Ordnance Survey Demonstrates BIM Potential with Pioneering Project in Singapore

By combining building information modelling (BIM) with geospatial technologies, Ordnance Survey (OS) is breaking down barriers in Singapore. OS has spent two years in the Southeast-Asian nation championing the use of BIM data and its potential to transform urban planning. Britain’s mapping agency lent its expertise to a project with the University of Singapore and the Singaporean government that aims to make Singapore a world leader in smart technology. OS’s role was to develop data processing and 3D data modelling to help Singapore plan its future city more effectively. It contributed knowledge about the CityGML data model, an exchange compatible with... (read more)

2019-07-11 09:55:02

Land Surveying: Towards a Smarter Life

FIG Working Week in Hanoi, Vietnam, 22-26 April 2019

Surveyors and land professionals from all over the world came together in April in the heat of Hanoi to take part in the FIG 2019 Working Week. This year’s theme was ‘Geospatial information for a smarter life and environmental resilience’. The conference had a strong focus on tackling climate change by working towards a smarter life, both through the development of smart cities and also in rural areas. Spatial information, big data, surveying, BIM, land administration and much more are recognized as being essential factors in this development. There is a strong awareness that Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are directly... (read more)

2019-06-27 09:25:08

Leica Geosystems and Autodesk Extend Collaboration to Streamline Construction Documentation

Leica Geosystems, part of Hexagon, has announced further cooperation with Autodesk to offer streamlined communication and collaboration by integrating the field software Leica Captivate and iCON with Autodesk BIM 360. With the increasing complexity of construction projects and massive amounts of information generated, interoperability with various information systems and industry standards is a requirement for project success. The two organizations are again joining forces to bring new efficiencies in building construction. Professionals can now implement streamlined workflows based on reliable, high-accuracy data and workable 3D models. “As a user of Leica iCON and of Autodesk BIM 360, BAM are excited... (read more)

2019-06-27 09:04:42

Intergeo Places People at the Heart of Digitalization

Intergeo is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, providing the perfect occasion for a brief review of what it has achieved so far. Even more importantly, it’s an appropriate juncture for looking ahead – to the leading international trade fair for geodesy, geoinformation and land management, with its focus on digital topics. Industry experts from the realms of business and science gathered in Stuttgart at the end of May for a Round Table to share their experiences and expertise, true to Intergeo’s motto: 'Knowledge and action for planet Earth'. Reviewing how Intergeo has evolved over time, Christiane Salbach, managing director... (read more)

2019-06-19 02:01:39

Geoinformation Software as a Service

From Licensing to Subscription

Accurate geoinformation about urban areas, public buildings or historical sites is in great demand. It has become astonishingly easy to capture these scenes through cameras or laser scanning or to acquire open data from a diversity of sources. Professionals without a surveying background can do the job, but such professionals require reliable, robust, easy-to-use and affordable processing tools. Today, cloud computing can meet that need, enabling users to work with software packages running on remote servers on either a pay-per-use or a subscription basis. This article presents a cloud computing service dedicated to geoinformation software. Storing data in the cloud... (read more)

2019-06-13 01:10:12

Hardware-Software Partnership Introduces Real-time 3D Mobile Mapping and Construction Verification

At the recent SPAR 3D & AEC NEXT conferences in Anaheim, California, USA, ClearEdge3D, maker of EdgeWise, Verity and Rithm for Navisworks software, announced a collaboration with Gexcel, maker of HERON wearable scanners. The two companies have joined forces to make it quicker and easier for AEC professionals to conveniently gather as-built data with Gexcel’s HERON wearable laser scanners, and to compare that data against design/fabrication models using ClearEdge3D’s Verity software. This allows 100% verification of installed work in real time. "The partnership between ClearEdge3D and Gexcel brings together two globally recognized AEC tech leaders in the 3D world that... (read more)

2019-06-03 11:21:15

Standards Are a Great Help for Establishing Land Administration

GIM International Interviews Christiaan Lemmen

In 2017 Dr Christiaan Lemmen, a former contributing editor of 'GIM International', was appointed as professor of land administration modelling at Twente University’s Faculty ITC for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation. He is the leading designer of the ISO 19152 international standard for geographic information – Land Administration Domain Model (LADM), the second edition of which has been in development since 2018. In this interview, he discusses the importance of LADM standards, poverty and tenure security, and the long and winding road to put well-functioning land administration in place in developing countries. The Land Administration Domain Model is actually an... (read more)

2019-05-28 01:39:20

Geospatial Data in Support of 3D Cadastre

Zooming in on Recent Technical Developments

The urbanization trend is leading to an increasing number of people living in cities, thus also placing new demands on cadastral registration. To be able to register the complex infrastructures and built-up areas properly, the cadastre will need to consider the third spatial dimension. The 3D cadastre is based on 3D parcels (spatial units) which are single volumes (or multiple volumes) of space. Although the technology offers numerous possibilities for implementation of the 3D cadastre, there are still some open issues, as this article explains. We live in a three-dimensional world. Over the past decades, there have been an increasing... (read more)

2019-05-22 08:21:03

Geodata Takes Centre Stage at Intergeo 2019

At Intergeo 2019, from 17 to 19 September in Stuttgart, Germany, more than 680 exhibitors will be providing insights into the highly dynamic geospatial sector. The world's leading geospatial event will focus on the growing importance of geodata – also termed 'the currency of the future' – and the resulting opportunities. Key topics will be drones, smart cities and BIM. Tickets for this year's edition are available now. Geoinformation has filtered into every area of our lives, with hardly a single website or app able to function without it. Planning, visualizing and designing, creating sustainable living spaces, understanding increasingly complex interconnections, finding... (read more)

2019-05-21 09:33:22

Lidar Point Cloud Segmentation

A Novel Framework for Processing Terrestrial Lidar Data

Terrestrial Lidar data has great potential to produce measurements for as-built building information modelling (BIM). Unfortunately, processing hundreds of millions of points, often contaminated by substantial noise, can be tedious and time-consuming. This article describes normal variation analysis (Norvana) segmentation – an automatic method that can segment large terrestrial Lidar point clouds containing hundreds of millions of points within minutes. Thanks to the high speed, point density and accuracy of modern terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), as-built BIM can be conducted with a high level of detail. But TLS captures not only useful geometric information but also unwanted objects, such as... (read more)

2019-05-10 02:00:42