Directions on Remote Sensing and GEOINT

GEOINT with SAP HANA, Esri ArcGIS

{blog_authors backspace="2"}GEOINT with SAP HANA, Esri ArcGIS, {/blog_authors} — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:27:31 -0500

David Cruickshank from SAP's Co-Innovation Lab (COIL) describes in his blog the architecture of how SAP users can perform geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) analysis using both SAP's HANA in-memory database with a workflow to Esri's ArcGIS. Some of the workflow is explained as follows: SAP NS2 looks to create through this COIL project, an SAP Rapid Deployment...

Landsat Data Continuity Mission: The Long Swath by NASA Earth Observatory-GigaPan

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:29:08 -0500

On April 12, 2013, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) reached its final orbit, 705 kilometers (438 miles) above Earth. One week later, the satellite's natural-color imager scanned a swath of land 185-kilometers wide and 9,000 kilometers long (120 by 6,000 miles)--an unusual, unbroken distance considering 70 percent of Earth is covered with water. That flight path...

Trimble Introduces Photogrammetry Functionality to its Trimble Business Center Software for Surveyors

Thu, 16 May 2013 08:12:30 -0500

Trimble (NASDAQ: TRMB) introduced today a new version of its office surveying software—Trimble Business Center Software version 3.00. Trimble Business Center Software version 3.00 is a powerful, next generation surveying office software suite designed to manage, analyze and process all field survey data, including optical, GNSS and imaging data....

Research: US Minorities Live in Heat, Whites in Cooler Areas

Thu, 16 May 2013 08:01:02 -0500

UC Berkeley researchers tapped satellite imagery to locate warmer communities. They then used U.S. Census figures to determined who lived in those areas. The conclusion, published this week in the journal, Environmental Health Perspectives: Heat-prone neighborhoods were disproportionately populated by African Americans, Asians and Hispanics. Compared with their white...

Meet the new Google Maps - Google

{blog_authors backspace="2"}Meet the new Google Maps - Google, {/blog_authors} — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:40:31 -0500

Take a tour of the new Google Maps announced at Google I/O May 15, 2013. Request access: http://maps.google.com/help/maps/hell...

AeroMetric Presents USACE with Award for Navajo Housing Authority Project

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:23:35 -0500

– AeroMetric presented the St. Louis U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with special recognition including an inscribed award and project poster for "Creating an On Target Geospatial Foundation for the Navajo Housing Authority." The award and poster were duplicates of the ones that AeroMetric was honored with the at the MAPPS conference in November...

LiDAR Services Mobilizes Advanced Laser Mapping System to Saskatchewan for Flood Plain Mapping

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:52:57 -0500

- LiDAR Services International Inc., (LSI), a Calgary based airborne LiDAR mapping company, announced they will be mobilizing a fixed wing aircraft equipped with an advanced laser mapping system into Saskatchewan for an 835 km2 flood mapping project north of Saskatoon around the Rural Municipality of Corman Park. The aircraft is scheduled to...

Look Ma, No Clouds!

{blog_authors backspace="2"}Look Ma, No Clouds!, {/blog_authors} — Wed, 15 May 2013 07:16:01 -0500

What's the MapBox team been up to? Well, yesterday.... Not only did we just launch our new Cloudless Atlas imagery for the entire world (down through zoom level 8), we also launched new aerial imagery for the entire US and EU down to zoom level 19. Everything is traceable in OpenStreetMap, and now any edits to OpenStreetMap show up on MapBox within 5 minutes. This...

Skybox Imaging Announces Strategic Partnership with Japan Space Imaging

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:12:19 -0500

Strategic alliance to provide timely high-resolution satellite imagery and full motion video to the Japanese market Skybox Imaging (Skybox), an emerging provider of timely high-resolution satellite imagery and full motion video, today announced it has entered into a multi-year, strategic partnership with Japan Space Imaging (JSI), a...

European Space Imaging celebrate a decade as key VHR data provider to the European Commission�s CwRS Campaign

Tue, 14 May 2013 06:21:43 -0500

For the 10th year, European Space Imaging (EUSI) is supporting the European Commission in the Controls with Remote Sensing program (CwRS) with timely delivery of Very High-Resolution (VHR) satellite data. The yearly CwRS campaign involves around 1,000 images. In total, more than 240,000 km² are covered each year as part of the program – twice...

Privatizing National Mapping Technology

Tue, 14 May 2013 03:31:38 -0500

Google has not only become the de facto mapping app, the de facto navigation app, the de facto remote sensing app, the de facto change detection app, etc. It's the de facto National Map, as well. The USGS collected the data (imagery, topo, etc.) but Google monetized it. Is this an acceptable model where the government invests but the private sector monetizes the...

NGA: DigitalGlobe Imagery Contract will not be Impacted by Sequestration

Mon, 13 May 2013 16:05:43 -0500

Satellite imagery provider DigitalGlobe has received word from its principal U.S. government customer [National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, NGA] that the company’s centerpiece imagery-delivery contract will not suffer from the mandatory budget cuts known as sequestration that are sweeping through U.S. government agencies, DigitalGlobe Chief Executive Jeffrey R. Tarr...

2d3 Sensing Launches Reticle Georegistration in New Motion Imagery Software Suite

Mon, 13 May 2013 10:25:29 -0500

2d3 Incorporated (dba 2d3 Sensing), a wholly owned subsidiary of Oxford, UK-based OMG plc and a technology leader in the field of computer vision, image understanding, and full motion imagery/video (FMV) exploitation, announced today the launch of Reticle FMV metadata improvement and georegistration in the latest release of its motion imagery...

Canadian Public Safety Claims First Life Saved by Drone

Sun, 12 May 2013 13:49:36 -0500

A man's car had flipped leaving him well offroad in cold Saskatchewan on Thursday night. He called Canadia 911, but traditional manned aircraft could not locate him. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police launched a Draganflyer X4-ES helicopter drone near the last known coordinates from his cell phone. The drone's infrared sensor helped authorities find and treat the accident...

RADARSAT-1: Seventeen Years of Technological Success

Fri, 10 May 2013 07:00:22 -0500

LONGUEUIL, QUEBEC, May 9, 2013 - On March 29, 2013, Canada's first Earth Observation satellite, RADARSAT-1, experienced a technical anomaly after surpassing its expected lifetime by 12 years. In the days since, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) assembled a joint CSA-industry team of engineers, who conducted an extensive investigation. Following...

PCI Geomatics Renews Gold-Tier Partnership with Esri

Thu, 09 May 2013 13:37:46 -0500

-PCI Geomatics, a world-leading developer of remote sensing and photogrammetric software and systems, announced today that is has renewed its Gold-Tier Partnership with Esri for 2013, through the Esri Partner Network (EPN). An Esri partner since April 2009, PCI Geomatics provides leading-edge technology that integrates with Esri’s ArcGIS solution...

Landsat Images Provide the Gold Standard for New Earth Applications

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:50:58 -0500

May 9, 2013, WASHINGTON — Images from Landsat satellites provided free to the public by the Department of the Interior's U.S. Geological Survey were the starting points for "a new breakthrough" reported today by Time and announced on the Official Google Blog. Using its Earth Engine technology, Google has compiled decades of Landsat images into a...

Western U.S. Disasters and Health & Air Quality: California Flames and Oregon Plains - NASA DEVELOP

Thu, 09 May 2013 04:00:48 -0500

This past fall, NASA DEVELOP interns partnered with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Oregon Department of Forestry to apply NASA EOS in understanding the impact of the 2012 wildfire season in Oregon on landscape and air quality. DEVELOP students combined VIIRS and Landsat 7 data to create burn scars and fire risk maps, and CALIPSO curtains and HYSPLIT modeling to visualize...

DigitalGlobe Reports First Quarter 2013 Results

Wed, 08 May 2013 08:31:39 -0500

Revenue Up 47%, Next Twelve-Month Revenue Backlog Up 47%, GeoEye Integration Ahead of Plan With 35% of Operating Expense Synergies Attained DigitalGlobe, Inc. (NYSE: DGI), a leading global provider of high-resolution earth imagery solutions, today reported financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2013. First quarter 2013...

Bluesky Images Celebrate History of Tour de France

Wed, 08 May 2013 08:31:21 -0500

Aerial photographs from Bluesky are to feature in a soon to be published book ?Le Tour 100?. Licensed by Cosmographics, an award winning cartographic services company, the Bluesky images were used to create graphics illustrating stages of the world famous Tour de France cycle race from 2007 and 1974. The actual race routes were plotted on the high...

Rutgers Maps Sandy and other Education GIS News

Wed, 08 May 2013 06:49:54 -0500

Rutgers students not ony built an app to track Sandy debris in Toms River, New Jersey, they went into the field to use it. It was aimed at determing households eligible for the township's demolition and debris removal program. They created a smart phone app in their Community Mapping class that helps towns classify homes damaged by Sandy. ...The students, led by...

Why GIS Didn’t Help with the Boston Marathon Bombings

Tue, 07 May 2013 08:36:13 -0500

Bryan Ware, writing at CTO Vision, details how the Boston Marathon bombing were a “big data” event. He's the CTO of Haystax Technology, a new analytics company focused on the defense and intelligence sector. And offers this important discalimer: Disclaimer: These observations are made from a distance; I was not part of the Boston response nor do I have input on these...

Coahuila Disasters -� NASA DEVELOP: Piedras Negras

Tue, 07 May 2013 02:01:16 -0500

Coahuila, one of the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico, shares a border with the U.S. for a 512-kilometer stretch along the Rio Bravo, also known as the Rio Grande. Flood risk is a geographically sporadic, yet very serious concern in the state. In April 2004, the state experienced a devastating flood in the border city of Piedras Negras, where more than 30...

Australia Renames its “NGA”

Mon, 06 May 2013 06:32:17 -0500

The Defence Signals Directorate and the Defence Imagery and Geospatial Organisation, two Australian defense agencies, are getting new names to better reflect what they do. The new names do not include "Defence" in them: Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) , Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (AGO) - PS News...

PCI Geomatics Software Supports KOMPSAT-3 Sensor

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:11:36 -0500

-PCI Geomatics, a world-leading developer of remote sensing and photogrammetric software and systems, announced today that it now supports KOMPSAT-3 imagery within its software suite. KOMPSAT-3, a new satellite built and operated by the Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) was launched on May 12th, 2012 from the Tanegashima Space Center of...

USGIF Announces Agenda for GEOINT Community Week 2013

Wed, 01 May 2013 14:26:08 -0500

USGIF announced its agenda for GEOINT Community Week 2013 and opened registration this week for the various events to be held throughout Northern Virginia May 20-23. This year's events will take a particular focus on training and education, with several learning opportunities presented throughout the week. NGA Tech Showcase East will feature a...

American Sentinel University Adds a Geospatial Learning Lab and Badges to its Online Education Programs

Wed, 01 May 2013 02:00:36 -0500

In March, American Sentinel University announced new learning tools for students in its Master of Geospatial Information degree program, including a learning lab and competency-based badges. Directions Magazine interviewed Dr. Stephen McElroy, GIS program chair at American Sentinel University, about these innovations.

NASA Flies Dragon Eye Unmanned Aircraft Into Volcanic Plume

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:20:32 -0500

NASA Earth science researchers traveled to Turrialba Volcano, near San Jose, Costa Rica, to fly a Dragon Eye unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) -- a small electric aircraft equipped with cameras and sensors -- into the volcano’s sulfur dioxide plume and over its summit crater, to study Turrialba’s chemical environment. This article explains how researchers want to improve the remote-sensing...

Global Interoperability Consortium’s Cloud Computing Project Detailed at NATO Conference

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:06:31 -0500

Eric Vollmecke of the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium reports the proliferation of geospatial information will pose problems for disaster responders and describes a project designed to move critical data more efficiently using an open cloud-based infrastructure WASHINGTON, April 30, 2013 -- Managing and disseminating...

Proteus Wins Contract for Satellite-Based Bathymetric Mapping in Ireland

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:29:32 -0500

Proteus, a provider of satellite-derived bathymetric mapping and seabed classification services, has been awarded a major contract by the Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI) to deliver complete bathymetric surveys of five Irish bays. In addition to operational mapping, Proteus will use satellite data to create a seabed classification map and perform...