Keith Clarke, CBE, FREng, FICE, RIBA, Chairman, speaking on “Forum for the Future,” at the Bentley Year In Infrastructure 2019 thought leadership conference in Singapore in October, pointed out that recycling bins throughout the convention center have a sign above them stating, “the greatest threat to the planet is that we think somebody else will save it.”
Among numerous announcements made this week at Intergeo in Stuttgart, Germany, by Trimble, the new Trimble X7 3D Laser Scanning System was introduced, a scanning system that enables professionals with little or no scanning expertise to capture precise 3D scanning data to produce high-quality deliverables.
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.
Dr. Anne Kemp OBE, UK BIM Alliance Chair, Fellow and Technical Director at Atkins, has received the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for her contribution to the development of the UK’s smart digital economy.
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.
Recently Harris Geospatial Solutions has provided a series of webinars on SAR. The most recent one, conducted by solutions engineer, Megan Gallagher, is entitled “A Deeper Dive into SAR: Agriculture and Land Surface Deformation” and is available on their website
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.
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.
Surveyors use drone technology to capture images of at-risk for flooding riparian areas of northern New Jersey. These images captured by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have become part of the documentation for a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) program that has saved Pompton Lakes, New Jersey residents hundreds of thousands of dollars per year on flood insurance premiums.