The 2020 Virtual Esri User Conference (Esri UC) Is next week, July 13-17. Of course this year all conferences are virtual and it will be interesting to see how the user conference that we all know and look forward to each year in San Diego will play in virtual space.
For Esri, this is an inflection point; as a company as they have been very active in the virtual geospatial marketplace for a long time. They have been working on digital transformation and work-from-home initiatives for about two years now.
Close to 70,000 people are attending this year; in past years attendance has been around 17,000.
The constraints thrust upon us are spurring innovation, according to Esri CMO Marianna Kantor.
Esri is very good at crisis management, specifically the disaster response program. The Johns Hopkins University dashboard tracks all the covid cases in the world.
Among the stats brought forward:
The types of events you have grown to look forward at Esri UC will be available in virtual format, including the Plenary, Expo and technology workshops, Map Gallery Tour, SIGs, special sessions and educational sessions. Those registered will receive a Platform direction guide.
Central Live is a TV like component to the event, hosted live by an Esri executive.
Plenaries will be split into three days, with Jack Dangermond’s plenary on Monday. On Tuesday will be technology enhancement plenary, and Wednesday will be joined by Jeffrey Sachs, president of UN Sustainable Development Solutions and Vicki Phillips, executive vice president and CEO of National Geographic Society.
Head of Global Business Development, Jeff Peters, said that Esri wants to become as much a leader in virtual technology as in the physical world.
“If there was any doubt of role of GIS being a mission critical technology in organization, look at any federal, state, government authorities around the world and we are seeing transformation happen right before us,” said Peters.
“It’s a bit of crisis culture, and covid-19 is one of those. The DRP program provided technology to over 4500 organizations and some work done on our racial equity hub, with Esri work supporting organizations around the world with transparency. Even as you shift to more recent events, for example, around the locust response we’re seeing locusts impact both Asia and Africa, potentially many could lose their lives. As a company Esri identifies these crisis events and ask, what can we do with real work to help users customers and citizens respond to those events?”
Peters said the the Johns Hopkins dashboard is up to almost a trillion views since launch. “At the peak of the use of Esri’s stat system ArcGIS Online saw 12 billion transactions per day, and was the #3 most visited website in the world. The technology is absolutely mission critical. The theme of interconnecting our world, the value of geospatial infrastructure will be discussed, including using AI, analytics, mobile clients, and bringing technology and making it pervasive for both the private and public sector is our continued ambition.”
Pix4D, a photogrammetry and drone-mapping industry leader headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, announced recently the release of Pix4Dcloud and Pix4Dcloud Advanced: new mapping platforms for online surveying workflows and construction site monitoring.
The Geospatial Distancing series from L3Harris Geospatial recently conducted a panel discussion webinar entitled, “How will image analysis get done in a post-COVID world?”
Francois Valois, vice president, Civil Engineering with Bentley Systems spoke at Bentley’s recent Civil Design Virtual Press Briefing about the current state of civil engineering and how we now need to do things differently. Civil infrastructure will continue to need to accelerate, according to Valois. “There has been an enormous infrastructure deficit over the years. Any time we stop accelerating we make the problem worse. Now we have social distancing, and funding challenges. Projects may be funded by a special tax on gas, for example. In addition to this, we have to stay home and when we’re onsite we must have less people onsite and find new ways to work. Our answer is the digital twin, and helping our users to go digital.”
Robert Cardillo, former director National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) was the keynote at the AGI Geospatial Analysis Showcase on April 28th. Cardillo brings background and depth to the topic. Currently president of the Cardillo Group, he supports the intelligence profession and bigger GEOINT community, and also serves as a member of the board of directors and consultant to Cesium.
Esri StoryMaps have often been front and center in creating social change. Since the last week of January, Esri’s Cooper Thomas and Ross Donihue have been working on their Esri Covid-19 StoryMaps.
Johns Hopkins University map to capture all confirmed COVID-19 cases, fatalities and recoveries.
Christian Steimle, Bartolomeo Business and Service Manager, spoke with GISCafe Voice about the Airbus built Bartolomeo platform that was successfully launched on March 6th from Cape Canaveral, Florida, US. Bartolomeo is now on its journey to the International Space Station (ISS) and will be installed outside of the Columbus Laboratory, the European module of the ISS built by Airbus.
Pointfuse, a powerful modeling engine that delivers an automatic, precise and flexible way of converting the vast point cloud datasets generated by laser scanners or photogrammetry into segmented mesh models, has launched a new toolkit called Space Creator. Pointfuse Space Creator is designed to facilitate adopting laser scanning within space management, planning and utilization workflows.
Pascal Strupler, Product Manager, HxDR, Hexagon Geosystems spoke with GISCafe Voice about its recent product announcement, HxDR. HxDR is aiming to be Hexagon’s central smart digital reality data hub, a new cloud-based digital reality visualization platform that can import and visualize any type of reality capture data from airborne, ground, and mobile sensors. This data can be integrated together easily, according to Strupler.
In 2019, it came to my attention that there was more specific attention being paid to AEC and GIS integration, specifically two partnerships of AEC companies formed with Esri. In a conversation with Esri’s Kathleen Kewley, GISCafe Voice discussed the resurgence of interest of GIS in the AEC space from an Esri perspective. Kewley also worked at Autodesk at one time. In addition I have included information from a webinar conducted by Autodesk senior technical marketing manager Wes Newman and AEC Solutions engineer from Esri, Rafael Fernandes, about the partnership between Esri and Autodesk.
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