According to UK-based Bluesky, a prototype version of a website online platform has been launched that allows homeowners, solar installers and manufacturers, energy companies and government organizations to assess the suitability of individual properties for solar energy technology.
GISCafe Voice
Archive for the ‘geospatial’ Category
Startup AllSource uses commercial satellite imagery to monitor North Korean political prison camps from space
Wednesday, January 14th, 2015Chuck Herring, formerly of DigitalGlobe, is one of three founders (Joe Bermudez and Stephen Wood) of the startup company Allsource Analysis Inc. (ASA) Located in the heart of Colorado’s Front Range geospatial hub, commercial imagery intelligence and analytics products AllSource Analysis Inc. (ASA) is establishing itself as a company to address specific analysis and monitoring challenges using commercial satellite imagery and remote sensing.
A representative image of the work done by AllSource in North Korea
IMAGINiT on “The challenge of managing big datasets”
Friday, January 9th, 2015At Autodesk University 2014 held in Las Vegas in December, Joe Hedrick, Infrastructure Solutions Team Manager, IMAGINiT Technologies, spoke with GISCafe about how projects in general are becoming bigger, along with ever-increasing use of reality capture. IMAGINiT is a provider of software, training, support and services to design and engineering companies and Autodesk Authorized Reseller and Autodesk Training Center.
The InfraWorks 360 Model Builder cloud service allows users to select a city-scale area from a map of the world in order to generate 3D city models in minutes.
“Bigger datasets, more partners and consultants are involved,” said Hedrick. “We continue to see a huge increase in people looking for ways to manage data. We’ve had several contracts with the army where they are managing everything from facility drawings to various documents and spreadsheets. In addition, private and commercial engineering and architectural firms are looking for ways to share data and projects.”
IMAGINiT will sometimes have to build tools inhouse, but mostly they use Autodesk Vault for integrations and data storage. “Commercial firms may want to tie into accounting, and we have integrations into some of the popular accounting packages out there,” said Hedrick. “We’re in the middle of a big one for the government. We are using our system and then programmatically writing to the data tables that they have in place.”
A cheaper solution to integration and managing data is Autodesk’s Fusion A360, said Hedrick. “I think it will change how we manage data. It’s going to integrate very nicely into the design platforms and apps.”
With data management, Hedrick said the biggest challenge is the size of the models. “How do you share a model that could be several gigabytes? With one of the army projects, we’re talking about 3 TB of data. How do we share that information? With pure sizes, there’s not a great way to share that amount of information. This becomes particularly difficult when you incorporate scanned data into it.” Hedrick said it used to be hard to find anyone to embrace the cloud but now the government is beginning to embrace it and the security is better. The cloud holds a lot of promise for managing large datasets and is being offered as a service in the InfraWorks 360 Model Builder cloud service.
Happy New Year and 2015 GISCafe Voice Editorial Calendar!
Tuesday, January 6th, 2015Happy New Year from GISCafe!
Holiday announcement for GISCafe
Thursday, December 18th, 2014
Dear Readers,
Over the holiday season, the last 2014 daily GISCafe newsletter will go out on December 23rd and the last GISCafe weekly on December 21. All of our Daily newsletters and Weeklies not be published between
December 24 – January 4th and will resume on January 5th.
Wishing you and your families the happiest of holidays and prosperous New Year!
GIS and CAD converge: interview with Autodesk’s Paul McRoberts
Monday, December 8th, 2014In an interview with vice president, Infrastructure at Autodesk, Paul McRoberts at Autodesk University 2014, GISCafe Voice discussed the convergence of GIS and CAD technologies at the company.
The InfraWorks 360 Model Builder cloud service allows users to select a city-scale area from a map of the world in order to generate 3D city models in minutes.
Special GISCafe Coverage: 3D Cities: Envisioning Communities of the Future
Friday, November 21st, 2014Cities worldwide are charged with the same challenge: that of creating or retrofitting sustainable, intelligent infrastructure. Cities need the best in design, geospatial, visualization and analytical tools to realize a viable and intelligent city design. 3D City design is architectural design times thousands, plus it must have the ability to be interwoven with other surrounding infrastructure and foster an urban conversation.
CyberCity 3D
Bentley acquires SITEOPS civil engineering cloud software
Tuesday, November 18th, 2014[First Published in AECCafe Voice]
Mike Detwiler, Bentley vice president and Rachel Rogers, Bentley director Civil, Geospatial, and Hydraulics & Hydrology, spoke with AECCafe Voice this week about the Bentley acquisition of North Carolina-based BLUERIDGE Analytics, provider of SITEOPS civil engineering cloud software, in August 2014.
Mike Detwiler was CEO and co-founder of SITEOPS prior to the acquisition. He is now vice president SITEOPS Product Development at Bentley. The office will remain in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the SITEOPS staff will be retained.
SITEOPS comes to Bentley with an impressive list of engineers, developers and land planners working in the retail, real estate and AEC industries. Says Rogers, “We’ll continue to support our users and work with them to help take SITEOPS to the next level. Bentley and SITEOPS have highly complementary products, so we’re excited to add SITEOPS to our civil design product offerings.”
Says Detwiler, “Bentley has a global reach, which is going to benefit us tremendously.”
Rogers explained that Bentley didn’t have a site optimization technology that SITEOPS brings, which is breakthrough technology in the cloud. The addition of SITEOPS empowers site development professionals to move beyond engineering to optioneering, which enables the exploration of engineering alternatives and their costs.
Detwiler added that SITEOPS engineering and optioneering can offer site design options, costs management and 3D modeling.
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Bentley’s “Year in Infrastructure 2014” announces new geospatial releases
Tuesday, November 11th, 2014In the “Utilities and Government” breakout session on Media Day at the Bentley “Year in Infrastructure 2014” event held in London last week, a number of Bentley executives spoke on various aspects of utilities and government, with new developments for 3D cities.
Bentley Year in Infrastructure 2014 Conference, London
The event showcases work being done with Bentley Systems’ software, with presentations by all the Be Inspired Award finalists for the year, topped off by a gala Awards ceremony on Wednesday evening.
Cyndi Smith, senior director of Application Advantage at Bentley, introduced speakers. Aidan Mercer, senior industry marketing manager for Government spoke on “Advancements in Government and Life cycle Management of Infrastructure.” He also spoke about “Advanced BIM for cities,” which includes the various BIM levels used in 3D cities: Level 1: 3D visualization and design; Level 2: performance improvements; Level 3: extending into the operations at the complete asset level and this contributes to a smarter city. He mentioned a really excited finalist in the BE Awards this year, the City of Eindhoven, a city that uses MicroStation, Descartes, ProjectWise, and Navigator in its development of new city infrastructure.
Know What’s Underground
Rachel Rogers, Applications Advantage for Civil, Geospatial, Hydraulics and Hydrology, announced Bentley Subsurface Utility Design and Analysis in OpenRoads will be available in early 2015, and will be a game changer in terms of knowing what’s underground.
The product automatically creates a 3D model and brings together the information needed, provides 3D modeling of all underground utilities, that you can readily update into your GIS database. This gives you a true picture of what’s underground.
One of the highlights is that you have visualization clash detection which can drive construction costs down.
Utility Industry with Cyndi Smith
An industry trend seen recently: convergence. “With the convergence of information technology and operations technology, some projects I’m seeing are bringing in engineering technology,” said Smith.
Better utilities performance catalyzed by:
- Drivers and enablers
- Smarter networks and technology
- Regulations
- Economic factors
- Organizational evolution
- Results better performing utilities infrastructure
Inaugural ASPRS UAS Conference 2014 held in Reno
Monday, November 3rd, 2014The inaugural ASPRS UAS Conference was held October 20-22 in Reno, Nevada, bringing together a diverse group of technologists, pilots, surveyors, vendors and consultants to talk about this emerging technology. 500 attendees and 50 exhibitors were in attendance.
Master of Ceremonies, Lewis Graham of GeoCue, opened with his comments on the importance of miniaturization, connectivity and sensors in the UAS market.
“Miniaturization and connectivity and sensors. Sensors will communicate in intelligent ways, software in background to make that happen,” said Graham. In addition, “Sense and avoid” type of technology/ software makes decisions based on proximity of the aerial system.”
The confluence of miniaturization, guidance and control systems, motors, sensors, on the photogrammetry side, new technologies out of robotic vision, taking point clouds of photos and taking information from this all conspire to bring UAS to the forefront and make it a force to be reckoned with.
Pix4D City Construction
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