered into an agreement with DigitalGlobe Inc. to license its satellite imagery for offline use in Trimble Outdoors mobile apps, allowing outdoor enthusiasts to view and store imagery on their smartphones and tablets. In addition, DigitalGlobe imagery will be available for high-resolution, large-format custom prints at MyTopo.com, a Trimble company.
“Our customers use Trimble apps in remote areas where network data coverage doesn’t exist. Armed with smartphones loaded with memory, they�re increasingly asking for map content to be stored locally on the handset for off-the-grid use. We’re excited to enable our customers to cache DigitalGlobe’s high-resolution imagery on their smartphones to address these needs,” said Mark Harrington, vice president of Trimble. “In addition, providing our MyTopo customers with the ability to create large format print maps with DigitalGlobe’s high-resolution imagery allows them to have the convenience of a traditional paper map that matches their handset experience in the field. By partnering with DigitalGlobe, Trimble can significantly enhance the quality of satellite photography available in our products.”
According to the announcement, DigitalGlobe will provide imagery down to a 30-centimeter resolution for the continental U.S. and 50-centimeter resolution globally, effective immediately. The 30-centimeter resolution means one pixel on the image equals 30 centimeters on the ground.
“By partnering with Trimble we can showcase how our imagery can be used in new and unique ways for location-based services companies,” said Bert Turner, senior vice president of sales at DigitalGlobe. “Outdoor enthusiasts will now have access to DigitalGlobe’s vast imagery library—the largest and most up to date of its kind—in order to harness the power of mapping and location intelligence even in the most remote locations.”
Mobile Apps with DigitalGlobe Imagery
According to the announcement, outdoors enthusiasts will be able to use DigitalGlobe’s worldwide imagery in five apps:
Trimble Outdoors Navigator (iPhone, Android), designed for in-the-field navigation for hikers, backpackers, mountain bikers, and general outdoor use
Trimble Outdoors MyTopo Maps (iPad, Kindle Fire, Android tablets), designed for outdoor trip planning
Trimble GPS Hunt (iPhone, Android), smartphone app built for hunters
Trimble GPS Fish (iPhone, Android), smartphone app built for anglers
Trimble GPS Maps (iPad), tablet app designed to plan hunting and fishing trips
To save maps on their mobile device, customers need to select the area and zoom levels of the DigitalGlobe imagery using the Offline Maps tool found in the supported apps. The ability to store offline satellite imagery will require an Elite membership ($29.99 per year) to TrimbleOutdoors.com (trimbleoutdoors.com/elite) or GPSHuntFish.com (www.gpshuntfish.com/elite).
Printed Maps with DigitalGlobe Imagery
Customers can order the new Premium Satellite Image prints in five sizes ranging from 18″ x 24″ to 60″ x 96″ on MyTopo.com, which has a simple five-step process to design custom maps. In addition, users can select the map scale down to 1:1K, plus overlay GPS coordinates, navigation grids and exclusive map layers like public land boundaries, hunt units, forest roads, and lake contours. The imagery can be printed on several paper formats, including waterproof and glossy.
High-resolution prints will be available in the U.S. and Canada to start, and expand to worldwide coverage later in 2013.
INTRUSION SENSORS strive to have a high detection rate and low false alarm rate.
By Eric Olson and Steven Pisciotta
Ongoing threats from terrorist activities at critical facilities require early detection before the threats can reach their target and complete their mission. This has produced the need for advanced security systems to effectively detect terrorist activity, while reducing alarms caused by normal friendly activity. Automatic Threat Assessment, also referred to as Identify Friend or Foe (IFF), is the ability to automatically acknowledge alarms created by friendly assets. It can be achieved with a security system that uses GPS and geospatial data to go beyond the typical intrusion-sensor-only configuration.
The addition of a tracking system associated with friendly vehicles and personnel can provide the missing information necessary to tighten security and reduce the need to take action on alarms caused by friendly targets, and reduce the material and personnel cost of threat assessment. Tracking systems and intrusion sensors can worktogether to automatically classify an actual intruder with high confidence and without operator intervention.
The Verification Problem
Typical intrusion sensors include intelligent fences, ground proximity sensors, radar, LIDAR, and video analytics. The role of the intrusion sensor is to identify a breach and notify security personnel so they may perform verification. Table 1 shows the formal alarm types received from intrusion sensors, which strive for a high detection rate and a low false-alarm rate. For this reason, the nuisance alarm can be problematic as it reflects a real event for the intrusion sensor, but often a non-event for the security operator.
These typical sensors only provide a “suspected intruder” list. The follow-on task is to decide whether or not to reclassify a suspected intruder as an actual intruder. This process is typically a manual task and can be difficult, confusing, and time-consuming.
For instance, a landscape crew will trigger alarms. Even for very accurate systems that can uniquely track the object over a long period, it is highly likely that over the period of time the landscapers are in the area, the track will be lost, causing the system to re-alarm on the same person or vehicle, as it represents a potential intrusion.
If the landscaping crew needs to open a gate, and that gate is integrated into the facility’s access control system via a dry contact or beam breaker device, it may continuously alarm while left open, or at a minimum, in the case of the beam, each time one of the workers or the vehicle passes through the entrance. In these situations, security will either need to validate each alarm by verifying it on a camera or having an officer follow the landscaping crew throughout their route.
The existence of a friendly alarm event that needs continual validation can lead to compacency of security personnel, either not verifying it, or not verifying it in a timely manner.
Table 1. Alarm types.
Combined Detection, Location
A GPS tracking system combined with the intrusion sensors can help identify friends. Tracking systems consist of two main types of locating devices: GPS-enabled devices and wireless transponders.
Modern, low-cost GPS receivers can achieve an accuracy rating of less than 3 meters, provide an update once per second, and do not require visibility to the open sky. Wireless communication transmits the GPS data to the C2 system. A typical data set includes time, date, latitude, longitude, altitude, heading, speed, and quality of GPS signal.
The combination of intrusion sensors and tracking systems can produce automatic threat assessment. Routine situations requiring significant security involvement, such as the landscaping scenario, can be automatically managed by the system. The command and control system has the ability to know friendly targets and their location.
Further, the system can perform a check before actually alarming. In the case of a perimeter alarm, it now has the intelligence to understand, within a level of confidence, that the object detected by the intrusion sensors is the same friendly item being tracking by the tracking system. If the system determines the targets to be the same object, the alarm can be suppressed, eliminating the need for security to verify the event.
THE COMBINATION of intrusion sensors and a tracking system allows for Automatic Threat Detection.
Common Operating Picture
The integration of these types of systems is not complex in terms of how to coordinate data. Interface documents exist for these types of integration and are done on a regular basis. Typical position and target information is communicated over XML in a standard format. However, to gain these benefits, the tracking systems and intrusion sensors must all work within a common geospatial operating picture.
Advantages of geospatial or geo-referenced systems systems include the ability to easily display and control data in a map-based format, allowing tracking systems and intrusion sensors to synergistically perform automatic verification. This combined knowledge of the target’s track also allows the fusing of the GPS data and the intrusion sensor data into a single object and path, aiding security by reducing target and track clutter on his command and control or PSIM (perimeter security information system).
Take for example a guard enabled with a tracking device, performing a tour around a fence protected by video analytics enabled cameras. On a typical PSIM, a normal guard tour would result in two icons on the display, one friendly from the tracking system and one unknown from the video analytics. This scenario would also result in two similar object tracks. Security would need to review the situation and understand that this symbology represents a single target and a single track.
Integrating the tracking system with the video analytics system allows for a fusing of this data, and the resulting command-and-control symbology is a single target and a single track.
Other considerations when combining a tracking system with intrusion sensors include update rate, time and location accuracies, and overlapping coverage.
Ideally, all sensors would be synchronized when it comes to timing aspects, but this is typically not the case. Different timing between data updates and time inaccuracies can result in the inability for the systems to confidently conclude that two tracks were created by the same target. Transport delay, the transmission of the GPS data through the satellite, can also be an issue. For tracking devices, it’s vital for the data to be received by the C2 system with a repeatable transport delay. Variability in the transport delay also decreases the ability to automatically verify the threat.
Geographic accuracy of both the GPS tracker and the intrusion sensor is another important factor in data fusion. Typical GPS trackers have an accuracy rating of 3–10 meters. Actual accuracy varies based upon the visible GPS satellites, tall buildings, body worn, and RF interference. Intrusion sensors also possess an inherent accuracy. Radar surveillance may have a resolution of 1 x 1 meter at close range, but it expands at far range to 1 x 20 meters.
Intelligent fence sensors and video analytic systems can have resolutions that vary from 1 to 25 meters, based on the type of sensor and the terrain. These geographic inaccuracies can be handled to some degree by considering other factors, including heading, speed, and previous track, but it’s important to understand where these inaccuracies can occur.
Overlapping coverage of surveillance sensors also affects data fusion. In the case of track fusion, this ability is only available is areas where both a geospatial intrusion sensor exists and a tracking system is operational. If there are gaps in overlapping coverage, or areas that do not include geospatial- based intrusion sensors, then fusion is not possible in those regions.
Eric Olson is vice president of Marketing at PureTech Systems.
Steven Pisciotta is president of Remote Tracking Systems.
DigitalGlobe announced that ArcGIS Online users will now have access to DigitalGlobe’s Premium Services. Revealed today at the plenary address during the Esri User Conference, the new offering brings expanded geospatial products and solutions to select users of ArcGIS Online on a subscription basis.
According to the announcement, DigitalGlobe’s Global Basemap, FirstLook, and Multispectral Premium Services can now be seamlessly integrated into the workflow of ArcGIS users, allowing them to access the most current imagery and information available directly from the source!
“Accessing high resolution imagery with ArcGIS has taken a giant leap forward,” said Lawrie Jordan, Esri director of imagery. “The new DigitalGlobe Premium Services enable everyone to benefit from quick and easy access to one of the best collections of high resolution imagery through ArcGIS Online.”
“The Premium Services partnership will serve as the next era in the expansion of our relationship with Esri,” said Bert Turner, senior vice president, sales at DigitalGlobe. “We’re excited to work with Esri, the GIS market leader, to bring users of ArcGIS Online some of the most advanced imagery services available today.”
The Global Basemap Premium Service provides some of the best available natural color and panchromatic imagery. This imagery is available as a cached tile service with vast coverage of the U.S. and Canada. This service will be regularly updated to reflect new, high quality imagery from DigitalGlobe.
The FirstLook Premium Service is a disaster and crisis monitoring service populated with imagery when a qualifying event occurs, such as a natural disaster, manmade crisis, political instability, or human interest occurrence. Through this service, users have access to near real-time post-event imagery as well as pre-event imagery for comparison.
The Multispectral Premium Service offers access to rich, full resolution multispectral content through an ArcGIS Online interface running on a highly scalable cloud architecture. The service and the content it hosts can be tailored to the client’s specific project needs. Users who require highly detailed imagery for image analytics, geodatabase updates, and surface change analysis can work with DigitalGlobe experts to maximize the value of the subscription.
HERE, a Nokia business, announced that it is bringing its real-time traffic information to Esri, a market leader in Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping software used by enterprise and government fleet management companies around the world. With HERE Traffic, Esri will enhance its web and cloud location platform with more precise location data for intelligent routing. Fleet operators will be able to better manage problems as they occur in real time, re-routing fleets when traffic unexpectedly hits, and providing alerts when pickup or delivery delays occur.
With congestion in the top 100 highway bottlenecks getting worse, real time traffic information helps fleets avoid traffic hotspots so that they get can get to their destinations faster and more safely.
“For 10 years, Esri and HERE have had the shared goal of enhancing safety and increasing the efficiency of fleet operations by offering the most accurate transportation information on more roads than any other provider across the world,” said Chris Cappelli, Director of Sales at Esri. “Launching real-time traffic from HERE on Esri’s platform for our ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS for Transportation Analytics software products will offer a deeper level of logistic and analytic capabilities for enterprise and government fleet companies.”
According to the announcement, real-time traffic is one of the services that HERE delivers based on the data it gathers from a wealth of sources including, the world’s largest compilation of both commercial and consumer probe data, the world’s largest fixed proprietary sensor network, event-based data collected from government and commercial sources, and billions of historical traffic records.
“Dependable real-time traffic information is crucial to improving fleet operations strategy today and for the long-term,” said Roy Kolstad, Vice President for Mobile, Web and Enterprise in North America at HERE. “Our traffic offering will complement HERE map content, which Esri has been using for a decade. Through this combination of traffic and map content, Esri will be able to offer a richer location-based analytics offering that will help businesses make more informed decisions.”
HERE reports that the freshness of that data enables HERE Traffic to provide a more accurate picture of traffic conditions. HERE currently processes 20 billion real-time GPS probe points a month, with almost half of all the data less than 1 minute old and more than three-quarters less than 5 minutes old.
“Traffic data is the single most important telematics application,” said Roger C. Lanctot, Associate Director in the Global Automotive Practice for Strategy Analytics. “Whether for fleets or consumers, traffic data is essential to determining the fastest or most efficient route and HERE’s expanding relationships on the enterprise side are significant. Traffic information is core to maximizing uptime and essential for alternative fuel vehicles such as EVs.”
Geospatial Solutions Editor Eric Gakstatter, who is also a contributing editor to GPS World magazine, will be attending the 2013 Esri Survey Summit and Esri International User Conference, providing continuous new and analysis for the duration of both conferences. The conferences are being held this week in San Diego, California.
On Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. in Room 24A of the San Diego Convention Center, Gakstatter will deliver a presentation entitled “High-Precision GPS/GNSS on your Smartphone, Handheld and Tablet,” discussing trends and new product innovations for sub-meter and centimeter mapping on smartphone, handheld and tablet devices, including Windows Mobile, Android and iOS (Apple) devices.
Steve Copley, GPS World and Geospatial Solutions associate publisher and account executive, shared images of the event on his Twitter account. Here are a few of them:
Esri has announced increased subscription value for ArcGIS Online that it says enables users to do more with the web mapping platform. Because of the popularity of ArcGIS Online, Esri is now able to reduce the cost of several services and make others available as part of the subscription. This means that organizations can create more interactive maps and apps and share them using fewer credits, or for no cost, Esri said.
“Organizations everywhere are succeeding with ArcGIS Online,” says Jack Dangermond, president, Esri. “Its popularity has resulted in economies of scale that translate into reduced costs. We’re passing those savings on to our users. By increasing the value of ArcGIS Online credits, it’s easier than ever for businesses, governments, and individuals to create, publish, and share maps in the cloud.”
Organizations with ArcGIS Online will have:
• Unlimited bandwidth usage (outbound data transfer) is now included with the ArcGIS Online subscription.
• Uploading tile packages from ArcGIS for Desktop is now also included with the subscription.
• Geocoding costs have been reduced by 50 percent.
• Routing and geoenrichment costs have been reduced nearly 65 percent.
• Infographics costs have been reduced by more than 80 percent per view.
Esri will continually introduce new services to the ArcGIS Online subscription. For instance, Esri Updated Demographics and other data will be available with the July release of ArcGIS Online.
Organizations can start taking advantage of the new subscription value with the July release of ArcGIS Online. At that time, Esri will provide more details about the service credit reduction.
View an interactive map of U.S. wildfire locations, perimeters, fire potential areas, global burn areas, wind conditions, and precipitation via streaming data from NIFC, GeoMAC, NHSS, MODIS, METAR/TAF, and the USDA Forest Service, Fire Modeling Institute. Click the About menu for more information.
See the real-time effects of the fires via social media posts. To change the search terms, go to the Social menu, click the settings icon, and update the keyword. Click here to visit the interactive website:
Bing Maps announces a number of updates to Bing Maps, including the largest shipment of Bird’s Eye imagery yet, nearly 270 terabytes of data, along with expanded venue maps and a new “Report a problem” feature.
Bing Maps Bird’s Eye View
According to the announcement, Bird’s Eye Imagery is captured at a 45-degree angle, giving depth and three-dimensionality to ortho photography.
To date, Bing reports it has published a total of 1,452,958 square kilometers, or half a petabyte of data, of Bird’s Eye scenes from around the world. Look for yellow in the below world map to see Bing’s new Bird’s Eye coverage from this release:
Visual Intelligence unveiled its new geoimaging solution, iOne Infrastructure Metric Mapping System (iOne IMS), which it calls a major technological milestone for infrastructure metric mapping and surveying. iOne IMS allows aerial imaging companies to capture more imagery and data at a fraction of the up-front investment and operating cost of competing products, allowing them to do much more for less, the company said.
Oblique Imagery of Transmission Tower Insulators from iOne IMS Sensor. Courtesy: Visual Intelligence
According to the announcement, when installed on aircraft, the iOne IMS collects ortho, stereo, forward and backward oblique, multispectral 4-band and point cloud product generation—all in a single pass. Visual Intelligence is launching the iOne IMS today at RIEGL LIDAR 2013 during the International Airborne, Mobile, Terrestrial and Industrial User Conference in Vienna, Austria. Visual Intelligence President and CEO Dr. Armando Guevara is a featured speaker at the event where he will present “The Making of the iOne IMS + Riegl: From Design to Delivery.”
“Sensor solutions for infrastructure metric mapping and surveying have traditionally been expensive, single-purpose devices that are not scalable, not flexible, hard to work with, and difficult to service and maintain,” said Guevara. “But iOne IMS represents a new generation of standards-based, multi-purpose sensor solutions that delivers the performance, quality and precision that mapping and surveying professional need to grow their businesses.”
The company reports that iOne IMS is based on Visual Intelligence’s award-winning iOne Sensor Tool Kit Architecture (STKA), which is a next-generation software/hardware foundation for high-performing, multi-purpose 2D-3D geo-imaging sensors for aerial, terrestrial and mobile applications. iOne IMS is highly scalable both in terms of collection and functionality. Customers can easily expand from a medium-format iOne system to a large-format system. Customers can also buy only the functionality they need in the short term and then add more functionality as needed later on. Traditional solutions force customers to buy more functionality than they need, which increases capital equipment purchase and maintenance cost.
iOne IMS can be mounted on airplanes, helicopters and UAVs to support a wide range of projects:
• Cadastral inventory
• Roads and rails surveys
• Construction surveys and monitoring
• Oil and gas pipeline corridor mapping
• Coastal surveys and environmental monitoring
• River and body of water surveys and water quality control
• Vegetation inventory and classification
• Forest and agricultural monitoring
• Disaster rapid response
• And many others
Finally, the company reported that the iOne IMS will be optimized for UAV, UAS and Mobile applications. Miniaturized versions will be usable in interior mapping, Building Information Management (BIM) and other mobile close range photogrammetry (3D) applications that leverage cell phone technology.
