Interviews from INTERGEO.Digital

INTERGEO Digital experienced an exciting first day on October 15^th with 232 exhibitors who uploaded 2,700 products and data files to the platform. Participants from 150 countries signed in online.

Because of the unexpectedly enthusiastic response, many digital elements will most likely be added to INTERGEO 2021 next year that is slated to be held in Hannover from 21:09 to 23:09, 2021.

Like many conferences this year going completely digital was a new experience for all. Prof. Dr. Hansjörg Kutterer from the organizer DVW had this to say about the response in company materials: “The challenge of a fully digital event received very positive feedback from all our guests, exhibitors and speakers. With INTERGEO.digital we have realized a comprehensive and innovative event concept within a very short period of time”. Christoph Hinte, organizer of INTERGEO.digital, adds: “We have succeeded in establishing a stable digital platform that has generated a vast volume of interaction. Together with all partners we have ensured that the geo-community with its great thematic relevance can also meet in pandemic times”.

INTERGEO.digital has recorded over 330,000 interactions at the digital touchpoints. In detail, this means that around 12,000 participants created a digital profile on the platform. The peak dwell time was up to 5.5 hours per participant. The accessibility through the international participants was significantly increased. Visitors from 153 countries were present. The top ten countries of origin were Germany, USA, Switzerland, Great Britain, Austria, Russia, China Italy, France, and Japan. The live hosting of the INTERGEO EXPO LOUNGE achieved a playback time of around 300,000 minutes.

INTERGEO.digital held an Expo that attracted 228 exhibitors who presented over 2,900 products at INTERGEO.digital. Numerous premieres of products and solutions were presented to an increasingly international community on their digital stands. Presentations were held in eight different languages. Online participants, exhibitors and speakers showed great acceptance of the digital format – which is a format many people have become accustomed to in the past months. “Adapt and learn – that is the statement we can make for both ourselves and our visitors. This new format is a challenge for all of us – and we took it! We would now call our visitors ‘digital consumers’ as the acceptance and usage of digital content was higher than expected vs. the direct contact via digital tools. We are looking forward to a detailed follow-up and the possible outcome, being quite optimistic”, says Michael Degen, Partner Business Consultant DACH at Autodesk. Thomas Harring, President Hexagon Geosystems: “It is great to see how the whole team has evolved in this new world. The feedback from my team and the customers is very positive. They told me that they have had very good conversations and our presentations were frequently visited.” Ronald Bisio, responsible for Global Surveying and Geospatial Business at Trimble, emphasized that his team received even more international customers than in previous years: “My team told me, that we had contacts even from New Mexico. They most probably wouldn’t have had the chance to visit us otherwise. And they were very happy to participate. “

A number of interviews were conducted at the conference which highlight areas of concern for exhibitors, attendees, technology professionals and educational professionals of all types.

“Cities must understand the power of data” was the title of Moritz Mierisch’s talk. Head of Business at S O NAH GmbH, Moritz Mierisch is responsible for the strategic positioning of the company. In his presentation at INTERGEO DIGITAL he showed how companies with digital infrastructure can become data-based solution providers for cities. What does that mean?

Here is the interview from the conference:

Mr Mierisch, what does S O NAH do? And what makes S O NAH different from others?

“S O NAH is a high-tech company that specializes in data collection in cities. We use our sensors to create a digital image of the street and determine the status quo. The aim: to digitize urban space in order to make the best possible use of it. Our technology is unique.”

 Do you have an example?

“A classic example, the search for a parking space. Nerve-racking, time-consuming, polluting the environment. Our sensors simply report, ‘Parking space free’ or ‘Parking space occupied’. Cities, utilities or companies use our data and integrate it into their platforms and applications. The result is less traffic jams, less environmental pollution, more time instead of doing laps.”

What was your presentation at INTERGEO DIGITAL about?

“We enable cities, public utilities and infrastructure operators to make optimum use of space. I will use a very concrete example to show how our technology is used in Aachen and how this data can be turned into added value in other cities. Vividly, concretely, ‘hands on’ and with real data!”

Ulrich Ahle is Chief Executive Officer at FIREWARE FOUNDATION, a non-profit organization that promotes standards and open source solutions for smart cities. At INTERGEO.digital he talked about standards and open source technology for smart cities.

Mr Ahle feels strongly about the importance of open source solutions for Smart Cities.

“With the non-profit organization Fireware Foundation, we advocate standards and open source technology in Smart Cities. Because this makes it easier to implement Smart City platforms and solutions and keeps the costs of implementing and operating Smart City solutions low.”

In his presentation Ahle showed ways to approach the digital transformation of cities. “The process of developing a fully developed smart city platform takes three to five years, three to five years to develop a fully developed smart city platform that networks with citizens, companies and public authorities. The result will be intelligent solutions, for example for waste management, parking or lighting in cities.”

Here is an interview from INTERGEO TV 2019 with another perspective on smart cities – and geodata.

Professor Thomas H. Kolbe, Geoinformation Specialist at Technical University of Munich, spoke in an opinion leader interview on the topic: Smart Cities: Geodata Provides the Basis.

Geodata and high-resolution city models are important for smart city applications and are meant to make life better, they want to make urban planning more sustainable, said Kolbe.

“To achieve these goals, to provide citizens with better data and make cities a better place to live, information is needed on electricity or traffic but additional value is sometimes only created by combining a wide variety of information. Geodata provides a structure, because structurally it represents and subdivides space. Everything that exists in reality has a counterpart in the spatial data set.”

What is meant by that is “If a building a street or a tree exists outside, there are corresponding model in the city model. And now we can assign different information to these objects in the model.”

Do you have a concrete example of how geodata makes a smart model in the first place?

“On the basis of geodata, for example, we can perform energy calculations. If we knew the size, shape, location, age and type of use of a building, we can accurately predict its demand for heating. Not just for the building but for an entire city or district. What is exciting is geodata gives us the opportunity to simulate scenarios. What if we would energetically renovate this street? We can show which re-education was would achieve this. This is interesting for the owner, but also for the city, which is perhaps asking itself, whether it could supply this road with a block power plant. Such questions can be answered with this information.”

City models are available in increasing resolutions – who benefits from them?

“Let’s take UAV for example, Think about the Amazon vision and look at a skyscraper with 2,000 people. If the parcel is placed outside the main entrance we will need high resolution data to be able to navigate precisely. But if you also imagine other sectors, such as maintenance or infrastructure management, bridge structures, for example, many bridges are in a bad state of repair in Germany, some are inadequately maintained and the damage has not been suitably recorded. These too are areas in which high resolution information can be very helpful.”

Why is Germany lagging behind when it comes to smart cities?

The feeling that we are very behind in Germany is not so true. Hamburg or Munich are very active as well as other cities. Countries in the Middle East and China benefit from a different political culture when it comes to Smart City. There the government chooses not to take data protection or fundamental rights into account. This will not work in Germany or other European countries. A development of smart cities must take place at all levels.”

What must be done to advance Smart City in Germany?

“When it comes to smart cities it’s not enough to just look at geodata. A change in thinking is also required in urban planning. And the willingness of the various authorities to work together in urban planning. It’s often the case that someone starts and a folder then passes through other departments. Usually this is still a paper folder, we need to get cities to create a group to push ahead with digitalization. In terms of data quality we are very advanced. We have many geoinformatic players who are world leaders, companies or universities. But we have to involve other players better. But it is also important to involve stakeholders such as transport providers. It is a cooperation of many players and everyone needs their own opportunities.”

The INTERGEO Stages and Conference sessions received on average 370 visits per event. Topic areas included geo-innovations, drones and smart cities. Venues included discussion panels, talks and presentations and cities and networks presented their products live.

Tags: geospatial, GIS, GNSS, imagery, Infrastructure, intelligence, laser scanner, LiDAR, location, mapping, mobile, mobile mapping, navigation, remote sensing, satellite imagery, smartphones

Categories: 3D Cities, analytics, Big Data, citizen science, climate change, cloud, data, disaster relief, geospatial, GIS, image-delivery software, indoor location technology, laser radar, lidar, location based sensor fusion, location based services, location intelligence, mapping, mobile, Open Source, photogrammetry

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