Dr. Ron S. Jarmin and other spokespeople from the U.S. Census Bureau spoke at the Esri User Conference 2019 Plenary Session about the enormous responsibility of the U.S. Census Bureau to administer the constitutionally mandated count of the U.S. population, a task that is done every ten years since 1790.
The theme of Esri User Conference 2019 was “See What Others Can’t.” The idea is that with GIS, people have the power to see differently. This was the 39th Annual Users Meeting, and while the meeting attracts close to 12,000 attendees per year, Esri CEO and president Jack Dangermond said that the purpose remains the same as it was when they began meeting with users at a Montessori school many years ago.
At the GEOINT Symposium 2019 held in San Antonio, Texas, NGA Director Vice Adm. Robert Sharp gave a keynote in which he brought to the audience’s attention new leadership roles including his own as the seventh NGA director.
In an interview with Arnaud de Saint Vincent, Analytics Strategy – Digital Services Intelligence Communications, Intelligence, Security of the Defence and Space intelligence branch of Airbus, he spoke about one of their digital services, Earth Monitor, under the umbrella of their OneAtlas platform. Airbus Defence and Space and Orbital Insight have expanded upon their partnership agreement to create Earth Monitor, a powerful change analysis and insights service which provides situational awareness over archived or newly tasked areas of interest.
The Notre Dame Cathedral has been well-documented both before and after a devastating fire destroyed its spire and roof on Monday, April 15, 2019. What we have going forward is extensive documentation in the forms of satellite imagery, aerial imagery, as well as 3D laser scans to help in the reconstruction of the Gothic cathedral.
Satellite photos show Notre-Dame Cathedral before and after Monday's devastating fire. Facebook/Digital Globe
The U.S. has seen an increase in the number of natural disasters between the years 2016 and 2018. The resulting “underinsurance issues” have kept analytics and data-enabled solutions providers very busy with analyzing the new wave of areas that would be better served by increased natural hazard coverage.
Digital Twins – are they taking the technology world by storm? IDC recently noted that by 2020, 30% of global 2000 companies will be using data from Digital Twins to improve organizational productivity by as much as 25%. While it is not quite there, Gartner predicts the Digital Twin will reach the “Plateau of Productivity” within 5 to 10 years.
According to the 2018 Gartner Hype Cycle, Digital Twin is a trend that is now approaching the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” and is estimated to hit the “Plateau of Productivity” within 5 to 10 years. Image courtesy of Gartner, Inc.
Kevin Jones, Executive Director of Marketing for PCI Geomatics, spoke with GISCafe Voice about the release of new software for Geomatica and GXL, the company’s flagship software for complete and integrated desktop and enterprise geoimage processing. Geomatica features tools for remote sensing, digital photogrammetry, geospatial analysis, mosaicking, and more that can be deployed through the Geomatica desktop, Python workflows, or through large-volume-production systems. The focus of the new release is enabling big data processing for large archives of satellite data, which need to be processed to a scientifically rigorous level known as Analysis Ready Data (ARD). The new ARD tools provide methods to create datasets that can then be used for Multi-Temporal Analytics (MTA) leveraging the Open Data Cube infrastructure.
Jordan Lawver, Portfolio Manager, Mixed Reality – Trimble Buildings Division, spoke with GISCafe Voice about the results of a new partnership between Microsoft and Trimble, and the new mixed-reality headset, Trimble XR10 with HoloLens 2 that has transpired from that relationship.
Digital twin technology has been talked about a great deal over the past few years, and is being worked on in various technology segments. At one time it was the province of manufacturing and now it is part of the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and data analytics. It is also being explored by numerous industries.