EAS 2019: Connecting, Exploring, and Transforming Geospatial Data

I recently attended the 2019 ENVI Analytics Symposium (EAS) in my proverbial backyard in Denver, CO.

The Symposium was put together by L3Harris Geospatial Solutions. ENVI was developed and launched in 1991 as image analysis software for image scientists, analysts, and GIS professionals for extracting accurate and meaningful information from many kinds of earth observation data.

L3 and Harris Corp. recently merged in late June to become L3Harris bringing a stronger presence for geospatial analytics to the market. The newly combined company has approximately 50,000 employees, $17 billion in sales, and is wisely not tied to any particular platform or technology set with more of an “open” mindset.

As a technology, ENVI is flexible and can be customized to meet specific project needs and can be deployed and accessed from the desktop, in the cloud, and on mobile devices. Fully integrated with ArcGIS for Desktop and ArcGIS for Server from ESRI, users can access ENVI tools directly within the Arc environment to add image analysis capabilities to their GIS models and applications.

ENVI supports imagery from most satellite and airborne sensors, including multispectral, hyperspectral, panchromatic, LiDAR, infrared, thermal, radar, HDF5, full-motion video, LAZ, ASCII, and NET CDF-4. ENVI includes a comprehensive suite of image analysis tools that provide customers with algorithms for quickly and accurately analyzing geospatial data.

As a community of users, analysts, scientists, and vendors, L3Harris realizes that it must continue to find innovative ways to collect, process, and analyze geospatial data while creating purpose-built solutions that deliver real value. EAS 2019 provided a venue for participants to connect with others from across the community, explore new trends and ideas, and transform this fast-growing and dynamic geospatial technology ecosystem.

Several discussions revolved around the fact that while geospatial data is getting better, in many cases it is also getting cheaper, but that presents caveats. For example, Landsat imagery went from a cost model to a cost-free model, but as one of the speakers said, “Free has costs associated with it.” As far as purchasing imagery, another speaker implored, “If you’re going to pay for geospatial imagery, get what you really want and need, not just what you can get.”

The Theme of EAS 2019

The theme of the 2019 EAS was “Connect, Explore, Transform.” Done correctly, geospatial analytics can help save time and money, as well as allow better decisions to be made. The convergence of advanced analytics, the collection of massive amounts of data, and improvements in cloud computing and artificial intelligence, offers the real opportunity to improve the lives of billions. For the technology to be adopted, it needs to be embedded as a seamless part of workflows and solve specific problems.

Topics of the conference included:

• Predictive Analytics and Decisions
• Monitoring the Earth with New Forms of Data Acquisition
• Industry Solutions of Geospatial Data & Analytics
• Applying Geospatial Analytics Outside the Box
• Machine Learning and AI for Business and Commercial Applications
• Big Data Insights for Government and National Security
• Democratization of Geospatial Analytics
• Industry Collaboration to Overcome Obstacles

Increasing Popularity of SAR

One of the more interesting technologies presented and discussed at EAS 2019 was Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), a remote sensing technology that is just beginning to take off in the U.S. along with hyperspectral imagery. SAR is a form of radar that is used to create 2D images or 3D reconstructions of objects, such as landscapes. SAR uses the motion of the radar antenna over a target region to provide finer spatial resolution than conventional beam-scanning radars. It is typically mounted on a moving platform, such as an aircraft or spacecraft.

The distance the SAR device travels over a target in the time taken for the radar pulses to return to the antenna creates the large synthetic antenna aperture (the size of the antenna). Typically, the larger the aperture, the higher the image resolution will be, regardless of whether the aperture is physical (a large antenna) or synthetic (a moving antenna) – this allows SAR to create high-resolution images with comparatively small physical antennas. Additionally, SAR has the property of having larger apertures for more distant objects, allowing consistent spatial resolution over a range of viewing distances.

To create a SAR image, successive pulses of radio waves are transmitted to “illuminate” a target scene, and the echo of each pulse is received and recorded. The pulses are transmitted and the echoes received using a single beam-forming antenna, with wavelengths of a meter down to several millimeters.

Today, airborne systems provide resolutions of 10 cm or better, ultra-wideband systems provide resolutions of a few millimeters, and experimental terahertz SAR has provided sub-millimeter resolution in the laboratory.

The use of SAR data has become increasingly popular in recent years due to its many advantages such as its ability to capture data day or night and see through clouds. However, SAR data can be extremely complex and difficult to work with. ENVI SARscape has made the benefits of SAR data available to professionals across industries for several years.

Recent GISCafe Interview with Rebecca Lasica, Executive VP at L3Harris

ENVI SARscape now includes easy-to-use tools for some of the most common SAR processing applications — extending the benefits of SAR data to more users. These tools, ENVI SARscape Analytics, can be accessed in the ENVI toolbox and ENVI Modeler as well as ArcGIS Pro, and do not require you to be an expert in SAR to run them.

ENVI SARscape allows you to process and analyze SAR data and generate products like DEMs or surface deformation maps, while giving you the option to integrate this information with other geospatial products. This data analysis capability takes your data from hard-to-interpret numbers, to meaningful, contextual information. Since ENVI SARscape is integrated with ENVI – an image processing and analysis solution – you get the benefit of image analysis tools and SAR processing functionality in one package.

The ENVI SARscape Basic Module includes processing functionality for generating airborne and spaceborne SAR products based on intensity and coherence. This is complemented by a multi-purpose tool, which includes a wide range of functions – from image visualization, to DEM import and interpolation, to cartographic and geodetic transforms.

L3Harris stressed, however, that while SAR is becoming increasingly popular, it is vital to deliver real, usable information to customers, and not just pretty pixels.

Empowering Autonomous Vehicles

Matt Preyss of HERE Technology talked about his company’s efforts in making autonomous vehicles a reality. To enable autonomous vehicles, location data and creating a digital representation of the physical world are keys to success through efficiency and safety (since today most accidents are still caused by human error).

The company is creating high-definition maps (with a technology called HERE HD Live Map) for autonomous vehicles that addresses the questions autonomous vehicles must answer:

• Where am I?
• What is around me (in the context of the surrounding environment)?
• How do I get to my destination?
• How should I behave (what are the rules of the road)?
• Can I trust the data coming from HD map and sensors?

Preyss said that HERE’s fleet of test vehicles is collecting approximately 28 TB of data every day and that LIDAR scanning and machine learning are just a couple of things that separate his company’s approach from the competition. He also said that while cloud computing is still a big part of making autonomous vehicles possible, there is a big movement afoot to move some of the computing overhead and other capabilities from the cloud to onboarding them on the vehicles to address issues with blocked signals (think tunnels) and latency.

Breaking Down Barriers

Several of the presentations at the conference were concerned with breaking down geospatial barriers. Some of the barriers discussed included:

• The vital nature of current and precise geospatial data
• Properly analyzing and truly understanding the data
• Ease (or lack thereof) of geospatial system implementation
• Data and IP security (especially a challenge with collaborative projects)
• Following and adhering to international standards (primarily due to national security issues)

Some of the possible future game changers for geospatial data that were discussed included:

• New constellations of geospatial satellites
• The rollout of 5G technologies
• Improved integration and connections to sensors and other devices
• Better analytic methods
• Ability to adapt to change of increasingly complex dynamic problems
• Mini drones for data collection
• The ability to acquire and process all this faster, faster, and faster!

All in all, EAS2019 was a very interesting event with intriguing prospects for the future of earth observation and the data/information that are becoming one of the world’s most valuable resources.

You can learn more about the ENVI Analytics Symposium and L3Harris Geospatial Solutions by going to www.harrisgeospatial.com.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 27th, 2019 at 9:47 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.