SPAR 2010 Focuses on Vertical Markets with a Great Deal of Practical Applications

The attendees at SPAR 2010 comprised a broad cross section of engineering, surveying and other infrastructure-oriented practitioners with a focus on opportunities in this down economy. There was a marked focus on user case studies at this years event, with more applications-oriented tracks and fewer technology-centric tracks. Among the key application areas outlined with multi-day sessions were Mobile Surveying, Industrial Plant, Security Planning & Forensic and Scan to BIM. The diversity in application areas were supplemented with some interesting sessions on the cutting edge of technology advancement.

Keynotes Focus on Technology Advancement and Reality

Allan Carswell, the founder of the Canada-based LIDAR company Optech, provided the opening keynote. Carswell has been working with LIDAR since 1960 and has been responsible for a great degree of technological advancement as well as the application of the technology in areas as diverse as the capture of measurements of the built world to use on Mars exploration missions.

Carswell spoke about the future development of the technology with greater and greater pulse rates of lasers and the measurement of multiple returns for whole new levels of accuracy and measurements that can be classified. On the software side there is a need and interest to provide synergy among the different sensors and to automate the data collection.

Carswell was asked about the application of these tools for global warming and global change. He asserted that atmospheric LIDAR are leading the way, particularly at the poles, for our understanding of warming. The tools are also of great use in improving our energy efficiency, with measurements of buildings for retrofit. He also discussed the application of coherent LIDAR systems that send out a beam to measure wind several kilometers out for precise wind measurements that avoid for wind farms.

The level of potential for this technology was referred to as the LIDAR Revolution, given the great potential. Carswell indicated that we’re just scratching the surface and there are all sorts of potential applications with exponential growth that will be accompanied by a great degree of changes in all aspects of technology application from planning, procedure, data acquisition and assimilation.

Dr. Paul Debevec, director of the UC Institute for Creative Technologies, provided an inspiring keynote about the collection of data for realistic rendering and simulation. His work is at the forefront of what’s possible for the application of scanning and rendering for film-based animation in the entertainment industry.

Debevec provided a technology progression from his pioneering work that was done for his Ph.D. He developed some of the first software for the stitching of photos together in an automated fashion (think PhotoSynth) that applied photogrammetry techniques to create a realistic model of the Berkeley Campus back in 1997. He showed the use of kite-based aerial images along with other low-cost, low-tech capturing methods to provide a realistic model of the campus. A short movie was made that caught the eye of Hollywood and some of the techniques that were developed were used in the development of the Matrix movie series to provide the background images to the slowed-down scenes where the hero Nero dodges bullets.

Debevec continues to fine-tune the realism of his models, with the ultimate goal of realistic animated computer renderings. The level of technical hurdles to capture true realism shows the many benefits that Hollywood investments will enable in other fields, including forensics, medical, AEC, etc.

Mobile Mapping

Mobile mapping seemed to explode at this year's event with six different mobile mapping platforms on display outside the convention center. Mobile mapping is being touted as breakthrough technology that will usher in a new paradigm for collecting survey and GIS data. This technology offers the ability to collect millions of points at once at highway speeds that you can then distill down and use for all sorts of applications.

This image features the Optech Lynx system that is being utilized by McKim & Creed.

Scan to BIM

At last year’s SPAR Conference, there was a good deal of discussion about the potential for scanning within the BIM community, but this year there was more of a focus on actual projects. A telling story of the progression of the productivity shift that has happened with the advent of LIDAR tools is that in the past a large project may have needed five surveyors in the field with just one CAD operator. When tripod-mounted LIDAR arrived that shifted to one or two field workers, and five CAD jockeys back in the office. That further shifts with mobile LIDAR to one or two operators in the field and twenty back in the office. With this change to heavier data processing burdens, and the increasing volumes of data that accompany the more advanced collection tools and methods, there’s an obvious and glaring need for quicker and more automated processes.

In all of the Scan to BIM sessions at the event, there was a great degree of discussion about format and software manipulations. In a GSA project in Chicago, a team used no fewer than 14 different software packages and discussed a format workflow that includes COBIE, gbXML, IFC, DGN, DWG, etc.

The worldwide architectural design firm HKS has been doing some impressive large-scale scan to BIM projects. HKS assigns one person as a controller of this complex process to facilitate and manage the manipulations of files and formats to develop a central integrated file. This person aptly holds the title of Data Wrangler.

Given the complexity of the tasks and the limitations of the software to capture and quickly render the level of details in such large models, it’s only a matter of time before more interoperability and performance are brought to bear on the problem. Until these issues are ironed out, any firm conducting such work should be prepared for data wrangling pains.

The participants at the event came from far and wide to see the latest in technology innovation and application. There was a good level of technology innovation since this group met last year, and a number of large and impressive projects on display. Given this high level of activity worldwide, we can expect this technology sector to continue along its rapid growth path, with more gains on display at next year's event.

 

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