Geospatial Industry Research Articles

Ready, Set, Modernize – ASPRS Takes on Preparing the Geospatial Industry for the Modernized National Spatial Reference System (NSRS)

The National Geodetic Survey (NGS) is modernizing the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS) in the United States. The modernization involves significant updates to the official reference frames and vertical datum used across the country, affecting the entire geospatial industry. Key benefits of the Modernized NSRS will include improved accuracies and enhanced interoperability and sustainability of geospatial data and systems. The ASPRS NSRS Modernization Working Group produced this paper to help prepare the geospatial industry for the upcoming changes. It serves as a guide for industry professionals to understand the implications of the Modernized NSRS and recommendations to begin preparing for it. It emphasizes the importance of proactive measures to ensure a smooth transition to the new reference frames and vertical datum.

Evaluating geospatial education provision: a case study of Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT Geospatial technology is still a growth area and knowledge of these technologies remains essential for a skilled workforce. In higher education, geospatial curriculum design is predominantly determined by educators and is influenced by what educators believe should be taught. Knowledge of national or regional provision can support a richer understanding of expected provision and areas of over or under-provision to better support the needs of varied geospatial roles and identify possible programme specialisations. In this paper, we describe an approach for evaluating Aotearoa New Zealand’s provision of geospatial education in the tertiary education sector. First, we examine and compare current course offerings in New Zealand’s tertiary sector against selected institutions in five countries using the GIS&T Body of Knowledge and Geospatial Technology Competency Model as a framework for comparison. Second, we evaluate the results of a focus-group workshop of geospatial education providers and geospatial industry stakeholders about perceived needs in geospatial education in New Zealand. We find this approach works well to support a better understanding of what is provided for both educators and industry. By including industry geospatial professionals in identifying perceived gaps, educators’ knowledge of industry needs will grow as well as industry’s understanding of current provision.

An extended TOE framework for local government technology adoption for citizen participation: insights for city digital twins for collaborative planning

Purpose This study aims to understand and explain factors that influence how, when and under which conditions local governments adopt digital technologies for citizen collaboration. It discusses what these findings mean for city digital twin adoption. Design/methodology/approach This research uses the systematic literature review following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) process to collect and evaluate evidence needed to answer the research questions. It uses the technology–organisation–environment (TOE) framework and proposes an additional dimension: “stakeholders” as the analytical framework. Findings Critical influential factors identified include the technology dimension: security and privacy; organisation dimension: top management support; environment dimension: political influence; and stakeholders’ dimension: technological experience. Research limitations/implications This research extends the TOE framework and comprehensively analyses those factors which relate to citizens but significantly impact local government’s decision to adopt digital tools for collaboration purposes. This research posits that in the context of local government technology adoption for collaboration, both the organisation and stakeholders’ dimensions are critical. Social implications This research contributes to the government-citizen discourse and provides a constructive understanding of technological transformation in collaborative planning. The findings are helpful for local governments, researchers and geospatial industries as they offer a critical understanding of digital technology adoption, particularly city digital twins, for collaborative planning. Originality/value This study extends the TOE framework to include aspects relating to citizens. It provides a nuanced understanding of the influential factors and intricacies of technology adoption by local governments for citizen collaboration. It also discusses relevant issues of city digital twins’ adoption by local governments for citizen participation.

Ideologies in Geospatial Futurism: A Computational and Critical Discourse Inquiry Into the ArcGIS and ESRI-Blogs

Geographic information systems (GIS) are ubiquitous building blocks of geosurveillance environments embedded in everyday social practices. This article builds on the literature on geomedia, the criticisms of GIS, and communicative spaces, to delve into the realm of GIS software and spatial analytics. The data corpus consists of ArcGIS and ESRI blogs on the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) site, which defines itself as the global market leader in GIS software, location intelligence, and mapping. This project assesses the impact of their discursive representations of the future and the societal implications of these views through an iterative process of computational and critical interpretive analyses—extending from LDA topic modelling to critical discourse analysis—to unveil the ideological underpinnings of a corporate-prescribed understanding of (GIS) future. The analysis reveals that representations of the future in the main blogs of the geospatial industry are deeply embedded in ideological principles that emphasise perceived indispensability and technosolutionism as the inherent belief that complex social, political, and economic issues can be solved primarily or exclusively through technological means. The article identifies the rhetorical and structural operations in a discourse that ultimately kidnaps any alternative futures. The geospatial industry’s representations of the future serve as ideological tools that shape perceptions about societal development and democratic conditions. The critical engagement with these representations contributes to understanding the role of GIS technology in the shaping of fair futures built on democratic public spheres in the digital age.

Digital Twin for Active Stakeholder Participation in Land-Use Planning

The active participation of stakeholders is a crucial requirement for effective land-use planning (LUP). Involving stakeholders in LUP is a way of redistributing the decision-making power and ensuring social justice in land-management interventions. However, owing to the growing intricacy of sociopolitical and economic relations and the increasing number of competing claims on land, the choice of dynamic land use has become more complex, and the need to find balances between social, economic, and environmental claims and interests has become less urgent. These facts reflect a paradigm shift from top-down, noninteractive, and one-directional policymaking approaches to a more negotiable, bottom-up, deliberative, and responsible one. Geospatial industries claim that digital twin technology is a potential facilitator that improves the degree of stakeholder participation and influences land-use planning. The validity of this claim is, however, unknown. By adopting the integrative literature review, this study identifies where in LUP is stakeholder participation much needed and currently problematic, as well as how digital twin could potentially improve. The review shows that digital twins provide virtual visualisation opportunities for the identification of land-use problems and the assessment of the impacts of the proposed land uses. These offer the opportunity to improve stakeholder influence and collaboration in LUP, especially in the agenda-setting phase, where land-use issues could be identified and placed on the LUP agenda. This relies on the ability and willingness of local planning institutions to adopt digital twins, and stakeholders’ perception and willingness to use digital twins for various land-use goals. Despite the assertion that digital twins could improve the influence of stakeholders in LUP, the focus and the development of digital twins have not accomplished much for those features of the technology that could improve stakeholder influence in LUP. By adopting the principles of the social construction of technology, this study proposes a “technological fix” of digital twins to focus more on improving stakeholder influence on land-use planning.

APPLICATION OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION

The key group of innovations from the standpoint of sustainable development are technological innovations, which are represented by innovations in technology or (innovation-process). They are the basis of meeting the growing needs of society, increasing production efficiency, changing models and generations of equipment and technological methods of production. Modern agriculture cannot be imagined without the use of IT technologies. Today, the robotization of agriculture is inevitable. Agriculture will benefit from the revolution in the field of information and communication technologies, which is happening in all areas: robotics, sensory perception, more intelligent decision support systems, data analytics, etc. For the geospatial industry, fieldwork robotics is a particularly important task. It is a huge operation to control robots - on wheels or in the air - using navigation systems and sensors, to store all data and integrate them into relevant applications. Technological renewal of the agrarian sector of the economy is usually based on the use of high-tech systems of management, monitoring, control, management and automation of production processes, with the use of highly integrated SMART systems and the involvement of artificial intelligence technologies. Taking into account the significant volumes of cargo processing, agricultural enterprises, in particular in warehouses, a promising direction and reserve for ensuring high labor productivity is the use of robotic manipulators, and research is devoted to increasing their functionality and maneuverability, including through the use of intelligent control systems and optimization of the structure of executive mechanisms. relevant and will have practical value. In the article substantiates the kinematic parameters and dynamic characteristics of the angular manipulator.

Accuracy Assessment of Low-Cost Lidar Scanners: An Analysis of the Velodyne HDL–32E and Livox Mid–40’s Temporal Stability

Identifying and mitigating sources of measurement error is a critical task in geomatics research and the geospatial industry as a whole. In pursuit of such error, accuracy assessments of lidar data have revealed a range bias in low-cost scanners. This phenomenon is a temporally correlated instability in the lidar scanner where the measured distance between target and sensor changes over time while both are held stationary. This research presents an assessment of two low-cost lidar scanners, the Velodyne® HDL–32E and Livox® Mid–40, in which their temporal stability is analyzed and methods to mitigate systematic error are implemented. By immobilizing each scanner as it observes a stationary target surface over the course of multiple hours, trends in scanner precision are identified. Scanner accuracy is then determined using a terrestrial lidar scanner, the Riegl® VZ-400, to observe both subject scanner and target, and extracting the distances between scanner origin and observed surface. Patterns identified in each scanner’s distance measurements indicate temporal autocorrelation, and, by exploiting the high linear correlation between scanner internal temperature and measured distance in the HDL–32E, it is possible to mitigate the resulting error. Application of the proposed solution lowers the Velodyne® scanner’s measurement RMSE by over 60%, providing levels of measurement accuracy comparable to more expensive lidar systems.

Market analysis of the relationship between Brazilian Federal Government and the geospatial industry

ABSTRACT The public sector’s possibilities of using geospatial technologies are vast and can improve public management. In the Brazilian Federal Government, the use of geospatial technologies is unknown, nor is it known the main applications and public and private actors involved. This research proposes to analyze the geospatial technologies market in the Federal Government between the years 2011 and 2019 through public data of contracts. Through the individual analysis of 600 contracts, we concluded that R$ 804,747,626.99 were negotiated during the period. The contracts mainly involved Remote Sensing and Aerophotogrammetry (50%) and Geographic Information Systems (33%) solutions, applied primarily in the thematic areas of Oil & Gas (39%), Infrastructure (19%), and Environment & Natural Resources (10%). Fototerra was the leading company, providing R$ 155,553,107.03 in products and services. The foremost acquiring institution was the Ministry of Mines and Energy, contracting R$ 410 million, of which Petrobras acquired R$ 311 million. This paper showed how different federal institutions use Geography’s technological bases to fulfill their missions, improve social well-being, and contribute to a more developed, less unequal, and fairer country.

3D City Model from LiDAR of Akoka, Lagos Using Geographical Information Technique

3D city models are now widely adapted globally and since Lagos state is fast developing into a megacity, there is the need to have proper 3D city visuals. This study therefore created and visualized a 3D building model from LiDAR and orthophoto data of Akoka in Lagos State using geographical information techniques. A recently digitized Google Earth satellite image of the study area was compared with the Orthophoto to identify major changes in the area. The LiDAR point cloud data was classified using the automatic classification of LiDAR data method and then subsequently classified into buildings, vegetation, water body, grounds and roads. Elevation models such as Digital Terrain Model (DTM), Triangular Irregular Network (TIN) surface model and Digital Surface Model (DSM) were generated from the processed LiDAR data. Furthermore, maximum likelihood algorithm was used to classify the LiDAR image. And then accuracy assessment technique performed on the classified image. The result of the accuracy assessment indicated that the overall classification was 66.00% while the overall kappa statistics was 0.5677. This study concluded that the application of geographical information technique to LiDAR images can be used to assess, visualize and model 3D cities which can be very effective and useful in advancing the geospatial industry and enhancing urban planning for smart cities.

ARCHITECTING LOCATION INTELLIGENCE PLATFORMS USING OPEN-SOURCE COMPONENTS

Abstract. Location Intelligence is an emerging application of geospatial industry. It allows professionals from different business domains (finance, disaster management, retail, health) and with minimum expertise in GIS technologies to use efficiently many spatial analysis tools and algorithms to solve their day-to-day problems. One of the major characteristics of Location Intelligence is the use of multisource and alternative data either user ingested or directly available in the platform (by geo-enrichment).In this contribution we investigate the architectural challenges raised by the development of this kind of platforms, particularly in term of functionalities, use of open-source components, management practices, deployment on the Cloud and source code control. To validate our assumptions, we built a new platform, named “Geoweba”, based on the GeoNode Project and having as objective to disrupt the Algerian consulting market. The resulting platform is deployed on the internet and freely available for users. In this contribution we demonstrate that our development approach based on Agile principles and open-source components gives a good result, mainly in the early stages when just a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is needed for market validation of the idea.

DIGITAL DEFORMATION MONITORING TECHNOLOGIES - THE MOST IMPORTANT COMPONENT OF GEOSPATIAL ACTIVITIES (INDUSTRY)

Within the framework of the program for creation of a geospatial industry it is offered to form a competent state body - the Main Directorate of the Geospatial Industry under the Government of the Russian Federation. The key aspect of the program is digital production - a multi-level system that includes automated measuring systems in the process of deformation monitoring, means of transferring the received information and their visualization, powerful analytical tools for interpreting the received geospatial information and many other related components.

Preface

The Geomatics International Conference (GeoICON) is an annual scientific meeting organized by Department of Geomatics Engineering, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember Surabaya, Indonesia since 2016. The conference carried out a theme about Geospatial Technology for Mapping the Future: Implementation and Development for Building Information Modelling (BIM). The 5th GeoICON 2020 aims to bring together researchers, scientists and scholar students to exchange and share their experiences, new ideas, and research results about all aspects of geospatial science and technology. The discussion about the practical challenges encountered were performed and the solutions were adopted.During the conference, more than 100 participants presented their findings in eight main conference topic tracks i.e. (A) Geodesy and Geomatics, (B) Geology and Geophysics, (C) Spatial Data Infrastructure, (D) Geography and Urban Environment, (E) Agriculture and Forestry, (F) Mining and Energy, (G) Cadastral Mapping, (H) Marine Environment, as well as discussing potential joint researches and collaborations among them.Due to the spreading of COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease 2019) since the beginning of March 2020 in Indonesia, especially in East Java, we as the organizers of GEOICON (Geomatics International Conference) 2020 has replaced the conference to the virtual format. It also refers to regulations made by the Indonesian government and approved by the local government to implement large-scale social restrictions (PSBB), namely to prevent the gathering of large number of people in one place. Lately the utilization of online meeting media is widely use all over the world. We found the capacity to organize and conduct the online meeting is very familiar to many scientist and industrialist.These recent four years, GEOICON have been held as offline conference. During the four years of GEOICON, it was attended by more than 250 participants from various education and industrial institution. We find the increase in number of participants each year due to the high demand of participants and colleagues, especially from government institutions, universities and the geospatial industry. GEOICON is one of the pioneers of the conference in the field of geomatics that carries many themes related to geospatial research. The high demand of knowledge and ideas sharing, as well as an adaptation of geospatial technologies from our colleagues of both the industry and academics during this pandemic this year, has encouraged us to held GEOICON with virtual version which essentially have not reduced the values we bring in the physical conference. Besides we were also aware that the growth of geospatial technology is highly developing, nowadays. During this virtual conference we utilized the zoom application and each participant used his / her private PC and sufficient internet connection.This virtual conference was held at August 26th, 2020. The conference has only conducted as presentation session. In the presentation session, participants were given the opportunity to deliver presentations for 10 minutes, with details of 8 minutes presentation and 2 minutes for Q&A. The virtual room were divided based on the topics, where participants can join any room with the suitable conference topics. During the discussion each moderator of the topics was assisted by a technician to submit questions. Participants can ask short questions directly to the presenter after the permission given by moderator.During the seminar, participants used the virtual place with comfortable conditions which facilitated the focus during the seminar. Participants were allowed to stay at their home or office while they were required to obey the local health procedures. The total papers received during GEOICON 2020 were 70, which were then reviewed and only 41 of them matched the selection criteria.We would like to thank the committees for their strong commitment in organizing this event and the participants who have contributed to this volume.We would also like to thank the editor for their time and valuable remarks as well as the reviewers for their suggestions about how to improve the paper. Our gratitude is also expressed to the publisher for the generous help and publishing this proceeding volume. Lastly, we would like to acknowledge all contributing sponsors for their generous supports to the conference.November 25th, 2020Cherie Bhekti Pribadi, S.T., M.T.The 5th GeoICON 2020ChairmanList of GeoICON 2020 Committee are available in the pdf.

Geospatial Survey Analysis for 3D Field and Building Mapping using DJI Drone and Intelligent Flight Battery

Geospatial industry undergoes revolution for every few years. The industry used total stations, GPS, and robotics for the past mapping method. Now, professionals around the world are using drones for mapping which boast quick data collection times, excellent accuracy, and safe operator experience. However, the method for making a 3D map of field and buildings are different. For making a 3D model of buildings, drone must collect the data of buildings by orbiting each of the building. Surveyor will need more time and effort to make a 3D map of buildings than field in the same quality. Therefore, professionals have to make an effective plan to survey different kinds of region. For this research, we used DJI Phantom 4 Pro which has the intelligent Lithium Ion Polymer Battery with the capacity of 5350 mAh. Using the drone, we used different kinds of grid plans to collect map data of regions with buildings and a sport field in Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia. A 3D modelling software is being used to construct an orthophoto and 3D model of the surveyed region which results error data of 3-5 m. According to this research, we can survey about 111.180 m2 area with 0.045m/px resolution using only one battery by the overlap image of 80% We believe these flight plans can inspire researcher and professionals of geospatial to develop other plans for bigger survey application.

Разработка концепции подготовки кадров для геопространственной индустрии в рамках сквозных технологий цифровой экономики

The article describes the difficulties of training personnel for a dynamically developing geospatial industry (geoindustry). The authors analyzed the current state of the geoindustry based on scientific publications, industry reports, opinions of workers and industry leaders, highlighted its key technological elements, such as geographic information systems, remote sensing of the Earth, including laser scanning technologies and survey from UAVs, GNSS- and BIM technologies, sensor systems. It is noted that technological changes entail the transformation of the classical sections of cartography, which include thematic mapping. Consequently, it is necessary to improve the scientific and methodological foundations for a number of sections of cartography and to update the strategy of educational activities in the field of cartography and geoinformatics. New elements in the work of a specialist in the field of cartography and geoinformatics, associated with the use of geosciences, functions of geostatistics, artificial intelligence technologies, which appeared as a result of a significant increase in the volume and variety of available spatial and nonspatial data are highlighted. Based on the analysis of the ongoing technological changes, tasks that must be solved by specialists in the geospatial industry are formulated, a conclusion about the need for educational programs to correspond to the technological level of the geoindustry is drawn. The concept of education for the geospatial industry is proposed, which includes the development of professional standards, as well as bachelor and master programs. The experience of participation in the development of the professional standard “Specialist in cartography and geoinformatics” is presented. The elements of the developed educational programs for bachelor degree 05.03.03 “Cartography and geoinformatics” and master’s degree 05.04.03 “Cartography and geoinformatics” are presented, a list of professional competencies and logical structure of blocks of disciplines are presented.

Branding the Geospatial Industry

AbstractThis study situates geospatial technology within the platform economy and constructs its brand culture, making it visible as a for-profit business rather than a utility. A critical lens is turned on the macroscopic economic and micro-social processes of the geospatial industry that result in the hegemonic relations and discursive regimes that legitimize and naturalize a common geospatially equipped, data-driven world. The annual user conventions and platform marketing of Esri, the global market leader in geographical information systems (GIS), acts as a site to observe how an imagined geospatial community of practitioners and investors is constructed. Branded content is unpacked to understand how the company’s image-making cultivates power relations between the public at large while negating itself as gatekeeper. These symbolic processes and collective practices help influence the uncritical investment and growth of the geospatial industry.

UAV and terrestrial laser scanner data processing for large scale topographic mapping

Integrating spatial data from different sources results in visualization, which is the last step in the process of digital basic topographic map creation. Digital elevation model and visualization will used for geomorphological mapping, geospatial database, urban planning and etc. Large scale topographic mapping in the world countries is really a prominent challenge in geospatial industries today. The purpose of this work is to integrate laser scanner data with the ones generated by aerial photogrammetry from UAV, to produce detailed maps that can used by geodetic engineers to optimize their analysis. In addition, terrestrial - based LiDAR scans and UAV photogrammetric data were collected in Sharga hill in the north zone of Mongolia. In this paper, different measurement technology and processing software systems combined for topographic mapping in the data processing scheme. UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) projected coordinate system calculated in WGS84 reference ellipsoid. Feature compilation involving terrestrial laser scanner data and UAV data will integrated to offer Digital Elevation Models (DEM) as the main interest of the topographic mapping activity. Used UAV generate high-resolution orthomosaics and detailed 3D models of areas where no data, are available. That result issued to create topographic maps with a scale of 1:1000 of geodetic measurements. Preliminary results indicate that discontinuity data collection from UAV closely matches the data collected using laser scanner.

BIM/GIS integration for web GIS-based bridge management

ABSTRACT Integration of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Geographic Information System (GIS) can benefit both the Architecture, Engineering and Construction/Facility Management (AEC/FM) domain, and the geospatial industry. For GIS, BIM is a promising source of three-dimensional (3D) building information that can be used in the study of smart city, green building, big data, etc. The underlying data transformation from Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) to shapefile enables GIS to use the rich building information. However, this transformation is difficult due to the different modelling methods used by IFC and shapefile. IFC generally represents 3D objects using boundary representation (Brep), swept solid, constructive solid geometry (CSG), clipping and mapped representation, while shapefile only uses Brep. In addition, the use of different coordinate systems also contributes to the geometry transformation issue. Among all the solid modelling methods used by IFC, Brep and swept solid are the most often used two methods. Compared with Brep, the transformation of swept solid is more challenging as each type of profile for swept solid defined in IFC has to be properly interpreted and converted. This paper develops algorithms to interpret the commonly used profiles of swept solid for the transformation of IFC into shapefile. A bridge model is used to validate the proposed method, and a Web GIS-based bridge management system is developed to demonstrate a possible usage of the transformed shapefile model.

Automatically Processing IFC Clipping Representation for BIM and GIS Integration at the Process Level

The integration of building information modeling (BIM) and geographic information system (GIS) is attracting more attention than ever due to its potential benefits for both the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) domain and the geospatial industry. The main challenge in BIM and GIS integrated application comes from the fundamental data conversion, especially for the geometric information. BIM and GIS use different modeling paradigms to represent objects. The BIM dataset takes, for example, Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) that use solid models, such as boundary representation (B-Rep), swept solid, constructive solid geometry (CSG), and clipping, while the GIS dataset mainly uses surface models or B-Rep. The fundamental data conversion between BIM and GIS is the foundation of BIM and GIS integrated application. However, the efficiency of data conversion has been greatly impaired by the human intervention needed, especially for the conversion of the clipping geometry. The goal of this study is to automate the conversion of IFC clipping representation into the shapefile format. A process-level approach was developed with an algorithm for instantiating unbounded half spaces using B-Rep. Four IFC models were used to validate the proposed method. The results show that (1) the proposed approach can successfully automate the conversion of IFC clipping representation into the shapefile format; and (2) increasing boundary size has no effect on the file size of unbounded half spaces, but slightly increases the producing time of half spaces and processing time of building components. The efficiency of this study can be further improved by using an open-source package, instead of using the low-efficiency packages provided by ArcGIS.

Large Scale Topographic Map Comparison Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Imagers and Real Time Kinematic (RTK)

Large scale topographical mapping is important in geospatial industries in providing high resolution 3D geospatial data sources. The field of aerial photogrammetry also plays an important role in the surveying scope and map production. Nowadays, the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platform is a quick way for low altitude aerial data acquisition for mapping. For collecting ground details data at the land-scape level, real time kinematic global positioning system (RTK GPS) is a useful tool for Ground-based topographic mapping. RTK GPS is mobile, collects data quickly at field, and measures elevation within an accuracy of 1 – 5 cm. This work aims to do a comparison of topo-graphic map generated by UAV imagers and by RTK GPS in term of accuracy. The study was conducted using UAV with high resolution non-metric digital compact camera while the ground control point were established using static observation method and ground detail survey using RTK observation method. Vertical accuracy for digital elevation model (DEM) obtained from this study was 8.015 cm at the altitude of 116 m.

The Economics of Maps

For centuries, maps have codified the extent of human geographic knowledge and shaped discovery and economic decision-making. Economists across many fields, including urban economics, public finance, political economy, and economic geography, have long employed maps, yet have largely abstracted away from exploring the economic determinants and consequences of maps as a subject of independent study. In this essay, we first review and unify recent literature in a variety of different fields that highlights the economic and social consequences of maps, along with an overview of the modern geospatial industry. We then outline our economic framework in which a given map is the result of economic choices around map data and designs, resulting in variations in private and social returns to mapmaking. We highlight five important economic and institutional factors shaping mapmakers’ data and design choices. Our essay ends by proposing that economists pay more attention to the endogeneity of mapmaking and the resulting consequences for economic and social welfare.