GISCafe Guest 
Sanjay Gangal
Sanjay Gangal is the President of IBSystems, the parent company of AECCafe.com, MCADCafe, EDACafe.Com, GISCafe.Com, and ShareCG.Com. GISCafé industry predictions 2023 – Sinclair IndustriesJanuary 18th, 2023 by Sanjay Gangal
By Bob Sinclair, CEO, Sinclair Industries Bob Sinclair Here is my 2023 prediction piece and headshot – appreciate the consideration – “There’s a lot of talk about artificial intelligence (AI) and this needs to evolve much like maps have evolved over the years. 2023 will be the year of “Geo Consciousness”. To truly realize and understand the potential of GIS we must first recognize that a map is so much more than a map. “Geo Consciousness” is the next frontier in big data, analytics, maps, and AI. This combination of technologies will provide an opportunity to finally have maps that understand they are actually a map. For example, the team at Bob Sinclair Industries are people, that have names, that live in different locations (“our homes”). Read the rest of GISCafé industry predictions 2023 – Sinclair Industries GISCafe Industry Predictions for 2023 – DawoodJanuary 17th, 2023 by Sanjay Gangal
By Jodie Gosselin, GISP, Geospatial Technologies Director, Dawood Engineering Geospatial technologies are prevalent in our personal lives. With the advancements of the smart phone, we have an underlying expectation that information is presented to us in a spatial context. Which businesses are near me? What travel delays will I encounter? When will the snowplow come to my street? Where is my teenager driver? In 2023, I predict that this same level of geospatial expectation becomes fundamentally engrained in our professional lives. Where are the assets that need to be inspected? What travel restrictions will my construction vehicle encounter? Where are existing utilities in relation to proposed construction? When was infrastructure along this route replaced? The business world has already seen this trend begin. My experiences lead me to believe that the spatial delivery of information will become even more widespread—particularly among non-technical users. For example, Dawood developed a web-based GIS solution for a major utility company’s land management team. These non-technical professionals—who had been using a spreadsheet-based workflow successfully for years to manage their easement acquisition process— had the foresight to realize that geo-enabling their workflow would save time and money. Read the rest of GISCafe Industry Predictions for 2023 – Dawood How to Know When It’s Time to Let Legacy Technology GoDecember 13th, 2022 by Sanjay Gangal
If any of these 10 indicators ring true for your AEC firm, it could be time to modernize  By Lucas Hayden Legacy technology reminds me a lot of the aging but still reliable car that has faithfully carried me and my family around for the better part of two decades. Much like legacy software, that car reliably gets us from Point A to Point B — usually, at least — it has features that were ahead of their time when they were first released, many of which still work, and although it’s way out of warranty and has its obvious limitations, it does the things it was built to do. Nothing more, nothing less. Because it still runs well enough, it’s familiar, has that vintage feel, and carries some sentimental value, an item like this, whether it’s a car or a software product, can be difficult to say goodbye to. Yet in the case of my trusty old car, I can’t help but wonder what I’ve been missing and what I stand to gain by replacing it with something more modern — the elevated features, capabilities and amenities others are enjoying while I loyally stick with the status quo. Read the rest of How to Know When It’s Time to Let Legacy Technology Go Autodesk Acquires Immersive Collaboration Platform, The WildMay 7th, 2022 by Sanjay Gangal
President of AECCafe Sanjay Gangal spoke recently with Montreal-based Nick Fonta, General Manager, XR division at Autodesk about Autodesk’s XR immersive experience and the company’s acquisition of The Wild, an immersive remote collaboration platform for architecture, design, and enterprise teams. Sanjay: Thank you so much for joining us, Nick. So, tell us about Autodesk XR Solutions. Nick: For sure. Autodesk has an interesting journey or history when it comes to XR. We started in the 1990s with our first project around XR, and it was a full 3D immersive experience with AutoCAD data that people could navigate into, a little bit like a first-person shooter. You could interact with basic interactions with the AutoCAD scene at the time. That was a project in prototype. And since then, we’ve been doing a lot of things, we have a research group who continued testing the limits of those technologies, but more recently, we’ve had a few things maybe worth noting. The first thing being about seven years ago, we moved into the real-time engine business, if you will, with our own engine, which was called Stingray. And we also built a first product in our trying to understand what that meant phase for Autodesk, and the product was called Revit Live. And both Stingray and Revit Live were our first real experiments to try to understand how real-time technologies, VR, and AR can can add value and solve real problems for our customers in the AEC and manufacturing spaces. We tried a lot of things there, and then finally, a lot more recently, we have products today that support mostly VR, a little bit of AR as well in a portfolio. We have VRED, which targets mainly the automotive industry. VRED is a very high end, high resolution, high level of fidelity when it comes to imageries and rendering. It comes with the collaborative VR experience, so you can bring multiple designers to review, do the design reviews typically on cars, but it’s also used in other manufacturing industries. So that’s one, as a product, it’s been around for about five years, maybe a bit more, and is still around. It’s very successful, we’re seeing a lot of adoption and growth there, and we also have a capability called Create VR that allows designers to sketch and ideate in VR from scratch in a 3D space for a very creative way of transferring your ideas as a designer into the 3D world. Recently we released a capability out of Fusion products, one of our Hero products in manufacturing that allows any Fusion model to be experienced in AR, experienced on iOS with a publish to a USDZ. This is what we have today. This is where this all journey started, maybe a couple of months ago, and I’m sure we’re going to talk more about that now. Read the rest of Autodesk Acquires Immersive Collaboration Platform, The Wild Using Geodesign to Balance Tourism and Conservation in BelizeAugust 2nd, 2021 by Celi Cho
The Conflict of Tourism and Conservation From log cabin and spa-type accommodations settled in lush green rainforests to fun-in-the-sun alongside sparkling waters, Belize is a popular tourist destination. As such, Belize thrives on the tourism industry, one that the COVID-19 pandemic has recently decimated. In non-pandemic times, Belize’s tourist industry is one of its top income earners. Additionally, Belize is also known for its commitment to protecting natural resources. Over 30% of its ecosystems are under various forms of protected status, as they are one of the many reasons tourists visit Belize. However, the exponential growth of the tourist industry has led to significant development and conservation conflicts – this is where the story of Caye Caulker begins. Caye Caulker is off the north-eastern coast of Belize. The island is divided into two by a relatively narrow inlet, known as the “Split.” South Caye Caulker is where most of its permanent population resides and attracts foreign investors eager to exploit tourism in Belize. However, the diverse littoral and mangrove forests in the north appear as another world in contrast to the more developed south. The low-lying forests on North Caye Caulker provide an ideal habitat for reptiles and serve as a seasonal home to many migrating birds. The Caye Caulker Forest and Marine Reserve, which encompass the northern tip and a portion of the Belize Barrier Reef System, were established in 1998 with the assistance of environmentally motivated Caye Caulker residents. It was essential to protect the biodiversity that provides critical ecosystem services and livelihoods, including the barrier reef, associated inland lagoon, littoral forests, and mangrove vegetation. Read the rest of Using Geodesign to Balance Tourism and Conservation in Belize Machine Learning Offers New Opportunities for Geospatial ApplicationsDecember 9th, 2020 by Linda Duffy
Four Powerful ML Apps Thanks to constellations of imaging satellites, advanced aerial cameras and scanners and various other collection devices, the volume of available geospatial data has grown beyond the capability of humans to manually manage and analyze the datasets. To leverage this abundance of information, machine learning is the new programming paradigm that effectively extracts the wealth of knowledge contained in millions of petabytes of archived and frequently refreshed data. Using machine learning, large datasets are reviewed and analyzed in a fraction of the time compared to previous methods.
For customers interested in developing machine learning algorithms that solve problems or answer a specific question, UP42 provides the building blocks for powerful geospatial products. A block essentially is a ready-to-use unit of data or processing algorithm that customers string together to form workflows. The basic data handling algorithms give developers a head start with processing blocks such as “Pan-sharpening SPOT/Pléiades images” and “K-Means Clustering for unsupervised classification.” UP42 also provides access to data blocks from multiple sources ranging from 0.5m Pléiades images to Landsat-8 and NEXTMAP digital surface models and digital terrain models. The developer platform created by UP42 is made accessible to its customers through APIs. The platform enables browsing the datasets and selecting data blocks that meet the customer’s criteria, before applying custom or off-the-shelf algorithms. Developers can choose either to put their custom algorithms onto the platform in a private block or publish a processing block that is accessible to the whole UP42 community for a fee. In addition to facilitating analysis of geospatial data with machine learning, service offerings in the cloud are scalable to meet the need for any level of computing power. Geodesign is an Angel Investor in Post-COVID Planning ProjectsSeptember 14th, 2020 by Jesse Suders
Geodesign and its application in the public sector or the public/private interface is more critical than realized by the clients and companies to whom it is providing a service. Think of Geodesign as an angel investor, anyone can see the benefit, but not everyone knows, or understands where the benefit comes from. Geodesign methods and theories, as well as supporting GIS technologies, are helping to broaden views, increase cross discipline collaboration, and enhance business development efforts. Geodesign frames out the components of decision making for both the client and the consultant supporting them. How is this accomplished? It is done buy utilizing the three-part Geodesign framework process and the associated components. In my professional capacity, I frequently hear public sector clients speak about how they are offered “pie in the sky” solutions by consultants that have no real-world applicability. This is often due to the lack of engagement, management of stakeholder expectations, identification of conflict points, and holistic integration of planning factors including public funding requirements/limitations, as well as others. Additionally, clients seem reluctant to engage “stakeholders” because they fear that broad public input may prolong or complicate the “planning” process. Read the rest of Geodesign is an Angel Investor in Post-COVID Planning Projects Maps are (Still) Important AgainMay 7th, 2020 by Jim Sparks
Maps are important! They have been helping us understand and navigate our world since the beginning of human history and they are helping today as we are reminded in every news cycle. Humankind has been making maps since the time we developed language, and perhaps before. The earliest known map consisted of lines and symbols carved into a flat rock to depict water flow, nearby mountains, and locations of animals that lived in the area. Archeologists discovered the 13,000-year-old map in a cave in northern Spain. It is within the limits of imagination to think that the elements depicted on the stone were extremely important to that ancient cave dweller, and perhaps contributed to his survival. Centuries later, around 600 BCE, the Babylonians sought to show their city within the context of a larger world. A clay tablet, the Imago Mundi, survives from that time and shows the city of Babylonia figuratively as a circle surrounded by the larger circle of land mass, which in turn was surrounded by a “bitter river” that held seven islands. Travelers beware, though – the sixth island is “where a horned bull dwells and attacks the newcomer.” Freakonomics take on “How Do You Reopen a Country?”May 3rd, 2020 by Sanjay Gangal
Listen to this entire Podcast at: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/covid-19-reopen/ Here are some excerpts: Steve Dubner recently called up Steve Levitt, his Freakonomics friend and co-author. He’s an economist at the University of Chicago — which, like all schools, has moved to remote teaching.
Read the rest of Freakonomics take on “How Do You Reopen a Country?” Covid Near You – Participate in a Harvard Medical School Citizen Science ProjectMarch 27th, 2020 by Sanjay Gangal
Source: Science Friday As suspected and confirmed cases of COVID-19 skyrocket in the United States, testing availability remains limited, leaving people wondering if their cough is something to worry about. But testing isn’t just a balm for anxiety—public health officials need data about how far the new virus has spread to make decisions about how to best protect people, and where to send critical resources, like masks and gowns. Accurate information is the frontline of defense, but scientists still have pressing questions about the novel disease. For instance, how many people who are infected actually have symptoms? If you do have symptoms, how likely are you to get severely sick? Until we are able to test both healthy and symptomatic people at scale, citizen science can help fill the gaps in tracking who has COVID-19. And the public health team that launched Flu Near You to track seasonal flu symptoms is now doing just that: soliciting your symptoms in the Covid Near You project. Covid Near You co-founder John Brownstein of Boston Children’s Hospital explains what questions the project may help answer, and what trends Covid Near You will track—including why this data is so valuable to public health efforts. Sign up at www.covidnearyou.org to report how you’re feeling—whether you’re healthy or have symptoms. |
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