At the Carlson Software Annual User Conference, Carlson announced that the newest version of Carlson Software’s SurvCE 3.0 GPS/GNSS data collection software.
Featuring hundreds of additions and improvements, Carlson SurvCE 3.0 supports the widest range of popular and new release RTK GPS and conventional/robotic total stations of any other data collection software on the market. Newest instrument drivers added for Total Stations and GPS receivers include: Geomax Zoom 80, Carlson CR2/CR5 robotic, Topcon PS, Sokkia SX/50RX and South OnBoard total stations, and 20 or more new models of GPS from Carlson, Hemisphere, Datagrid, Topcon, Leica, Altus, CHC, Hi-Target, Navcom, Stonex, Javad, Geomax, Satlab and even including the Spectra Epoch 50.
“SurvCE 3.0 continues to set the standard in data collection,” says Carlson. “While Carlson is well known for its surveying and roading features, especially in the U.S. and Australia, the new options in SurvCE should also appeal very strongly to the European market with its emphasis on precision occupation for total stations, and expanded reporting of GPS localization and measurement data.”
SurvCE 3.0 is available now in more than two dozen languages. These include: English, Spanish, French, French (Canadian), Portuguese, Czech, Dutch, simplified Chinese, Korean, Greek, Italian, Polish, Hungarian, Swedish, Latvian and more.
Now over 12 years in production, with incremental updates along the way, Carlson SurvCE 3.0 features an optional icon-based interface and new Cloud-based messaging, file transfer, NGS monument recall, simplified stakeout methods and powerful GPS measurement averaging and blunder detection in the field (with accuracies in-between RTK and post-processing). The Carlson SurvCE 3.0 upgrade is offered for just $150 for Carlson customers already using SurvCE. The price to purchase SurvCE remains the same as it has since 2007.
“The main and universal advantages of SurvCE are retained—a simple interface, quick learning curve, now even stronger graphics, and a rich set of features to complete any work from building and highway stakeout, to property surveying, TOPO, control, and GIS data collection,” adds Carlson.
According to the announcement, those upgrading to SurvCE 3.0 will find new camera integration among its many improvements. This integration will provide the ability to attach pictures to points and lines and store in KMZ and EXIF files containing relevant data such as position and description.
Other top new features include:
Ability to stake roads by complete LandXML Road Model—a new method augmenting “By Sections,” “By Templates,” and “From Map;”
Ability to use point “blocks” from drawings as point symbols or as objects to snap to for stakeout or for creating alignments, with GIS attributes associated with blocks recognized;
Large Point ID and Description Fields – expanded to 256 characters;
Use of RTCM 3.1 messages from virtual reference stations to auto-compute grid and geoid shifts.
Oregon State University announced that two small, remote-controlled aircraft are expected to start flying over potato fields in the Hermiston area this month as part of Oregon State University’s efforts to help farmers more efficiently use water, fertilizers and pesticides to bolster yields and cut costs.
While taking photographs, the aircraft will fly over 50 acres of OSU’s 300-acre Hermiston Agricultural Research and Extension Center (HAREC), as well as several crop circles totaling about 1,000 acres at a research cooperative farm west of Boardman. The flights will take place at least three times a week until the potatoes are harvested in the fall, beginning with a test run Wednesday at the Boardman farm.
Tetracam’s Hawkeye UAV
OSU researchers will use various cameras on the aircraft to photograph the potato plants. The cameras will include ones that detect different wavelengths of light. One of these wavelengths, infrared, is reflected by plants, but unhealthy plants reflect less of it, and in infrared photographs sick plants are much darker. Researchers will also explore using other wavelengths of light to determine which ones will be most helpful in identifying troubled plants.
Researchers aim to see if the cameras, which are capable of zooming in on a leaf, can detect plants that aren’t getting enough fertilizer and water. They’ll purposely reduce irrigation and fertilizer on some plants and will then see how quickly, if at all, the equipment detects the stressed plants. If it works, the scientists hope that the project will continue in subsequent years so they can test the cameras to also find plants that are plagued by insects and diseases. The idea is to help farmers take action before larger crop losses occur and it becomes more difficult and expensive to control the problem.
“The key is to pick up plants that are just beginning to show stress so you can find a solution quickly, so the grower doesn’t have any reduced yield or quality issues,” said Phil Hamm, the director of HAREC. “This in turn can save money. It’s an early warning system for plants with issues as well as an opportunity for growers to reduce costs by being more efficient in water and fertilizer use.”
Potatoes were chosen as the focus of the research because they’re a high-valued crop, expensive to raise and must be carefully managed to reduce internal and external blemishes and irregular growth spurts, said Don Horneck, an agronomist with the OSU Extension Service. One of Oregon’s leading crops, the state’s farmers sold $173 million of potatoes in 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But spuds are prone to devastating problems caused by diseases and insects, said Horneck, who is the lead researcher from OSU on the project.
“They are one of the most difficult and expensive crops to grow,” he said, adding that it typically costs Hermiston farmers $4,000 or more per acre to grow them. That equates to about $500,000 for the average size of field in the area.
OSU hopes that the aircraft it tests will reduce these costs. The aircraft that will fly over OSU’s land is called a HawkEye and is sold by a company called Tetracam. About the size of a suitcase and weighing only 8 pounds, its maximum flight time is 10-30 minutes. The hull-less, battery-operated machine is easy to operate and was made for farmers with plots of land that are less than one square mile. A motor and propeller allow it to take off on four wheels. A parachute keeps it in the air. Photos and videos of it are at http://bit.ly/10LDbjt.
A delta-winged aircraft made of plastic foam will fly over the private farm. Made by Procerus Technologies and called a Unicorn, it has a wingspan of no more than 6 feet and weighs less than 6 pounds. A bungee cord launches it like a slingshot. A factsheet on it is at http://bit.ly/XTqioS.
Lockheed Martin Unicorn UAV
OSU is inviting the public to see the HawkEye fly during its potato field day at its Hermiston research center on June 26.
Allaying concerns about privacy, Hamm said, “These unmanned aircraft are for agricultural research only and will be used to do nothing more than that. This is about helping our local growers do a better job of growing crops, something HAREC has been doing for the past 102 years.”
The Federal Aviation Administration has authorized the flights of the aircraft, which aren’t allowed to fly higher than 400 feet and must stay within sight of the operator, typically less than a mile away.
OSU is leasing the aircraft from Boeing Research & Technology. n-Link, an information technology firm in Bend, is also a partner in the project. Ray Hunt, a plant physiologist with the USDA in Beltsville, Md., will collaborate with OSU’s Horneck on the data analysis.
OSU aims to become one of the nation’s premiere universities using unmanned aircraft for research. It is using or has plans to use them in studies on natural resources, wildlife, land-use management, forestry, oceanography and engineering.
Google posted technical specifications for its much-touted Glasses.
Fit
Adjustable nosepads and durable frame fits any face.
Extra nosepads in two sizes.
Display
High resolution display is the equivalent of a 25 inch high definition screen from eight feet away.
Camera
Photos – 5 MP
Videos – 720p
Audio
Bone Conduction Transducer
Connectivity
Wifi – 802.11b/g
Bluetooth
Storage
12 GB of usable memory, synced with Google cloud storage. 16 GB Flash total.
Battery
One full day of typical use. Some features, like Hangouts and video recording, are more battery intensive.
Charger
Included Micro USB cable and charger.
While there are thousands of Micro USB chargers out there, Glass is designed and tested with the included charger in mind. Use it and preserve long and prosperous Glass use.
Compatibility
Any Bluetooth-capable phone.
The MyGlass companion app requires Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or higher. MyGlass enables GPS and SMS messaging.
GIS is a platform for understanding our world. In the past, the data that fueled GIS was typically created to represent the state of the geoscape at a specific moment in time (“historic” or “current”; or “future” to represent a future modeled state). While this data has proven valuable for countless GIS applications and analyses, even the “current” snapshot falls out of sync with the real world quickly. In today’s fast-paced, constantly changing world, the “current” snapshot is outdated almost as soon as it is created.
A number of new technologies are combining to enable the real time collection of data, and the sharing of that data in real time with GIS. The result is a dynamic platform which enables real time visualization, analysis, and understanding of our world. This is the new age of real-time GIS.
Some of the new technologies enabling real-time GIS include:
GeoEvent Processor is a new ArcGIS for Server extension. It gives users the ability to connect to real-time data streams from a wide variety of sensors, perform continuous processing and analysis of those data streams, and send relevant information to users or other systems.
Geofencing is the creation of a virtual perimeter for a real-world geographic area. In the case of GeoEvent Processor, the GIS server is detecting and using geofences to issue an alert when a mobile device approaches, enters, and leaves the geofenced area (which can be based on any map feature). GeoTrigger technology will let developers build geofences into their apps that can be triggered based on time of day, speed, or position. This technology will be available as part of developers’ ArcGIS Online subscriptions in the second quarter of 2013.
GeoEvent Processor for Server makes it possible to use GIS features as geofences and create geofences on the fly Source: Esri
Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS provides a common operating picture for monitoring events. Operations Dashboard integrates maps and a variety of data sources to create comprehensive operational views that can include charts, lists, gauges, and indicators which update automatically as underlying data changes.
Collector for ArcGIS is designed with field crews in mind, and is used to capture and update both tabular and spatial information via smartphones using the built-in GPS capabilities of the device, or by tapping on the map. Data captured using Collector can be displayed in the Operations Dashboard.
Mapping social media data provides insight into what people are saying and where they are saying it. Social Media Mapping apps let you display in real time what people are saying through location-based social media such as Flickr, Twitter, and YouTube.
Esri is also busy adding new features to ArcGIS Online such as Real-Time Data Services, support for GeoRSS Feeds, and more, and we are working with our imagery partners to enable the delivery of Real-Time Imagery in to ArcGIS Online just seconds after it has been captured by satellites.
New types and sources of geographic content, and new ways of sharing them, provide people with exciting new capabilities to incorporate dynamic, real-time information into decision making. The result, as Esri president Jack Dangermond likes to call it, is a Living Atlas of the World—a new vision for the concept of an atlas. “It’s a kind of global gathering place for integrating and applying knowledge about our planet and sharing it with everyone—and to do it all in real time,” says Dangermond.
The thematic information available within this virtual atlas is dynamic; it’s not stored in one centralized, static database—“It’s live, linked to and feeding in from multiple sources across the web and across the world in real time,” adds Dangermond. “The Living Atlas of the World is not only changing the way we look at the world, it is also changing the way we interact with it.”
About Matt Artz
Matt Artz joined Esri in 1989. In his current role as GIS and Science Manager, he helps communicate the value of GIS as a tool for scientific research and understanding. He writes extensively about geospatial technologies, manages the GIS and Science blog, and is the editor of GIS.com. Prior to joining Esri he worked as an Environmental Scientist at a large science and engineering consulting company, on such diverse projects as highway noise modeling, archaeological impact assessment, and chemical weapons disposal. His educational background includes an M.S. degree in Environmental Policy and Planning and a B.S. degree in Anthropology and Geography.
Colorado State University announced that David Prawel and CSU’s Mechanical Engineering department have begun a new program that assists entrepreneurs and others in the community with 3D printing while training students on this revolutionary new technology.
Prawel, a senior research scientist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, has opened the Idea-2-Product Laboratory to the community so anyone can use this amazing 3-D printing equipment to create prototypes and products, repair parts, beautiful artwork, or virtually anything they can imagine.
Students on hand to help
CSU reports that the lab is staffed by current and graduated engineering students who can provide design and printing expertise. Prawel charges a small fee to recoup costs of materials and maintenance.
Brent MacKenzie, lab manager, works with one of CSU’s 3D printers at the Idea-2-Product Laboratory Source: Colorado State University
“3D printing is very high-value technology that has been proven to increase innovation and accelerate time-to-market for countless entrepreneurs and companies,” said Prawel, who has 31 years of experience working with 3D software and companies, including six companies he helped create. “We provide the equipment and expertise; our users provide the ideas and innovation. You can’t steer innovation – you just have to provide the tools and put some water on it and let it go.”
“The lab currently has five, soon to be seven, machines that can print up to 18 types of materials and create intricate designs that couldn’t be created any other way,” Prawel added. One or two more machines are available for use in the Morgan Library depending on the demand for the machines in the laboratory.
Innovation knows no bounds
“We’re already at capacity – we are running these machines full-time,” Prawel explained, noting that staff assists users until they’re are certified to use the devices themselves. “Users learn how to make their ideas become real products, and on the way they learn things like computer-assisted design and manufacturing and all kinds of things they’ve never thought of before. This helps satisfy the educational mission of our lab.”
Erica Suchman, a professor in the Department of Microbiology Immunology and Pathology, is working with the lab to develop 3-D printed models of virus-antibody models that can be snapped together to create unique epitope binding sites. This allows students to create different antibodies with specificity to different epitopes or shapes on the surface of 3D-printed viruses.
“These models will be given to the students in the class to manipulate creating different antibodies and exploring where on the virus these antibodies can bind, allowing them to visualize a difficult special concept,” said Suchman, who is in the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
I2P software and equipment are funded by contributions from Autodesk, Lulzbot, Advanced Manufacturing Enterprises, the Mechanical Engineering department and by CSU’s students through the university’s Student Fee Review Board. I2P would also like to acknowledge the vision and assistance of the Morgan Library for space, resources and technical support.
Editor’s Note: The following is summary of CoreLogic’s nationwide parcel database that was provided by CoreLogic, followed by a short Q & A from Eric Gakstatter and the end of the article.
When the Trust for Public Land (TPL)began organizing its extensive conservation research and project information, its executives planned several database initiatives to showcase the volume of land that has been conserved for public use to date. Already innovators in funding conservation projects and city park creation, the TPL team set a goal of using GIS technology to make it easy for government agencies and other partner organizations to find the information they need to generate public funding for land conservation. The challenge: Organizing decades’ worth of comprehensive research and historical project information to accurately depict the true volume of U.S. land conservation.
The initial project, TPL’s Protected Places Inventory (PPI), involved modernizing a database that included over 4,500 land projects spanning more than 40 years of conservation work. TPL knew the database needed nationwide parcel data to produce reports that would give urban residents, city officials and elected representatives more detailed information—such as the percentage of residents in the nation’s 40 largest cities who live within a half-mile of a park.
The National Conservation Easement Database (NCED) resulted from collaboration with four other leading conservation organizations to provide a comprehensive view of an estimated 40 million acres of privately owned conservation easement lands throughout the country. When TPL and its partners—Ducks Unlimited, Defenders of Wildlife, NatureServe and the Conservation Biology Institute—began work on what would become the NCED, the team discovered that many land trusts and entities that manage easements did not have those easements mapped at the parcel level. By mapping conservation easements at the parcel level, the easement database offers government agencies, land trusts and conservation professionals a more accurate assessment of an easement’s size and location.
Another project, the Conservation Almanac, which was developed around the same time as the Protected Places Inventory, presented a similar opportunity to enhance historical records with parcel-level data. Designed totrack land area conservation activity across the U.S., the Conservation Almanac helps key stakeholders understand the context of land conservation and funding from both the public and private sectors. This database helps answer common questions, such as how much land has been protected per state, which state and federal agencies have protected land, and what the cost to protect that land was.
“When looking to add to our databases, we soon discovered that in some areas, parcel data either didn’t exist or was so expensive through the local government that it prohibited our organization from economically acquiring it,” said Breece Robertson, TPL’s national conservation vision and GIS director. “Additionally, the data we did finally acquire was often outdated or incomplete.”
With that in mind, TPL began a search to find a cost-effective single source for nationwide parcel data. The organization found a solution through CoreLogic ParcelPoint, the largest standardized nationwide property database, which contains data for 134 million parcels, covering 2,391 counties and representing 93.6 percent of the U.S. population.
Parcel database architecture Source: CoreLogic
US ParcelPoint Coverage Source: CoreLogic
“With the help of CoreLogic, the organization’s budget for adding parcel data was significantly reduced, and the PPI project took a single year to complete instead of the estimated five years ,” said Robertson. “Plus, with more than 4,500 completed projects in the Protected Places Inventory database, it’s not only easier to keep the parcel boundary information current, but entering new projects now only takes 15 minutes instead of the previous three hours.”
Q & A on ParcelPoint
Gakstatter: What was the range of costs you were quoted from local governments for parcel data?
CoreLogic: It ranges from $60 for them to get the data onto a disk to mail to us, to upwards of $3-4k. One county in California quoted us $10k for their parcel data, another used to charge $1 million for their parcel data but they’ve since been forced to offer it for a nominal “packaging” fee.
Gakstatter: Are you going to/Did you enhance the parcel data you acquired? With what data and how?
CoreLogic: In some cases, we ran parcel prioritization analyses on the parcel data using many other datasets to show where priorities stack up on the landscape, such as size of parcel, adjacency to protected lands, adjacency to wildlife habitat areas, parcels that flood during storm events, etc. The parcels get tagged with a score or metric depending on how important it is for conservation based on a variety of inputs.
Gakstatter: Which horizontal datum do you use for your nationwide database? What is the estimated horizontal accuracy of the database?
CoreLogic: For all of our projects, we work locally so we always have to clip out the parcel data we need for an area and re-project that using either the local UTM or state plane projections.
Added 4/12/13 from CoreLogic: Spatial accuracy can be highly variable depending on the source of the data and the methods under which the data are created. CoreLogic employs statistically valid testing methodologies based on guidelines developed by the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) to provide quantitative and statistically valid accuracy statistics for the vast majority of counties within ParcelPoint. During the most recent compilation, the overall ParcelPoint dataset tested approximately five meters (15 feet) horizontal accuracy with a 95 percent confidence interval.
Gakstatter: Can you expand on the three programs and the process you went through to compile data before going “modern” with ParcelPoint?
CoreLogic: For all three programs, it was the same. We’d have to do a Google search to see if parcel data was readily available online. If not, we got a contact phone number for the local assessor’s office and contacted them. At that point, we found out what type of license agreement we would need to sign, or if there was a fee for the data. At that point, we would have to figure out if the license agreement was too stringent or if the cost of purchasing the data was prohibitive. We involved our legal staff to review the license agreements and provide suggested changes or write up addendum stating our use of the data for the county or city to consider. That process was expensive (in staff time) and took a long time with all of the back and forth. Finally, when we received the parcel data, if we were working on a project that spanned many counties or cities, we’d have to using GIS tools to project the data and stitch it together – running into issues like datasets not matching up or overlapping parcels, etc. With ParcelPoint, we just go to the database, clip out what we need and we are off and running. What used to take weeks or months to just acquire the parcel data from various entities now takes 15 minutes.
Follow Eric Gakstatter on Twitter by clicking here.
comScore, Inc. released data from the comScore MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the U.S. smartphone industry for the three month average period ending February 2013.
This most recent data release represents the 100th month of data collection for MobiLens, a leading mobile measurement product that was first delivered to clients in November 2004 as the flagship product of M:Metrics (later acquired by comScore). Since then, MobiLens has delivered the market with important mobile marketing insights and trends, including market share information, user demographics, device usage and characteristics, and mobile media behavior.
comScore MobiLens currently includes the following:
8 countries of reporting (U.S., UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, and Japan)
100 monthly data collection cycles dating back to 2004
1,176 surveys fielded
3.124 million total survey respondents
Smartphone OEM Market Share
133.7 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones (57 percent mobile market penetration) during the three months ending in February, up 8 percent since November. Apple ranked as the top OEM with 38.9 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers (up 3.9 percentage points from November). Samsung ranked second with 21.3 percent market share (up 1 percentage point), followed by HTC with 9.3 percent share, Motorola with 8.4 percent and LG with 6.8 percent.
Source: comScore mobiLens
Smartphone Platform Market Share
Google Android ranked as the top smartphone platform with 51.7 percent market share, while Apple’s share increased 3.9 percentage points to 38.9 percent. BlackBerry ranked third with 5.4 percent share, followed by Microsoft (3.2 percent) and Symbian (0.5 percent).
Source: comScore mobiLens
About MobiLens
MobiLens data is derived from an intelligent online survey of a nationally representative sample of mobile subscribers age 13 and older. Data on mobile phone usage refers to a respondent’s primary mobile phone and does not include data related to a respondent’s secondary device.
Esri released a video describing how to leverage ArcPad with ArcGIS Online.
According to the ArcPad Team Blog , if you are already using ArcPad and ArcGIS Online (or are looking at integrating ArcGIS Online into your organization), this video will give you some ideas on how these products work together to support your field work workflows.
ArcPad Packages (available since December 2012) are the key to this relationship. The ability to distribute ArcPad Templates and Packages using ArcGIS Online could improve data transfer between remote locations, provide reliable back-up and storage for your projects or even remove the need for tethered data transfer altogether.
Does remote-sensing information, such as that from Landsat and similar Earth-observing satellites, provide economic benefits to society, and can this value be estimated? Using satellite data for northeastern Iowa, U.S. Geological Survey scientists modeled the relations among land uses, agricultural production, and dynamic nitrate (NO3–) contamination of aquifers. They demonstrated that information from such modeling can allow more efficient management of agricultural production without sacrificing groundwater quality. Just for northeastern Iowa, the value of such remote-sensing information was shown to be as much as $858 million ± $197 million per year, which corresponds to a current value of $38.1 billion ± $8.8 billion for that flow of benefits into the foreseeable future.
Supergeo announced that SuperGIS Server 3.1a Value Edition and Standard Edition are officially launched globally.
According to the announcement, SuperGIS Server is designed for enabling organizations to create, manage, integrate and publish the various types of GIS services. Through SuperGIS Server, spatial data and spatial images of all types as well as GIS functions can be applied as GIS services in desktop, mobile and web applications over the internet to assist enterprises in building ideal workflow and improving productivity.
The newest SuperGIS Server 3.1a mainly adds geoprocessing service publishing functions and enhances the efficiency of map cache tools. Besides the functions in Value edition, SuperGIS Server 3.1a Standard Edition additionally provides developers with Mobile SDK to customize mobile applications which can access SuperGIS Server services and meet various requirements.
The California Technology Agency has launched the California GeoPortal, an interactive and user-friendly gateway to thousands of geographic data sources around the country.
“California’s new GeoPortal organizes important geographic data and makes it more accessible and useful,” said Secretary Carlos Ramos. “This innovation increases government transparency, boosts efficiency and saves the State money.”
According to the announcement, the California GeoPortal helps find solutions to real-world problems such as locating a new business or helping choose a new place to live. The GeoPortal gathers thousands of data sources such as demographics, environmental hazards, school information and transportation, and makes the information more accessible and useful. The GeoPortal strengthens these databases by combining information and making it customizable.
“For the first time in our history, California is taking a statewide approach to sharing data and mapping it to provide a visual location based view for our stakeholders – both public and private industry,” said Scott Gregory, California’s Geographic Information Officer. “By making these diverse resources accessible and relevant, it becomes a very efficient and powerful decision making tool for all Californians.”
“The GeoPortal is a groundbreaking tool enhancing collaboration and data sharing among the public and private sector,” said Carl Guardino, the Chief Executive Officer of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. “Business will have accurate and relevant data at their fingertips, supporting their decisions to help grow California’s economy.”
The announcement stated that California’s GeoPortal is a comprehensive catalog of thousands of data sources from federal, state, county, city, tribal and education geographic resources. Users can access the GeoPortal from the web without having to login to another system, streamlining access to government derived and developed data.
“The ability to share geospatial data through a single public source will be a tremendous benefit to the academic institutions in California,” said Dr. Shawna Dark, Department of Geography Chair, California State University, Northridge.
The GeoPortal is a service offering by the California Technology Agency to state and local agencies and departments at no cost. It is a tool to be leveraged by organizations to catalog and manage their geographic data resources. Organizations will be able to register their geographic data content on the GeoPortal and securely manage their information. It has a robust set of management tools that allow organizations to edit, upload and maintain geographic information. The end result is a more comprehensive and authoritative data resource for geographic data in California.
For a video introduction to the California GeoPortal, visit here.
Esri and Geofeedia announced plans to extend the ArcGIS platform with Geofeedia’s social media tools. Public safety professionals will be able to advantage of these capabilities to accurately integrate, monitor, analyze, and visualize live emergency data as events unfold. Deploying assets and personnel, understanding of events on the ground, adjusting response on the fly, and post-event monitoring are all improved using social media combined with location analytics.
“Geofeedia is an innovator in location-based social media,” says Ryan Lanclos, emergency management manager, Esri. “Both organizations recognized that understanding location provides context and value to social media. Ultimately, this improves meeting mission demands.”
“Esri is an industry leader and provides the ideal enterprise platform to visualize and analyze real-time social media feeds from Geofeedia,” says Phil Harris, CEO of Geofeedia. “Location-based social media data layers from Geofeedia combined with Esri’s technology and vast repository of other layers give public safety officials the best combination of real-time intelligence for response efforts.”
According to the announcement, the real-time data integration, searching and streaming will work across multiple social media platforms including Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, YouTube, and Picasa. Geo-located tweets, photos, and videos can be viewed within the context of digital imagery, street networks, topography, and community base maps. The social data can be mashed up with other information such as public safety assets, city infrastructure, utility networks, hazardous materials, demographic data, and more. Additional dynamic data including weather, automated vehicle location, GPS, and traffic video camera feeds can be combined with social and map data. In addition, people can perform historical social media analysis to identify trends and patterns.
In addition to public safety, professionals in government, national security, healthcare, and insurance will be able to extend the ArcGIS platform by adding intelligence about social conversations. This includes social media sentiment, location, population profile, and temporal and spatial trend analysis. Adding intelligence improves security, crisis response and business continuity, event monitoring, marketing, compliance, and more.
