Tuesday, May 19. 2009

Podcast: DigitalGlobe IPO: Pushing Geospatial into IT?

This week DigitalGlobe joined the ranks of other companies that are publicly traded. Does this move and the related buzz help move geospatial technology into the realm of the broader information technology space? How should we see this change? Also: concerns about GeoEye-1 push that company's stock down.


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Thursday, February 12. 2009

TomTom Map Share Feedback Even Surprises Tele Atlas

This week, Tele Atlas (TA) announced the first release of their global street network that is augmented with data from TomTom Map Share, a service offered to users of TomTom portable navigation devices (PND) that allows them to independently report a variety of road network changes including impedences, new signage, etc. The feedback is sent to TA, a TomTom company, but as a consequence of collecting so much additional data, TA recognized that it was also capturing new road geometry not previously mapped.

Users of TomTom PNDs have the option of providing feedback in a few different ways. One is to manually indicate road blockages, for example, but another is to share certain bits of data such as speed and position. As it turns out,TomTom users were leaving their PNDs on even in areas where there was sparse or no road coverage such as certain regions of Eastern Europe. This feedback made it's way to TA database managers that are recognizing that new road segments were being added to the community contributed data. This new information allows the company to selectively dispatch crews to verify new road geometry and perhaps identify pockets of new users for additional marketing and advertising.

I spoke to Mr. Arnout Desmet while attending the Map World Forum conference in Hyderbad. Directions just recently interviewed Mr. Desmet when it was announced that TA had signed a agreement with the Survey of India (SOI) to incorporate SOI data into the TA road database. He also informed me about TA's historical speed profiles which are now being incorporated into traffic information. TA began collecting speed information in 2006 and now has a database of historical profiles in 5 minute increments for various times of day and now over months of time. Essentially, TomTom users are acting as probes on the street network collecting a vast amount of data that now equals twice the entire road network of Europe every 24 hours according to Mr. Desmet. He believes this is a unique service that TomTom provides to users.

Tuesday, February 10. 2009

Indian Ministry or Earth Science Focuses on Developing Tsunami Early Warning System

In an interview conducted with Dr. Shailesh Nayak, Secretary of the Ministry of Earth Science (Government of India), we discussed the use of GIS in developing a tsunami warning system that was begun shortly after the Indonesian tsunami in December 2004. India recognized a need for a rapid response system for tsunami warning. His department instituted a program to develop a three-part system using sensor systems to monitor tides, ocean bottom pressure recorders, and other coastal monitoring stations. He emphasized the need to acquire data in real-time. However, in order to enact a warning system that was accurate, there was a need to establish a huge database of tsunami models.

Creating a Sustainable Lens...a Digital Globe: Remote Sensing CEO's Offer Future Vision

Two remote sensing technology CEOs offered provocative insights into how they will conduct their companies in the near future at the Map World Forum in Hyderabad, India today. Jill Smith of DigitalGlobe wants her company to proactively collect imagery of regions of the world where climate change or other problems might be of interest to the global geospatial community. Dr. Robert Moses of PCI Geomatics believes that one day we will use a web service to query and analyze for change detection in a region using not only a time-series of remotely-sensed imagery but advanced classification algorithms to automatically map and highlight the affected areas. "The greatest opportunity is to enable a true model using all of the available sensors," said Moses.

Thursday, February 5. 2009

NASA Satellite to Map Earth's CO2 Levels

NASA will soon launch the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO), a satellite that will effectively detect the levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere. Prior to the launch of the OCO, CO₂ measurements were taken with land-based instrumentation such as FLUXNET and AmeriFlux both of which are management by Oak Ridge National Labs (ORNL). The OCO will measure the reflected radiance in both the near IR (.77 µ) and slightly longer wavelengths (2.06 µm) for oxygen and CO₂ bands, respectively, to model the actual CO₂ levels. Chemical and Engineering News reports that the launch is scheduled for Feb. 23. Airborne instruments will support the calibration of the model.

SiRF Technology’s GPS Solutions in SYNC with Ford Cars…Literally

SiRF Technology is providing the GPS chip set for Ford Motor Corporation’s SYNC technology to support location-based applications. SYNC was developed jointly with Microsoft and was launched 18 months ago on selected Ford vehicles. It is an in-dash system for advanced connectivity, communication and entertainment but, as importantly, functions as platform for many other applications that can be expanded when the demand is needed.  On January 8th at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Ford announced that SYNC’s new features will now include Traffic by INRIX and driving directions supported by TeleNav that leverage SiRF’s technology.

SiRF is working with M/A-COM Technology Solutions, a tier 1 electronics supplier to Ford that is supplying an integrated module to Ford that includes the SiRF chip set with antenna, receiver, and memory as well as a Bluetooth-enabled phone. M/A-Com is responsible for linking location to the car’s architecture bus and making sure it works indoors as well as outdoors.

The technology of M/A-Com and SiRF that is being supplied to Ford will use the car’s architecture bus to take information from the car’s many other sensors to compliment the GPS. Using a SiRF Star II GPS chip set, SiRF developed new software architecture to work with the car’s sensors.  This allows the SiRF GPS chips to calibrate the vehicle’s sensors, such as an internal gyroscope, and the vehicle’s sensors will in turn support location determination if a GPS signal is not available.

When GPS is not reliable, the combined measurements of speed and heading as well as the odometer are used to determine the vehicles location. The vehicle’s internal gyroscope is involved to help also determine whether the car is going forward or reverse so that location accuracy will be maintained. Other vehicle sensors are so accurate so as to detect whether the wheels are drifting and if the car tires are expanding, both of which might affect the vehicle’s position over long distances. In that case, the M/A-COM modules is sophisticated enough to perform the recalibration needed to correct location.