WOC “Sustainable Ocean Summit” - Updated Program Now Available

Initial Speakers, Sessions and Schedule Now Posted, Including Exciting New Sessions; Abstract Submissions Close on 31 July

Τhe latest program for the 3rd Sustainable Ocean Summit (SOS) – the global ocean business community conference on responsible ocean industry operations – is now posted here.

With a focus on “Sustainable Development and Growing the Blue Economy - the Next 50 Years”, the World Ocean Council (WOC) flagship event will gather the international ocean business community in Singapore from 9-11 November.

The Secretary General of the International Chamber of Shipping, Peter Hinchliffe, stated that, “The WOC Sustainable Ocean Summit is the event - with the program, the speakers and the participants - for catalysing a global, multi-industry dialogue on ocean sustainable development. The growing focus on ocean sustainability is drawing in new regulatory work from a range of national and international agencies, and from the UN itself. Ocean industry leaders, such as shipowners, need to understand the potential for these emerging measures to impact their business.”

SOS 2015 sponsorship opportunities are available for companies and organizations seeking to advance industry leadership and collaboration in addressing ocean sustainability challenges. Click here for sponsorship information.

Hinchliffe added that, “It is critical for the ocean business community to share experience among the sectors that have a stake in both the future health of the ocean and in the future of responsible ocean use. The SOS is a rare opportunity for the diverse ocean business community to come together to address these needs and opportunities.”

The draft SOS 2015 conference program includes the following proposed sessions:

Plenary sessions:

• Investment and Innovation for Ocean Sustainability
• Ocean + 50: Ocean Industry Projections and the Future of the Ocean Economy
• Ocean Executive Forum: Exploring Industry Leadership and Collaboration Across the Sectors
• Singapore and the Blue Economy

Parallel Sessions - Sector Spotlights

• Marine Mining: Opportunities and Challenges for a New Ocean Industry
• Shipping, Sustainability and Synergies: Engaging Green Shipping Initiatives with Each Other and with Other Ocean Industries
• Rig Decommissioning and Vessel Recycling: Exploring the Synergies
• SE Asia and Coral Reefs: Responsible Ocean Industry Operations in the ”Coral Triangle”

Parallel Sessions - WOC Programs: Progress and Plans

• Ocean Policy and Governance: Creating an Informed and Engaged Ocean Business Community
• Smart Ocean-Smart Industries: Industry Data Collection to Improve Ocean Knowledge
• Arctic: Business Leadership and Collaboration for Responsible Artic Development
• Marine Spatial Planning/Ocean Zoning: Ensuring that Ocean Planning Engages Ocean Industries
• Sound and the Marine Environment: Creating a Global, Multi-Industry Approach
• Marine Debris: Reducing the Industry Input of Plastics and Other Wastes through Adequate Port Reception Facilities
• BioFouling and Invasive Species: Understanding and Addressing a Global, Multi-Industry Issue
• Sea Level Rise/Extreme Events: Port and Coastal Infrastructure Adaptation and Resilience

Parallel Sessions - Other Hot Ocean Issues

• Fisheries and Extractive Industries: Understanding the Interactions and Resolving the Conflicts
• NEW Big Ocean Data: The Business of Marine Data Collection, Management, Analysis and Mapping
• NEW Blue Carbon: Carbon Sequestration through Marine Ecosystem Management
• NEW Blue Solutions for Business, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development
• NEW Ocean Acidification: Understanding and Addressing this Emerging Global Ocean Challenge

Until 31 July presentation abstracts may be submitted here . 

The WOC is especially seeking presentations by and for the ocean business community and will give preference to presentations from private sector representatives. Proposed presentations from government agencies, intergovernmental bodies, research or academic institutions, NGOs or others who are working closely with ocean industries will also be considered.

SOS 2015 will bring together a wide range of ocean industries, including: shipping, oil and gas, fisheries, aquaculture, tourism, offshore renewable energy, marine mining, ports, dredging, submarine cables, marine science/technology, biotechnology, the maritime legal, financial and insurance communities, and others.

Conference space is limited so register early to secure a place at this unique, timely multi-industry event. For a limited time, the SOS 2015 venue – the Marina Mandarin hotel – has special conference room rates available.

SOS 2015 REGISTRATION NOW OPEN!

Sustainable Ocean Summit 2015 : 9-11 Nov 2015

Marina Mandarin Hotel, Singapore

The 3rd World Ocean Council Sustainable Ocean Summit (SOS) will take place in Singapore the week of 9-11 November 2015. Plan to attend this unique global ocean industry event, which is held only every 2 years.

WOC Outreach this Month

6-7 June
Ocean Acidification International Reference User Group (Paris): Participant

21-24 July
International Seabed Authority Annual Conference (Kingston): Participant




Contact:
Paul Holthus, CEO
Phone: +1 (808) 277-9008
email: Email Contact
Web: www.oceancouncil.org

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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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Quest for Maps: Boon or Bane for Geospatial Industry

In 2003, while visiting the Esri Campus in Redlands, I got my first exposure to the geospatial content aggregation programme called Geography Network. Dozens of desktop servers were networked to create a platform for Esri users to populate their maps and share them with other users through the Geography Network.

Come 2005 and Google launched its first ever aggregated and organised geospatial content in public domain at a negligible cost (almost free of cost). The move made billions of users around the world gain access to maps and satellite images. Microsoft followed suit with its own programme called Microsoft Virtual Earth, which eventually came to be called as Bing Maps. The ever expanding and burgeoning navigation market added a new dimension to overall value of geospatial content, triggering big acquisitions of Tele Atlas by TomTom, valued at about $ 4.3 Billion. And, fearing growing competition from Google, Nokia too jumped into the ball game and went on to acquire Navteq at an unimaginable price of $8.1 Billion.

Despite the fact that Apple didn’t join the bandwagon, businesses across the world continued to rake in the moolah and transactions close to $25 billion dollars on account of geospatial content were carried out from 2004 to 2009. In fact, acquisition of MapInfo by Pitney Bowes also found motivation in Pitney Bowes’ quest for having its own exclusive geospatial information and software capabilities.

While building exclusive self-owned geospatial content empire, big IT and telecommunication giants acquired a range of small, medium and large geospatial companies. Their quest for the acquisitions continued until recently when Google bought Skybox, offering a constellation of small satellites to constantly monitor and update each and every activity happening on the face of the planet earth. Additionally, since social media is the latest buzzword and an easy access tool for data, various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin are building their own platforms for using geospatial information in their respective business processes.

Acquisitions, buy-outs and partnerships are reverberating on the business front, hence comes the time to monetise such investments. Google, with its largest IT machinery, managed to leverage its outreach to monetise and harness the value of its investments through efficient advertising revenue streams and online navigation tools that are available on smartphones. Furthermore, Google went on to offer geospatial software solutions, bundled with its geospatial data suit to large businesses and government organisations. Despite all of this, the technology giant finally showed a sign of losing its faith in geospatial exclusivity by terminating its software solutions group in February this year; and offered compensation to its large customer base for withdrawing itself from professional geospatial market.

Following this move by Google, the uncertainty over Microsoft Bing Maps was looming. The clouds of uncertainty hovering over Microsoft Bing Maps winked today, when it offered to collaborate and share its platform, people and data with Uber.

The story of Nokia is known to one and all. Probably, the acquisition of highly valued Navteq marked beginning of its downfall as the investment as huge as this wasn’t easy to be recovered for an engineering company like Nokia. Changes in PND based navigation market took TomTom by surprise; its revenues continued to fall on a regular basis and brought it almost to a closure. But, thanks to Apple’s sudden realisation and affection for maps, and exclusivity of content by other big players, TomTom found ground and trotted towards economic recovery by selling and reselling its geospatial content to Apple.

This makes me ponder – how all of this happened over a period of last one decade? Who has been behind this upsurge and growth of geospatial content? How come geospatial caught overnight attention of Google, Microsoft and Nokia? Or have there been geospatial champions who attributed to this revolution? Of course, competent geospatial professionals were the backbone of this movement, though it would be difficult to attribute this upsurge to them, officially.

While tracing the movement of few geospatial professionals in last 12 to 15 years, it is imperative to understand their extraordinary vision towards making geospatial a commodity. After having been denied opportunities by leading geospatial companies, they did venture out and joined hands with large IT and Telecommunication companies to create huge markets and ultimately succeeded in their mission of making geospatial information a public commodity. And it’s the same set of people who are moving on towards setting next frontiers for geospatial market including business intelligence, target advertising, media and entertainment, social media, e-commerce and Internet of Things.

But why am I concerned today? The future is promising and the geospatial industry is expanding and growing to its fullest potential. How does it matter to me as a geospatial advocate if big players are making an entry or an exit? Or for that matter losing or gaining money in their businesses. Ultimately, I should be looking at the growth and maturity of geospatial industry and nothing beyond. Yes, actually I am in a state of flux, where excitement is challenged by equal, if not more, sense of concern.

Did we oversell dreams, which eventually caused exit of big players? If so, then did we take lessons from our earlier experiences? Seems like ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Despite hundreds of billions of dollars having been invested in geospatial capabilities in last one decade, we still do not see an organised and mature geospatial industry. We are, time and again, debating on setting up mechanisms and methodologies to assess return on investments. We are yet to fully evolve and integrate geospatial workflows with user industries. None of the significantly large IT, Telecommunication and Engineering companies came forward to invest and strengthen geospatial business and practices. There is not even a single 5 billion plus geospatial company, we are yet to have one. But how does it affect? Yes it does, long term business value and sustainable growth is driven by constant investment and improvements in overall industrialisation, capacity and infrastructure supported by cutting edge technical, financial and managerial equity.

We, as geospatial industry, need to develop our capabilities and serve the needs of user industries instead of creating buy back oriented captive plants of geospatial content. In order to make attract constant investments towards improving the quality and currency of geospatial content, we need to enhance its economy of scale by serving to larger number of organisations across different industries, globally. The resort will make geospatial content more service oriented, solutions more valuable, products more affordable, investments more steady, innovations more open, and companies more profitable. This will ultimately move the industry towards business maturity and multiplying sustainable growth for industry. 

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Madhya Pradesh to release georeferencing database of land records

In a move that is going to be of immense help to the state’s farmers in designing cropping patterns and planning fertiliser usage, Madhya Pradesh will release comprehensive georeferencing database of its land records soon.

In a move that is going to be of immense help to the state’s farmers in designing cropping patterns and planning fertiliser usage, Madhya Pradesh will release comprehensive georeferencing database of its land records soon. It will be the second state after Gujarat to do so.

Policymakers would also find the facility handy, with digitised cadastral maps of the state to be superimposed with satellite images procured from Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro).

With the database in place, the state government, sources said, would be carrying out region-specific comprehensive planning and designing for various projects, covering sectors such as agriculture, roads, irrigation, water supply, etc. without having to visit the actual sites.

Cadastral map would include details of ownership, tenure, location, dimensions and at some time, even the value of land.

According to Hari Ranjan Rao, secretary, Department of Information Technology, Madhya Pradesh, various government departments, including revenue, forest and agriculture, had collectively worked to put together available individual maps and digitised land records and merged them with actual satellite images for creating the georeferencing database. This data would be ready for use in the next few weeks.

Rao said that three different sets of records — individual patta or map, land record digitisation and Isro satellite image captured real time — are to be placed on the single platform referred as georeference.

He said that the cost of generating such a data was not very high as most information was available with the government, adding the benefits would far outweigh the cost.

“The utility of the such database is manifold. The data would help farmers choose appropriate crops and in application of fertilsers on the basis of soil conditions,” Rao told FE.

In case of crop damages due to hailstorms, excessive or scanty rainfall, the government can specifically identify people in an area impacted by the nature of the calamity using this georeferencing data.

Rao said georeferencing data for 56,000 villages and 400-odd towns in the state would be available shortly.

Under the National Land Records Modernisation Programme launched in 2008, most of the states with the exception of few north-eastern states, have computerised all the land records, including mutations and digitised maps.

The Narendra Modi government’s Digital India programme, among other things, also aims at digitising land records, birth and death certificates, mark sheets and other such utilities.

According to an official with the department of land resources under the ministry of rural development, states like Gujarat, Haryana and West Bengal have progressed considerably in the field of modernisation of land records.

Haryana has integrated its land records system and the registration systems resulting in real time and up-to-date land records while West Bengal has integrated textual and the spatial data of the Record of Rights.

The term georeferencing is commonly used in the geographic information systems field to describe the process of associating a physical map with spatial locations.

Gujarat has digitised maps and has superimposed more than hundred GIS layers relating to various attributes such as wastelands, agriculture land, water bodies, power lines, roads etc. on these digitised maps.

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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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Satellite images provide new view of uncontacted Amazonian communities

A laundry list of dangers threaten Amazonia’s few remaining uncontacted indigenous communities. Colonists and industry workers often grab tribal land for mining, logging, drug trafficking, or hydrocarbon extraction, which damage the groups’ environment and bring them into conflict with armed settlers. Careless encroachment by outsiders can also bring diseases to which uncontacted groups have no immunity.

Locating and keeping tabs on settlements is an important step in protecting communities from the advances of colonists and even government-sanctioned development. But this has often entailed direct contact or aerial surveys with low-flying planes, which cost researchers thousands of dollars per flight and cause undue stress to people being surveyed. A number of aerial images show villagers shooting arrows at planes or fleeing into the forest.

In the past few years, however, scientists have begun to explore using high-resolution satellite images to gather data on the location, population, and configuration of uncontacted communities. Surveys using these images can cost as little as US $10 per square kilometer and they provide higher-quality, more systematic data than aerial surveys. A study in the journal Royal Society Open Science uses images purchased from high-resolution image databases and the mapping software ArcGIS to locate and measure villages, gardens, and houses in five uncontacted communities near the Brazil-Peru border.

Western portion of site H that was monitored during the study. From 2012 to 2013 this site showed an increase in slash-and-burn fields that are designated by arrows, as well as an expansion of two large cleared areas in the center. These changes total 16 ha cleared in 14 months.

The study used tips from news stories and Brazil’s indigenous agency, Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI) to get a sense of where the communities were located before zeroing in on them and eventually purchasing high-resolution images for specific areas.

The researchers were able to learn quite a lot about the communities by analyzing the satellite images. For instance, one village was visible in 2006 satellite images, but appeared abandoned and overgrown in 2012 images. A 2014 overflight showed the community had moved to a nearby location. And using population estimates from FUNAI, the team calculated that the communities surveyed had about two square meters of indoor space and .11 hectares of land for each inhabitant, making their living space an order of magnitude denser than that of most contacted tribes.

"As indigenous people acculturate, the density goes down quite dramatically," Robert Walker, an anthropologist at the University of Missouri who led the study, told mongabay.com. "We want to find and measure more isolated villages and compare them to contacted villages… and see how [both] move and change over time."

Satellite image of clearing and houses for a section of site F2 that was monitored during the study. 

The approach could also be used to monitor the effect of external threats like logging on indigenous communities’ populations and movements. Satellite images have the potential to significantly augment FUNAI’s existing strategies to protect uncontacted groups, like overflights and law-enforcement stations at remote forest outposts, the researchers write. "We could be much more vigilant of monitoring encroaching external threats, and at a lower cost, using a remote surveillance program that would alert a mobile team to help stop specific invasions into protected indigenous lands," said Walker.

Satellite monitoring did not identify individuals or faces and it involved spatial analysis rather than direct interaction, alleviating concerns about consent and privacy, Walker said. However, he was careful not to reveal the exact locations of the communities in his paper for fear that doing so "might facilitate some people causing harm to these isolated villages," he said.

According to the study, the ultimate goal of this work is the security of uncontacted people and specifically "a longitudinal surveillance program across Amazonia that can facilitate informed decisions by policy-makers to increase protection of isolated populations."

Uncontacted indigenous tribe in the Brazilian state of Acre. Photo by: Gleilson Miranda / Governo do Acre via Wikimedia Commons. 

Citations:
Walker RS, Hamilton MJ, Groth AA. Remote sensing and conservation of isolated indigenous villages in Amazonia. R. Soc. Open Sci. 1:140246. 2014.



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HxGNLIVE 2015

An extravaganza of new technology, future visions, opinions, synergetic collaborations and a great deal more was presented during HxGNLIVE in Las Vegas, which ran until June 4th 2015. The event has attracted thousands of users from a variety of industries and organisations, many of whom work in surveying, GIS, building, metrology, security, mining, cadastre or government. 

Attendees witnessed pioneering performances from Leica Geosystems, whose innovations will result in high precision measurements executed by UAV's (drones). Ground Penetrating Radar is now being combined with Mobile Mapping: underground/above ground integration whilst driving. The term ‘Wearable Reality Capture’ refers to the miniaturizing of 3D scanners. Future Hexagon conferences will surely boast scanning teams equipped only with a backpack. The prefix 'Smart' has also landed within the Hexagon family of companies, but it still might be synonymous with 'how we really would like stuff to run'.

Another hot topic is the crowd sourcing of map data. “We can't rely on a few professionals, we have to ensure everyone contributes to making the best maps possible.” Folks who still feel that crowd sourced data is useless, might want to reconsider if they want to make it work. “See it as a big lump of data, find trends in the volume and not so much in the detail”, said Mladen Stojic of Hexagon Geospatial. David Glenn, of Intergraph fame, elaborated in a dedicated session on Geomedia GIS about upcoming versions of GeoMedia 15.0 and what could be expected from "16.0" 

Geospatial

Mladen Stojic refers to the new M.App Chest cloud space, which is hosted by Amazon, 'The Dropbox for Geospatial'. The official launch of the Smart M.App portfolio and the Geospatial 2016 release will be at HxGNLIVE in November 2015, in Hong Kong. Purpose built applications for end users, localised by partners, are going to be a part of the M.App Portfolio. GEOApp: UAS is another new product from Hexagon's Geospatial division. It's a fully automated workflow using photogrammatic data from UAV's. A collaboration between Hexagon and satellite image vendor Airbus Defence & Space integrates content into the software.

Geosystems

Creating 3D models, the newly released Leica Captivate enables measurement professionals across a wide array of industries, working in various applications, to capture and manage complex data. By combining software, precision measurement instruments and services, it's an all-encompassing solution with the look and feel of a smartphone. With Leica Captivate onboard, the new Leica total stations and MultiStation 'learn' any environment, deliver accurate positions regardless of difficult conditions and offer a fast relock in case of interrupted line of sight. The new instruments include: Leica Nova MS60 MultiStation, Leica CS20 Controller, Leica Nova TS60 Total Station, Leica CS35 Tablet and Leica Viva TS16 Total Station. When integrated with the Hexagon Imagery Program through Leica Infinity office software, basemaps can be viewed in Leica Captivate. 30 centimetre, 4-band georeferenced imagery helps users be more visually aware of what is at any jobsite, allowing for better decision making in real time. This results in increased productivity, fewer errors and a reduction in return trips to the site. Additionally, this saves time during post processing. 

Technet Rail

Geosystems elaborated on the acquisition of Technet-Rail 2010 Gmbh, a software development firm specialising in geospatial big data applications for the rail transportation industry. Incorporating technet-rail’s specialised knowledge, the acquisition should extend Leica Geosystems’ offerings, specifically in the mobile mapping segment and enable the bundling of direct or hosted market vertical solutions for the rail industries. Technet-Rail’s highly-mathematical and probability-perception approach to analysing large 3D datasets is in use on rail networks with mobile mapping data, including applications such as dynamically extracting clearances and rail gauges over whole rail networks. With this technology, Leica Geosystems is now able to further extend existing mobile mapping solutions into the rail industry. This includes developing specific monitoring tools for dedicated pit-to-ports rail networks, solutions for timely and cost-effective rail bridge refurbishment, and enabling monitoring of the growing high-speed rail networks. Offering full geo-referenced rail network maps, technet-rail 3D data tools can be used to calculate maximum train speeds – a process that until now was without an as-built basis.

Esri

The newly launched Hexagon Imagery Program, which provides ready-to-use imagery services, will be available to Esri users through the ArcGIS Marketplace. These services deliver high-resolution aerial imagery such as ready-to-use basemaps and analytical subscription services. Esri, Hexagon, and Leica have joined forces to provide this imagery to Esri users. These images are powered by the ArcGIS platform, deployed into the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. As these services are powered by the ArcGIS platform, the user has the support of a powerful, dynamic web GIS. The Hexagon Imagery Program includes two imagery services that are live and available now on the ArcGIS Marketplace as basemap and dynamic image services. The Basemap Service is a cached basemap imagery service consisting of 30-centimeter true colour imagery that is updated on an ongoing basis. The Multispectral Imagery Service provides access to the original pixel values for all four bands (red, green, blue and near infrared) of the 30-centimeter imagery. This dynamic image service is ready to use for rich image analysis and exploitation activities in ArcGIS for Desktop, ArcGIS Pro, web and mobile apps, and supported Esri partner applications. Through the Hexagon Imagery Program, the collection, storage and serving of imagery have been streamlined through a set of cloud-based subscription services, freeing up staff to perform the critical tasks that keep our communities running smoothly. These services are sold on a subscription basis for specific areas of interest. A single subscription includes access to both the Basemap and Multispectral Imagery services. This bundling of capabilities allows organizations to deliver both fast-performing basemaps and analytically capable multispectral services using just one subscription.

Autodesk

Leica Geosystems announced a collaboration with Autodesk to provide wider access to premier reality-capture and BIM-to-field layout solutions for professionals involved in laser scanning, building construction layout and related markets. The collaboration should create new opportunities for professionals working with Autodesk software to leverage the high-accuracy data from Leica Geosystems’ sensors directly within popular Autodesk authoring tools. Multiple technology integrations are being explored as both companies investigate ways to create synergies that will benefit their joint customers. 

Next HxGNLIVE events: Hong Kong 18-20 November 2015, Anaheim, CA 13-16 June 2016.

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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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Radio astronomers seeking open-spectrum national parks

The National Academies of Science has evaluated a steadily growing problem: …





Readers of Ars will undoubtedly be familiar with some of the battles over spectrum allocation for wireless devices and services. As the number of wireless devices and their bandwidth requirements continue an apparently inexorable climb, the fight over who should get which chunk of the radio spectrum has generally played out between big business and public interests. One group that hasn't generally appeared to be taking part in the scrum is the science community, but that's not for lack of interest—the radio spectrum is used for both astronomy and the monitoring of the environment on Earth. Now, a report by the National Academies of Science calls for a greater role for science in spectrum allocation.


The intersection of radio communications and radio astronomy has a rich history—the radiation remnant of the big bang, for example, was discovered accidentally when researchers at Bell Labs noticed that a microwave receiver picked up persistent interference. Radio telescopes have since been used to explore everything from the behavior of neutron stars to the presence of organic molecules in distant dust clouds. Unfortunately, researchers have been compelled to build them in ever more remote locations, due to the interference that arises closer to population centers. As the report notes, however, even those are coming under threat from everything from cell phone signals to aircraft and satellite transmissions.


Because the objects studied by radio astronomers occur at varying distances across the Universe, key diagnostic signals may experience significant redshifts for some objects, meaning that a wide spectrum needs to be reserved in these areas. The faintness of some signals also requires that some objects be imaged for a full day to provide sufficient data, making these observations extremely sensitive to interference.


If anything, the situation with remote Earth sensing is even worse. Signals in the radio frequencies can provide detailed information on things like wind speed, water content, and mineral formations, but these techniques are becoming nearly useless in the areas where we might need some of this information the most: major population centers. In more than one case, we've actually lost the ability to use instruments after we went through the (extremely expensive) step of putting them into space. Right now, there are over 20 satellites in orbit that use passive microwave sensors to study the Earth.


Unfortunately, the spectrum allocation system in the US dates from the 1940s, long before radio astronomy and remote sensing were significant concerns. Still, the system has managed to reserve a bit over two percent of the spectrum below 3GHz for scientific observations, and another four percent is allocated on a secondary basis.


But those allocations haven't been made as part of a systematic attempt to consider what areas of research may require additional areas of spectrum, and a variety of factors are increasing the problems faced by the scientific community. Even licensed devices may interfere with key areas of the spectrum through things like spurious emissions, interference with adjacent channels, and occasional out-of-band emissions. Perhaps more significantly, there has been a proliferation of unlicensed low-power devices, from cordless phones and networking equipment to newer technologies like anti-collision radars used on automobiles. Although these are low power, their collective emissions in densely populated areas can interfere with scientific observations.


Improvements in wireless technology are also causing problems. Scientists have learned to make use of the "white spaces" left between channels to prevent interference with broadcasts, but engineers are increasingly able to fill these with usable signals.


The report makes a large series of recommendations, predicated on the recognition that the problems are entirely one-sided: research uses rely on passive sensing of natural radio sources—they can't possibly interfere with wireless communications. As such, the effort should be made to protect key areas of spectrum for scientific uses, in the same way we protect areas of land in the form of parks. Agencies with key interests in the area, like NASA and NOAA, should become more involved in the spectrum allocation process, and think about future areas of research that will need specific pieces of spectrum. For example, the report notes that researchers have become interested in the Cosmic Dark Ages, when the first stars in the Universe formed and exploded, and imaging that era will require radio frequencies.


For their part, the agencies like the FCC and NTIA could be more aggressive about policing devices or services that bleed over into spectrum they haven't been allocated.


But radio-based communications are clearly here to stay, so the report also suggests that everyone involved look into a number of technological fixes. These include some sorts of active interference suppression for instruments, as well as using technology developed by wireless equipment makers for their own purposes. Devices as simple as WiFi transmitters have the ability to hop frequencies to avoid sources of interference. It should be possible, the authors conclude, to create a cooperative system in which devices coordinate a temporary avoidance of certain areas of the spectrum in order to give scientists a clear window to view the Earth and cosmos.


Listing image by NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day






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Microsoft acquires Vexcel, a multiple remote sensing technology company

Microsoft has acquired Boulder, Colorado-based Vexcel?a company that creates …






Microsoft has announced that it has bought Vexcel, a Boulder, Colorado-based company that deals with multiple remote sensing technologies. Vexcel's products and services span three categories, and those categories are Mapping and Photogrammetric Solutions, Satellite Ground Systems, and Advanced Radar Technologies.


Some of the more interesting systems that Vexcel carries include:
The Apex Ground Station: a complete remote sensing satellite reception and processing system including tracking antenna, data capture, and data processing subsystems
Satellite Intelligence Solutions: integrated multi-sensor intelligence solutions for image exploitation and analysis
EarthView Stereo: generates a digital terrain height model from a pair of SAR images and is able to process a full resolution DEM in under an hour
OceanView: a cost-effective satellite maritime surveillance system which offers a new approach to tracking objects in the oceans and allows broad-range ocean monitoring capabilities through readily available commercial satellite imagery
UltraMap Worksuite: a highly-automated workflow which allows a radical improvement of all steps of the photogrammetric production process


A complete (and impressive) lineup of Vexcel's products is listed on the company's website. While there are plenty of areas where Vexcel's tools could complement Microsoft's products, the most likely place we'll see them first is in the Virtual Earth department. I'm thinking that this acquisition will result in a very promising Google Earth competitor as well.






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Travel across the Roman Empire in real time with ORBIS

In a clever bit of technological legerdemain, Stanford University has combined historical research, mapping, and Web technology to bring ancient Roman Empire travel to the Internet. A cross-disciplinary team has created and launched ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World. With it, a user can determine how long it will take to travel from any point in the Roman Empire to any other, as well as calculate the cost of transporting goods and people.

This heretofore unnatural union of geographers, technologists, and historians of the ancient world is becoming more and more common under the descriptor of "digital humanities." ORBIS looks to be one of the most effective examples of its promise.

Built by historian and classicist Walter Scheidel and Stanford Libraries' digital humanities specialistElijah Meeks, with the assistance of geographer and Web developer Karl Grossner and GIS analyst Noemi Alvarez, the interactive online atlas is based on a host of data. This includes historical tide information and weather; size, grade, and surface of roads; main cities and ports; land, sea, and river routes; vehicle speed (including ships, ox carts, horse, and walking); and the cost of transport.

The time period the system centers on is about 200 CE, when Roman power was at its highest and the empire's extent was greatest. The atlas is built from 751 sites, most of which are cities and towns, and covers about four million square miles. Two hundred sixty-eight of the sites are ports. The road network mapped on ORBIS includes 52,587 miles of road, including desert tracks and 17,567 miles of rivers and canals.

The dynamic distance cartogram

According to Meeks, the project started when Scheidel happened to see a dynamic distance cartogram of the London tube system. Dynamic distance cartograms distort the layout of their data based on your selection. If you choose one stop, it will show you a map of how close in time expenditure the other stops are, based on information like train connections.

"In building a geographic transportation model of the Roman Empire, you can't just download an API for distance," Meeks told Ars. So once the proposal was approved, the principals had to figure out how to collect that data. For land travel, they were able to use itineraria, Roman accounts of time spent traveling various routes. But for sea voyages, similar information did not really exist. It was in creating a model for the missing information that ORBIS's builders found themselves in the role of pioneers.

They had to write a model for ancient sea travel based on scientific data regarding wind, currents, and weather. Meeks did so using Gephi, the agnostic network analysis and visualization tool. He subsequently imported it into PostGIS, a PostgreSQL open-source database.

Grossner built the user-facing site using ExtJS for the site interface and OpenLayers for the maps.

"As a geographer, my favorite thing about the site," Grossner told Ars, "is that it brings some basic geographic principles, like cost distance and cost surfaces, to an audience that seems genuinely tickled by them. The oddball merging (of the site's textual components with its interactive ones) was done with enough care that the approach can be fairly evaluated as a potentially new wrinkle on an emerging genre of interactive scholarly works."

History as a system

The major ground broken with ORBIS, however, is not technical, per se. It's in the use of technology to approach history as a system instead of a static collection of data.

"When you look at other historical digital projects," said Meeks, such as Pleiades, the crowd-sourced digital atlas of ancient history, "you see sets of rich data layers you can look at on maps, which is great. But with ORBIS we have a model of an historical world system—we can start to talk about how this world functioned."

In only two weeks since its launch, the response to ORBIS has astounded its builders.

"We've gotten feedback from middle school teachers, PhD candidates, undergraduates using it for papers." Respondents have noted that in addition to being a good tool for teaching the history of Rome, it's equally good at teaching geographical concepts. One scholar is using it to determine the cost of information distribution in the ancient world. Another is using it to track the journeys of St. Paul. "It's proving to be a useful tool on various levels, and so popular I'm not even sure our little server is going to be able to handle it."

One of the disappointments for Meeks, however, is the tool that inspired the ORBIS project in the first place.

"A tech friend of mine was laughing at the metrics," Meeks said. "It'll show 50,000 people looking at the maps but only 100 using the interactive distance cartogram." In fact that function is not very intuitive looking. At first (or even second and third) glance a first-time user is not sure what he or she is looking at.

"It shows me that we in the library business have to take UX design seriously."

This is a shame—albeit one likely to be mitigated with subsequent design tweaks—because it is arguably the most valuable aspect of the project.

The season, the city, the cost

Ox cart and boat takes a lot longer than flying.

If Web technologies only made what is in books available online, it would still be important because of how that act democratizes access to information. But when it does something simply impossible within the pages of a book, it gets a great deal more exciting. ORBIS's cartogram is just such a thing. It allows the user to select one main city—Rome, Constantinople, London, or Antioch—and a season, then choose either the fastest routes or the cheapest ones. The map changes dynamically according to those choices, and rearranges the spatial relationships to reflect them.

Suddenly London zooms away from Rome, actually moving off the map—it's nearly impossible to get there during the winter due to Atlantic storms. With another set of choices, Corinth meets Antioch in the center of the map—it's a cheap destination during the summer.

At moments of innovations such as this one, history seems closer and technology more relevant.

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