Looking forward to 2021 brings with it a necessary looking backward at what geospatial organizations and providers have had to deal with in 2020. On a regular basis throughout the next two months, GISCafe Voice will post industry predictions from professional geospatial organizations, looking at what vectors are influencing the industry and what directions the technologies will take. This week we will hear from spokespeople from Maptek, Nearmap, Septentrio and Sinclair Industries. Autonomous solutions, partnering with other technology providers, mapping critical care centers such as testing centers, cybersecurity and increased accuracy and analytics are all areas that geospatial and mapping have stepped up to as a result of Covid-19. The technology was there, ready to meet the sudden and unanticipated demand. What does that mean going forward? Greater resilience and growth, innovation at a more rapid pace, and much more, according to these industry professionals.
While many industry markets saw a decline during 2020, geospatial and GIS remained steady and are projected to grow. According to Research and Markets’ report, “Geospatial Analytics Market – Global Forecast to 2025” the Geospatial Analytics Market Size is Projected to Grow from USD 52.6 Billion in 2020 to USD 96.3 Billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 12.9% During the Forecast Period.
An interview with the Hon. Susan Gordon, Former Principal Deputy Director of National Security, by Balan Ayyar, CEO, percipient.ai was conducted at the USGIF GEOINT Community Forum Online in the past weeks. Ayyar is the Founder and CEO of percipient.ai, a Silicon Valley-based AI, machine learning and computer vision firm focused on intelligence and national security missions and the company is the title sponsor of the USGIF. Ayyar is also a retired U.S. Air Force General Officer. His last role was as the commanding general of the combined joint interagency task force 435 in Kabul, Afghanistan.
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)
INTERGEO Digital experienced an exciting first day on October 15th with 232 exhibitors who uploaded 2,700 products and data files to the platform. Participants from 150 countries signed in online.
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.