ENVI adds powerful 3D functionality

Does your data “pop” off the page? 

ENVI 5.3 goes 3D

ENVI software is known for its powerful geospatial image analysis tools, but now the latest release of the software adds significant LiDAR point cloud analysis and visualization capabilities – capabilities that previously were only available in the ENVI LiDAR software package. The new and improved ENVI offers users a single software interface to work with hyper-spectral, multi-spectral, panchromatic, and LiDAR data.



“The core ENVI software now has significant out-of-the-box functionality for 3D point-cloud visualization, derived terrain product generation (e.g. DEM), and LiDAR analytics such as viewshed line-of-sight calculation,” according to Adam O´Connor, ENVI and IDL Product Manager at Harris. “If you need point-cloud or terrain products in an area where collecting LiDAR is not feasible or is too expensive, the ENVI Photogrammetry Module is able to

generate synthetic 3D point clouds from stereo optical imagery to take advantage of existing

imagery archives,” added O´Connor.

We didn´t stop there – we enhanced the 4th dimension...time!
The dimension of time can be critical for a thorough geospatial analysis of an area and this ENVI release has added enhancements to the Spatio-Temporal analysis toolset. Spatio-Temporal analysis visualizes change and derives statistics from data over time. “Understanding these patterns is part of an ongoing strategy to provide our users with methods to observe events of the past to better predict upcoming activities,” said O´Connor. “This functionality helps organizations make better decisions as they plan for the future.”

New additions were also added to the ENVITask system, a relatively new method for performing discrete bits of image processing programmatically through the ENVI object-based API. This programmatic approach to image processing can save time because you can easily chain together multiple ENVITasks, allowing the output from one ENVITask to become the input to the next. There are now 138 ENVITasks available in the ENVI API. To learn more about what´s new in ENVI 5.3, be sure to attend one of the upcoming webinars.

EAS 2015 – The times they are a changin´

Last month leading minds in our industry gathered in Boulder, Colorado, for the ENVI Analytics Symposium (EAS). With world-class presenters and a high level and caliber of participation, the event exceeded expectations all the way around. Billed as the starting point for a community discussion on the future of the Geospatial Analytics Market, many opportunities and challenges were identified at EAS. Here are just a few of the takeaways from those two days.



All that talk of moving to cloud is happening now. Many presenters have deployed ENVI applications in a cloud or enterprise setting including Datamapper.com, CloudEO, DigitalGlobe´s Geospatial Big Data, and Hyspeedgeo.com to name a few. ENVI is consuming Esri image services in its cloud demonstration site. You can try it for yourself here. Consumers are looking for answers and these companies are providing them by solving problems through a cloud platform that can be accessed on demand and serve up actionable answers from a pile of data.

Big Data was on display at EAS
Speaking of data – yes, the volume is huge and growing all the time. DigitalGlobe is taking on Geospatial Big Data with its approach of “Platform as a Service” that provides data and compute power to “show me where” I can find features in a sea of data. Airbus Defense and Space has a World DEM at 12m resolution, enabling terrain modeling in areas which previously had only SRTM 90m data to work with — this dataset is huge. There are numerous scientists asking questions of big data and the compute power is there in force to do this and not just expensive super computers – a GPU can turn a laptop into a super computer if put to work the right way.

Another interesting takeaway from EAS was that spectral analysis is still coming up with new discoveries. There were presentations on WV3 and SWIR data, a how to on using thermal data to enhance HSI imagery for certain mineral mapping, and a demonstration of U.S. Geological Survey´s Processing Routines in IDL for Spectroscopic Measurements ( PRISM) software (it´s free, so check it out).

For more highlights from #EAS2015 check out this recent Imagery Speaks blog post and watch the video highlight reel.

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From Big Data to Big Action: Tackling Poverty and Inequality Using Data Visualization

By Matthew Tyler.



“It’s not about big data, it’s about big understanding… Understanding strengthens the link between data tools and policy action.” These were the reflections of Jack Dangermond, Founder and President of the Esri, at the 14th convening of the Project on Municipal Innovation Advisory Group (PMI-AG). Dangermond was joined by leaders from America’s largest cities to discuss how municipal Chief Data Officers can impact policy, emphasizing ways that data – and in particular, data visualization – might be used in the fight against poverty and inequality.

Big data analytics and data visualization have made great strides in recent years. Building and food inspections are better targeted; congestion on roads and public transport is monitored in real time; natural disasters are preemptively simulated; and city “story maps” are used to engage citizens in municipal service delivery, small business decisions, and land use planning. However, the palpable sense of anticipation among PMI participants suggested that using big data and data visualization to tackle deeper systemic issues proves more difficult.


“Understanding strengthens the link between data tools and policy action,” Dangermond said.

With regards to poverty and inequality, progress in data visualization has been largely limited to what several participants described as “sad maps.” Maps for crime rates, school retention, and infant mortality measures all tell similar geographical stories: the darkest shades of the map, indicating the most severe disparities, represent the same few neighborhoods. Participants agreed that all too often these maps prompt concern, but offer few suggestions on how to shape policy.

Over the course of the panel, however, it became clear that several emerging data-orientated approaches have the potential to shape policies that address poverty and inequality:

• Overlay “sad maps” with the existing geographical distribution of service delivery to inform future budget allocations. Several participants are in the process of using maps to determine whether there is underlying discrimination in infrastructure investments.
• Use spatial correlation analysis to identify and understand positive deviance. That is, given what we know about a neighborhood’s context, which areas are performing better than they ought to be? For instance, what can we learn from high poverty neighborhoods where obesity is low?
• Use regression over space and time to identify root causes. In doing so, the most important lead indicators can be used to identify those who may benefit most from early intervention. In Chicago, intensive academic tutoring is targeted at those who fail Algebra 1; the best predictor of school dropout. A similar approach is being employed to analyze patterns of eviction in New York that are most likely to lead to homelessness.

These approaches are only a starting point. To create real change, a symbiotic dance must take place between policy officers and data officers. Policy officers must identify the information products needed to inform decision making. Conversely, data officers need to help point out caveats and suggest how additional analysis could tease out further conclusions. In turn, policy officers complement data analyses with their nuanced research knowledge to build a causative narrative of what are almost always endogenous problems – and this narrative can spring to life with data visualizations or story maps developed in data shops. This is the back and forth of problem solving that translates analysis to action.

Similarly, getting the best out of big data requires engagement with the public. Several Chief Data Officers explained that they spend a lot of time talking with the public to understand what is happening “on the ground.” Data is only one piece of the puzzle. In a bid to share costs and broaden capabilities, a growing number of cities are partnering with leading research universities through the White House backed MetroLab network. It is hoped that these partnerships will underpin the transition of big data and data visualization across mayoral administrations.

Like e-mail, big data and data visualization will likely become ubiquitous. For systemic policy issues though, moving from data to information products and ultimately to policy action is no easy task. The ideas raised during the PMI-AG discussion suggests big data and data visualization have the potential to improve policies targeting poverty and inequality. With that said, there is much work and discovery to come before we can make firm conclusions about their efficacy. In the words of Thomas Edison – “the value of an idea lies in the using of it.”

Source: Public CEO

“Calling Abidjan” – estimating population distribution through analysis of mobile phone call data records

Big data, big challenge? Together with Harald Sterly of the University of Cologne I presented a little piece of research in the Extended Spatial Analytics session of the German Geography Congress (Deutscher Kongress für Geographie) in Berlin. The project “Calling Abidjan” that we worked on with Kouassi Dongo of Université de Cocody-Abidjan was started after we successfully applied for participation of the D4D Challenge. According to the initiator Orange telecommunications ‘Data for Development’ is “an innovation challenge open on ICT Big Data for the purposes of societal development”. The project allowed us to work with anonymised mobile phone data from individual call records by Orange in the country of Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast).
We were interested in investigating, what non-computer scientists with a social science and urban planning background can do with such data in a more contextual rather that technically driven way and therefore explored how mobile phone call records can be used to better estimate population distribution.

For our analysis we used anonymised call data records consisting of information about the base station, timestamp, and caller ID produced by the approximately 500.000 Orange Télecom users in the country. There were 1079 base stations at the time the data was generated and we were able to work with data covering 183 days. The dataset consisted of 13GB of raw data which some would perhaps call ‘Big Data’ (though I personally do not like this term for many reasons).
The following two (draft) maps give an insight into the results. The purple circles show the distribution and density of population estimates that we derived using only mobile phone call records dataset. To better see the correlation with what other population data tells us about where people live, we did not only produce a normal land area map (on the left, also displaying some basic idea of the topography in the country) but also showed the data on a gridded population cartogram which we generated from the LandScan population grid, the perhaps most detailed population dataset currently available on a globally consistent high-resolution basis:

(click for larger version)

The correlations that show up in these (admittedly quite drafty and basic) maps already gives an idea of our preliminary findings: Only using mobile phone call records we were able to reproduce a number of similar patterns, namely the higher population densities in the Southeast and the Centre, the lower densities in the Northeast and Northwest, and particularly the urban areas of Abidjan, Yamoussoukro, Bouke, Man and others (which especially stand out in the gridded population cartogram and show the details within these areas). However, aggregated on the 255 subprefectures our population dataset was not consistent in all parts. Considerable differences can be seen especially in the Western parts of the country and, most notable, in the Southwest.
Further analysis showed that the call data record analysis generally seems to overestimate population figures in the urban areas and to underestimate in rural areas or areas with little population density.
These could be explained with differentiated mobile phone subscription rates in urban and rural areas, but possibly also inaccuracies in the underlying census data and population models of the AfriPop dataset that we used to validate our approach.
To highlight one other notable difference: in the Southwest (region of Bas-Sassandra) the figures derived from mobile usage is significantly higher which we interpret as caused by a particularly positive economic development of the region (to a large extent related to the port of San-Pédro), resulting in both population growth as well as higher mobile subscription rates.

Our presentation at the conference was far from over-technical, but instead framed in a geographic context of the ongoing urbanisation processes on the African continent and the relevance of mobile phone communication technologies in this region (which I looked atfrom a health perspective with another colleague). To get an idea of the full context, take a look at the slides that we used during our talk available on Slideshare:

The content on this page has been created by Harald Sterly (University of Cologne), Benjamin Hennig and Kouassi Dongo (Université de Cocody-Abidjan) as part of a talk held at the session Extended Spatial Analytics at Deutscher Kongress für Geographie, 1 October 2015, Berlin (Germany). Please contact me for further details and terms of use.

Source: Views of the World

Weather Decision Technologies Powers Big Data Analytics for Climate Applications with Internap's High-Performance Colocation and Global Network Services

Internap's high-density colocation, route-optimized IP and CDN services speed delivery of mission-critical weather services while reducing costs



Internap Corporation (NASDAQ: INAP), a provider of high-performance Internet infrastructure services, today announced that weather industry leader Weather Decision Technologies (WDT) is using the company's high-density colocation, route-optimized Performance IP™ and Content Delivery Network (CDN) services. The global high-performance environment allows WDT to cost-effectively process massive amounts of weather and climate information and accelerate delivery of critical weather services to customers around the world.



WDT delivers real-time weather information and analytics – such as hazardous weather detection and prediction, forecast modeling, geographic information systems (GIS) and interactive mapping – for a wide range of B2B audiences, including developers, broadcasting stations, oil platforms and the airline and shipping industries. Its top-ranked B2C RadarScope mobile app, available on iOS, Android and Mac, allows meteorologists and weather enthusiasts to view Nexrad radar data and severe weather warnings.

"Our business is dependent on ingesting and analyzing enormous amounts of raw weather data – often more than 80 to 90 terabytes per month – and rapidly serving it up to our customers in their preferred format," said Andrew J. Oldaker, vice president of operations at Weather Decision Technologies. "Internap's high-performance colocation and network services allow us to get data to our customers faster, while reducing our overall infrastructure costs. We're able to seamlessly download very large data sets from weather services and environmental centers around the world and then quickly and reliably process and deliver that data to our customers – speeding their decision-making and giving them a competitive advantage."

With previous infrastructure providers, WDT was experiencing spiraling costs due to the high densities needed to power its data-intensive HPC and clustered systems environment, which forms its weather analytics and delivery hub. Internap's high-density colocation in Dallas allows WDT to achieve its power demands with fewer server racks, which has reduced its costs by nearly 45 percent. Currently drawing upwards of 12kW, WDT can continue to scale to 18kW in-rack without consuming more physical floor space as its power needs grow. Internap's high-density design also contributes to optimal performance since WDT requires certain servers to be in close physical proximity to process large amounts of data via high-speed interconnects. Additionally, WDT installed a satellite dish at Internap's Dallasdata center, which allows the company to download meteorological data and instantly feed it to its infrastructure environment within the facility.

WDT is also using Internap's route-optimized, global Performance IP connectivity at Internap's Dallas, London and Secaucus, N.J. locations to eliminate the unreliable network performance and latency issues WDT was experiencing with previous providers that were using standard Internet routing to deliver its vast data sets from Europe and across the Atlantic to its data processing hub in the U.S. Powered by Managed Internet Route Optimizer™ (MIRO) technology, Performance IP enhances the Internet's default routing system by monitoring available bandwidth routes for packet loss, jitter and latency and sending WDT traffic over the fastest Internet path. As a result, WDT is able to download data from key weather services throughout Europe and along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard and ensure fast, reliable, low-latency delivery to its analytics headquarters at Internap'sDallas facility.

Additionally, Internap's MIRO-powered CDN is bringing weather information closer to WDT customers by storing and delivering the data from 24 points of presence globally. The move to Internap's CDN has resulted in faster performance for billions of customer content queries per month, with an 80ms – 100ms average reduction in latency, as well as reduced content delivery costs of 75 percent.

"Infrastructure speed and reliability are critical to organizations like WDT that need to consistently power large, data-intensive workloads and distribute real-time information worldwide," said Steve Orchard, Internap's senior vice president and general manager, data center and network services. "We're uniquely equipped to serve these customers with performance built into every aspect of our portfolio – from high-power density colocation to route-optimized network services delivered across a global footprint."

Supporting Resources:

• Case Study: Weather Decision Technologies -http://www.internap.com/resources/case-study-weather-decision-technologies
• Next-Gen Colocation Drives Operational Efficiencies -http://www.internap.com/resources/next-generation-colocation/
• The Secret Sauce Just Got Better: Optimize Internet Route Performance with MIRO - http://www.internap.com/2014/04/24/secret-sauce-just-got-better-optimize-internet-route-performance-miro/
• Bare Metal: The Right Infrastructure for Big Data -http://www.internap.com/2015/04/21/bare-metal-right-infrastructure-for-big-data/

About Weather Decision Technologies, Inc. (WDT) 

Weather Decision Technologies, Inc. is the industry leader, providing organizations with weather decision support on a global scale. WDT offers specific expertise with big data as it applies to hazardous weather detection and prediction, forecast modeling, decision analytics, GIS, mobile apps and interactive mapping. WDT employs the world-renowned WeatherOps forecast team, staffed by experts who provide global asset projection and commodities trading decision support. WDT maintains operational offices inNorman, Oklahoma and Houston, Texas.

About Internap 

Internap is the high-performance Internet infrastructure provider that powers the applications shaping the way we live, work and play. Our hybrid infrastructure delivers performance without compromise – blending virtual and bare-metal cloud, hosting and colocation services across a global network of data centers, optimized from the application to the end user and backed by rock-solid customer support and a 100% uptime guarantee. Since 1996, the most innovative companies have relied on Internap to make their applications faster and more scalable. For more information, visitwww.internap.com.

Forward-Looking Statements 

This press release contains forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include statements related to the performance of our Internet infrastructure services and the benefits that our customers may receive from them. Because such statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, there are important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These factors include the actual performance of our Internet infrastructure services; the reaction and behavior of customers and the market to our company; our ability to react to trends and challenges in our business and the markets in which we operate; the availability of services from Internet network service providers or network service providers providing network access loops and local loops on favorable terms, or at all; failure of third party suppliers to deliver their products and services on favorable terms, or at all; failures in or intrusions into our network operations centers, data centers, network access points or computer systems; our ability to provide or improve Internet infrastructure services to our customers; and our ability to protect our intellectual property; our ability to avoid infringing the intellectual property of others; as well as other factors discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Given these risks and uncertainties, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results. We undertake no obligation to update, amend or clarify any forward-looking statement for any reason.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150319/183128LOGO



Media Contact: 

Mariah Torpey 

Davies Murphy Group, Inc. 

781-418-2404 
internap@daviesmurphy.com 
www.daviesmurphy.com

Investor Contact:
Michael Nelson404-302-9700
ir@internap.com




SOURCE Internap Corporation
Contact:
Internap Corporation
Weather Decision Technologies, Inc.
Web: http://www.internap.com

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Democratization of Geospatial Data with Real ROI

By George Demmy



It’s easy to fall into a trap of considering data for data’s sake. Knowledge is power, after all, and by democratizing data; you spread power to more places and more people.

To what end? When an organization considers the means to acquire, analyze and present data, the investment has to be driven by both its cost and its impact on the bottom line. By performance, more than power. In this case, performance means the Return-on-Investment (ROI) in democratized data.

The military faces this challenge regularly in its goal of making personnel “human sensors,” adding what they see on the ground, in front or behind them in real-time, to satellite and unmanned aerial system sensors to provide situational awareness to commanders miles or even continents away who are making life-or-death decisions.

In industry’s case, decisions can make or break a company and careers, and those decisions have a goal. In his blog, Michael McCarthy writes, “investing in democratizing data needs to have a wide range of influence over many decisions across the organization … The objective is to excel at decision-making. The reason for doing this (in business) is to realize revenue growth.”

He adds, “More emphasis needs to be placed on making better decisions faster and identifying the data needed to support those decisions, and not the other way around.”

That’s why TerraGo created OpenGeoPDF – to combine the latest, most appropriate geospatial and IT standards, practices and capabilities to extend the reach of GIS to the widest possible audience. These capabilities include a bi-directional relationship with field operations that can offer decision-makers a better sense of situational awareness than data limited to that normally available at headquarters. It can do so with mobile data input and decision reception from an iPhone or Android device.

This audience can then drive decision-making away from the realm of the “gut” and the limitations of company policy to allow managers to adapt to changing times. Data to support these decisions can be more up to date and adaptable to operational environment ebb and flow. Data behind the presentation maps can drive other decisions, as well as creativity and innovation in areas not imagined when the data was harvested. That’s democratization.

Measuring return on investment in GIS is easy enough if you limit it to reducing time-to-customer and man hours saved with the capability. But what about savings attributable to using data available to a wider range of people within an organization and the impact on revenue and market share growth? On measuring efficiencies vs. opportunities?

On attracting and retaining employees at decision-making and information-gathering levels because they see the “why” in the work they are hired to do, rather than just the less-rewarding and often-frustrating “what?” Those metrics can be softer and more elusive, but they are no less real or of diminished importance in cost-benefit analysis that drive ROI.

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The role of Wearable Tech and Internet of Things in Geomedicine

By Muthukumar Kumar

A few years ago, Bill Davenhall, who was ESRI’s Global Marketing Manager for Health and Human Services Solution on Geomedicine at that time gave an insightful TED talk “Your health depends on where you live“.

Since the TED talk back in 2010, National agencies across the world have understood the importance of having location information tagged together with health records and Geomedicine as grown in importance ( Geomedicine: Can Geographic Information keep you healthy?).

When you think about it, having your place history together with your health record makes a lot of sense, it helps identify potential health issues due to environmental reasons and lets you be aware of your choices and their impact on your health.
But in the era of Internet of Things and Wearable tech, is place history the only piece of geotagged information that we can use?

Some of the most interesting use cases for Internet of Things has been in environmental monitoring, there are many applications that utilize crowd sourcing and IoTs to get data on air pollution, noise levels and even monitor light pollution. These apps typically use a map to visualize the information, helping create awareness about the impact environment has on human health. (Read: HabitatMap & AirCasting: Internet of Things, Maps & Environmental Monitoring).

Most fitness bands and Smartwatches have an 3-D accelerometer and a heart rate sensor. Some of them even have a GPS or synchronize with the smartphone to get GPS data. All this data is then used to let you know the route you used to walk/run/cycle, the calories you burned, your resting heart rate, etc. Similar information from smartphones have already helped map the places where people choose to run, walk or bike (1.5 Million Walks, Runs, and Bike Rides from RunKeeper mapped on Mapbox).

Combine the Internet of Things environmental monitoring together with these Wearable Tech/Smartphone fitness data and we already have two layers that can be used to inform people about whether, it is a good idea to run in that region, at any time of the day. Simple, basic GIS that can help people make healthier choices. Maybe urban planners can utilize this data to see if people really like to run along the jogging paths they created, etc. Add algorithms that finds the most beautiful route between A and B to the mix and already we have a better interest in getting out there on the bike. Most certainly there are a million better ideas out there that already look to utilize Internet of Things and Wearable tech for Geomedicine.

In some sense, the whole idea might sound like a complication of a simple problem – how to be healthy? For every factor that is in our control (being active, eating healthy, etc.) , there is another that isn’t really in our control (environmental pollution, etc) . If a complex computer application that crunches lots of spatial data and mines patterns to help lead healthier lives, maybe it’s not useless complication.

We already know, Geographic information can keep us healthy, many studies have help solve that question, the next question that needs to be explored is “How best to utilize Wearable Tech and Internet of Things in Geomedicine?”

Geomedicine is an idea whose time has come. – Bill Davenhall

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Accuweather Addresses the Storms of our Century

By Susan Smith


“The business of weather is a storm of data driven change,” said Dr. Joel Myers, founder, president and chairman of Accuweather in his keynote address entitled “Transformational Change Driven by Big Data” at the Esri User Conference 2015 held in San Diego. Myers added that, “We are reinventing ourselves over and over, to become the world’s most trusted source of weather information.”

Accuweather Portal

Weather information has definitely morphed over recent years, with maps that can be customized to the user’s requirements. With weather that has become increasingly unpredictable in the world, the challenge to provide up to the minute accurate coverage of weather patterns has also increased.

Tile data from Accuweather allows users to see an accurate representation of the weather and “manage their business processes via the weather,” said Myers.

This certainly does seem to be the case for big weather events. Myers said that the key criteria for weather are the following: what was it and what will it be, how severe and how will it be presented, when will it happen? Where?

Weather today is the original Big Data, according to Myers, and has helped drive increases in data power.

In the 1940s, thousands of pieces of data were collected and plotted onto maps called weather maps. They were analyzed by meteorologists to create forecasts, including how terrain, water and land boundaries impacted the movement of weather patterns. Weather forecasters were among the first to use big data collected in real time. In 1960 the first accurate weather prediction was made 24 hours ahead of the weather event.



“I built a company by hiring the best forecasters, and got the best tools,” said Myers. “People know Accuweather through their phone, and news.”

Accuweather pillars for superior accuracy
– Most complete global real time data

– Most complete database of forecast models

– Most advanced and accurate forecast engine globally

– Skill added by expert meteorologists

– Focus on impact and value – output is in Esri GIS

– Uses all GIS data, crowdsourced, and all types of data.

In order to pinpoint location, Accuweather uses Esri. The Accuweather Enterprise Solutions Portal is the realization of Big Data, and uses the Esri ArcGIS platform.

Underlying the platform is the Accuweather Forecast Engine, that can analyze and measure data from temperature, humidity, solar intensity and more. It can compare a forecast with real time data, and the information offered by skilled meteorologists on the ground. “We can provide the best benefit by introducing a forecast like snow accumulations ahead of time,” said Myers.

For weather forecasting to be most valuable, it must communicate and focus – precise wording, displays, ease of use, and pinpoint precision, beside accurate data.

Myers has a number of engaging near-miss “if not for accurate weather reporting,” stories to tell.

A snow and ice storm last year heading for Georgia, would create major disruptions, and was predicted to shut down all rail, road and air travel for 24 hours. By letting people know about the disaster in the making, people could avoid being stranded.

The year before Hurricane Katrina the weather center had issued hurricane e-warnings for the area that didn’t happen. Accuweather reported 50-70% of the city of New Orleans will be underwater and will be so for weeks. Myers said businesses who heeded this warning profited from this information and saved lives.

In 2013 severe weather was predicted near Chicago. Trains were halted before a tornado hit, and it tore out the track. A sold-out Pearl Jam concert was interrupted at Wrigley Field, and meanwhile an impending severe lightning bolt snaked across the sky just behind the stage. No one was hurt, and the concert resumed.

Myers also cited some statistics that suggest Accuweather is “11%” more accurate than the National Weather Service, “7-9% more accurate than the Weather Channel. False alarm rate on National Weather service is 88%, according to Accuweather.

Accuweather receives 12 billion data requests a day, and offers services such their award-winning mobile weather app to help users make more informal decisions. With AccUcast, available on iOS, they can share their local weather conditions. MinuteCast provides a global minute-by-minute precipitation forecast for a local area, predicting two hours ahead.

AccUcast app for iOS

At Esri UC, Accuweather launched its newest feature to AccUcast. Now users can submit their local weather and hazard condition observations through the app’s landing screen, map screen and setting menu, plus the MinuteCast screen.

With a color-coded zoomed out view, users will be able to see both national and international weather patterns in the crowdsourced weather map screen. Each color-coded pin displays the reported condition with a weather-specific icon so users can scan weather patterns in a localized area.

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Keep your eyes on the sky: Weather is the Rising Star of Big Data

By Casey McGeever




If “knowledge is power” as Sir Francis Bacon once said, then it’s no surprise that Big Data means big empowerment for enterprises all over the world.

AccuWeather understood the challenges and strength of Big Data long before it became a buzzword. After all, making forecasts with superior accuracy is a process that demands great amounts of data on an ongoing basis. We ingest more than 20 terabytes of weather data every day and deliver over 12 billion data calls to audiences and customers all over the world.

AccuWeather has the depth of information, the immediacy and the hyper-localization to serve enterprises in virtually all industries with the best weather available anywhere — what our customers were asking for was a simple way to access that data. Our answer is the AccuWeather Enterprise Portal.
Big Data, Big Simplicity

At the 2015 Esri User Conference in San Diego, we are showcasing the AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions portal delivery system.

AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions portal delivery system allows enterprises to monitor thousands of locations across the US and worldwide.

In one customizable view, enterprises are able to monitor thousands of individual plants and retail locations. Using Esri’s GIS platform, multiple map overlays for severe weather, precipitation, temperature and more can be combined for at-a-glance awareness. Manufacturing enterprises use this combination of weather data to maintain maximum uptime for the plant while ensuring the safety of its workers. Retail enterprises can use longer range weather data to assess inventory needs, and the AccuWeather 45-Day Forecast to determine the timing on summer promotions. Utilities, Transportation and Government agencies use custom warnings and AccuWeather’s unique MinuteCast® to know exactly when to deploy vehicles.

Even more powerfully, the portal can put specific information coming from the enterprise side-by-side with AccuWeather’s data to create a clear picture for business intelligence and decision-making. The combinations of available weather data are as nuanced and varied as the needs of the businesses they serve.

AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions portal delivery system includes an array of customizable severe weather warnings.

AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions portal delivery system provides hyper-localized forecast for virtually every location on Earth where people live.

AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions portal delivery system provides multiple layers of severe and tropical weather information.

We live in a time of transformative innovation – 90% of all the data in the history of humanity has been generated over the past 700 days.

The challenge for your business is to make the most of all this rapidly accelerating change the data landscape presents to you before your opportunity for competitive advantage has passed.

To learn more about the big weather picture for Big Data, attend the keynote presentation for the second annual Weather Track at the Esri Conference on July 21st from 1:30 to 2 p.m. in Ballroom 20 where AccuWeather Founder, President and Chairman Dr. Joel N. Myers will be delivering a presentation entitled “Transformational Change Driven by Big Data”.

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AccuWeather Founder Dr. Joel Myers to Deliver Big Data Weather Track Keynote at 2015 Esri User Conference

Dr. Joel N. Myers shares his vision for integrating multiple streams of Big Data to create powerful, proprietary business intelligence that drives actionable results worldwide.

(PRNewswire) — AccuWeather Global Weather Center – AccuWeather, Inc., the global leader in weather information and digital media, today announced that AccuWeather Founder, President, and Chairman Dr. Joel N. Myers will serve as the keynote speaker for the second annual Weather Track at the 2015 Esri International User Conference. The presentation entitled "Transformational Change Driven by Big Data" will take place on July 21st from 1:30 to 2:00 PM in Ballroom 20D.

In his thought-provoking keynote, Dr. Myers will discuss the challenges and opportunities of big data in the age of transformative innovation and examples of how enterprises are integrating multiple sources of weather data with Superior Accuracy™ to create valuable customized data outputs for their global locations and detailed business concerns. Myers will also give insight into how AccuWeather is helping enterprises handle big data effectively with the ground-breaking AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions portal.

"In this time of transformative change, AccuWeather has continued its revolutionary innovations to enable clients to aggregate and synthesize multiple streams of Big Data with unmatched localization and weather, creating powerful tools for enterprises," Dr. Myers said. "AccuWeather aggregates and analyzes big weather data with custom business data, providing actionable insights that meet business needs worldwide. Enterprises that use the strength of this proprietary business intelligence can gain a competitive advantage globally."

AccuWeather and Esri have partnered for over 14 years to provide superior Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and weather solutions for enterprise clients. World-leading weather and GIS are a natural fit to provide enterprises with unprecedented, real-time situational awareness. AccuWeather's weather intelligence integrated with Esri mapping technology creates an enterprise-wide solution that moves beyond traditional mapping in order to protect people, property, and profits.

As an Esri gold partner, AccuWeather is fully integrated into the Esri User Conference again this year with a presence at various events throughout the week, including:

• Saturday (7/18) – Esri Business Summit2:30-5:30pm | Kiosk Table B109 | San Diego Hilton Bayfront HotelVisit the AccuWeather table 
• Sunday (7/19) – Esri Business Summit11:00-11:20am | San Diego Hilton Bayfront Hotel Rosemary Radich presenting a Q&A session on the impact of weather on events
• 2:00pm | Room 30C | Agricultural Form | San Diego Convention CenterLou Seidel presenting "Weather Intelligence in a Geo-Spatial World"
• 2:30-8:30pm | Kiosk Table B109 | San Diego Hilton Bayfront HotelVisit the AccuWeather table
• Tuesday (7/21) – Esri User Conference 
• 9:00am-6:00pm | Booth #411 | San Diego Convention Center
• Visit the AccuWeather booth
• 
  

• 10:00-11:00am | Indigo 204A/B | Hilton San Diego Bayfront 
• Don Coash presenting Leverage Weather Technology to Protect People, Properties, and Profits at Manufacturing Round Table
• 1:30pm | Ballroom 20D | San Diego Convention Center
• Dr. Joel N. Myers presenting the keynote at the weather track, AccuWeather: Weather, GIS, and Big Data
• - Wednesday (7/22) – Esri User Conference 
• 8:30am | Room 24B | San Diego Convention Center
• Rosemary Radich presenting "Weather Impacts on Health-Related Behaviors"
• 9:00am-6:00pm | Booth #411 | San Diego Convention Center
• Visit the AccuWeather booth
• - Thursday (7/23) – Esri User Conference
• 9:00am-1:30pm | Booth 411 | San Diego Convention Center
• Visit the AccuWeather booth

Visit AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions booth #411 for a preview of the AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions Portal. For more information, contact Email Contact or call 814-235-8756.

About AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions, Inc
Serving over 240 of the Fortune 500 companies and thousands more, AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions - the commercial weather services division of AccuWeather, Inc. - delivers mission-critical weather-driven enterprise solutions to assist businesses, government, media, and institutions, protecting people, property, and profits worldwide. AccuWeather enterprise products and services include the most accurate, site-specific and customized severe weather warnings, short- and long-range forecasts, legal forensics, and weather-triggered analytics, providing actionable insights from the world's largest weather media company.

Visit AccuWeather.com/EnterpriseSolutions for more information.

About AccuWeather, Inc. and AccuWeather.com
Every day over a billion people worldwide rely on AccuWeather to help them plan their lives, protect their businesses, and get more from their day. AccuWeather provides hourly and Minute by Minute™ forecasts with Superior Accuracy™ with customized content and engaging video presentations available on smart phones, tablets, free wired and mobile Internet sites via AccuWeather.com, connected TVs, and Internet appliances, as well as via radio, television, newspapers and the new AccuWeather Network cable channel. Established in 1962 by Founder, President, and Chairman Dr. Joel N. Myers – a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society who was recognized as one of the top entrepreneurs in American history by Entrepreneur Magazine's Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurs – AccuWeather also delivers a wide range of highly-customized enterprise solutions to media, business, government, and institutions, as well as news, weather content, and video for more than 180,000 third-party websites. AccuWeather's CEO, Barry Lee Myers, is an award winning leader in global weather information issues and one of the world's most recognized advocates for cooperative relationships between government weather agencies and the weather industry. He is a leader in the digital weather information space.

Visit www.AccuWeather.com for additional information.



For more information contact:
Justin Roberti / 814.235.8756 / Email Contact
AccuWeather, Inc. / 385 Science Park Road / State College, PA 16803



Katie Seifert / 973.588.2235 / Email Contact
Coyne Public Relations

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150720/238186

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Map Technology Takes Center Stage in San Diego

More than 16,000 people from 120 countries around the world are expected to converge in San Diego, California, to discuss the power of maps and applying geography at the 2015 Esri User Conference (Esri UC). The Esri UC and related events will take place from July 18–24, featuring a variety of speakers from a presidential candidate to global first responders. Attendees will share ideas and best practices for improving our world through maps.

Other featured speakers will include operations staff from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, executives from JPMorgan Chase, the director of Strategic Cooperation at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), and the president and CEO of the National Geographic Society. Former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley headlines a list of innovators from across every industry who will demonstrate how geospatial technology can make government smarter, combat global health challenges, ensure public safety, and drive greater revenues for businesses.

Before the Esri UC even kicks off, a series of concurrent events related to business; education; national security; architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC); and 3D mapping will take place July 18 and 19 in and around the San Diego Convention Center. These focused events will give attendees a deeper dive into various functional areas and equip them with an action plan to immediately invigorate their own organizations.

Throughout the week, more than 1,000 users will deliver presentations detailing how GIS helps their organizations in a number of ways. Whether they're onstage for Monday's Plenary Session or leading one of the nearly 300 moderated paper sessions, speakers will share lessons learned and best practices that can help their peers succeed.

The National Geographic Society will be on hand to continue celebrating the organization's 100 years of making maps. A chronicle of the history of maps and the American presidency, from future President Dwight Eisenhower carrying maps into battle during World War II to President Barack Obama receiving official presidential maps in the White House, will present the art and science of where. Gary E. Knell, president and CEO of the National Geographic Society, will also speak at the Plenary Session about the importance of geography in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education.

From hundreds of expert-led technical workshops to the expansive GIS Solutions EXPO featuring more than 300 technology companies and start-ups, attendees will immerse themselves in the latest and greatest in mapping and spatial analysis. Attendees will find a range of demos, talks, and resources about hot topics—big data, 3D visualization, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and more.

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Big Earth Data at your Fingertips

by Heike Hoenig, Science Journalist; PR - Media - Communication

EarthServer initiative is establishing Agile Analytics on Petabyte data cubes as a commodity.

Pushing the boundaries of Big Earth Data services, the intercontinental Earthserver initiative enables researchers to browse, access, and analyze massive multi-dimensional data sets from a wide range of sources. Big Earth Data at your fingertips - this is the vision of EarthServer for unleashing the potential of Big Data through a disruptive paradigm shift in technology:

• from isolated silos of data with disparate functionality towards a single, uniform information space;
• from a difficult, artificial differentiation between data and metadata access to unified retrieval;
• from zillions of files towards few whatever-size datacubes;
• from limited functionality to the freedom of asking anything, anytime, any server in a peer network of data centers worldwide.

In phase 1, EarthServer has established open ad-hoc analytics on massive Earth Science data, based on and extending the leading Array Database technology, rasdaman. According to EU Commission and inde pendent reviewers, rasdaman will "significantly transform the way that scientists in different areas of Earth Science will be able to access and use data in a way that hitherto was not possible" as demonstrated by portals with over 230 TB of spatio-temporal data. EarthServer "with no doubt has been shaping the Big Earth Data landscape through the standardization activities within OGC, ISO and beyond".

Now phase 2 of EarthServer has started, with an even more ambitious goal: data centers will provide at least 1 Petabyte of 3-D and 4-D datacubes. Technology advance will allow real-time scaling of such Petabyte cubes, and intercontinental fusion. This power of data handling will be wrapped into direct visual interaction based on multi-dimensional visualization techniques, in particular: NASA World Wind. Following the motto "a cube says more than a million images" EarthServer has set out to redefine the Big Data service landscape even more.

This way, critical support will be given to Copernicus and the Sentinel satellite data: a single 3D x/y/t datacube will be constructed for each satellite instrument so that millions of images form a single, simple data space, irrespective of its size resulting. Likewise, each climate dataset will form a single 4D datacube. Access to these cubes is through a clean-slate standards-based query language on n-D grids, OGC WCPS. This yields the agility that any query can be sent at any time, without admin intervention on server side. Multiple cubes can be combined based on parallel, distributed processing. Altogether, the WCPS language allows navigation, extraction, aggregation, and fusion of any-size space/time data cubes using simple, yet powerful query operators.

The consortium consists of Jacobs University (Germany, coordinator), rasdaman GmbH (Germany, SME), , Plymouth Marine Laboratory (UK), European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (UK), MEEO s.r.l. (Italy, SME), and CITE S.A. (Greece, SME). Additionally, two high-profile international organizations participate: NASA (US) and National Computational Infrastructure (Australia).

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New Ideas and Markets Emerging Based on Big Data from Space

The Copernicus Masters competition is inviting all interested participants to submit outstanding ideas, applications, and business concepts involving innovative uses of Earth observation data by 13 July 2015. Along with cash prizes, the winners will receive access to a leading international network, corresponding data, start-up funding, and other support valued at more than EUR 300,000 in total.

The tremendous amounts of data produced by the European Earth observation programme Copernicus and its Sentinel satellites hugely benefit science and public authorities and open the door to countless products and applications in a wide array of business sectors. The European Space Agency (ESA) and Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen (AZO) have thus initiated the Copernicus Masters competition to aid visionary entrepreneurs in bringing their innovations to market.

“Start-ups and SMEs in particular stand to benefit from the virtually limitless scope of the data Copernicus provides,” affirms Prof Dr Volker Liebig, Director of Earth Observation Programmes and Head of ESRIN, European Space Agency (ESA). “The ideas submitted to previous editions of the Copernicus Masters have already demonstrated this to impressive effect, as has the constantly growing number of companies that are developing products and services based on Earth observation data in ESA’s business incubation programme.”

These companies operate in a diverse range of fields, where they address subjects like resource efficiency in agriculture, the construction industry, and renewable energy. The Copernicus Masters, meanwhile, is also looking for new services and products in forward-thinking segments such as big data, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, data visualisation, and mobile applications, to name just a few.

In this year’s edition, prizes will be awarded in topic-specific challenges sponsored by a number of world-class partners, including: ESA, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), T-Systems International GmbH, Satellite Applications Catapult Ltd., Greece’s National Cadastre and Mapping Agency (NCMA), CloudEO AG, and European Space Imaging GmbH. In addition, the new University Challenge specifically addresses students and research assistants around the world.

“We and our partners are offering the participants space for innovation in areas that are already shaping the future – the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, smart cities, and renewable energy, for example,” states AZO managing director Thorsten Rudolph. “We want to support them in realising their creative solutions to these global challenges.”

“Taking part in the Copernicus Masters gave us the chance to make some key contacts and gather valuable feedback,” reports John Smedegaard, a co-founder of Ceptu, which won the CloudEO Farming Challenge in 2014. “The whole process was a huge help in advancing our idea and developing it into a commercial product through our new start-up.”

Experts from the realms of research and industry will be tasked with selecting the winner of each challenge. The overall winner – the 2015 Copernicus Master – will receive (along with their challenge prize) EUR 20,000 in cash and a satellite data package worth a further EUR 60,000, which is being provided with the financial support of the European Commission.

All of the winners will be announced this autumn and recognised as part of a festive awards ceremony.



For all of the details on this year’s prizes, partners, and terms of participation, please visitwww.copernicus-masters.com.



Additional information on the Copernicus programme is available at:

http://www.esa.int/copernicus & www.copernicus.eu

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