Infrastructure Group Benefits from Drone Technology in Smart Motorways Project

The international infrastructure group Balfour Beatty is reaping the rewards of using drones on major construction projects, including work on a multi-million-pound 'Smart Motorway' upgrade in the Midlands region of the UK with support from UAV specialist Heliguy. The group is utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or 'drones'), including the recently released DJI Phantom 4 RTK, to enhance safety, increase efficiency, gather data faster, improve asset productivity and gain high-accuracy results. The UAVs are being used for quicker stockpile measurements, informative aerial progress reports and accessing hard-to-reach areas. Balfour Beatty has turned to drone expert Heliguy as its preferred supplier,... (read more)

2019-04-09 10:39:43

Leica Geosystems, HDS

Fifth User Conference and HQ, San Ramon, USA

Terrestrial laser scanning combines a high level of detail with surveying accuracy for the creation of 3D-models of virtually any object. The technology literally opens up new dimensions and so attracts widespread attention. It is in the interest of manufacturers to bring these people together for cross-fertilisation of ideas, so to drive the makers on towards problem solving and new survey solutions. Leica Geosystems HDS held the fifth such get-together in California from 22nd to 24th October 2007.<P> Arriving tired and tense after an intercontinental flight, the journey from San Francisco International Airport to San Ramon feels fraught. After a... (read more)

2008-01-11 12:00:00

The Search for the Economic Value of 3D Geoinformation

Adding a Third Dimension to the Mapping Agencies’ Dominant Data Environment

In 2017, 11 European public mapping agencies (PMAs) financed a EuroSDR project to explore the economic value of 3D geoinformation. They gained from being able to share knowledge with one another about the findings and their concerns. For the investigated cases, the cost-benefit ratio was found to be about 1:3. Since the calculated financial benefits were rather circumstantial, however, the academics involved in the project complemented the study with a scientific article in which they attempt to provide more nuance by focusing on the broader public value. They conclude that, in general, the use of 3D geoinformation is increasingly profitable.... (read more)

2018-10-10 03:08:49

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

3D is the New Normal in Switzerland

Mapless Topographic Products Are the Future

Switzerland is unique in that it is still the only country to have switched entirely to 3D for its national object-oriented topographic database. As users increasingly discover the advantages in terms of new workflows and services, nobody regrets leaving the 2D era behind. According to Swisstopo, the extra dimension creates no extra costs – only extra benefits. It took the Swiss Federal Office of Topography (Swisstopo) ten years to build an object-oriented topographic database in 3D, with the last objects having been completed in 2019. “Nothing is excluded now; everything you can think of is available in 3D. Even the... (read more)

2019-08-29 09:42:38

Downtown Dublin as a Lidar Point Cloud

A Highly Accurate, Diverse and Dense Annotated Laser Scanning Dataset of a City Centre

The advance of Lidar data acquisition technologies is substantially increasing the amount of spatial data obtained and it is becoming cost-prohibitive to process it manually. Artificial intelligence (AI) has now started to offer cost-effective solutions to analyse and utilize those big datasets. AI can be employed for scene understanding, accurately detecting objects and classifying 3D assets. These are the significant fundamentals of several applications including autonomous navigation, intelligent robotics, urban planning, emergency management and even forest monitoring. The most popular types of 3D spatial information for such applications are Lidar and imagery data. This article describes the dense annotated ground-truth... (read more)

2019-11-27 10:05:38

Land Administration Census in Sub-Saharan Africa

A Plea for a Bottom-up, Brute-force Solution

The battle against poverty in developing countries has always been associated with the issue of land. Since the turn of the millennium, the focus has been on facilitating the official registration of land rights by the poor and the vulnerable. Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa still lack a well-functioning land administration system, notwithstanding many dedicated aid programmes. Such programmes were designed by Western institutions and often copied Western land administration architectures. In this article, the author advocates a bottom-up approach using census-taking as a paradigm. First the capabilities of advanced technologies are identified, then the way aid is brought to... (read more)

2019-05-08 10:28:26

High-level Political Support Needed

GSDI and Land Administration within Europe

Administrative reform within Europe has had a tremendous impact on land administration all over the continent. Geo-Spatial Data Infrastructures (GSDI) may bring further improvements. The authors review land policy, land administration and the role of land information within society, and call for high-level political moves towards information sharing. Examples of administrative reforms within Europe are restoration of the primacy of politics, reduction in ministerial tasking to core business, and improving the output of public institutions by distance steering, decentralisation and de-concentration of institutions. Other methods of improving output include quality assurance programmes, special service projects, restoring democracy and reestablishment of... (read more)

2005-07-14 12:00:00

BIM: A New Model for Surveyors

Important Opportunities and Challenges for Surveyors

Building information modelling (BIM) is one of the most intriguing opportunities for surveyors to come along in years. This model-based approach combines technologies and processes to support the efficient creation and use of information for building construction and operations. Because of its strong ties to spatial information, BIM offers a familiar landscape and rich possibilities for surveyors and other geospatial professionals, according to Ron Bisio, vice president of Trimble Geospatial. The opportunities stem from the growing acceptance of BIM within the surveyor’s traditional client base of engineers, architects and property owners. By gaining an understanding of the key concepts of... (read more)

2017-02-28 12:59:59

Small Company, Big Ambitions

GIM Interviews Paul Bosman, CEO, CycloMedia Technology BV

CycloMedia Technology BV is a privately owned company based in Waardenburg, The Netherlands. The company exploits an in-house developed camera system for capturing urbanised areas from the road. In January 2006 Paul Bosman became CEO. He talked to us about his many ambitious plans. What are the main products and services offered by CycloMedia? Since the early nineties CycloMedia has built up experience in systematic mapping of urbanised areas on the basis of 360-degree images (so-called cycloramas). These images are captured from the road and at street level using a car as carrier of the camera system, including positioning and... (read more)

2007-02-23 12:00:00