GISCafe Industry Predictions 2020 – Part 2

Every January GISCafe Voice publishes blogs of industry predictions from our readers. This is the second installment of those predictions. This year we have extended the deadline for submissions to January 14^th for entries.

Please send me your industry predictions for 2020 by January 14th for inclusion in a series of editorial articles to be published in January. Please keep your submission to 200-1,000 words, with author’s name, email address, photo and a short bio. Susan.smith@ibsystems.com

This week we have topics ranging from geointelligence, parallelization, hybrid sensor systems, UAV mapping for surveying, high resolution geospatial data from various sources, intersection with AEC industries and open, interoperable platforms for more seamless integration of disparate data sources.

Randy Zwitch is a Senior Director of Developer Advocacy at OmniSci

“Geointelligence is growing in importance across a variety of disciplines, which is driving the deployment of highly advanced technologies. In 2020, Julia will become more widely used as the programming language of choice. It offers higher performance than Python and even exceeds C++ for scientific applications. It’s extremely easy to learn, has extensive built-in functionality, and supports multi-dimensional matrix applications—plus it offers interoperability with virtually every major language from R, Java, Python and C to Go and MATLAB.

Also, parallelization is fast becoming the dominant processing strategy for high-performance computing. GPUs are more available now, but parallelization offers more flexibility in a wide range of processor environments, including maximizing the usage of CPUs. For a growing number of geospatial applications such as plotting LiDAR data or performing weather simulations, the only practical way to accomplish these tasks is via parallelization.

As the volume of data increases in cutting-edge GIS applications, strategies like these will be essential. Autonomous vehicles are going to have to interpret trees, crosswalks, even weather. LiDAR data is being expanded for a greater number of real-time GIS applications including complex system monitoring, disaster assessment and defense. These uses require huge amounts of computational power.

Recently the Celeste Project, the first supercomputer application to be written entirely in Julia, cataloged 188 million astronomical objects in just 14.6 minutes, achieving peak performance of 1.54 petaflops using 1.3 million threads on 9,300 Knight Landing notes. In 2020, more of these exascale projects are coming—and they will transform the geospatial realm as a means of solving real-world problems.

Randy Zwitch is a Senior Director of Developer Advocacy at OmniSci, enabling customers and community users alike to utilize OmniSci to its fullest potential. With broad industry experience in Energy, Digital Analytics, Banking, Telecommunications and Media, Randy brings a wealth of knowledge across verticals as well as an in-depth knowledge of open-source tools for analytics. Randy is a graduate of the University of Delaware (BS, MA Economics) and the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University (MBA)

Sebastian Schreiber, CTO, SOMAG AG

“We at SOMAG AG Jena are currently observing three trends in particular, which have already played a role in the past but whose significance will not diminish in 2020.

Firstly, it seems like the general trend in airborne mapping strongly heads towards hybrid sensor systems, combining a single camera or multi-camera system with a LiDAR unit, hyperspectral scanner or another data acquisition device. Collecting all relevant data at the same time while flying (or driving) is economically beneficial and the combination of several data sources results in a high degree of completeness and reliability of the data set, since the shortcomings of one method can be compensated for by the other.

Another trend that continues is the use of UAVs for surveying. UAVs have a wide range of possible applications and their popularity will continue in 2020. The usage of UAV´s for airborne mapping is nowadays an established technology and we see them in all sizes and shapes. Hybrid units which combine the advantages of fixed and rotary aircrafts seem to gain more significance in this sector. This is accompanied by the continuing requirement to keep parts and components small and light weight. As the equipment gets smaller and smaller, the data and accuracy of it increases more and more which will require efficient software tools to handle this amount of big data. The interaction between all system components in this context is highly important as well.

For us as a company, these developments are extremely exciting and we take note of them very clearly and are prepared to react to them in the long term. We have a wide range of devices in different sizes, both for the airborne and the land/marine sector. This allows us to cover a wide range of application scenarios for our customers. As an independent supplier on the market, we can respond flexibly to customer requirements and convert these into tailor-made products.

SOMAG AG Jena’s three axis gimbals compensate arbitrary vehicle movements and vibrations, which drastically reduce movements of airborne sensor systems. This technology enables high resolution image quality and is now standard in most geodata acquisition projects.”

Sebastian Schreiber, CTO SOMAG AG Jena graduated from the University of Applied Sciences Jena as a mechanical engineer.  He gained his first professional experience as a scientific assistant at SOMAG AG Jena. Afterwards he joined the Applanix Corporation in Canada and was responsible for the design of the mechanical and electronic connection of the camera systems to the stabilization platform SSM 270. In 2010 he returned to his roots at SOMAG AG and since then has been working successfully as Product Development Manager for all mounting systems. Under his technical leadership as CTO, SOMAG AG has become a leading manufacturer of Gyro Stabilization Mounts which set nowadays the pace for these devices worldwide.“

Patrick Cozzi , CEO of Cesium

“The increased availability of geospatial data and the demand for 3D insights will drive geospatial innovation in 2020.

Thanks to drones, autonomous vehicles, and the widespread availability of sensors, high resolution geospatial data is collected more frequently and is more available than ever before.

The demand for software that can extract value from these data is increasing rapidly. Geospatial software platforms like Cesium that provide the fundamental building blocks for application developers—data pipelines, visualization, and analytics—will become central to the geospatial ecosystem. To keep this ecosystem interoperable, open standards will continue to play a key role.

As geospatial continues to intersect with industries like architecture, engineering, construction, smart cities, simulation, and other fields that have an inherent need for real world context, 3D will become the new standard for geospatial data, offering users increased situational awareness, faster decision making, and increased safety and efficiency.

In addition, we will eliminate the need for software silos. At Cesium, we are building an open and interoperable platform for our vision of the future, where data from heterogeneous sources (point clouds, terrain, photogrammetry) and data from the global scale down to the local, can be fused together into a seamless experience.“

Patrick Cozzi is CEO of Cesium, which offers a complete platform for 3D geospatial data that includes optimization, visualization, and analytics. He is the originator of CesiumJS, an opensource JavaScript library for rendering 3D globes and maps that has accumulated more than 800,000 lifetime downloads, thousands of developers, and millions of end users.

Tags: autonomous vehicles, geospatial, GIS, hurricanes, imagery, Infrastructure, intelligence, laser scanner, LiDAR, location, mapping, maps, mobile, mobile mapping, navigation, reality modeling, remote sensing, satellite imagery, situational intelligence, smartphones

Categories: 3D Cities, aircraft tracking, airports, analytics, asset management, autonomous driving, Building Information Modeling, climate change, cloud, cloud network analytics, data, disaster relief, drones, emergency response, Esri, field GIS, flight paths, geocoding, geospatial, geotechnical, GIS, Google, government, GPS, image-delivery software, in car navigation, insurance, integrated GIS solutions, iPhone, laser radar, location based sensor fusion, location based services, location intelligence, mapping, mobile, Open Source, OpenGeo, photogrammetry, public safety, remote sensing, resilient cities, satellite imagery, sensors, spatial data, subsurface utilities, telecommunications, transportation, UAVs, wildfire risk

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