ESRI User Conference – A Preview
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ESRI User Conference – A Preview

7th to 11th August, San Diego, California, US

The Annual International ESRI User Conference takes place from 7 to 11 August in San Diego, California, US. At the accompanying exhibition many companies from all over the world present products and services, often in close relationship to ESRI products.

As may be expected from the location of the conference, most enterprises represented at the exhibition are US or Canada-based. But there will also be organisations from Russia, India, France, Japan and The Netherlands. The promised presence of Topcon, Thales and Leica Geosystems demonstrates the vivid and increas-ingly close coupling of GIS and surveying. This connection is also demonstrated by the Survey and GIS Summit which ESRI has organised to take place in San Diego simultaneously with the User Conference, from 5th to 8th August. This exhibition preview offers the opportunity for a number of exhibitors to elaborate on their specialities. It may help to navigate you through the abundance of information that will without doubt engulf you as a conference participant.


Aerial Cartographics of America
Aerial Cartographics of America (FL, USA) will showcase MultiVision, an oblique aerial imaging product for property appraisers, emergency management, law enforcement, and homeland security. MultiVision enables users to instantly create real 3D building models from oblique aerial imagery. In addition, MultiVision integrates vertical and oblique aerial photos into single image files; users can rapidly measure structures, import GIS layers or export oblique images into any GIS program.
Stand number: 1704

Avenza Systems
Avenza Systems (Canada) will showcase Geographic Imager for Adobe Photoshop, a product that enhances the Adobe Photoshop imaging environment with the addition of all the tools and technology necessary to support import, editing, manipulation and export of geospatial images such as aerial and satellite imagery. In addition to allowing the use of Photoshop’s numerous native imaging functions, Geographic Imager adds the ability to open and recognise geotiffs and other referenced raster formats, automatically mosaic images spatially, re-project images, transform and geo-reference images based on ground control points and save images with all spatial information intact.
Stand number: 1523

CompassCom Software Corp.
CompassCom Software Corporation (CO, USA) is a provider of mobile resource management solutions for first-line responders, public works, defence, utilities and transportation. Its fully interoperable mobile resource management solutions deliver an array of rich location, status, two-way communications information that provides a remote management facility to improve operating efficiency and effectiveness. CompassCom patent-pending client/server solutions deliver decision-making information to improve results achieved from distributed asset environments.
Stand number: 1948

Data East
Data East is a Russian company providing GIS software development, engineering and consulting services. Data East staff took part in development of such ESRI software products as ArcIMS, MapObjects Java, Business Analyst, DDK Pro etc. Data East is also an authorised ESRI business partner and regional distributor of ESRI software products. The company represents ESRI interests in Siberia and Far East regions. It will present a new GIS product, Personal IMS, and new versions of other well-known products for ArcGIS users such as XTools Pro, TAB Reader and Smart Search for ArcGIS.
Stand number: 1912

Electronic Data Solutions
Electronic Data Solutions will showcase FormsPlus for ArcPad, a product that automatically converts Trimble Data Dictionaries to ESRI ArcPad forms. It also includes a new, simple Forms Wizard that allows the user to create ArcPad forms or edit forms and pick lists after they are created. Data and forms need simply to be added to a mobile device and useful data can be collected with ArcPad. Just ten minutes is required for typical applications.
Stand number: 1600

Extract Systems
Formerly UCLID Software, Extract Systems (WI, USA), provides mapping and indexing productivity tools for government, survey, title insurance, medical and other industries. The 4.0 version release of IcoMap, the mapping productivity extension for the ArcGIS platform, will be officially launched at the 2006 ESRI International User Conference. New features include the ability to edit entered calls before completing a feature, an automatic closure error report, support for PDF source images, and a concurrent licensing model. Demonstrations of IcoMap 4.0, and additional information, will be available on the stand. Extract Systems software can significantly improve efficiency and productivity for county recorders and state and federal agencies that map from legal descriptions in GIS.
Stand number: 507

Intermap
Intermap (CO, USA) enables better decision-making and creation of applications for numer-ous commercial, government, military and consumer products through the purchase of high-quality and affordable elevation datasets. The company is proactively re-mapping entire countries and building national databases called NEXTMap, consisting of highly accurate digital topographic maps. The growing NEXTMap USA database now includes the complete states of California, Hawaii, Mississippi and Florida. Demand for three-dimensional NEXTMap data is growing as new commercial applications emerge, particularly for automotive navigation and safety, insurance risk management and interactive internet mapping.
Stand number: 1807

International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC)
ITC knowledge of geo-information management is plentifully available and continually being developed and extended. By means of education, research and project services we contribute to capacity building in emerging countries. In doing this considerable attention is paid to the development and application of GIS for solving problems. Such problems can range from determining the risks of landslides to mapping forest fires, planning urban infrastructure and implementing land administration systems or detecting environmental pollution.

The key words characterising our activities are ‘geo-information management’, ‘worldwide’ and ‘innovative’. We concentrate on earth observation, the gener-ation of spatial information and development of data integration methods.
Stand number: 808

ISSI
ISSI (CA, USA), a small GIS consulting company, will launch its first custom, off-the-shelf product, AceTools, which utilises enter-prise GIS to create an environment that simplifies mapmaking for users. AceMap uses wizards in order to achieve this. Data exploration and layer management are made easier with AceTools, which allows users to browse and give recognisable names to each of the layers that make up an enterprise database.
Stand number: 101

Juniper Systems
Juniper Systems, Inc. (UT, USA) designs, manufactures and sells ultra-rugged handheld field computers and mobile data-acquisition systems for natural resources, agriculture, industrial, land-survey, mobile GIS and other markets. Juniper Systems recently introduced the Archer Field PC, which runs Microsoft Windows Mobile version 5.0 and is power-ed by the Intel XScale 520Mhz processor.
Stand number: 1602

Laserfiche
Laserfiche Document Management will demonstrate working examples of Laserfiche/ESRI integrations. Laserfiche representatives will be on hand to answer questions, demonstrate new products and provide details about successful GIS/document management integration in the United States and internationally. Alejandro Catalán, general cadastral co-ordinator for Guerrero, Mexico, will present an educational session focused on strategies for integrating ESRI and Laser-fiche in a large-scale, ongoing state-wide project. Laserfiche will also host the ESRI Latin Ameri-can User Meeting on Tuesday 8th August, from 5.30 to 7p.m.
Stand number: 1505

Leica Geosystems
On the Leica Geosystems stand experts will be available for interactive demonstrations of product offerings including Image Analysis for ArcGIS, Stereo Analyst for ArcGIS, Feature Analyst for ArcGIS, ERDAS IMAGINE, IM-AGINE AutoSync, Leica Virtual Explorer, and Leica Photogrammetry Suite. There will also be a preview of Leica Ortho Accelerator. In addition, they will participate in several pre-conference seminars in the areas of Remote Sensing, Photogrammetry, Automatic Point Matching and 3D Visualisation. Four technical sessions will be held on Stereo Analyst/Feature Analyst.
Stand number: 601

Marshall and Associates
Marshall (WA, USA) is a provider of mobile GIS products and services with a core focus on spatial enterprise integration, the seamless integration of ESRI GIS with other core business applications. Marshall’s GeoResults Mobile GIS software, powered by ArcGIS Engine, allows organisations to ‘extend their enterprise’ to the field where work gets done. GeoResults Mobile automates current paper-based field business processes by providing field staff with up-to-date GIS (geodatabase) and other enterprise business data in a single data-entry-point mobile application.
Stand number: 701

Orion Technology
Orion Technology Inc (Canada) will showcase the newest version of its Web GIS product OnPoint 6.0. Featuring more power and advanced functionality, OnPoint 6.0 allows building Web-GIS applications and GIS-Web Services in minimal time and without any programming. The OnPoint Product Suite makes easy linking business systems to GIS. OnPoint 6.0 features include map services, embeddable searches and maps, collaboration and redlining, a rich SDK for customising OnPoint and highly customisable user interface.
Stand number: 1621

Placebase
Placebase (CA, USA) will showcase Pushpin, technology consisting of a broad collection of browser-centric, interactive mapping capabilities. Important components include an optional Web-services platform and access-controlled user environment that can be rapidly customised. If an application requires themes or other disaggregated layers, or base maps with own cartographic style, Placebase can provide draggable browser maps to high standards and demands, run legally on intranet or paid internet site.
Stand number: 810

Placeways
Placeways, LLC (CO, USA) will introduce LayerLogic, an ArcGIS extension for real-time analysis using field formulas. The graphical, drag-and-drop interface allows the user to create ‘Smart Fields’ in layer-attribute tables, values being formula-driven and self-updating. Almost a hundred analysis functions are available for creating everything from on-the-spot calculations like ‘name of closest city’ to sophisticated geospatial models. This product is intended for anyone who uses ArcGIS on a regular basis and wants to get more information out of their data and save time on data maintenance.
Stand number: 1923

Ricoh
Ricoh’s geo-imaging solution integrates GPS technology directly into a digital camera, providing a single-unit solution for capturing digital images and geo-encoding these with position and user-defined metadata. A simple plug-in imports the images into ArcGIS. Point and attribute-table data is automatically created for instant access of images.
Stand number: 1515

RMSI
RMSI (India) will be both an exhibitor and a presenter at the conference. Through well-structured demos and poster presentations, the company will showcase its recently completed projects in municipal GIS, business demographics, system integration and conflation. The highpoint of the RMSI stand will be the GeoData Viewer application that integrates and thema-tically represents data accessed from different service providers. The application facilitates comparison by providing a single user interface with different windows for viewing information. Business-specific GIS data layers can be overlaid on the base data/imagery provided by these service providers, giving data comparison and effective visualisation. GeoData
Viewer is customisable and can be integrated with existing systems to enhance geospatial capabilities.
Stand number: 516 and 514

SANZ
SANZ (CO, USA) will be demonstrating EarthWhere with Raster ETL for ArcSDE, which provides enhanced SDE data preparation and loading capabilities through the use of the EarthWhere Spatial Data Provisioning application. In a recent case study at the USGS using EarthWhere, data was extracted from its source state, transformed into datasets specific to an ArcSDE application requirement and then easily loaded into ArcSDE to fulfil the USGS business need. This documented benchmark validated a significant reduction (ten to one) in time required for the manually intensive process of preparing data for loading into ArcSDE. An easy-to-use tool guides users through preparing data to load into ArcSDE, reducing not only the amount of time required, but also the need for highly skilled personnel to perform these functions.
Stand number: 611

Smart Data Strategies
Smart Data Strategies, Inc. (TN, USA) provides a variety of GIS software and services focused on Real Property Intelligence and its use by a variety of clients, including local, state and federal government agencies, and private industries utilising GIS. Services include DREAMaps land-records management software currently being used to manage over six million parcels across the United States. Also included are parcel conversion, Geodatabase design and implementation, GIS/CAMA integration, CAD-to-GIS conversion, systems integration, inventory management, ROW management, e-commerce data brokerage and distribution, training, toll-free support and GIS data conversion services.
Stand number: 400

Software Technologies
Software Technologies (Russia) will showcase its implementation service for telecom, transportation, utilities and other industries. New offerings include building desktop, server and mobile solutions based on ESRI’s ArcGIS, ArcIMS, ArcPad, RouteMAP IMS and BusinessMAP products.
Stand number: 1305

Stratus Technologies
Stratus Technologies continuously available servers will be driving many of the ESRI demo applications at this year’s 2006 User Conference. This is the first time ESRI applications have been shown on a fault-tolerant server platform. The ftServer 4300, with its field-proven 99.999%+ uptime reliability, recently completed ESRI’s Technology Evaluation and Performance Validation Testing. According to the test report, “Stratus servers appear to offer a viable alternative to traditional clustering and, in the long term, may prove to be much easier and more cost-effective, while providing higher availability than traditional clusters.”
Stand number: 915

Thales
Thales will showcase its MobileMapper CE, the handheld GPS receiver for GIS applications, which now offers differential corrections via NTRIP and direct IP.

The MobileMapper CE GPS receiver offers an array of high-performance features including real-time, sub-metre GPS positioning, embedded Microsoft Windows CE .NET, Bluetooth wireless technology, removable SD card memory and an all-day removeable battery, making it attractive for a wide variety of demanding GIS data collection and mapping applications. Current owners of MobileMapper CE will find a free update of the new firmware version at the Thales FTP site after 1st July 2006.
Stand number: 1821

T-Kartor
T-Kartor will present the CPS NG software developed for database-driven map production and data-base maintenance. One flavour of CPS NG is based on the ESRI Inc Geodatabase data model, and this version will be demonstrated on the stand. Source Data Module, including tools like Multiviewer and Swipeviewer, will also be demonstrated. The Swipeviewer enables comparison of two different datasets, and the Multiviewer viewing of Multiple Mapwindows at different scales whilst still using the Swipeviewer. TMapServer software, an effective Internet Map Server, will also be presented and demonstrated. Anyone interested in a Cartographic Seminar hosted by T-Kartor, including refreshment and dinner, should contact Helene
Kristiansson (hk@t-kartor.se). Seats are limited, so interest in participation should be registered in advance of conference.
Stand number: 714

Topcon
Topcon will be showcasing the new GMS-2 dual-constellation satellite-tracking system in small, hand-held receiver. This system provides integrated digital camera powered by Topcon imaging technology, combined with electronic compass.
Stand number: 1009

Tri-Global Technologies
Tri-Global Technologies, LLC (GA, USA) is to announce two new additions to its suite of GPS inventory tools. Tri-Global BarcodeMapper is a customised ESRI ArcPad add-on that allows even novice field technicians to accurately collect and document bar-coded features. Designed on the basis of a rugged, outdoor Bluetooth barcode scanner allowing wireless communication with various PocketPC and Trimble GPS mapping devices, BarcodeMapper not only dramatically speeds up asset collection but can be used to query, edit and navigate to already collected inventories. Tri-Global D.A. Tools is a customised ESRI ArcPad application allowing quick and easy underground utilities data collection. D.A. Tools integrates underground utility-locating sensors from RadioDetection with the latest Trimble GPS mapping devices.
Stand number: 1900

VELOCITIE
VELOCITIE plays a key role in several projects involving ArcGIS and SAP. Through innovative tools, development of interfaces and use of geocoding technology, its clients achieve efficiencies in keeping GIS data up to date and integrating disparate data for company-wide access. VELOCITIE will present papers on Aquarion Water’s ‘Gateway to the Enterprise’ and PSE&G’s award-winning innovations in data reconciliation and SAP interoperability: ‘Innovative Tools for Data Reconciliation’ (at PSE&G), ‘Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Driven GIS-An Alternative Approach’ (at PSE&G) and ‘GIS-the Gateway to the Enterprise at Aquarion Water Company’.
Stand number: 1812

VLS
Visual Learning Systems (VLS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Overwatch Systems, software applications provide assisted and automated tools for extracting geospatial features of interest from imagery with the highest measure of speed and accuracy. VLS tools provide a key bridging technology between the raster-based world of imaging and the vector-based world of mapping. In 2005 VLS introduced Lidar Analyst for extraction of 3D terrain surfaces, buildings and trees.
Stand number: 331

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