Where do you Start? - INTERGEO 2014

UAVs as platforms or systems were very much to the fore at this year’s INTERGEO. But so was software, reports editor Stephen Booth. In one of the six exhibition halls of the German INTERGEO, there is a display tracing the history of the event. Beginning in 1986, a splendid poster board of wood and other materials (what I think the art world calls an installation) for each year marks appropriate technologies and locations. He literally pulled all the stops out for Leipzig (2007) with a musical tribute to JS Bach and an organ keyboard! Chatting to one of the organisers'... (read more)

2017-08-22 02:50:01

From Nautical Chart to Digital Marine Mapping

Digital marine mapping became possible with the arrival of the electronic chart. The authors, who pioneered the re-engineering of this data for use in GIS, question whether the requirement has been fully met or whether fundamental issues still exist. It has been over ten years since UK marine environmental and engineering consultancy, Metoc, started to re-engineer UK Hydrographic Office data to make it suitable for use in GIS. Mike Osborne and John Pepper, who pioneered this work and are now directors of marine data management and GIS specialist, OceanWise, consider how the requirement for digital marine mapping has changed over... (read more)

2017-08-24 03:46:51

Crossrail Monitoring - Delivering the three Rs

The decision to take monitoring in-house has allowed Morgan Sindall to create a tailor-made solution that delivers the three Rs sought by Crossrail, Network Rail, and Docklands Light Railway on the C350 Pudding Mill Lane contract. In 2018 Crossrail services are due to commence through central London. The £15bn project will pass through 37 stations and run 118 km (73 miles) from Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east. The project’s C350 Pudding Mill Lane contract, won by Morgan Sindall plc, is worth in the region of £100 million and will link the... (read more)

2017-07-19 05:48:05

Geodesy and Land Administration - FIG Working Week 2017

GW was not at the Working Work in Helsinki in May, but FIG publishes most of the technical papers presented at the conference on its website www.fig.net. Richard Groom has been sifting through the proceedings and has drawn together papers on Geodesy and Land Administration and a few other interesting topics. The code in parenthesis indicates the session number where the papers were presented. It is some time since GW published an article by Chris Rizos on the Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS). Kutterer (TS03C) provided an update. His paper gave a general overview of GGOS and its work in... (read more)

2018-01-15 11:14:18

Surveyor 2.0, Land Administration and More

Richard Groom provides pointers to articles from the FIG Congress in May. Papers can be downloaded from https://bit.ly/2yz8xlB. Changing Survey Muller and Klein (TS06C) look at moves to update the role of the surveyor – known as ‘Surveyor 2.0’. Surveyor 2.0 measures, models and manages geospatial data. Although many of us already manage data, the paper formalises this and therefore helps clarify what is probably a grey area for many. The paper covers methodological and social skills as well as the nuts and bolts and is well worth reading. Buxton and Harrington (TS08G) asked “Will technology ever replace the human... (read more)

2018-11-07 03:48:51

Connecting Buyers and Sellers - GeoDATA 2017

GeoAware hit just the right note with this year’s GeoDATA 2017 London Showcase which took place at the ILEC Conference Centre in West London on 30 November. It attracted 32 exhibitors and a busy crowd of enthusiastic participants. There is no entry charge for attendees to GeoDATA. It is the exhibitors who pay to be there and so this is an event focused on enabling them to achieve a return on their investment. The seminar slots were all taken by exhibitors who were identified by their company name, to the point that some presenters were not actually introduced. Rather than... (read more)

2018-03-29 04:56:21

Women and Surveying

Increasingly women are entering the geospatial sector, with many (though not all) holding higher degrees. As the industry becomes more diverse with new opportunities, Ruth Badley talks to three women of their experiences, including two who are running survey companies, in what is otherwise a male-dominated profession. Sue Stewart is a director of Laser Surveys, which operates from offices in Worcester and Hornchurch, Essex. The company supplies Ordnance Survey mapping and a range of products online as well as providing topographical surveys, floor plans, elevations and sections, laser scanning, 3D modelling, underground services surveys, ground penetrating radar surveys, drainage... (read more)

2017-08-22 03:48:34

An Indoor Mapping Test for the ZEB1

The ZEB1 handheld laser scanner has been in production for over a year and in use the novel spring mounted system still gets the odd strange glance. The system consists of a 2D laser scanner rigidly fixed to a MEMS IMU. Both sit on a spring which keeps them in constant and random motion. So, is this the ideal tool for interior mapping and many BIM applications? In this handheld system data is captured at walking speed, as the user moves through the desired environment. On finishing capture, data is transferred to the Geoslam servers where an innovative simultaneous localization... (read more)

2017-07-20 03:32:18

Technical Advances Bring Digital Twin of Underground Infrastructure Closer

Mapping the underground is one of the major challenges in creating an infrastructure map at the municipal, regional, and national level, which is a key foundation for a national digital twin. Recent technical developments include: the ability to collect data at highway speeds that can be used to create a 3D model of underground infrastructure, software that can extract relevant 3D underground information from consumer digital photography, and video capture. Meanwhile, novel ways to share information about underground infrastructure, and progress on standards for sharing information about the subsurface are making mapping the underground increasingly feasible. The uncertainty in the... (read more)

2018-10-08 04:46:21

Putting Drone Mapping into Practice in Malawi

Drone technology has improved to the point where take-offs are easier than ever. Flight planning apps such as Pix4Dcapture help aspiring pilots take to the skies. But what happens next? In 2017, the government of Malawi and UNICEF launched an air corridor to test the use of drones for humanitarian purposes – the first in Africa and one of the first globally with a focus on humanitarian and development use. In this context, UNICEF Malawi hosted Pix4D for a 3-day workshop in the capital city Lilongwe, aimed at local participants from a range of different sectors. The workshop’s objective was... (read more)

2019-12-02 09:02:04