While it’s still early for most of us to be thinking about the 2020 Census, it is not too early for the U.S. Census and most technology providers of Census software to be considering how to prepare.
Michael Ratcliffe, Asst. Division Chief, Geographic Standards, Criteria, Research, and Quality, Geography Division, US Census Bureau, spoke with GISCafe Voice about what the 2020 Census requires, and the Local Update of Census Addresses (LUCA).
With regard to the 2020 Census, an accurate address file for each state is essential, otherwise each state could lose millions of dollars in federal funding. It can also affect state budget obviously, and number of seats in Congress (determined by count).
What are ways the Census can ensure everyone gets counted in 2020?
Our goal is a complete and accurate census.
An accurate count helps determine how the nation allocates tax dollars to pay for services used by the entire local population — citizens and noncitizens alike and accurate data are crucial for determining how many congressional seats each state gets.
We need communities to help us spread the word that all census responses are confidential and we will continue working with trusted voices in local communities to encourage people to participate.
What are any new requirements for the 2020 LUCA program for identifying individuals and how do they contrast with past requirements?
Will townships, tribes, cities and counties submit their Census figures to the state or submit them independently?
The Census is self-response only. Census numbers are not compiled by any organization other than the Census Bureau. Residents should provide their 2020 Census responses to the Census Bureau only.
Will citizenship status be included in this collection?
UK laser scanning and monitoring companies 3D Laser Mapping Ltd and GeoSLAM Ltd have merged to create a highly innovative mobile mapping and monitoring technology provider. While geospatial technology supplier and innovator, 3D Laser Mapping, works with its customers to capture and analyze their world in 3D, GeoSLAM is a “go-anywhere” technology with its state-of-the-art 3D handheld mobile mapping technology solutions.
3D Laser Mapping’s customers include governments, universities, large mining companies, blue-chip firms and operators of highways, power lines and railways. GeoSLAM takes 3D mobile mapping to challenging environments: underground, indoor or difficult to access, removing the need for GPS.
Shareholders agreed to merge the businesses to take advantage of new world market opportunities, increased R&D capability and ensure greater market reach. Shareholders include Graham Hunter, the founder of 3D Laser Mapping and CSIRO’s Data61, Australia’s data innovation network, part of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia’s national science agency. The contribution of CSIRO since the formation of GeoSLAM in 2012, has been significant in creating the market for handheld mobile mapping.
Graham Hunter, CEO of GeoSLAM, spoke with GISCafe Voice about the merger and what it means for customers of both products.
Recently, Trimble announced that its Trimble® Catalyst™ software-defined Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver for Android phones and tablets has been updated to support GLONASS.
Aerial mapping company Bluesky of Leicestershire, UK has completed a research project backed by the UK government’s innovation agency, Innovate UK, to develop the use of mobile phones for capturing accurate 3D spatial information.
The nine-month research project focused on the use of standard smart phone technology to capture and calibrate video footage, and then convert it to 3D information. Designed for electricity Distribution Network Operators (DNO) and other organizations with a distributed asset base, the low-cost measurement tool can provide an accurate record of the feature’s location and its environment. Accurate measurements of essential infrastructure, such as overhead power lines and other utility facilities, could then be extracted using specially developed algorithms and workflows.
Trimble announced the release of the Trimble® MX9 mobile mapping solution, completing Trimble’s mobile mapping portfolio. A next-generation mobile mapping system, the Trimble MX9 combines a vehicle-mounted mobile LIDAR system, multi-camera imaging and field software designed for efficient, precise and high-volume data capture for a broad range of mobile mapping applications such as road surveys, topographic mapping, 3D-modeling and asset management.
Trimble MX9 Back Perspective
According to company materials, the Trimble MX9 is characterized by its ability to capture dense point cloud data along with 360 degree immersive georeferenced imagery using an industry-leading spherical camera, GNSS/INS technology and dual-head laser scanning sensors. The system’s lightweight design makes it easy to install and setup on a variety of vehicles. Spatial data can be captured at highway speeds from inside the vehicle for safe operation in transportation corridors. The intuitive, browser-based field software, accessible via most tablets or any notebook, enables operators to quickly establish and conduct data acquisition missions, monitor the status of the system as well as assess the quality of the acquired data in real time.
Christian Hoffmann, Market Manager, Mobile Mapping Solutions, Trimble Geospatial spoke with GISCafe Voice about the recent announcement:
GISCafe Voice: Has Trimble had a mobile mapping solution before the MX9?
The Trimble Mobile Mapping portfolio has been in the market for more than a decade with popular products like the MX2 and MX7, which we currently sell. The MX9 completes Trimble’s mobile mapping portfolio, adding a high-end system that is designed for efficient acquisition of survey-grade dense point cloud data and imagery. The lightweight design and a focus on easy, tablet-based operation lowers the learning curve and contributes to maximize ROI.
Trimble MX9 Top View
GISCafe Voice: Is there a limit to how much point cloud data the MX9 can gather?
The system collects up to 2 million points per second plus various imagery, which is one of the highest data rates in the market. 2 x 2 TByte SSD drives allow recording a lot of data, typically for 7-8 hours of constant data recording. Details are dependent on the project specifications. Customers can use additional sets of disks in order to maximize acquisition capacity. (more…)
2017 tested the resilience of geospatial technologies with many natural disasters. In reviewing the year, we take a look at products, services and technologies that moved the industry forward and responded eloquently to geospatial need.
Disaster response, weather tracking, and predictive weather analysis drove a great deal of development and put to the test those technologies in place for just such eventualities.
Other areas of interest include new developments in sensors, location and Big Data, small sats, mobile mapping and 3D models for indoor mapping, autonomous driving, and building smart cities.
Under the Weather
In an interview with URISA’s GISCorps founder Shoreh Elhami and URISA executive director Wendy Nelson, they offer a broader understanding of what GISCorps is about and how it can help with natural disasters.
Is ArcGIS Online able to generate a setting for help, i.e., website, app, or whatever resource might be needed, during a natural disaster event? And how soon might that be available to the public?
ArcGIS Online (AGO) can be used to create a variety of story maps. Those story maps as well as any AGO based web apps can be embedded in any website and very quickly. A good example of that is the web app that our volunteers embedded in Fort Bend County’s website on road closures. Another example is a story map that was built by NAPSG shortly after the disaster, our volunteers also assisted with that project.
How has the GIS relief effort for Hurricane Harvey been handled by GISCorps so far and what are the plans going forward?
26 of our volunteers have been working on mapping road closures in Fort Bend County. The information originates from County’s website, emails, and also tweets. The Web app has been helpful to residents, first responders, and the county staff. The project was lead by two of our volunteers who worked with GISCorps Core Committee members on managing the project. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) also requested the assistance of a GIS programmer to pull data from the FEMA site on an ongoing basis. The GISCorps Recruitment team selected a volunteer within 30 hours and put the volunteer in contact with CDC. We also asked our volunteers to contribute to NAPSG story map. We are currently on stand-by and ready to assist with other projects at this time, be it for Harvey or Irma.
Hurricane Harvey weather map
How do the projects for Hurricane Harvey and Katrina differ or are they the same? What are the priorities?
Quite different. For Katrina, we deployed 30 volunteers onsite, the option to assist remotely didn’t even exist. Volunteers packed up their bags, laptops, and other essentials and head over to the affected areas within a couple of days. For Harvey (and many other disasters of the past few years), we haven’t had to send anyone anywhere. Volunteers work from their home or offices and have been effective in different ways. For Katrina, the priority was to help with the rescue efforts at first (locate people under stress and report to the coast guard) and then, the recovery phase began where volunteers made 100’s of maps and conducted lots of analysis). For Harvey, crowd sourcing and information from social media have become major sources of information for developing interactive maps to first responders and other affected population.]
Tom Jeffrey, CEO of CoreLogic, a leading global property information, analytics and data-enabled solutions provider, talked about their analysis for the flooding and storm surge as a result of Hurricane Harvey. (more…)
This week the news hit close to home: my son was working in the Manderley Bay Hotel when the shooter opened fire on Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas outside. He was safe thank God, but terribly shaken by the event as visitors poured into the hotel with panicked stories and later, the hotel was in lockdown for several hours. The level of fear and panic generated by this event was hard to contain as most people didn’t know what was happening and heard only shots coming from up high.
Rather than rehashing the news here, which everyone has read already via TV or popups on their phones, I’m going to blog through maps that show factual information on this and other recent disasters that have hit close to home, both manmade and natural. Maps put events in perspective, take one incident out of isolation and place it in context.
From The Guardian: The United States owns way, way more guns per capita than the rest of the world. And the best research on gun violence suggests that’s probably contributing to our homicide problem — as exemplified by Sunday night’s horrific shooting.
Here’s a map of firearm ownership around the world, using 2012 data compiled by The Guardian. The United States has nearly twice as many guns per 100 people as the next closest country, Yemen — 88.8 guns per 100 as opposed to 54.8 in Yemen:
We have also the aftermath of the devastation from three hurricanes making landfall in the U.S., Mexico and the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Barbuda and others, plus an earthquake in Mexico. Fortunately maps are abundant in the GIS world for tracking and analysis of the events, plus disaster recovery efforts.
In many parts of the world people do not have physical addresses, nor defined property boundaries. The importance of identifying location by addressing/location with just three words is brought to light in this video by what3words:
This Esri Interactive Map presents the enriched Shakemap of the M 7.1 Earthquake near Puebla, Mexico to show the potential impact to population and households in the area.
Clicking on the shaded areas allows you to view the impact for that intensity:
Orange (very strong): 447k total population; 114k total households
Yellow (strong): 10.2m total population; 2.6m total households
Green (moderate): 8.7m total population; 4.8m total households
Blue (light): 43.1 total population; 10.8m total households
While there are still many places that are not on the radar of technology after catastrophic events such as hurricanes, cyclones and earthquakes, map technology may be used to locate victims and learn where to provide desperately needed services. From company materials: Esri is supporting organizations that are responding to hurricane/cyclone disasters with software, data, imagery, project services, and technical support. If you are in need of software or support, complete the Request Assistance form on the webpage above. All requests should be justified in the message section of the form and are subject to approval.
Web mapping applications related to Hurricane Maria provided from the Esri Disaster Response Program and agencies involved in response to and monitoring of the hurricane. There is also an identical page for Hurricane Irma.
CrowdRescueHQ is an organization powered by volunteers, who gather data from social media to support rescue efforts and victims of natural disasters. This CrowdSourceHQ Observations dashboard is updated every half-minute and displays latest observations reported in Puerto Rico related to Hurricane Maria.
Woolpert, working under two separate contracts that had very technically different requirements, collected and posted high-resolution, before-and-after imagery of areas in Florida affected by Hurricane Irma to assist with flooding and damage assessment.
From company materials: Miami-Dade County contracted with Woolpert for post-storm imagery as Hurricane Irma approached, while Woolpert’s work with the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) is part of an existing five-year, statewide contract for emergency mapping services.
“Miami-Dade wanted imagery from after the event, documenting damage assessment, while FDOT wanted to see how high the water got at the peak of the flooding to gain current flood conditions,” Woolpert project manager Mike Zoltek said. “For FDOT, we captured 1,000 square miles of imagery along the St. Johns River in a single day as the water was cresting. The imagery was collected across four counties—St. Johns, Duval, Putnam and Clay—from Palatka to Jacksonville.”
The FDOT project is complete, while the Miami-Dade project continued as weather allowed throughout the week.
The collections have included 6-inch and 1-foot ground sampling distance (GSD) orthoimagery. The smaller the GSD, the higher the image resolution. As part of this process, Woolpert captured aerial imagery, processed the data, paired it with comparable imagery collected prior to the hurricane, delivered it to clients and posted it on a before-and-after online slider for use by anyone affected by the disaster.
The resulting online maps, aggregated with data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Google, enable viewers to look up an address, navigate to an area of concern, and zoom in and out.
Woolpert, whose planes had just returned from mapping the devastation in Houston after Hurricane Harvey when contacted by Miami-Dade, credited the county for preparing for recovery efforts before the storm hit.
Two Koreas Story Map
Two Koreas
Tensions between the U.S. have escalated rapidly, with a lot of chest thumping and threats of nuclear war. The conflict is not new, and has roots reaching all the way back to World War II. It is a conflict over control of the Korean Peninsula, pitting the North against the South.
While the Korean War of the early 1950s never formally ended, its aftermath has created starkly divergent worlds for those living on either side of the north-south divide. This Esri Story Map takes a look at life in the two Koreas; how such a night-and-day difference came to be; and offers some analysis of where the crisis could go from here.
Pitney Bowes data and software solutions today announced a major expansion of their solutions, adding location to Big Data to perform location analytics, to give organizations a better understanding of their customers. The announcement is three-pronged: Big Data Module for the flagship solution Spectrum, Addressing and GeoEnrichment Data Portfolio and Conform Solution Suite.
Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Structural Integrity (SI) provides innovative engineering services and proven solutions for structural evaluation and repair. TerraGo announced recently that Structural Integrity has chosen TerraGo Magic to build a field data collection and collaboration app for field inspectors, engineers and others involved in their projects to improve efficiency of field reporting, inspection workflows and data management.
Mark Reid, Vice President of Product Management at GeoSLAM Ltd talked about their recent announcement of the real-time upgrade option for the ZEB-REVO, their handheld mobile mapping system. Demonstrated for the first time at SPAR 3D 2017 in Houston, the optional upgrade includes a revised datalogger capable of undertaking SLAM registration in real-time. It has its own integrated Wi-Fi, with results that can be displayed live, as they are captured, on any web browser enabled device including tablets and smartphones.
Thornton Abbey Scan
GISCafe Voice: What are some indoor map applications for ZEB-REVO?
The ZEB-REVO handheld mobile mapping device employs a highly robust 3D Simultaneous Localisation And Mapping (SLAM) algorithm, which enables the rapid creation of a 3-dimensional model of any space.
Since it does not require a GPS signal, the ZEB-REVO is at its best in complex, enclosed, multi-level environments, without compromising on the accuracy of data collection.
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