Perspectives

Top 10 of 2011

Esri Adds 3D Design Tools with Procedural Acquisition  - Esri announced the acquisition of Switzerland-based company Procedural at their 2011 User Conference in San Diego. Procedural's CityEngine application allows for the quick modeling and visualization of city-scale models, marking Esri's serious entrance into the 3D design and city modeling space, and further blurring the lines between what the CAD and GIS toolset are capable of. The integration of this city modeling, 3D creation, visualization, and 3D analysis capability within Esri's product line will further define GeoDesign.

Indoor Mapping Added - In the online mapping realm, this year marks the introduction of interior mapping with both Google and Nokia offering maps and indoor navigation. The Google Maps' offering closely matches their StreetView interface, allowing you to browse store aisles, airports and malls, with video as the content. Nokia is aiming to include 3D interior maps, with Blutooth used as the positioning tool. These serious forays into interior mapping are likely to lead a trend as indoor is truly the frontier in terms of unmapped locations on our planet.

Autodesk Launches Infrastructure Modeler - Autodesk's new conceptual design software aims to create, evaluate and communicate infrastructure design projects much more readily, adding greater flexibility and much faster speed to the process. The product addresses the conceptual design workflow that has been clunky at best in the past. The product allows you to leverage data you already own and manage, as well as data that is freely available data from the Web, with support for multiple data file formats. Importing the data into the workspace allows you to quickly create a model that can be shared and enhanced over time.

Lidar Data Handling Catches Up to Hardware - Lidar data capture tools have long been out in front of the ability of software and computers to import and analyze it, largely due to file size and the necessary computing capacity. We're now seeing a generational leap forward in terms of tools that can manipulate the data, automatically extract features, analyze different 3D scenarios, and simulate 3D point clouds. Leading this next generation of Lidar data analysis tools is E3De from Exelis Visual Information Solutions. This new software can handle billions of points, can automatically classify different feature layers such as buildings and trees, and can integrate with the company's Envi product for combination with satellite imagery, and export to Esri's ArcMap for further analysis. We can expect a whole new range of tools to continue to expand the role of Lidar outputs.

Lightsquared's Assault on GPS - The aggressive assault by LightSquared, with its proposed LTE wireless broadband network that harms the GPS signal, served to further validate the utility of GPS in the public's eye. Coming to the defense of accurate GPS signals were the likes of John Deere, the aviation industry, and GPS makers including Trimble and Leica. While this is not quite played out, it now seems that the next generation 4G network is working to adapt their technology rather than force GPS changes that would have cost the GPS industry and commercial GPS users a significant sum. While the cost of the fight wasn't trivial, it's refreshing to see testimony at high levels that demand the ongoing utility as well as the economic importance of this geolocation technology.

GLONASS Becomes Fully Operational -  Russia's GLONASS satellite constellation was complete in 2011, making the system fully operational for the first time since 1995. This has spawned renewed acitivity and interest in developing new products.

Arctic Sea Ice at Record Lows - As the Arctic ice continues to melt, profound new developments are arising in terms of arctic transportation, energy search and monitoring in the high arctic. Several nations are involved with respect to setting sovereign boundaries. 

Awakening to High Accuracy Data - The value of high accuracy data was more prominent in discussions in 2011. Manufacturers involved in GNSS, remote sensing, utilities and 3D modeling all expressed interest and understanding about the value of high quality geospatial data. Pointools lidar data handling (a company acquired by Bentley) is an example of 'best of class' software of the many company's performing this type of work. 

Japanese Tsunami - Perhaps no other event in 2011 was mentioned more. It spawned a wealth of online mapping, development of tsunami mitigation measures based on spatial data and interest about geophysical geography not seen in many years. Current interests include the development of infrastructure monitoring technology for such events.

High Detail Ocean Floor Maps - Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory from scientific data collected on research cruises, the new synthesis of seafloor topography improves resolution in covered areas from the former 1-kilometer grids to just 100 meters.