Tell a MrSid Story for its 20th Anniversary and other GIS Competitions

LizardTech is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the MrSID imagery format:

We'll be hosting events throughout the year to celebrate MrSID's 20th anniversary. In the meantime, we’re holding a contest, inviting people like you – in fact, you – to say a word or two about how MrSID has come to their rescue. Send us your recollection or tribute at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) by July 10th, 2012. We’ll pick three contributors at random. Grand prize winner will receive an iPad and the two runner-ups will each receive a $50 gift card to amazon.com. We will announce the winners the winners via Twitter at Esri International User Conference in San Diego on July 24th.

- webpage via @gletham

Autodesk is running the Infrastructure Excellence competition with prizes including HP hardware, trips to Autodesk University and cash. Infrastructure projects that use specific Autodesk software are eligible. Last day to submit May 31.

- Infrastructure Excellence website via @engis

Four University of Wisconsin-Whitewater students who mapped all of the buildings, athletic fields and parking lots on their school's campus have tied with three other teams for third place in a Google Map Maker Competition.

University of Waterloo in Canada won the big prize. The folks, one of whom uses a wheel chair and mapped barriers to travel in the mode, got notebooks, stickers, etc. No word on if they are geo students or in some other area of study.

- Chicago Tribune

In Brazil, It’s All About Geospatial Data: Collection, Maintenance, Processing

As mentioned in my previous post, it's obvious by the vendor exhibits at the MundoGEO Connect conference here in Sao Paulo that the focus is on data: data capture, data management and metadata.  That was brought home again in today's keynote  addresses.

Dale Lutz, vice president and co-founder of Safe Software offered his perspective on the community's ability to handle as much data as we are collecting. "We are inundated by data in the form of point clouds. LiDAR is inexpensive, accurate and voluminous," said Lutz. In addition, Lutz noted that while solutions from his company make it easy to integrate data by extracting, transforming and loading, i.e. spatial ETL, geospatial data to minimize myriad format exchange problems, this solves only part of the problem. "Everyone has difference jobs and different needs and the result is different formats."

Ruedi Wagner, vice president of imaging for Leica Geosystems, noted another challenge caused by point clouds. LiDAR creates n-dimensional data because it is possible to annotate points with hyperspectral data. This can lead to not only spatially accurate data but data containing information derived from sensors that parse spectroradiometric information into extremely narrow bands. "At 5 cm accuracy, you can map every single tree leaf … There is work for us for years to come, said Wagner."

Ray Kerwin, global product planning director for Topcon, discussed precision guidance of construction vehicles.  He showed how it is possible to monitor machine sensors for equipment health as well as establishing a geofence to make certain that the equipment does not venture outside an area where that equipment will not function properly.


And so, while Brazil is an extremely developed nation with well established infrastructure, the need to continually collect data for maintenance as well as new projects is paramount. As mentioned above, data collection equipment has become relatively inexpensive. However, the manpower to process these data is not and the country faces a challenge to education more geospatial professionals.

GITA Re-Assessing Annual Conference

I spoke with Bob Samborski, president of the Geospatial Information and Technology Association (GITA), this morning regarding some reports that have been surfacing about the status of the Geospatial Solutions Conference that took place this week in Grapevine, Texas. Attendance for the association's annual conference had been declining in recent years and there had been discussions among board members as to the future of the event. Several factors, inlcuding the economy, have led Samborski to indicate that the conference "had run its course." Both from attendees and exhibitors the feedback had been that while the program was excellent, the attendance was disappointing.

For next year, Samborski indicated that whatever the association decides, it will be "not this conference...not [in] this format." No dates have been confirmed for next year nor a meeting venue. This was the 34th annual meeting for the association and Samborski said it took some time for him to come to the conclusion that this may be the final event, but hastened to add that other alternatives are being discussed. One of those alternatives may include co-locating a similar GITA event with Utilimetrics, another utility technology association at their Autovation conference. Samborski felt that since Utilimetrics was another association that the fit with their business model may be most appropriate. These details will all be worked out in the future and an official statement from GITA will be forthcoming.

My take: Over the last several years, I've commented on the state of the GITA conference (2005, 2007, 2010) and have had many conversations with Bob. I think the decision taken at this time by the association is the proper one and the move to build relationships with other, similar utility technology associations will benefit the community of users and association members. It's time to change and as geospatial techology matures, we're seeing a shift toward vertical solution events rather than broad GIS conferences. While the conclusion of this annual event may seen unfortunate, the association should and will look toward other avenues to forge a different technology community.

Indian Infrastructure Development #GWF

For those of you who hear of the tremendous expansion of the infrastructure within India but don’t always get to see it, I wanted to offer these photos from Hyderabad (I took the photos while attending the Geospatial World Forum):

Rajiv Ghandi Airport (click for larger image) opened in 2009 and receives international flights direct from Abu Dhabi, Frankfurt, Dubai, and other cities. Other major Indian cities have also just opened new airports within the last 5 years including Mumbai and New Delhi.

Below is an image of a four-lane highway near the airport that wasn’t open two years ago when I visited. Other highways like this one were under construction as well.

Here’s another shot of the highway (Click for larger image)

The skyline looks like this in nearly all directions. Condos and office buildings are going up at a rapid pace.

Hyderabad is a city of over 6 million people in the metropolitan area.

Infrastructure Means Opportunity for Geospatial #BeInspired2010

By attending the BeInspired Conference in Amsterdam this week hosted by Bentley Systems I got the feeling that the global economy is being propped up by massive infrastructure projects. From the $59 million Jiangxia 500 kV substation project in China (shown at right… and China needs 200 more to support the growth of its economy) to London’s $24 Billion Crossrail project, a rail line cutting through the city, to offshore drilling platforms in Vietnam, the scope of the construction as well as the information processing and management aspects of these projects leads me to conclude that much of the growth in geospatial will be to support projects such as these.

To that end, Bentley released a study of their own to rank the largest owners of infrastructure by value. The Bentley Infrastructure 500 report, compiled over an 18 month period, ranks the top owners of infrastructure around the world from within both the public and private sectors.

How and why did Bentley undertake this? Bentley reviewed financial statements of these organizations and recorded the value of their tangible fixed assets, net of depreciation. Bentley found the yearly list of largest design firms from the Engineering News Record (ENR), based on current spending and project progress only, was inadequate to help them quantify the market, hence leading to this report. The result provides an understanding of who or what has the highest investment in total infrastructure. According to Bentley, total infrastructure of these 500 owner/operators is $13 Trillion, roughly the size of the U.S.’s annual gross domestic product (GDP) and equal to the combined GDP of China, Japan and Germany.

What this says to Bentley, as well as other information technology providers, is that efficiency in maintaining these assets will be driven by better information management and not necessarily in new buildings and projects. And while, this conference certainly illustrated the work of new and ongoing projects, the growth rate in places like China or India, and the impact of U.S. stimulus funds may soon peak. As such, work will turn to asset management through better “information management.”

Greg Bentley, the company’s CEO (above right), also referred to the high level of interest in 3D City GIS, a marketing program by Bentley to illustrate the integration of their solutions. The concept of integrated information management within cities is not new nor is the use of 3D visualization of infrastructure for urban planning or economic development. What’s changed perhaps is the fact that much more data has been digitally collected, now and within the past ten years, and the ability to exchange data between geospatial solution providers, whether though open standards or simply better ETL products, has allowed GIS analysts to explore 3D. In addition, product suites for geospatial and civil engineering are better integrated. So, when the need arises to show how the transportation network will be impacted by a new utility substation, the data are more easily retrieved, visualized and analyzed.

Malcolm Taylor (at right), head of technical support services for London’s (UK) Crossrail project, said that “Data is running through Crossrail veins.” While there’s lots of steel to bend and concrete to pour, Taylor knew that information technology would be key to efficient project management. He said that his “data strategy was to create an integrated design, facilitating multidisciplinary collaboration through the life of the project becoming the base for an asset management system.” Taylor shared that the GIS data alone consists of 231 tables, 420 layers, 34 thematics and 250 additional layers (unspecified) and called this use of these data “a pretty powerful way of working.”

As I listened to these presentations, it was hard not to conclude that geospatial technology for infrastructure management has a bright future now and beyond the current recession.

[Full disclosure: Bentley is supporting this trip with travel expenses]