GIS News: ERDAS Plugin for ArcGIS, New World Map Edition

BY CAITLIN DEMPSEY MORAIS



The latest geospatial industry news includes software announcements from ERDAS, SuperGeo, PCI Geomatics, and Esri. GfK Geomarketing announces new world data, and Geosparc will be hosting technology sessions at FOSS4G.

ERDAS
ERDAS announces the release of new version of ECW Plug-in for ArcGIS Desktop. The ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK plug-in provides a means for ArcGIS for Desktop users to read files in the ECW and JP2 formats and accept ECWP streams of ECW and JP2 data originating from ERDAS APOLLO.

Esri

The National Land Survey of Iceland (NLSI) is implementing Esri’s ArcGIS for INSPIRE to meet compliance with the European Union’s Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) Directive. This will ensure that the country’s public data is visible and accessible to institutions, companies, and individuals for improved governance.

Microsoft has selected Esri to participate in the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) Alliance Partner program. Esri’s flagship ArcGIS software will be demonstrated in MTC Envisioning Centers worldwide as part of the Strategy Briefing offering. These leading-edge geographic information system (GIS) tools will also be available to Microsoft prospects and customers to use during Proof of Concepts workshops.

GfK Geomarketing
GfK GeoMarketing’s new and completely overhauled digital World Map Edition is now available. This global edition includes all map updates of the past several years, including those for Asia, America and Africa. The edition provides comprehensive, detailed coverage of worldwide postal and administrative boundaries as well as topographic information.

SuperGeo

SuperGeo will be releasing SuperGIS Desktop 3.1 which improves the performance in editing, displaying, analyzing and managing spatial data. SuperGIS Desktop 3.1 contains two versions, Standard version and Professional version. In addition to the entire functions of Standard version, Professional version also supports Topology Analysis, reinforces geodatabase management, and provides VBA customization.

ELMF

The European LiDAR Mapping Forum has announced that 60% of exhibitor space has been sold to vendors includingFARO, Optech, Topcon Europe, Ixblue, Leica, Optech, and Esri. The second ELMF is taking place at the Salzburg Congress, Salzburg, Austria from 29 – 30 November 2011. Last year’s inaugural event attracted 613 professionals from the mapping, surveying and GIS industries representing 46 countries.

earthmine

earthmine has announced it is now an Autodesk AEC Industry Partner, along with the immediate availability of its latest addition to the earthmine desktop product suite, earthmine for AutoCAD Map 3D.

CARIS

CARIS’ Bathy DataBASE (BDB) software has provided the last link of a 25 year project enabling the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) to implement their Hydrographic Information Network.

PCI Geomatics
PCI Geomatics has successfully deployed a high speed image production system to the Amazon Cloud in support of Esri’s ArcGIS Online platform, to process and make available high resolution Imagery content.

Geosparc


Geosparc, the company professionally supporting the open source GIS development software Geomajas, today announced that it will be present at Foss4G, the international conference for Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial, in Denver (US) from 12 till 16 September 2011. Geosparc will be hosting the Introduction to Geomajas workshop and the following technology sessions: Mobile GIS through Geomajas, Geomajas, a GIS framework for the web, and Securing GIS data.

Source: GIS loung - Maps and GIS

Hexagon Geospatial Automates Property Change Assessments in ERDAS IMAGINE®

Users need automated solutions that are highly effective in helping to accurately predict property changes. By developing this new patent-pending innovation within ERDAS IMAGINE, we have simplified the entire process.




Hexagon Geospatial is pleased to announce it has filed a patent for a new, fully automated Image Change Detection technique in ERDAS IMAGINE that is ideal for property change assessments.

The new patent-pending Image Change Detection technique allows users to automatically compare classification segments generated in property change assessment zones to effectively identify changes that occur over time. The new change detection workflow is delivered as part of the standard ERDAS IMAGINE configuration.

“The property appraisal process can present a host of both business and technical challenges,” said Mladen Stojic, President of Hexagon Geospatial. “Users need automated solutions that are highly effective in helping to accurately predict property changes. By developing this new patent-pending innovation within ERDAS IMAGINE, we have simplified the entire process.”

When comparing imagery captured at different times, users can now perform an analysis on a zone-by-zone basis to determine the extent of change that has occurred in each zone. The results are displayed from the highest probability of change to the lowest, allowing users to easily verify them and generate a comprehensive report.

While the intended audience is property assessors, the change detection technique is ideal for all types of data, making it a universal approach for anything from natural resource applications to defense and intelligence.

Hexagon Geospatial patent titled “Image Change Detection”, application number 14/738,374 was filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office on June 12, 2015.

ABOUT HEXAGON GEOSPATIAL 

Hexagon Geospatial helps you make sense of the dynamically changing world. Known globally as a maker of leading-edge technology, we enable our customers to easily transform their data into actionable information, shortening the lifecycle from the moment of change to action. Hexagon Geospatial provides the software products and platforms to a large variety of customers through direct sales, channel partners, and Hexagon businesses. For more information, visit http://www.hexagongeospatial.com or contact us at marketing@hexagongeospatial.com.

Hexagon Geospatial is part of Hexagon, a leading global provider of information technologies that drive quality and productivity improvements across geospatial and industrial enterprise applications. Hexagon’s solutions integrate sensors, software, domain knowledge and customer workflows into intelligent information ecosystems that deliver actionable information, automate business processes and improve productivity. They are used in a broad range of vital industries. Hexagon has more than 15,000 employees in 46 countries and net sales of approximately 3.1bn USD.

Learn more at hexagon.com.

Contact:

Jason Sims
Hexagon Geospatial
+1 202-262-3340

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Mastering Waves of Data

Hexagon Geospatial and rapidlasso GmbH Partnership





As a result of a recent partnership between Hexagon Geospatial and rapidlasso GmbH, the latest release of rapidlasso´s LAStools contains a new toolbox for ERDAS IMAGINE 2014, with a 2015 release expected this summer. Now, analysts can create Spatial Models within one interface that chain together the operators added by LAStools with the raster and vector operators in ERDAS IMAGINE to create models that describe their specific workflow.





Figure 1: Sample LAStools workflow created with the Spatial Modeler of ERDAS IMAGINE. First a point density raster of the input LAZ is computed for quality checking by 'lasgrid'. Next, the file is ground classified by 'lasground'. Then the “height above ground” of each point is computed by 'lasheight' and used to classify building and vegetation points by 'lasclassify'. Then a 0.5 meter DSM hillshade is produced with 'blast2dem' and a 0.5 meter DTM hillshade is produced by 'las2dem', both in PNG format. Finally, two shapefiles with polygons marking the building footprints and the vegetation areas are computed by 'lasboundary'.



Those who balance out their intense geospatial careers with surfing the world's oceans often describe the moment of catching a wave as feeling absolutely in tune with the forces of nature. As the wave comes closer you paddle and position your board to carve out a niche in the wave using the skills and experiences acquired on numerous waves before. Each wave has its own identity, so you need to adjust your moves to ride a wave to shore. Becoming one with the ocean like that is an incredible experience.

Waves and waves of geospatial data are rolling in on those working in today's geospatial analysis industry. There is not just one but three different kind of data crashing upon our shores: raster, vector, and point cloud data. For a smooth ride during geospatial data analysis, people require multiple and modular software packages that effectively work together. They must be adjusted as needed to synthesize the input streams into one cohesive answer. The ability to edit and classify in the point domain, then run analysis on a raster and feed that information into vector analysis is crucial for making sense of the choppy seas of data and painting the bigger picture our decision-makers need.

Position Yourself in Data Waves
This is where ERDAS IMAGINE Spatial Modeler comes to the rescue. By allowing you to quickly and easily string together geoprocesses in an easy and intuitive fashion, it frees your mind to focus on riding even the biggest geospatial data waves in the most efficient way. It replaces the traditional dialog-driven workflow with modular and customizable pipelines that provide your geospatial senses with a streamlined and repeatable means of getting the answer.

The Spatial Modeler has an extensive library of geo-processing operators that work on all three waves of data. But its real power comes from its extensibility, allowing users and domain experts to add their own operators, including tools from other software. This can be done by running external command line tools within the Spatial Modeler environment, by creating Python operators, or by using the Spatial Modeler SDK to build new operators.

Carving Out Your Niche
That’s why Hexagon Geospatial and rapidlasso GmbH decided to team up. ERDAS IMAGINE is a powerful tool used in the Remote Sensing industry, and LAStools by rapidlasso GmbH is a popular LiDAR processing software suite – a robust collection of extremely efficient, batch-scriptable, multi-core command line tools. Together, we can merge our strengths to simplify the system.

Balancing the daily developments with a few hours of surfing in their secret laboratories in the Philippines, Hexagon Geospatial and rapidlasso GmbH used the inspirations of their exotic location to leverage the extensibility of Spatial Modeler and make the powerful command line tools from LAStools available within the ERDAS IMAGINE Spatial Modeler framework. The latest release of LAStools from rapidlasso GmbH contains a new toolbox for ERDAS IMAGINE 2014, with a 2015 release expected this summer.

Now, analysts can create Spatial Models within one interface that chain together the operators added by LAStools with the raster and vector operators in IMAGINE to create models that describe their specific workflow. These models can then be saved, reused, and shared across departments. They can even be customized so non-technical specialists can use them to adapt as conditions change.

Riding Smooth Whatever Water
This combination makes complete sense. “This kind of partnership is part of a growing strategy to extend the utility of ERDAS IMAGINE and position the Spatial Modeler as a platform to provide our customers with powerful capabilities not supported in ERDAS IMAGINE. Many current ERDAS IMAGINE customers already use LAStools for their Point Cloud processing, and this collaboration provides them—and future customers—with a seamless interaction between point cloud, raster and feature analytics,” said Steve du Plessis, Director of Remote Sensing for Hexagon Geospatial.

“With the huge breadth of ERDAS IMAGINE’s Geospatial users and capabilities we cannot always meet the detailed requirements of our customers. Martin Isenburg has a very close relationship with his user community and provides concise market-driven functionality. This partnership with rapidlasso makes for the perfect mix,” added du Plessis.

Calming Choppy Geospatial Seas
By putting together a platform like the Spatial Modeler and powerful domain tools like LAStools, a system that has long been divided is now unified. The goal is to harmonize different geospatial workflows that have traditionally been separated no matter what waves of data users are exposed to. By simplifying and de-cluttering a workspace, users are allowed to focus on riding their geospatial waves to shore, opening new and innovative moves to unlock the wealth of information locked inside in new and innovative ways.

For more information, have a look at: http://rapidlasso.com and http://hexagongeospatial.com


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