The ESRI Surveying and Engineering GIS Summit is in its fifth year this August. The ESRI Remote Sensing and GIS Summit debuts at the same time, just before the formal Monday opening of the ESRI International User Conference. Also occurring before the main event are the Executive Summit (invitation only) and the Education User Conference, EdUC.

Of these, I've only managed to attend EdUC (I have a standing commitment to ride in or volunteer at the Pan Mass Challenge bike event, which often occurs the Friday/Sat preceding UC). It's just great and I hope I can attend again somehow, now that I'm teaching again. The Executive Summit, which my colleague Joe Francica has attended (his 2005 review), is all about helping executives "get" or "get more" out of GIS.

But these "new" summits are different. They are, from what I gather, opportunities to build bridges with related disciplines. I use that term with care. A discipline has its own rules, its own tools and technologies, in these cases, tools and technologies allied with GIS. I want to contrast disciplines with "industries" or "business areas." While ESRI does have a "surveying industry manager," Brent Jones, who hails from the Northeast, somehow it doesn't fall into the same space as other ESRI "industries." It's more like the "industry" I used to manage at ESRI, the one called "CAD." Surveying, like CAD and remote sensing, is horizontal and serves many industries. Other ESRI industries, oil and gas, pipeline, water, insurance, forestry, agriculture and others tap into GIS to better serve their customers and their bottom line. Surveying, photogrammetry, remote sensing and even CAD are more about data creation and preparation. They are sometimes thought of more as "inputs" to spatial databases and analyses.

So, what will be the next summit ESRI will announce? Will it be LiDAR? CAD? GPS? Location determination? User generated data? With what other technologies does ESRI and by extension the rest of the GIS establishment need to build bridges?

The original technology in the Hyperspectral Airborne Tactical Instrument (HATI) was originally developed to fly in space, but now it's doing work mounted on small aircraft.

It's built on low-cost commercial hardware and was recently used to explore environmental change in the Santa Margarita Ecological Reserve. Northrop Grumman hopes the low barrier to entry will mean further use of hyperspectral sensors. Says Mark Folkman of NG Space Technology:
"We are looking to work with customers who are interested in very low-cost HSI sensors for earth science missions, such as coastal waters imaging, land use, vegetation characterization and monitoring, wildfires, pollution and environmental damage."

Oh, and the technology may one get to space...

- Optics.org

The Clark Labs for Cartographic Technology and Geographic Analysis at Clark University received $1.2 million in two grants, to research the impact of climate phenomena such as El Niño affect the Amazon River area of South America and south central Africa.

The Labs will be researching the potential for a climate teleconnection-based (climate connections between fair apart geographies) early warning system for food, health and ecosystem security. The two grants, each $600,000 are from google.org., the philanthropic arm of the Internet giant, and $600,000 from the San Francisco-based Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

- Worcester Telegram

On Friday DigitalGlobe Inc. added an amendment to its paperwork for an IPO, though no offer date or price is yet announced.

The change of substance reports the Daily Camera is that Citi is no longer an underwriter. The remaining underwriters are Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, UBS Investment Bank, JPMorgan and Jefferies & Company. It's not clear why the change was made, and it may have nothing to do with the perceived value of the offering.

It won't include sensitive areas, but the new service built on the country's own imagery is expected in 6 months. ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair made the announcement.

- Sify