Between the Poles

A 3D base map for the globe

At the GeoIgnite virtual event Ryan Hamilton, Senior Manager 3D Products, at Maxar described a remarkable project Globe in 3D to create a 3D model for the earth's entire landmass using the petabytes of 50 cm imagery that Digital Globe (and now Maxar) has collected and is collecting from its constellation of satellites.  Multiview stereoscopy technology enables Maxar to create a 3D model for every point (pixel) on earth by combining multiple views of the same point taken at different times and with different camera locations.  The result is a textured 3D model that has better than 3 meter absolute positional accuracy, avoids the blind spots that result from a single camera view, and averages out errors that are often found in individual images.

In 2015 Digital Globe and Saab formed a partnership which created Vricon to integrate 3D technology with Digital Globe's imagery to enable the creation of an accurately georeferenced 3D model of the earth's landmass without using control points. (Maxar completed the acquisition of Vricon last year.) The process is compute intensive and is still underway. The result will be a 3D TIN model with textures on all sides for the entire landmass of the planet. The Globe in 3D is available in Vricon format, Esri i3S or Cesium 3D Tiles.

A number of derivative products are also available for specific use cases including digital terrain and digital surface models, textured buildings, classification layers identifying different land uses and vegetation, point clouds, 2D ortho images, 3D vector representations of buildings, vegetation and transportation infrastructure with coverage in dense urban, suburban and rural areas. A limitation resulting from the algorithm that combines images captured at different times is that it is not possible to assign a specific date to  the 3D model at any location. But Maxar does provide tools to enable change detection over longer periods of time.

The 3D model can be used for many use cases including estimating cut and fill for a road, railway or other linear structure, estimating tree height for vegetation management, planning 5G telecom networks and others.  But perhaps it's biggest achievement could be to provide a shared 3D base map for the entire planet. To assist in realizing this vision Maxar provides precision 3D registration (P3DR) tools to allow other data to be corrected (conflated) to the Maxar base map. P3DR is a stand-alone software solution that automatically georegisters imagery from any source to Maxar's Globe in 3D base map.

US 3D elevation project as a model for a national infrastructure map

A number of years ago an initiative was funded under the ARRA economic stimulus package to initiate what was then called LiDAR for the Nation.  This has resulted in a USGS initiative called 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) whose goal over an eight year period is to develop a 3D elevation map with horizontal resolution of a meter and vertical resolution of 10 cm for the entire U.S. and territories.  This entails LiDAR scanning the contiguous continental U.S. and Hawaii and interferometric synthetic radar over Alaska.  It also includes bathymetric data for the U.S. coastline.  To date 48% of the U.S. has been covered or scanning is underway.  An inventory of these projects is available.

At GIS in the Rockies this year Carol Lydic of the USGS gave an overview of this program and the most recent initiatives to broaden the partnerships that are instrumental in creating the national 3D elevation map.  The program is based on partnerships with federal, state, local, and tribal government agencies, academic institutions and the private sector.

In 2012 a study was completed that estimated the economic value to 27 different sectors of accurate 3D data.  The top five included in this study (National Enhanced Elevation Assessment) are

• Flood risk management                                  $295m to  $502m
• Infrastructure and construction management $206m to  $942m
• Natural resources conservation                     $159m to  $335m
• Agriculture and precision farming                  $122m to $2,011m
• Water supply and quality                                  $85m to  $156m

The total economic benefits for all sectors was estimated to be between $1.8B to $13B.   I find this to be a very conservative estimate. 

A number of years ago I remember hearing about an outstanding program by the state of North Carolina in cooperation with federal agencies that involved a statewide LiDAR scan and the creation of a database of all structures with a footprint of over 800 square feet that allowed estimates to be made of the economic impact of any type of flood anywhere in the state or of a rise in sea level along North Carolina's coastline.  This is of inestimable value in assessing any mitigation project.

In the infrastructure and construction sector, one of the largest contributors to the cost of a civil construction project such as a highway or a railway, is the amount of earth that has to be moved which can be derived from a 3D terrain model.  Having a reliable digital terrain model is of great value to any civil project for assessing alternative right of ways during the planning stage and could also be used during the design and construction phases especially if supplemented by information about the soil and geological structure of the subsurface and location of underground utilities.

I found the 3DEP project particularly interesting because it represents a potential model for creating a national infrastructure map including underground infrastructure.  Federal organizations that could be involved include USGS, National Map, US DOT, FERC, and NERC.  Partners might include NARUC (National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners), CGA (Common Ground Alliance), state and municipal DOTs, AGC (Associated General Contractors of America), utility and telecom network operators, general contractors, tribal government agencies, and academic institutions.

High resolution satellite imagery helps innovative electric utility optimize vegetation management

Vegetation is a significant source of outages for many utilities. In some regions from one quarter to one half of all outages can be ascribed to vegetation.  Vegetation encroachment initiated the massive North American northeastern outage of 2003.  It is so critical for utility operations that some utilities have a vice president responsible for vegetation management.  It can be costly for utilities to identify areas of high risk vegetation encroachment.  Scheduling and routing crews to prune the trees that require attention is often sub-optimal adding to the cost of vegetation management.  Optimizing these processes can produce significant benefits in the form of fewer outages and reduced costs. At Distributech 2018 Pedro Lemes, and engineer at Energisa (Brazil) described an innovative project which used high resolution satellite imagery to optimize vegetation management. Energisa is the sixth largest Brazilian power utility with 6.6 million customers.

Vegetation is the source of many outages at Energisa and the budget for vegetation management represents a significant proportion of its operating budget.   To reduce the number of outages due to vegetation and the costs of vegetation management, Energisa initiated a project to develop a tool that would allow it to identify and map high risk areas for vegetation encroachment and secondly to optimize routes and crew allocation for tree pruning.  The objective of the project was to decrease the number of outages due to vegetation encroachment, reduce vegetation management costs especially third-party firms hired to identify risk areas for vegetation encroachment, reduce the level of risk associated with vegetation near power lines, and to bring more IT into operations at Energisa.

The project innovated in using satellite imagery together with GIS data to solve the problem of identifying high risk areas for vegetation encroachment in a distribution grid.  By analyzing satellite imagery it was possible to distinguish vegetation from other objects, to differentiate trees from grass and bushes, measure the height of trees, and using GIS data to measure the distance between trees and poles and cables. Energisa contracted with Airbus Pléiades to provide 50-cm resolution, colour, orthorectified as well as near infrared (NIR) imagery. The contract with Airbus specified that all imagery supplied to Energisa had 15% or less clouds.  The imagery enabled identification of vegetation using the RGB and near infrared (NIR) bands.  In addition Pleiades provides high-resolution stereo imagery enabling generating digital surface and terrain models.  Trees heights could be determined by comparing surface and terrain models.    Trees were separated from other vegetation by a minimum height threshold.  Even when there were many trees together, it was possible to separately identify individual trees. NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) was used to differentiate between vegetation and other objects and to distinguish healthy and diseased trees.  Coconut palms were the most challenging because of the lack of a central crown.  Energisa's GIS provided the location of line segments, switches, poles and structures.  Based on the information derived from the two sources it was possible to calculate the distance between trees and cables and identify high risk areas of vegetation encroachment.

The second part of the project involved developing a pruning management system to optimize pruning.  Once the risk areas had been identified, based on the available budget, team locations, the desired level of risk and the cost of pruning a tree, the algorithm was able to determine an optimized route and schedule for pruning operations for each team.  The algorithm was sufficiently robust to be able to be applied to a neighbourhood or an entire city.

Nowadays there is a plethora of satellite imagery with resolution as high as a foot and a frequency of several times a day.  One company is now imaging the entire landmass of the Earth every day. Satellite imagery is becoming increasingly competitive which is lowering the cost of imagery.  Energisa's creative use of satellite imagery and another innovative application that uses satellite-based radar interferometry to detect subsidence, which often can be sourced to a water leak, are two examples demonstrating how satellite imagery can be applied by innovative utilities to improve performance and reduce costs.

Developing a national 3D strategy in the Netherlands

At the GeoBIM Building and Infrastructure Conference in Amsterdam Rob van de Velde and Friso Penninga of Geonovum presented an overview of what has been achieved to date with respect to 3D data and technology at the national level in the Netherlands and what they see as the next major step, the development of a national 3D strategy. 

 

BIM and geospatial (2D and 3D) are key underpinnings of 3D.  The Netherlands has been at the forefront of implementing BIM in the construction industry.  Just as importantly in the long term, the Netherlands has been leading the geospatial-BIM integration initiative.  It has long been recognized that geospatial/BIM integration is essential for building and infrastructure operation and maintenance or what is referred to as full-lifecycle BIM.

 

Years ago private Dutch engineering and construction companies began adopting an integrated geospatial/BIM approach to construction.  I blogged previously about a firm Royal BAM Group nv / BAM Infraconsult that adopted integrated BIM and GIS because many of its projects require full life-cycle BIM.  At the first GeoBIM conference in Amsterdam, Jothijs van Gaalen gave some real world examples of Design, Build, Finance and Maintain (DBFM) highway construction that included GIS+BIM integration. BAM's motivation for investing in BIM+GIS are market developments especially more complex construction assignments and an increasing demand from customers for service provision throughout the entire life cycle of a project.   As another example, ARCADIS Netherlands has delivered a number of projects that integrate geospatial into the design process. 

The Netherlands has also been leading in the development and application of open BIM/geospatial standards‎ in the construction industry including NL/SfB, BS&I, ETIM, CB-NL, IMGeo, CityGML, NLCS, GB-CAS, COINS, IFC, VISI, SALES, National Model BIM Protocol, and National Model BIM Implementation Plan.  The Netherlands has created a BIM Loket (BIM Gateway) that is intended to be a national portal for information about BIM and for management of open BIM standards in the Netherlands.  It provides a central information centre for open BIM standards including related geospatial standards. 

Geospatial

Within government the Environment Planning Act is responsible for a growing focus on the physical environment.  There is also a greater desire for an integrated approach to modeling the physical environment.  Citizens are asking questions that require accurate 3D modeling, for example, noise, air quality, light and shadow, and viewports.

There have been several initiatives at the national level in the Netherlands.

• 2010 3D pilot exploring possibilities of 3D including IMGeo and CityGML
• 2012 3D pilot exploring Geo-BIM integration
• 2014 "Breakthrough 3D" - application of 3D in many domains

The last "Breakthrough 3D" initiative revealed that 3D technology had matured and that there were many initiatives asking for uniform 3D data.

BIM

The Dutch Building Information Council (BIR) has been encouraging BIM for a long time - I blogged about BIR and BIM in the Netherlands previously.  One of my takeways from the recent RICS BIM conference in London was that there is a desperate need for standards, especially to classify the huge amount of date in addition to the 3D geometry that accumulates during a construction project.  Much of this data would be useful to the FM folks who are responsible for operating and maintaining the building after construction if it were accessible.

From both the perspective of geospatial data for modeling the environment and BIM data for modeling the built environment, it's time for the next step:  a government initiative for a national 3D strategy.  The concept is to create a 3D production chain, capable of creating timely, accurate and reliable 3D geo-information.

Gap analysis - what's available vs what's needed

The Netherlands has a digital elevation model ( AHN or Actual Height Model) with nationwide coverage but the update cycle is on the order of eight years.  What's needed is a nationwide point cloud that is updated at least once a year.  There are a number of ways including new technologies this could help achieve this.

The Netherlands has national 2D core data, large scale topographic data that is open and universally accessible.  It has no equivalent in 3D.  One way to generate this rapidly are reliable techniques for automating the extraction of buildings, infrastructure and natural features from point clouds.

The Netherlands has a national portal for disseminating 2D data.  The national geoportal PDOK has experienced  3-4 billion hits in 2016.  For 3D data, PDOK needs to be upgraded to be able to serve 3D data. 

 

For 3D data there are standards for exchanging 3D data about cities and BIM model such as CityGML and IFC.  What's needed are standards for distributing and viewing 3D data.  Another important outstanding challenge is developing an interface between CityGML and IFC.

Rob emphasized that developing a national 3D standard is about identifying and involving stakeholders, understanding user requirements, and realizing the individual components, but more importantly it is about aligning individual initiatives, thus optimizing 3D supply chain.

Be Inspired Awards 2016: 3D design helps 1.8 GW hydro project generate power 10 months ahead of schedule

At the Year in Infrastructure 2016 conference in London, the Be Inspired Awards attracted over 300 submissions.  Many of these were impressive in how they applied digital technology to designing, constructing and maintaining buildings and infrastructure. The winner of this year's Power Generation sector award was a remarkable full-lifecycle BIM project for a hydropower projects in a remote part of Yunnan, China.

Longkaikou hydro-power station is located in Heqing County, Dali Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province.  The primary focus of the project is generating electricity, but it also supports irrigation, water supply and flood control. The dam is a concrete gravity dam.  There are five turbine-generator units with a total installed capacity a 1,800MW.  Construction began in 2007 and in 2012 the reservoir began to fill.  By January 2014, all power generation units were fully operational.

The Longkaikou hydropower station is the first hydropower station in China that fully employed 3D digital design technology from the start of the project. Design of the power plant began in 2005.  More than 20 different disciplines were involved including geology, hydraulic, plant, water diversion, construction, road & bridge, metal structure, hydro-machinery, electrical, HVAC, and drainage.

PowerChina Huadong Engineering Corporation  (Huadong Institute) was responsible for design of the project.  It was the first institute in China's hydropower industry who migrated from traditional 2D CAD design to 3D collaborative design.  The project employed digital model throughout the lifecycle.  The project survey, design, construction and operation are all digital.  This is considered a revolutionary technical innovation in the Chinese hydropower industry.

3D digital design greartly improved the efficiency of the design process by enabling collaborative design.  Clashes between designs from different design teams were greatly reduced and product quality was significantly improved.  For example, equipment clashes were reduced by 95%.  The amount of on-site design change was reduced by over 80%. In the design of some equipment systems and the preparation of drawings, design time reduced by more than 50%.

The efficiency of collaboration between disciplines was significantly improved.  Being able to view designs from different design teams in one unified model greatly reduces the time for review and signoff. In the past, it usually took more than one month to review and signoff a power plant's layout drawings.  With 3D modeling, collaboration between disciplines improved design efficiency by over 40%.

The digital design platform made it possible to assess alternative design scenarios in order optimize designs. It is estimated that optimization of the dam's foundation surface construction based on a 3D geological model saved about CNY 194 million in engineering costs. The dam's foundation's is unique and complex and required innovative engineering because there was no previous model to follow. Using a 3D model of the geology (digital terrain model) made it possible to design and compare alternative construction scenarios to optimize the design. As a result of design optimization, the project was completed about 10 months ahead of schedule, creating economic benefits of up to CNY 1.79 billion.

With the use of 3D digital design and geo-coordination, the Longkaikou Hydropower Station project not only enjoyed a shortened design cycle, improved project and service quality, and reduced construction costs, but also provided the basis for digital operation and maintenance of the facility by the owner. Geo-coordination, a term minted by Bentley, is key to integrating data from many different sources including reality modeling, 3D building models and associated information.  Bentley recognized the value of geo-coordination very early on. With all Bentley applications in the last 12 years every infrastructure asset has geo-coordination in the form of real world x y z coordinates. It is recognized as essential for full-lifecycle (design, build, maintain and operate) BIM.  In this project it was fundamental not only for integrating the dam and hydropower plant design and the digital terrain model, but also for making it possible to reuse the BIM model and associated data during operation and maintenance.

The design was praised by both the construction contractor and the owner.  It enhanced the core competitiveness and reputuation of the Huadong Institute, establishing a strong foundation for winning future hydropower projects.

SPAR2016: Digitalizing highway construction at the Oregon DoT

At SPAR 2013Ron Singh, Engineering Automation Manager/Chief of Surveys, Oregon Department of Transportation (DoT) made a startling proposal that would stand the traditional highway construction process on its head by making the post-construction as-built survey the critical source of reliable survey and asset information in the form of a geo-referenced 3D BIM model (also known as horizontal BIM, heavy BIM, VDC, civil information modeling, BIM on its side, and BIM for infrastructure) and associated scanned and other data.  One of the implications of this is that when a new project is initiated in the same area over 80 % of the necessary survey-grade information is already available in the DoT's geospatially-enabled database making the traditional complete resurvey unnecessary - saving time and money.   Ron foresees that one of the consumers of this digital highway information would be autonomous vehicles.

This year at the Spar 3D 2016 Expo and Conference in Houston I had a chance to sit down with Ron to see how his and other DoTs have progressed on his vision since then.

Ron, the last time we chatted you mentioned you were organizing an event for Western State DoTs in July 2014. How did that go?

It was very successful. I did this on behalf of the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) who approached me and said they planned to do an event similar to the one I organized in 2010 which was called Design to Dozer. In that one we used digital technology including automated GPS-equipped dozers, graders, and excavators to build a sub grade of a road.  It was well attended and it really made a change for my DoT.

The FHA asked me to do another one to promote the use of intelligent construction technologies by providing information and training relating to 3D design, automated machine guidance (AMG) and related technologies for highway construction.  This time I decided to go all the way to paving including ditches, culverts, and drainage. I called it Design to Paver.  We invited the DoTs from the18 Western States plus Florida, North Carolina, and Michigan.  From each Dot we invited their chief engineer and their chief construction engineer.  Altogether we had about 250 people at the event.  It was a two day event and combined classroom work in the morning with on-site in afternoon.

This event included building a demonstration road but I wanted to build one we wouldn't have to tear up and restore. I found a piece of land that was a training facility for the Oregon National Guard. It was a big complex of about 40 or 50 acres and had been a training site since WWII. I went out to see the site and met with them and their environmental people.  I sketched out a plan for a road about 1500 feet long. I picked a site where the road would gain 200 feet in elevation because I wanted it to be fairly complex. I wanted to make some radical curves with superelevations and exaggerated superelevations, so we would have some drainage issues to deal with.  I wanted it to look like a real road and have some interesting geometry. No underground utilities. I wanted to take it from bare earth to a finished 1500 foot road with several curves, ditches, culverts, and paved in less than 2 days.  I don't know exactly but with a traditional approach this would probably have required about a week's work.  We could actually have done it in less than two days, but we were demonstrating.

We did all the surveying for the site months in advance.  We also had a geo-referenced 3D design model with rendering and animation.  We brought in the construction equipment the day before.  We had training sessions for the operators on safety including unexploded ordnance since this was a military training site.

I chunked the 1500 feet of road out in pieces and choreographed the whole thing.  For example, the dozer operator on each section of the road did not break ground until the audience showed up.  They stepped out of the buses and on their badges they had colour codes which allocated them to a team of about 25 people. Each group would go to station A at staggered times.  At station A they would be showed automated dozer operation. Then at a certain time they would go to station B and so on. It was very well coordinated.

What impact do you think the event had on the highway engineers who attended ?

It was amazing - the feedback through the emails I received was so positive.  People still talk about it. If you go to any of the DoTs who attended, the staff who had been there were just amazed.  One of the reasons is that what we were able to show them was something that would have taken a single individual many, many years to see, because none of them had experienced a project with automated equipment from breaking ground to paving.  They were able to experience it all in 2 days. We had all types of equipment, dozers, excavators, curb machines, paving machines, and so on.  We even had unmanned aircraft system (UAVs) for monitoring the construction and ground penetrating radar systems for detecting underground utilities.

Is there a way to find out more about this event?

We created a web site DesignToPaver.org which we intend to leave up for two more years. There is a guide book which you can download. It has more than the agenda. It has all the names of all the companies and  presenters.  If you would like to ask somebody questions, you can find that information in there.

Do you think the road map and time frame for 3D models and construction automation that you outlined is still realistic or is it accelerating?

The technology behind autonomous vehicles is really accelerating as is the engineering automation of highway construction, but the social and legal aspects of highway construction may be the barriers that are keeping it in check. If it were only up to to the technology we would be there much quicker, but I think the social and legal aspects are actually providing good balance, by making sure we are not breaking something that we can't replace.

You mentioned the legal aspects, do you think new legislation will be required to enable to the full digitialization of highway construction and maintenance ?

As long as you put a box around the question and restrict it to engineering automation, not autonomous cars, I think we are well-suited to get there with the existing laws.  I could imagine that to further capitalize on this technology, legislation to register another profession, such as remote sensing, might be beneficial.  I don't necessarily feel that it has to be a surveyor's function to do, let's say, mobile mapping or UAV mapping. I feel it needs to be somebody who is licensed, who has gone through training, who is able to prove that they know how to do this work, and who maintains ongoing professional development training.  The key requirement is that they stand behind their products in a legal sense.

There are many different technologies for capturing data now, even a consumer digital camera can be used to create a point cloud. If I  am a highway engineer how do I decide what data I can rely on for designing a highway ?

The data that has the level of rigour required for engineering design is what I call authoritative data. As an example, if you intend to use a boat with a sonar system and cameras for underwater bathymetric surveying in search of treasure, that's fine. I don't think anyone should regulate that. But if you are going to use the same tools to model bathymetry for the design of a public bridge, then it better be authoritative.  It better be data that you can track the lineage and source of.

One of the key questions I have is about the database of digital data including, in the case of Oregon, data from overflights and mobile LiDAR for the entire state highway system plus the digital as-built models and other data from actual construction projects.  Who do you see is responsible for maintaining this database including updates from ongoing highway maintenance work ?

In Oregon we think we at the DoT are responsible for maintaining it. As long as it is inside our corridor, it was either created by us or by our agents, companies that we hired. There is tremendous value in this data, but the value is only there if in the future people feel confident in using the data.  For that they need to know its provenance.  For example, if you consider our as-built plans, we have had these for generations, but we don't rely on them for anything but to help us find things. We don't rely on them for survey data, because the current as-builts were never created with that in mind.

If we collected very accurate, very rich data and we didn't track its lineage including metadata about how it was captured and when, a future engineering user would legitimately say I don't trust it, because I have no narrative about this data, for example, even something as fundamental as what coordinate system it is in.  But if we can compile all this information together in the form of comprehensive metadata that gives the future user trust in its provenance and reliability, then there should be nothing to prevent the data from being reused.

Are contractors who bit to build roads in Oregon interested in the data you are collecting - do they ask you for it ?

For construction project work, when we use mobile LiDAR or terrestrial laser scanning, we are very careful about precision, for example, we put in ground control points. We do the entire survey in such a way that we end up with a certain level of accuracy, a certain level of point density, and a certain level of reliability. 

When we collect mobile LiDAR data for the whole state, it is impossible to do collect data with the same rigour for the whole state.  We don't put ground control points in and we don't do other things that are required for high precision and reliability.  The data is still very usable for many things, but it is not authoritative, high accuracy survey data, that is required for engineering design.

If you are planning a project in an area where there was a previous project with a digital model, high precision data including ground control points and high density laser scans, would you tell contractors planning to bid on the project about the existing data ?

Absolutely. If we don' t tell them then we might as well as had not collected, documented (metadata) and stored it. We have to tell them because it helps drive the cost down.  To give you some background, our first automated machine guidance (AMG) project was in 1997.  In Oregon some contractors had invested in AMG technology and wanted to use it. In those days contractors who had done this were winning the bids by lowering their bid just enough to beat the other contractors.  When they did the work with AMG technology, they saved a lot of money, but most of the savings was going to the contractors, not to the DoT.  To redress this, starting in early 2015, we began specifying on our bid web site that projects were "AMG ready". We provide all the data we have which they can download to see the models, mobile LiDAR, overflight data, and so on.  The effect is to drive bids down, because there is less risk for the contractor.  Asa result we at the DoT are now sharing in the savings.

Is Oregon alone among DoTs in applying these technologies or are other DoTs also applying them ?

There are about five or six that are leaders in using different aspects of digital technology.  For example, the Wisconsin DoT is focusing on 3D design - they are ahead of us in this technology. Michigan is leading in some areas,  for example, data storage and data management. We met with them because we were interested to finding out what they were doing with engineering data management.  In return they were interested in what we were doing with 3D design and AMG. Utah his way ahead of most DoTs in asset management.  None of the DoTs including us are applying every aspect of 3D digital highway construction and maintenance.

Are there any ROI studies demonstrating the financial benefits of these digital technologies ?

We are doing one. We have a research project we call the OSU Engineering Automation project with Oregon State University in Corvalis.  They are studying our entire engineering automation process. They have already put a good project team together.   The final report is due by next April, about a year from now.

Using UAVs to create digital surface models for northern peatlands research

I just attended a fascinating presentation with the unprepossessing title of "CCRS/NRC/McGill Scientists - TOPICS OF PEATLANDS AND THE MER BLEUE BOG."  This was about a new project called MBASSS initiated by scientists from the Canada Centre for Remote Processing (CCRS), National Research Council (NRC), and McGill University to acquire airborne hyperspectral imagery and ground-based measurements for the purpose of validating satelllite optical earth observation (EO) multi-hyperspectral data products for northern/subarctic peatlands. 

The world has about about 3 million square km of northern boreal peatlands, which are huge carbon stores, estimated to contain 200 to 600 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon.  About one million square km of these are in Canada.  Peatlands act as both a carbon source and a carbon sink in the terrestrial carbon cycle. The net effect of northern peatlands is a small to moderate carbon sink, removing an estimated 49 billion kg/yr (Tg/yr) of carbon from the atmosphere.

75% of these peatlands are bogs and one of these is Mer Bleue a 28 square km bog very near to Ottawa.  Since it is much easier to study a bog that is 13 km from Ottawa than to travel a thousand km to subarctic Canada, Mer Bleue, which already has a peatland observatory, was chosen for the study. 

Mer Bleue is normally a net sink for carbon, removing on average 60 grams of carbon per square meter per year (g C m-2 yr -1), but this can vary from year to year depending on factors such as water level.  Historically it has ranged from 10 to 128 g C m-2 yr -1.

Conventional overflights for the project are being conducted by the NRC using a fixed wind aircraft (Twin Beaver).  But as an alternative, Matt Maloney of CCRS has conducted trial flights with three different UAVs.  At the low end with a Phantom 2 equipped wiith a GoPro camera.  The other devices are a Spyder PX8 and an Aeromapper EV2 with a Sony camera.  He had to get Transport Canada Flight Certification which requires line of site, daylight only and less than 300m altitude operation.  The area covered by the UAV flights was 500 square meters.

He used a technique called structure from motion which takes the 2D images captured by the UAV and stitches them into point clouds, ortho mosaics, and digital surface models.  By way of comparison with a typical fixed wing overflight equipped with LiDAR which typically generates two points per square meter, the point clouds captured from the UAV have a density of 500 points per square meter.  The ortho mosaics and digital surface models captured with the UAVs (and using ground control points)were quite impressive with 3-5 cm pixels and rmse less than 5 cm.

3D is transforming the construction industry and helping to build a new world

Increasing urbanisation, pressure on existing infrastructure, push for productivity in construction sector and environmental concerns are driving the convergence of geospatial, 3D and information modeling technologies.

Over the next two decades, construction of buildings and infrastructure (electric power, water/wastewater, roads and highways, and ports and airports) will see a massive infusion of investment, motivated by environmental concerns and the need to accelerate economic development.  As governments are discovering that they have less and less money for capital infrastructure projects, a greater proportion of the investment in infrastructure will come from the private sector, which will drive increasing productivity to improve returns on investment. As with other industries facing a productivity challenge, this translates into an investment in technology. The accelerating adoption of 3D technologies includes 3D visualisation, 3D building information modelling (BIM), 3D GIS, 3D CAD, 3D reality capture such as laser scanning (LiDAR) and ground penetrating radar (GPR), 3D photogrammetry from satellites, aircraft and UAVs, and technologies that enable 3D measurement such as oblique imagery is transforming the construction industry in important areas.

In a just published article in Geospatial World I discuss how 3D data and technologies integrated with geospatial and other technologies are being applied to model buildings, infrastructure, and entire urban environments ranging from individual buildings to neighbourhoods to cities, how this is feasible using today’s technology, and how it is already transforming the construction industry.

ncreasing urbanisation, pressure on existing infrastructure, push for productivity in construction sector and environmental concerns are driving the convergence of geospatial and 3D technologies across businesses. - See more at: http://geospatialworld.net/Magazine/MArticleView.aspx?aid=30905&utm_content=buffer67319&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer#sthash.MsgzMTNR.dpuf

Digital Globe buys into the oil and gas geospatial imagery market

DigitalGlobe, one of the first companies to offer commercial high-resolution earth observation imagery from several satellites (Quickbird, Worldview-1, Worldview-2, and GeoEye), has acquired Spatial Energy, which provides digital imagery and related services to the energy industry.

Spatial Energy provides digital imagery, imagery processing and analytical services to the oil and gas industry worldwide.   Spatial Energy acquires, processes, and manages an extensive collection of high resolution satellite and aerial imagery, topographic maps, and digital elevation models (DEMs), which is available on demand from their extensive data archives, by tasking satellites and aerial providers, and by speculative collection.  Typical ways that Spatial Energy's data is used by energy companies includes

• mapping monitoring of ground features like roads, well locations, facilities, property boundaries, utilities;
• seismic planning;
• new wellplanning and spotting; site development;
• facilities analysis and monitoring,
• pipeline construction and monitoring,
• environmental impact and
• hazards assessments,
• view shed analysis

Spatial Energy provides imagery and data content to 30 of the top 50 oil and gas companies in the world, including 5 of the top 6 supermajors.

Aerial surveying with UAVs: more densely sampled DSM in one fifth the time

At this year's GIS in the Rockies, there were very interesting sessions on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned aerial systems (UASs).  It turns out that Colorado is a hot bed for the development of these devices. 

Custom UAVs

Bill Miller is with a company GIS Services that builds customized UAVs, copters with your choice of sensors and cameras for $5,000 to $10,000 depending on your requirements.  The copters can fly for a maximum of 20 minutes.  They have smart controls.  For example, if you take your hands off the controls, the copter will hover.  It also has a pullback control, which will cause the copter to return and land where it was launched - you have to be careful that you haven't inadvertently stepped into the area where it took off from, because it will land on you.  They also can correct for wind.

He reviewed the legal challenges to flying UAVs, which are restricted to recreational use in the U.S.  UAVs are subject to

• Altitude limit - UAVs are limited to a maximum altitude of 400 ft (200 ft if tethered)
• Line of sight - the UAV has to be visible to the operator
• Recreational - can't be used for commercial purposes - for example, you can not sell imagery collected by the UAV (though you can give it to friends)

It is possible to get special exemptions for emergency monitoring and other purposes.

UASs

An example of a UAS is Trimble's fixed wing UX5 (derived from the Gatewing that Trimble acquired a few years ago.)  Using this device is a completely automated process.  You use software to define the flight path for the device for the area you are interested in.  After launch it will follow the plan without any intervention from the operator - including compensating for wind.  It flies at up to 80 km/hr for up to 50 minutes.  After processing the imagery you will have a orthorectified image and a digital surface model (DSM) of the area. It can cover a square km area in 36 minutes of flying time, taking 1014 overlapping images at a resolution of 3.2 cm.  Because of the airspace restrictions in the U.S. this device is not generally available in the U.S. It is being sold in Canada and Europe.

A detalied comparison of the cost of a traditional survey by a surveyor in the field and a survey conducted using the UX5 shows that the the survey can be completed at a comparable level of resolution (horizontal 2 cm and vertical 4 cm vs 1 cm and 2 cm) with many more sampling points (sampling interval of 3.8 cm vs 15 m) in about a fifth of the time (6 hrs 30 mins vs 32 hrs 30 mins) that the traditonal survey requires.  This suggests that UAVs are going to be disruptive for this type of survey once the airspace restrictions in the U.S. are resolved.