GISCafe Voice Industry Predictions for 2021 – Part 4

Thematically, this week’s group of industry predictions can be boiled down to one topic: delivering the data that people need, in a format that they can understand to enable them to make the best possible evidence-based decisions quickly and confidently.

While this is not as easy as it sounds, many new implementations are in place, such as new advanced safety systems and drone applications from Upvision, models that can analyze different kinds of data from Picterra, with cloud hosting and higher-density data more readily available, meeting the demand will be high density fixed-wing aircraft collection, according to VeriDaas, and from the expansion of greenhouse gas (GHG) remote sensing will drive the growth of networked computing, data, and AI models for geoanalytics, news from GeoSapient.

Jakub Karas, founder and CTO, Upvision

Upvision – Drone Industry Prediction

My industrial forecast for drone industry is that 2021 will be a year of introduction of new advanced safety systems and drone applications. Above all, this is the year when unmanned traffic management (UTM) should be implemented (US and Europe), including support for legislation and the application of systems such as detect and avoid (DAA) and remote ID, which will increase security in the airspace and enable scenarios for the beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flying to which it is bound future major benefits for society and for business and flying in the urban environment.

This development and practical deployment in urban environment, whether in medical delivery, inspection or other delivery scenarios, is the next step towards Urban Air mobility.

Simultaneously with the new rules and the possibility of flying BVLOS, a new effective potential for the use of drones will be unlocked, which, in addition to delivery services, will have the main advantages in geospatial applications. It will be possible to map urban areas legally (ideal for creating high resolution orthophotos, which can be used for other digital map outputs), map larger areas in a shorter time and more efficiently in terms of cost effective using drones, which will not be limited by the visibility of the drone for the pilot.

This year we can expect another significant shift in the use of advanced sensors on drones, especially LiDARs, multispectral and thermal cameras. Due to the ever-increasing competition among the manufacturers of these sensors, they are becoming cheaper and more affordable, and this year the development of the use of drones for laser scanning and the development of mapping applications with these drone outputs can be significantly expected.

Jakub Karas is co-founder and CTO of Upvision (founded in 2013), one of the biggest drone operator in the Czech Republic. He has more than 18 years of experiences in photogrammetry and remote sensing and many experiences in GIS, new technologies (laser scanning, mobile mapping) and drones.

Jakub Karas is President of the Czech Unmanned Aerial Alliance (UAVA), drone industry representative in International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS), Czech representative on the International RPAS Coordination Council of the UVS International Board of Directors, Czech drone industry representative and advisor in many international research projects.

Monika Ambrozowicz, Product Marketing Manager, Picterra

Picterra

Despite the massive and constantly growing amounts of archival and new Earth Observation data available, acquiring it can still be difficult for many organisations, especially smaller ones. It requires some knowledge of the types of data available and of the data providers, as well as at least the basic understanding of which types and sources of data best meet the requirements of a project. What makes things even more challenging, when the data available for free does not meet these requirements, purchasing data from one of the major operators of EO satellites often requires a lot of time and a large budget. In 2021, the geospatial community has been engaged in numerous heated discussions on that topic. Luckily, the growing number of startups and companies are now able to answer this need and to facilitate purchasing images from various data providers. This trend will likely develop in 2021.

However, even if the organisation is able to acquire relevant geospatial data, getting actionable insights out of it can be a daunting and extremely time-consuming task. In some cases, counting objects and detecting patterns manually is practically impossible, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that machine learning is one of the most promising trends in Earth Observation. Automatic feature extraction using ML works by training models to identify the objects of interest, such as buildings, vehicles, wind turbines, road cracks, vegetation, just to name a few. To train the models, users usually need to manually outline hundreds or thousands of instances of the object of interest to them. At least, they used to need. Now, thanks to the right tools like Picterra, the quality of annotations is more important than quantity, and it’s possible to obtain very good results with just a handful of annotations.

The next trend refers to a common misconception that satellite data is only archival and not ready to use for monitoring purposes. On the contrary, it is possible to task a satellite over an area of interest, and what is more, to apply a machine learning model for change detection. Users can now request daily/weekly/monthly imagery and then train a detector to detect various objects and patterns automatically, on multiple images, in order to receive timely alerts and accurate reports. On top of that, an emerging trend is to develop models that can analyze different kinds of data, such as from infrared (IR) and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensors. At the moment SAR data is very expensive, but with new companies launching SAR satellites and progress in machine learning models, it will likely be commonly used in the nearest future.

Monika Ambrozowicz is a Product Marketing Manager at Picterra, a Swiss company founded in 2016. Picterra is the first Machine Learning-powered Software-as-a-Service geospatial platform enabling businesses to autonomously extract intelligence & analytics from satellite, aerial, and drone imagery. Picterra’s users build and deploy unique actionable and ready-to-use deep-learning models, quickly and securely without a single line of code. Thanks to its pre-trained base detectors, only a few human-made annotations are needed to identify and monitor any object or patterns at scale, anywhere on Earth. 

Chris Payne, founder and CEO,  VeriDaaS Corporation

VeriDaaS Corporation

Demand for Extremely High-Density Airborne LiDAR Data will Grow in 2021

In 2021, the geospatial industry will see a continuation of a distinct trend experienced in recent years – an increase in the need for extremely high-density airborne LiDAR data collection. This demand is being driven by a combination of traditional and new end-user applications that require more detailed and more accurate 3D point data. The LiDAR that is available in the public domain is mostly low density and dated, which limits its usability for customers across many vertical markets.

Based on the applications we served in 2020, we expect a growth for the need of 30 points-per-square-meter (PPM) point density for airborne LiDAR capture. Here’s why: Some of the biggest consumers of LiDAR products today are 5G wireless network developers, transportation departments, and electric utilities. All need high-density elevation models derived from LiDAR – often relying on Machine Learning technology – to perform more detailed terrain mapping and extraction of increasingly smaller assets and features.

5G wireless, for example, requires precise line-of-sight mapping over small distances to accommodate transmission of shorter wavelength signals, while highway designers need engineering-grade topographic information. Electric utilities are under pressure to map and monitor even the smallest assets in their distribution networks and assess vegetation encroachment on their distribution networks. And these are just a few of the industries with a thirst for higher-quality geospatial data.

Fortunately, advanced airborne LiDAR technologies such as Geiger-Mode systems are now available to meet this need. And the demand for this technology continues to grow.

Massive LiDAR data sets, however, pose their own challenges to end users. Specifically, many organizations lack the computing infrastructure to store, manage, and process such enormous data files. As a result, another trend the LiDAR industry will experience is increased reliance on cloud-based data-as-a-service platforms. These cloud services will not only host LiDAR data sets, but also provide the computing horsepower where data can be processed, and algorithms can be applied for extraction of useable information from the 3D point cloud.

With cloud hosting and higher-density data more readily available, 2021 will see the need for high density fixed-wing aircraft collection. We also believe that collaboration between Government and commercial customers to co-fund LiDAR collection projects will continue to grow as it lowers the cost for all stakeholders and increases the return-on-investments.

Christopher Payne is the founder and CEO of VeriDaaS Corporation. Chris started his career in the airborne geophysics industry with a focus on Oil & Gas and Mineral exploration around the world. Chris has served as Director of Safety Helicopter Geophysics with Fugro, Director of Flight Operations with Atlantic Technologies, Director of Data Processing with Intermap, Director of Operations with ARKeX in the UK, before becoming COO of Aeroquest Limited, and then Director of Exploration for Neos Geosolutions in Denver.

John Kelley, President & Co-founder, GeoSapient

GeoSapient

New Administration First 100 Days: Make the U.S. an international leader on climate change

Newly-elected President Biden will reenter the U.S. immediately into the landmark Paris climate accord of 2015. This policy change, coupled with an extensive set of environmental goals proposed through his clean energy plan, which includes getting the country to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, has a direct and immediate impact on GIS needs, (near) real-time geoanalytics, and remote sensing.

The U.S. State Department’s Office of Global Change will take the lead on managing U.S. international policy on climate change and represent the United States in negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Furthermore, Biden is proposing a USD 2 trillion investment, throughout his term, to boost reliance on clean energy and sustainable climate practices. Biden also says that 40% of the funding will be used to support communities disproportionately affected by climate change, as laid out in his environmental justice plan.

How do the policy change and investment proposal impact remote sensing effects around climate change? GeoSapient sees sound science coupled with regulation policymaking as a cornerstone to driving U.S. regulatory and business changes. The monitoring of the Earth’s surface, ocean, and atmosphere at several geo- and spatio-temporal scales with existing and newly planned space-borne instrumentation will vastly improve climate system observations and science-based climate-related processes for long- and short-term phenomena impact.

The expansion of greenhouse gas (GHG) remote sensing will drive the growth of networked computing, data, and AI models for geoanalytics. Changes in sensor and imaging technology, along with computing, big data, and AI, put us squarely in the “Age of Awareness.” Increasingly, digital technology will monitor everything. New geocomputing workflows for climate modeling, change detection, and mitigation support will generate an improved understanding of “deep learning” leveraging cognitive computing for the planet’s big brain.

John Kelley is President and Co-founder of GeoSapient, Inc. He has extensive experience in the field of remote sensing systems engineering and associated geospatial applications. Prior to starting GeoSapient, Mr. Kelley spent most of his career in the aerospace industry developing remote sensing systems. Mr. Kelley’s passion is the subject of remote sensing of the Earth for environmental and geospatial applications. Driven by this passion he co-founded GeoSapient to create a unique ‘Geospatial Knowledge’ platform not currently in existence. He also teaches Remote Sensing as an adjunct lecturer at Villanova University, and has guest lectured on the subject.  

Léa Bodossian, Secretary General and Executive Director,  EuroGeographics

EuroGeographics

EuroGeographics members are at the heart of the response to Covid-19, delivering the data that people need, in a format that they can understand to enable them to make the best possible evidence-based decisions quickly and confidently. Ireland, Germany and Denmark are just three examples of our members providing up to date, accurate data and expertise to national governments.

With the swift delivery of data and services, they have demonstrated not only the ability to respond rapidly to the fast-moving pandemic, but also that they can adapt their datasets to fuel a hyper resilient society. In 2021, they will undoubtedly remain instrumental in helping to monitor and manage the pandemic, especially as vaccine programmes are rolled out across the world.

In 2021, our community will continue to support national governments, European policy-makers and global initiatives by connecting maps, people and policies. In doing so they will play a key role in the countdown to 2030 and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and contribute to the Digital Europe Programme, the European Strategy for Data, Open Data (PSI) Directive, Census 2021 and more. All of these need an unprecedented amount of statistical, geospatial and earth observation data that is official, reliable, comparable and verifiable.

To continue to meet the demand of this data-driven world, we’ll see rapid adoption of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, along with some really innovative uses of earth observation by our members. This will not only help scale costs and overcome resourcing issues at a financially challenging time, but will also enable faster data delivery and increase efficiency in supporting recovery from Covid-19 while ensuring that they can maintain the excellence of their high quality data.

Members recognise that facilitating access to their geospatial information is in the public interest and supports the public good. They have put data access at the centre of EuroGeographics activities and continue to work in partnership to achieve the widespread use of their data across the European and international systems

Many of our members are already making their data open and accessible, especially through geoportals, with France just the latest to make its geospatial data free and accessible under an open licence, and Slovakia creating a new Digital Elevation Model. We will see the release of more open data in 2021 as restrictions to using and accessing authoritative data, be they technical, legal (licences) or other, continue to be removed.

Later this year, we will be launching free to use maps from more than 40 European countries through a new online gateway. Open Maps for Europe will signpost and provide easy access to pan-European open data created using official map, geospatial and land information. The project, which is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union, is coordinated by EuroGeographics in partnership with the National Geographic Institute (NGI) Belgium.

Change is constant, and our members operate in an industry that has seen radical changes over the past 20 years, which show no signs of slowing down.

Collaboration, such as the recent Memorandum of Understanding between our members in The Netherlands and Ukraine, is vital if we are to find solutions to common challenges, share best practice and improve capabilities and role. In these uncertain times, this unity is key to demonstrating the certainty members provide to citizens, to governments and to businesses alike, and raising awareness of their collective value in delivering better data for better lives.

Léa Bodossian is Secretary General and Executive Director of EuroGeographics, an international not-for-profit organisation and the membership association for the European National Mapping, Cadastral and Land Registry Authorities. It currently brings together members from 46 countries, covering the whole of geographical Europe.

Tags: air pollution, cloud, data, ESRI, GIS, Google, imagery, indoor mapping, Infrastructure, intelligence, laser scanner, LiDAR, location, mapping, maps, mobile, mobile mapping, navigation, reality modeling, remote sensing, satellite imagery, small sats, social media

Categories: 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21/CMP11), 3D PDF, agriculture, aircraft tracking, airports, analytics, asset management, Big Data, citizen science, climate change, cloud, cloud network analytics, Covid-19, drones, election maps, emergency response, Esri, field GIS, geomatics, geospatial, geotechnical, GIS, government, GPS, image-delivery software, indoor location technology, laser radar, LBS, lidar, location based sensor fusion, location based services, mapping, mobile, Open Source, photogrammetry, public safety, remote sensing, resilient cities, satellite imagery, sensors, spatial data, survey, UAS, UAV, UAVs

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