Jack Dangermond Addresses the Origins and Future of GIS

Jack Dangermond, founder and president of Esri, addressed the start of the company with the audience at the Esri Forestry GIS Solutions Conference this week. Many of the company’s first customers were in the forestry industry. At the company’s first user conference of 12 attendees, the organization moved beyond simply selling software to build and support user requirements.
More on the origin and future of GIS

Lidar Moves from Imaging to Modeling for Natural Resources

Generating an accurate 3D model of the earth’s surface with lidar has many advantages over imagery, given that it’s a move toward modeling as opposed to just a photo. There is a great deal of information here with three main deliverables that include a digital surface model (DSM), a bare earth or digital terrain model (DTM), and the lidar intensity image.
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China Urges Improved Surveying – GIS Development

China this week indicated that improved development of surveying and geographic based data systems such as GIS are integral to the future economic development of that country. The Chinese Vice Premier pointed to the need for more integrated digitally based solutions that would enhance and support the construction and operation of digital cities.
More on surveying and GIS in China

Flying Underwater to Explore with New Technology

Fully 70% of the world is covered by water. It has been said that we know more about the moon, than we do about the oceans. Recently Hawkes Ocean Technologies won recognition from CAD software company Autodesk for the development of a new submersible design. ‘DeepFlight Challenger’ is the world’s deepest ocean explorer, and the winged submersible promises to keep us fascinated, curious and in awe in the days ahead as it surveys, explores and roams beneath the waves.
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Land Surveyor Sets Out to Be First to Top Everest

His special goal is to not only hike Mount Everest – the world’s tallest mountain – but to use his meticulously precise techniques of triangulation to determine the exact height of this roughly 8,000-metre mountain, last mapped in 1998.
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NZ’s Long Bay Development Underway

The 160 hectare development is one of New Zealand’s largest residential projects. Situated on the shoreline 25 minutes North of Auckland, the community will accommodate up to 5,000 people with a village centre, shops, recreational facilities and more than 2,000 dwellings.
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Origin Energy Appoints MWH for Water Treatment Services

Consulting engineering firm MWH has been appointed by Origin Energy to provide detailed design services for two proposed water treatment facilities as part of the Australia Pacific LNG (APLNG) project. Origin and ConocoPhillips are joint owners of APLNG, a 50:50 coal seam gas (CSG) to liquefied natural gas (LNG) joint venture project in Queensland.
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SuperGeo Announces New Reseller in India

RSI SOFTECH belongs to RSI, a company founded in 1985 by Mr. T. Sesha Rao, a former senior scientist and engineer of National Remote Sensing Center of India. The headquarters of RSI SOFTECH is sited in Hyderabad, with several branches located in New Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore and Dehradun.
More on the announcement 

DubaiSat-2 – Improved Over Predecessor

The second remote sensing and imaging satellite from the Emirates Institution for Advanced Science & Technology (EIAST) will have greater resolution, will gather more information from larger areas of the Earth and will download the data more than five times faster than its predecessor, DubaiSat-1.
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Remote Sensing Technique for Changes in Cityscapes

Three researchers at the National Central University (Jhongli, Taiwan) have developed a way of identifying altered features of urban areas by comparing existing building models with new lidar data points and aerial images.
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Malaysia PM Calls for Structure Examination on Ag Land

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak called for an examination of all houses and other structures erected on agricultural land nationwide to ascertain the risk they faced from landslides. He said Tuesday that such structures were exposed to the risk of landslides if they were erected contrary to guidelines.
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China Power Crunch to Worsen as Drought Slashes Hydro

The official Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday that the water level at the world’s biggest hydropower plant at the Three Gorges Dam in Hubei province has fallen to 152.7 meters, well below the 156-m mark required to run its 26 turbines effectively.
More on the drought

RapidEye Partners With ImageSat

RapidEye announced today that a partnership agreement has been signed between the company’s. The agreement allows ImageSat to use RapidEye imagery to colorize their panchromatic 0.7 meter resolution imagery to produce a colorized product.
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Hemisphere GPS Reports 2011 First Quarter Results

For the first quarter ended March 31, 2011, Hemisphere GPS achieved revenue growth of 41%, reporting $21.2 million in revenues, compared to $15.1 million in the first quarter of 2010. Revenues from all market segments increased in the first quarter. 
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Bentley Systems – Tekla Advance Interoperability

Bentley Systems, Incorporate and Tekla Corporation announced a joint collaboration to further advance the interoperability of software within Building Information Modeling (BIM) workflows. The two companies are improving interoperability between the Tekla Structures BIM software and Bentley’s Integrated Structural Modeling (ISM) methodology.

Leica GeoMoS HiSpeed: Analyzing in Real-Time

Leica Geosystems is pleased to announce an additional software module of its successful Leica GeoMoS Monitoring Software. Leica GeoMoS HiSpeed is a professional software tool for sophisticated and reliable deformation analysis of high-frequency data.

SuperGIS Server Provides Web APIs for Map Website Design

Provides Web Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for developers to access map services and customize map websites more efficiently. SuperGIS Server can effectively manage and integrate various types of GIS resources and publish them to the Internet as map services.

The Map Reader: Mapping Practice and Cartographic Representation

The Map Reader provides, for the first time, a single source for the most important literature about the nature of mapping practices from the last hundred years. Fifty four theoretical and thought provoking texts demonstrate how cartography works as a powerful representational form and explores how different mapping practices have been conceptualised in particular social and historical contexts.

Azerbaijan Addresses Based on EURADIN Standards

The State Committee states that it is necessary to introduce GIS (geographic information system) and coordination system of address specification, specify coordinates of all exits(entrances), streets and roads (transport infrastructure will also get its code not to be changed in renaming) for introduction of the address registry on EURADIN and INSPIRE standards

Mine Solutions New FlexiSurv

The suite includes functions for generating laser offsets, extending/inserting lasers, producing survey memos, creating drive profiles, caclulating overbreak and underbreak, generation of wire frame from level pickups, and more.

Trimble Expands Functionality of ThingMagic Embedded RFID

The added functionality gives customers an enhanced set of tools to develop more innovative and customized RFID solutions for worldwide deployment. The company also introduced enhancements to its ThingMagic MercuryAPI, the universal application programming interface (API) for all ThingMagic fixed/finished and embedded RFID reader products.

India Conducts Soil Mapping to Help Farmers

The agriculture department will undertake soil mapping in Sattari and Quepem on a pilot basis for a comprehensive study of the soil conditions. A central government agency had carried out a soil study in the late nineties, but it related to physical characteristics of the soil.

BIM: Australian Building Wins Development of the Year Award

Australia’s first commercial high rise building completely designed, constructed and handed over as a built model with asset management software using Building Information Modeling (BIM) has been named the NSW Development of the Year for 2011.