In recent years, Emergency Response and Recovery has been tasked with addressing the growing number of natural disasters and manmade disasters worldwide. When a disaster happens, the role of GIS and geospatial is front and center in the identification of location and the location of individuals impacted in the event, as well as the clarification of the physical damage to vital structures. It is also fundamental to the provision of medical care and utilities during a time when those things may be scarce or non-existent.
What has been an un-announcement in the geospatial industry is the fact that Google Maps Engine and Google Earth Enterprise are to be discontinued by Google. It’s possible that Google didn’t send out a press release about this because their customers, who are mainly consumers, may mistake the message to mean that Google Maps and Google Earth will be discontinued by Google, which is absolutely not the case.
The Esri/Google architecture in the post Google Earth Enterprise World
Reposting: During the week of September 15th, GISCafe Voice will run a special feature blog on the topic, “Satellite Imaging.”
If you wish to have your company included, please let me know, Susan Smith at susan.smith@ibsystems.com The Satellite Imaging Questionnaire will be sent to all companies who offer satellite imaging products and services, so that we may thoroughly cover all opportunities available. Or, you can print it yourself from this blog and email it to me.
At Esri UC, we heard about the launch of DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-3 from DigitalGlobe senior scientist, Product Development and Labs, Bill Baugh. This satellite will be especially helpful for mapping mineral mining.
WorldView-3 is superspectral and has 16 spectrums, and contains the overall structure of spectrum. “The bands coming in WorldView-3 will allow you to go after data you might not be able to go after normally,” said Baugh. “You’ll be able to see iron, rocks (short wave infrared) and steel infrastructure.”Additionally, with SWIR-6 you can see through the smoke from a fire, which would be valuable for crisis response, when you have to see what’s on the ground.
At the other end of the spectrum (excuse the pun), in 2009, a couple of Stanford grad students envisioned that they could “index the earth the way Google indexes the Internet.” This is how the radical satellite imaging company Skybox was born. And now Google has acquired the company. So I guess that’s where Google comes in: already there, in the way of indexing. And Skybox is already there in terms of providing the satellite. Last November the company launched its first mini-bar-sized satellite, SkySat-1 into orbit aboard a Russian Dnepr rocket. Plans are to launch eight more by the end of 2015. Skybox even has its own rocket.
I spoke to many of you at Esri UC, but I know there are many out there that I may have missed seeing. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to be included in the September coverage. Deadline for materials: September 1, 2014.
Greg Bentley, CEO of Bentley Systems, last week gave an overview of the company’s financial position as a private company. The company’s focus is infrastructure, meaning “everything people build to improve our planet,” according to Mr. Bentley.
Bentley is a “no drama company” when it comes to reporting, said Mr. Bentley. In their 30th year, he said that historical GAP revenues are $550 million. These GAP revenues grew 8% percent in constant currencies, and organic growth grew by 6%.
“Since the majority of revenues are from annual subscription, 75% of our revenues from subscriptions, up from 72% in 2011, and that’s from ongoing relationships, not ‘customers,’” said Mr. Bentley.
Bentley employees (although he doesn’t like to call them employees as they are also investors in the company – “colleagues and family”) own 98% percent of Bentley Systems. They have a global profit sharing plan and a buy-back plan.
I’ve been wondering what would happen with in-car navigation as a result of the new turn-by-turn navigation now available in smartphones. In-car navigation is much more expensive than the $50 app that allows you to use turn-by-turn navigation on your cell phone. The big plus of in-car navigation is the fact that you don’t have to hold your device while trying to navigate busy streets. But the higher price tag of in-car navigation has car manufacturers thinking up ways to utilize the smartphone navigation system.
Solutions are in the works, according to an article in today’s New York Times: Ford has teamed up with the navigation company Telenav to enable Telenav’s Scout software to run on compatible vehicles outfitted with Ford’s Sync system and software called Applink. A $25-a-year app, Car Connect, lets drivers connect Android phones to the dash. (An iPhone version is in the works.)
In a recent article “Emergency rescuers: Use GPS devices with caution,” the message was really about what happened to Craig Matthews, who turned off a major highway in northern New Mexico last spring, whose remains were found in July by his girlfriend and another friend. Why? Matthews had been traveling north on Interstate 25 when he talked to his girlfriend, Debra Hughes, who lived in Penrose, Colorado. When Matthews didn’t return home, Hughes called search and rescue. A state game warden found his truck lodged in a snowdrift four days later about 44 miles off a remote side road, U.S. 64. He was found approximately 4/10 of a mile from the vehicle.
Hughes thinks Matthews got confused after he stopped for coffee in the town of Raton which is on the Interstate, and got on 64 instead of the Interstate. She thinks he turned on his GPS to direct him toward home.
The first two ESA Galileo navigation satellites in space can now transmit dummy signals in a modulation scheme designed to allow full interoperability with the US GPS once operational services start.
This is the European version of the Multiplexed Binary Offset Code signal standard which is the agreed upon standard with the United States for the interoperability of Galileo and GPS.
“This is an advanced modulation technique that offers robust protection against signal interference and the misleading signal reflections known as ‘multipath’,” said Marco Falcone, Head of Galileo System Services.
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s new PETMAN robot expresses none of the fatigue of a human soldier, and whether he can leap buildings with a single bound is yet to be discovered. This innovation fof DARPA’s has sparked the new contest that aims to develop technology that advances robotics to the next level. The level at which robots can do what we do, go where we can’t, and change shape as necessary.
Trimble Navigation Limited (TRMB) reported that its fourth-quarter GAAP net income attributable to the company was $29.40, down from $36.56 million in the same quarter last year. Earnings per share in the fourth quarter of 2011 were $0.23 as compared to diluted earnings per share of $0.29 in the fourth quarter of 2010.
In November a gathering of 150 GPS engineers convened in Stanford at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center to discuss the $110 billion GPS market for military and commercial aviation systems, consumer mapping services in cars and automated agricultural machines, among other related industries at the fifth annual Stanford University symposium on Position, Navigation and Time.
A big topic on the table is that GPS is no longer the only navigation and tracking system on the planet any more. According to a November article in Wired, there are four things threatening the future of GPS:
Next-generation mobile broadband services angling for a piece of the electromagnetic spectrum relied upon by GPS
Cheap GPS jammers flooding the highways, thanks to consumers worried about invasive police and employers surveillance;
Cosmic events, like solar storms
Future location technology that will ultimately push those services to places where GPS hasn’t been able to go.
What’s on the horizon is the new mobile broadband company, Lightsquared, that has been said to threaten GPS signals with interference from a neighboring spectrum. Lightsquared appears at first like it will solve a lot of problems to broadband, by offering cable – like bandwidth to mobile customers through LTE, a next generation wireless service. What’s more, the Obama administration has endorsed Lightsquared – which resides in the same spectrum that runs GPS, which is lower power and gets interference easily.
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