On Monday November 16th, 2020 the opening Keynote Address of the USGIF GEOINT Community Forum was presented by Stacey Dixon, Ph. D., Deputy Director, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). The theme of the conference “The Convergence of Commercial Content with AI/ML to Provide Clarity” shaped the narrative for the week ahead. Dixon said that Covid-19 provided an unexpected opportunity to reimagine their mission very quickly.
Stacey Dixon, Ph. D., Deputy Director, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)
Pix4D of Lausanne, Switzerland recently announced Pix4Dmatic, a digital standalone desktop photogrammetry software for accurate and fast corridor and large scale mapping. Demand by professionals for this type of large scale mapping has been high. Previously mapped by aircraft, the types of projects are now mapped and surveyed with drones. Pix4Dmatic can make these projects much easier.
Pix4D is a Swiss company that develops a suite of software products that use photogrammetry and computer vision algorithms to transform RGB, thermal and multispectral images into 3D maps and models.
This week Enview, a company in the vanguard of the field of scalable processing of 3D geospatial data, announced the launch of Enview Explore™, a web application that leverages AI and cloud computing to automatically process 3D data at great speed and scale. Additionally, Robert Cardillo, former director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), has joined the company’s Board of Directors. Following an oversubscribed round of funding in May, the company continues to experience growth and momentum in the market.
Tammy Owen, Global Director of the Defense and Intelligence business area for L3Harris Geospatial, introduced speakers on the first day of the 6th annual ENVI Analytics Symposium held August 25-27th, which for the first time, was held virtually rather than in person in Boulder, Colorado as had been initially planned.
In a webinar recently presented by Emesent, the discussion was entitled “Smarter Lidar Technology for Infrastructure and AEC: better data, greater insights.”
Peter Dickinson, project manager for Emesent and Business Development manager for the Americas Dave Jaunay introduced customers who were using Emesent’s Hovermap sensor system for various challenging environments. It has been used extensively in mining and underground environments and land surveying.
The company Emesent is based in Brisbane, Australia with a staff of 38 but rapidly growing to meet global demands. The company aims to solve the problem of collection of data – in GPS-denied or challenging environments. The need to automate the collection of data, gave birth to the Hovermap for mine and roads, tunneling, indoor mapping and search and rescue, anywhere where maintaining a signal for GNSS solutions is problematic.
IDB president Luis Alberto Moreno & Jack Dangermond, president of Esri, discuss how GIS can help solve some of the world’s biggest problems, namely, Covid-19 and climate change at the recent Esri Virtual User Conference 2020.
Becky Tamashasky, Vice President of Vision & Product Engineering, Cityworks® | Azteca Systems, LLC, replied to our questions at GISCafe Voice in addition to her interview with GISCafe CEO Sanjay Gangal:
When is your new release of Cityworks coming out?
Becky T: As part of a public company, I can’t provide exact details, but I can say with anticipation that it is coming soon!
Do you want clients to think of Esri and Cityworks as all one solution or are you looking to have them view the solutions separately?
Many of our clients already view Cityworks and Esri as one cohesive solution. As the leading GIS-centric solution for public asset management and community development, we have worked to provide a seamless experience for organizations, and we support the Esri identity for user authentication across Cityworks platform and mobile native apps. (more…)
Normally approximately 17,000 people attend Esri User Conference held in San Diego, California but this year, the conference has attracted upwards of 80,000 people online as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. While it is sad not to be gathered in San Diego, the sheer volume of people who are able to participate online makes it quite a phenomena for Esri, a 50-year-old company spearheading the GIS movement globally.
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.”
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