GPS World

Tag: INTERGEO

  • Bluesky Announces International Expansion at Intergeo 2013

    Bluesky_Intergeo_WUsing an airborne mapping system, aerial surveying company Bluesky is expanding its international operations. The integrated system, developed by Optech, includes a LiDAR and fully integrated thermal sensor and high-resolution camera.

    Bluesky is exhibiting at Intergeo 2013, being held this week in Essen, Germany.

    Already proven in the UK the system, thought to be a world first, has already been successfully deployed in Northern Europe with additional projects proposed in Central Europe and the Middle East. The Bluesky system combines the Orion M300 LiDAR, CS-LW640 Long Wave Infrared thermal sensor and a CS-10000 RGB camera.

    “The integrated Optech system has been very successfully used for many projects in the UK and the results have provided our customers with the highest quality data as well as economic advantages due to the simultaneous capture of multiple data types,” commented Rachel Tidmarsh, Managing Director of Bluesky International. “We are now in a position to offer these advantages to potential customers around the world.”

    “Bluesky is the perfect example of an organization with the talent and vision to take full advantage of the unique capabilities of the latest Optech sensors. In addition, we are pleased that the ultra-compact and modular design of the system has made it portable and easy to install for them, further supporting Bluesky in their ambitious plans to expand their operations beyond the UK,” added Bill Sharp, Marketing Manager at Optech, Inc.

    The Optech solution used by Bluesky includes an Orion M300 LiDAR (Light Imaging Detection and Ranging) system; which uses aircraft mounted lasers to accurately determine the distance between the sensor and the ground or other targets such as buildings and vegetation. Specifically designed to offer a cost effective, high performance solution at mid altitudes, the Orion M300 is ideally suited for applications such as infrastructure modelling and environmental monitoring, including flood risk analysis and forestry management.

    The Optech CS-LW640 sensor records thermal infrared measurements and has already generated impressive results for recent projects. In upcoming projects it will be used for identifying heat loss from buildings, pipeline monitoring and forestry analysis. Like the CS-10000, it can be used simultaneously with the LiDAR or independently to fit the end user requirements. In addition to capturing thermal images of the target sites, the CS-LW640 camera can be mounted simultaneously with the other two sensors, providing customers with a wealth of coincident information for their area of interest; a complete solution, including highly efficient automated data processing, resulting in substantial acquisition savings.

  • Intergeo 2013

    Intergeo is a leading conference trade fair for geodesy, geoinformation and land management. With over half a million event website users and more than 16,000 visitors from 80 countries at Intergeo itself, it is one of the key platforms for industry dialogue. Intergeo will be held October 8-10 in Essen, Germany.

    The 19th Intergeo will look at the significance of changes in economic and political structures, among other things. Few locations have been as greatly affected by these structural changes in the past few decades as the German Ruhr area. Essen itself shows the transformation from a coal and steel region to one whose industry is based on technology and services. Strategic networking with Messe München International and the Intergeo Advisory Board launched in 2012 will bring new impetus to the event. Teaser

    Intergeo 2013 promises to bring with it many developments that will strengthen its image as a significant source of inspiration for future national and international business. For example, the newly founded Advisory Board with partners Esri, Hexagon and Trimble will deal with strategic issues and discuss the industry’s socio-political role.

    The collaboration with Messe München International creates new opportunities for global communication through a worldwide network with six subsidiaries in Europe and Asia, and more than 60 offices abroad that are active in more than 90 countries. Messe München International provides Intergeo with a globally comprehensive portfolio of services for exhibitors, visitors and media representatives.

    “The collaborative work between Intergeo and Messe München International will not only have a positive effect in supporting exhibitors and winning new ones. I also expect to see a further increase in the number of international visitors,” said Olaf Freier, Managing Director of HINTE GmbH, which organises INTERGEO on behalf of DVW.

    The host, DVW e.V. — the German Society for Geodesy, Geoinformation and Land Management — is expecting 16,000 visitors and 1,400 conference participants from all over the world. At the heart of the conference are the topics of “property valuation” and “intelligent geoinformation — how to gather, process and put it to practical use” and the continuation of the INSPIRE conference under the patronage of the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, the Steering Committee for Spatial Information Germany, the German Association of Cities, the German Rural District Association and DVW e. V.

    Answers will also be given to questions of urban development and the challenges posed by the energy revolution. The event days will be opened by keynote speeches from Garrelt Duin, minister for Economic Affairs for North Rhine-Westphalia, Jürgen Dold, president and CEO of Leica Geosystems AG, and Prof. Reiner Rummel from the Institute for Astronomical and Physical Geodesy at Munich Technical University.

    Intergeo covers a wide variety of fields, ranging from surveying, geoinformation, remote sensing and photogrammetry to complementary solutions and technologies. Another field is processing, using and analyzing geodata on the Internet or in the field. Associated solutions will be presented and discussed by experts.

    Intergeo will also highlight areas of innovation that are enjoying dynamic growth. Suppliers will showcase these future technologies at venues such as the OSGeoPark and the Innovation Park for young, innovative companies.

  • GPS World overview of Intergeo in Germany

    GPS World overview of InterGEO in Germany

  • InterGeo Starts Today

    The enormous importance of geoinformation for the energy revolution, cloud computing, open data and enterprise applications based on Microsoft Bing Maps — these are just some of the many fascinating issues that will take center stage at INTERGEO in Hanover, Germany, October 9-11. Host DVW e.V. — the German Society for Geodesy, Geoinformation and Land Management — is pooling issues relevant to its specialist areas at the trade fair and conference and is set to welcome some 16,000 visitors, including 1,200 conference delegates. The international meeting takes place in a different German city each year, with about 520 international companies,  40 percent of which are based outside Germany.

    GPS World’s Editor-in-Chief Alan Cameron, International Account Executive Chris Litton, and Contributing Editor for Survey/GIS Eric Gakstatter are in attendance.

    On the first day of the fair, Cornelia Rogall-Grothe, state secretary at the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, is launching the first national INSPIRE Conference with a speech on “INSPIRE: the driving force behind the national geodata infrastructure.”

    This year, for the first time, INTERGEO will incorporate the conference of the Council of European Geodetic Surveyors (CLGE), which will take place Thursday. The third conference of its type brings together surveyors from 36 member countries in Hanover.

    The Navigation Conference is also being held as part of INTERGEO for the second time. Once again, the event will seek to utilize synergies between navigation, IT and geoinformation.

    The conference is focusing on the latest topics and many technical solutions for capturing up-to-date geoinformation. Cutting-edge sensor technology will be presented along with the latest systems solutions.

  • INTERGEO 2012: Cloud Computing will Dominate the GIS Environment

    INTERGEO 2012, which is taking place October 9-12 in Hanover, Germany, announced the conference will show that the key topics at INTERGEO, such as capturing, processing, archiving and presenting data can be made available on an entirely new basis using cloud computing. Accessing geoinformation systems (GIS) via the cloud unlocks a whole new range of uses and makes them more accessible to new user groups who have found existing solutions too complex and ultimately too expensive.

    Otmar Didinger, President of the Rheinland-Pfalz Regional Authority for Surveying and Geoinformation, on how the cloud can benefit users: “It solves the issue of how they can access information without having to worry about where it is located.” Didinger cites WebAtlasDE. As part of this national pilot project, the Regional Surveying Authorities in Germany are providing access to their geodata. Merged into a single standardised national inventory, this geodata forms the basis of a web service. Similar to Google Maps, users surf a map that covers the whole of Germany and is based largely on the very latest official data, presented in a more professional format. Authorities, companies and citizens can access the store of geodata at WebAtlasDE (e.g. via www.geoportal.de) and combine it with their own information. This creates an excellent basis for making a whole range of decisions relating to everything from infrastructure management to sales campaigns.

    According to the announcement, Johannes Schöniger was the man responsible for the ambitious aim of making a high-performance IT system – a cloud solution – available in a short space of time. As Strategic Account Director Geoinformation Germany at Fujitsu Technology Solutions GmbH, he was certain of one thing in particular: “Cloud Computing is a pioneering and sustainable operator model. Just as with geoinformation, it’s no longer a question of whether or not we want cloud computing. Instead, we have to choose whether to actively engage with it and look to the future or not. If we do, we can ride the wave, if we don’t, it will come crashing down on us sooner or later.” Schöniger is in no doubt: “Cloud computing will dominate the GIS environment over the coming years.”

  • Tradeshow’s the Appeal at INTERGEO 2010 Conference in Cologne

    This week, I’ve been attending the INTERGEO 2010 conference in Cologne, Germany. It’s a gathering of ~16,500 people interested in geodesy, geoinformation, and land management. It’s the largest event of its kind in the world.

    Although there’s a lot of GIS activity, it’s just as much a surveying/geodesy trade show. I borrowed a little of the following from my Geospatial Weekly newsletter because I think it’s relevant in this newsletter, too. Let me just say that if you’re a land surveyor/engineer/construction contractor/GIS’r, you won’t find a trade show anywhere in the world like this one. To me, two things differentiate it from all other conferences I’ve attended that are related to surveying, engineering, construction, or GIS.

    • The sheer size. 16,500 people buzzing around attracting 504 exhibitors. You can find a solution to any sort of challenge you have regarding surveying, geodesy, construction or GIS. The major GNSS manufacturers (such as Trimble/Spectra, Topcon/Sokkia, Leica, Javad) have enormous exhibit booths that rival the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held every year in Las Vegas. You don’t see these companies spending this much money to exhibit at conferences in North America.
    • Unlike many of the conferences I attend, the focus at INTERGEO is on the trade show exhibit area. The technical sessions are few and most are in German, so that leaves the vast majority of the attendees to flock to the exhibit area. We’re currently in Day Two of the three-day conference, and the exhibit area attendance seems just as strong as the first day, which is not typical. On top of focusing on the trade show area, INTERGEO makes it inexpensive to attend. A one-day pass to the exhibit area is only EUR 20 (~US$26) and a three-day pass to the same is EUR 48.50 (~US$63). It’s even cheaper if you buy it online in advance.

    The few technical sessions held were presented by University Professors and various Ph.D.s, so although I submitted an abstract to present a paper, I knew there was no chance I’d be presenting in the formal technical sessions. The closest I am to a Ph.D. is my father’s, which he earned 40+ years ago. Anyway, INTERGEO has a stage in the exhibit area called the Trend and Media Forum. It’s sort of an infomercial stage for companies to show their products and services. They scheduled me to present on that stage, which I did earlier today (Wednesday). The title of my presentation was “GNSS is Changing a Lot — the Future of GNSS Mapping and Surveying.” The audience was sparse, but the good thing is that INTERGEO records the presentations and later posts them on their www.intergeo-tv.de site. My presentation is not on the TV site yet, but should be by Thursday. Please don’t laugh when I nearly fall down after stepping off the stage while I’m talking :-). Click on the following image to view my presentation.

     

    Following are some pictures I took of the conference exhibit area, with captions:

       

    Altus Positioning                                     Ashtech                                    Javad GNSS

     

       

    Carlson Software                    CHC Navigation (China)                                   FOIF (China)

     

         

    GeoMax GNSS (Leica)                           Leica Geosystems                                   Geneq   

     

       

    NavCom (John Deere)                  Pacific Crest (Trimble)                                  Sokkia (Topcon)

     

       

    Spectra Precision (Trimble)                                    Topcon                                         Trimble

     

    I’ll post some more photos on our live coverage website tomorrow.

    There were many new product announcements in the past day. I saw one that caught my particular interest. I’ve written before that for years I relied on stand-alone satellite mission planning software. The problem that most folks have is maintaining the software as they change computers or update operating systems. There’s also the pain of having to update the almanac every month or so.

    I’ve become a fan of online satellite mission planning. I’ve mentioned the NavCom Technology website a few times in this column. However, it has a few shortfalls, namely no control over the elevation mask used and no support for GLONASS or SBAS.

    I’m happy to report that today at INTERGEO, Ashtech released an online satellite mission planning tool, and it seems to fit the bill. Among other things, it allows you to adjust the elevation mask, and choose to include GLONASS and SBAS satellites. Of course, since it’s an online tool, you don’t have to worry ab
    out updating the almanac.

    Following are a couple of screenshots from the program.

    Select GPS and/or GLONASS and/or SBAS satellite

     

     

    Give it a try for yourself by clicking here. There’s a really cool plot that’s generated as a 3D visualization in Google Earth, showing each satellite (green = GPS, red= GLONASS and blue = SBAS).

    Follow the rest of my show blogs at INTERGEO at http://stage.globalpositioningnews.com/gis/live-event

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