Mexican university’s surveying department develops national education standards, gains acceptance of scanning
By Don Talend
The state of Nuevo León in northeastern Mexico is where technological progress and the preservation of historic architecture meet, if we are to judge by the recent imaging of a historic museum building with a high-speed laser scanner.
Starting in January 2013, the Civil Engineering Institute’s Department of Surveying at the University of Nuevo León scanned the exterior of the Regional Museum of the Bishopric—previously a palace for the bishop of the state of Nuevo León. Originally built by order of the Franciscan Bishop Fray Rafael Jose Verger in 1787, it was converted into a history museum in 1956. By the end of the year, the department was expected to scan the interior of the building, according to Angel Ervey Martínez, the department chair.
GISCafe.Com is exhibiting at the Intergeo 2013 conference in Germany on October 8-9 and at the GEOINT Symposium in Tampa, Florida on October 14-15. We are recording video interviews at our booth at each conference. Any conference attendee can book a time slot for an interview. Each interview is typically 3 – 7 minute long. We typically ask the following questions and a few follow up questions:
Tell us about yourself and your company?
What are you showing at your booth or what brings you to the conference?
Do you want to share any new announcements with the GISCafe audience?
How can GISCafe visitors find out more about your company?
The questions can be customized for each company or attendee.
We charge a nominal fee to cover our expenses. Contact Sanjay Gangal if you are interested in booking a 15-minute time slot for an interview. You can see past interviews here.
To add a little fun to the conference, we are asking the conference attendees to share a joke in front of the video camera. The best jokes will be edited together in a video montage. The jokes have to be clean and funny. You can see a Joke Reel from Esri User Conference here.
Here is one of the interviews we recorded last year which has received more than 2,000 views:
College students are the foundation for the next generation of geospatial leaders. Fortunately, academic programs provided by colleges and universities like Washington College provide an opportunity for students to get real, hands-on GIS experience that will help them transition into fruitful careers in our sector.
While we often showcase videos from industry on this blog, we wanted to highlight a specific student video that compiles all of the great work done by Caitlyn Riehl, a senior in who serves as the Photoshop Team Leader at Washington College GIS.
One of the more interesting projects that Ms. Riehl worked on was restoring historic map of Chestertown, Maryland. She spent many hours not only completing the restoring of the map to its original quality, but also coloring the map to give it a realistic touch.
Washington College is a small liberal arts college in a historic town that fosters a strong community and passion amongst its alumni. In full disclosure, I am a 1993 graduate of Washington College. Unfortunately, the college did not have a GIS program at the time, which further reinforces how much the geospatial sector has grown over the past 20 years.
Last year, Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) held its GIS-Pro 2012 symposium, which featured a keynote address by geospatial visionary Michael F. Goodchild.
The first part of Goodchild’s keynote address focused on how far the geospatial sector has come since 1998. Specifically, he highlighted how we now have faster broadband connections and graphic accelerators, as well as massive amounts of data. All of these things are driving today’s geospatial solutions through we still have challenges ahead of us.
The second half of Goodchild’s keynote address highlighted the global social constructs behind mapping. Each culture has a different interpretation of mapping and what locations are worthy of monitoring – whether it is a sports complex, a Korean deli or a riverbed in Western Australia. Goodchild also discusses how we are creating global mapping standards, as well as localized crowdsourced capabilities.
He also discussed “place-based GIS,” which is focused on core locations and how most cities have adopted standard subways maps (i.e. New York City). This standard is ideal because “humans can use it.”
Be sure to check out part two of Goodchild’s keynote address at GIS-Pro 2012.
It is no surprise that today’s geospatial enterprise has gone mobile. Based on rapid advances in mobile solutions for consumers, government and enterprise users, we imagine that the future of geospatial technologies will keep moving in this direction in a very aggressive fashion.
In addition, for geospatial solutions to be truly effective they need to fully support those in the field – from the warfighter to employees dispersed in disconnected environments, providing advanced collaboration for enhancing decision-making.
Late last year, TerraGo announced the release of its TerraGo Mobile for Android solution, which allows users of Android devices running version 3 or above to access and update intelligent, portable, interactive GeoPDF maps and imagery. This includes using georeferenced notes, audio, photo, video and Web services.
What is unique about this solution is that us enables anyone – even the novice GIS user – to collection data in the field using geoforms that can be easily updated and shared with pretty much anyone, anywhere.
Following is a video demonstration of TerraGo Mobile for Android.
ESRI is one of the most well known names in geospatial intelligence and is certainly one of the largest forces for standards and systems unification in this area, and now they have their sights firmly set of making cloud technologies work for geospatial data.
Many industries and many users of geospatial data in their domestic lives are already utilising the cost reducing, de-localised, multi-platform benefits of using cloud-based systems, but when dealing with vast datasets that need to move at high speed and with the utmost security how can it outperform current data architecture models?
DGI spoke to John Day, Director of Defence Business Development for ESRI at DGI 2012 to find out.
With one of the most distinguished careers in the geospatial intelligence arena, including Director of NGA, Director of Naval Intelligence, Vice-Director for Intelligence of the Joint Staff and now a professor at the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism and on the faculty of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University in New York, Bob Murrett is very much at the forefront of geo and multi-int.
Bob shared his thoughts at DGI 2012 on exactly what and how the geospatial intelligence landscape is changing and what developements we can expect to see over the next 12 months and beyond…
Normally, DGI would never condone torture under any circumstances, but when it comes to squeezing the maximum information out of your geospatial dataset, then they all for it!
Making the most of your pixels — gathering the most data you can from your imagery is one of the most important factors in multi-int today and Digital Globe are on the frontier of research and development of new technologies, but before marching forward, you need to know your past.
To explain more, DGI spoke to Jack Hild, VP of US Defence Strategy at Digital Globe.
Typically, geospatial intelligence is most commonly linked to defence and the military. While this may be true, more and more civilian organisations are utilising the power of geospatial information to radically improve their abilities. Unsurprisingly, the police force is one such area getting involved.
Associate Professor of Criminology, Law, Society & Planning, Policy & Design at the University of California Irvine speaks to DGI’s Online Editor Dan Mellins-Cohen about the innovative and highly successful implementation of geospatial intelligence by the LAPD to not only catch criminals, but proactively prevent crime.
Chad St. Amand, GIS Manager of Tembec, Timmins, Forest Resource Management presents how using lidar can improve operational planning for forestry managers at the Esri Forestry GIS Conference in May, 2012. This was the most popular presentation at this conference.
