We’re coming down the home stretch with our GISCafe Industry Predictions, so if you haven’t sent yours in, please feel free to do so until January 20th, for inclusion in a series of editorial articles to be published in January. This article is the third installment of those articles.
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 14th for entries.
The year in review is defined in large part by what drives the technology sector. Natural phenomenon such as fires and floods, earthquakes and hurricanes require continual vigilance to be able to record, predict, respond to and recover from. The effort of Digital Cities is an effort to maintain cities in a more efficient manner, with heightened emphasis on people and data.
According to ABI Research, 500 smart cities will have digital twins by 2025. Currently the cities of Boston, New York, Singapore, Stockholm, Helsinki, Jaipur, Newcastle and Amaravati have deployed digital twins.
Richard Leadbeater, State Government Industry Manager for Esri spoke with GISCafe Voice recently about Esri’s approach to smart cities and takeaways from the Smart Cities DC conference held in October. Leadbeater oversees all the state government stories and the area of smart space such as redistricting and elections.
Avalanches can be extremely dangerous especially for off-piste skiers as well as for small towns situated below the slopes. As ski season comes upon us, it’s a good idea to check the avalanche conditions of the ski slopes you plan on frequenting. There are over 1000 avalanches occurring every year in the Swiss Alps alone. Local communities put up steel fence barriers along the slopes to prevent avalanches from encroaching near their town. To build such snow barriers, steep rock faces and cliffs need to be surveyed with utmost precision.
Belgian company Orbit Geospatial Technologies (Orbit GT), specialists in 3D and mobile mapping, was recently acquired by Bentley Systems at the Bentley Year In Infrastructure 2019 thought leadership conference in Singapore.
Each year at the Bentley Year In Infrastructure thought leadership conference brings a new dimension to digital workflows. Digital Twins were definitely the order of the day this year, and mobile mapping and some other technologies taking front and center stage in the form of acquisitions.
With all the uses that have been discovered for GIS, humanitarian demining is one that has not gotten a lot of attention. Land mines and unexploded remnants of war are embedded in the soil and structures of one-third of the world’s developing countries. These abandoned time bombs affect innocent people long after the war has ended, making so many areas uninhabitable.
The FAA estimates that there will be nearly half a million registered commercial use drones in the U.S. by 2022 (FAA 2018 – 2038 Aerospace Forecast).
Drones in construction
Drones, or UAVs or UAS, are being used in the GIS industry for such purposes as military surveillance, real estate, searching for hurricane activity, search and rescue missions, public health and safety, agriculture and in construction and countless other industries. In some cases, drones can provide greater resolution than satellite imagery. Their size and affordability makes them a valuable choice for scientists, power companies, surveyors, military actions and civilians and many others. They are also environmentally friendly and provide a low-cost option for gathering valuable data that can then be fed into a GIS.
Since drones can autonomously collect a vast range of data they are appealing to many use cases. Besides, they are light-weight and high performance. Satellite imagery has provided remote sensing data for mapping, but can often display low fidelity or limited visibility from cloud cover. High precision and accuracy can be achieved with aerial imagery, with planes equipped with high tech remote sensors. Photogrammetry, which makes use of overlapping photos to identify exact measurements between objects, is a useful way of gathering accurate models.