The GEOINT Symposium 2016 attracted a great many exhibitors all focused on providing excellent resources for the geo-intelligence community. Tools for mobility, analytics, cloud, open source, business and location intelligence, moving data back and forth between unclassified and top security listings, and much more abound in this showcase of commercial offerings.
At an industry session held at SPAR3D 2016 in April in The Woodlands, Texas, Steve Hutsell, Chief, Geospatial Section U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Seattle District, and Lou Bush, Director of Survey, Bowman Consulting Group, gave a talk entitled: “Integrated Data Capture, BIM, CIM, GIS and CAD – Owner and Industry Perspectives on Products, Processes and Policies for Informed Decision Making.”
Daryl Madden, senior vice president and general manager, Advanced Information Solutions and Geospatial Solutions at Textron Systems Geospatial Solutions of Sterling, Va. spoke with GISCafe Voice about the $13 million corporation’s commercial off-the-shelf products.
Those I spoke to at SPAR3D 2016 last week were amazed at the progress the 3D laser scanning/reality capture products had made over just one year. Many people attended in order to find out if the technology would be right for their organization and what it would entail in terms of a learning curve, and of course, how much it would cost.
The four morning keynotes kicking off SPAR3D 2016 Expo and Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, Tuesday morning included Eddie Paddock, Engineering/VR Technical Discipline lead, NASA Johnson Space Center, Greg Bentley, CEO Bentley Systems, Inc., David Smith, CTO, Wearality, and Curtis Chan, technical evangelist, Autodesk.
Brian Goldin, CEO and founder of Voyager Search and formerly of Esri, recognizes that geospatial systems amass a tremendous amount of data. “A lot of solutions for helping people understand data haven’t evolved very well,” said Goldin. “By taking some modern web search technology and combining it with geospatial data, we can allow someone to install some software for dealing with their data without impacting their work in their existing IT environments.”
In February, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) responded to concern about increased El Nino flood risk by releasing new data on National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) policies, which showed an increase in more than 27,000 new NFIP policies written in California during the month of December 2015.
At Esri Federal GIS two weeks ago, there were a number of three-hour presentations called “Summits” that focused on particular areas of expertise and featured many federal agency experts.