Business
Airbus Defence and Space (www.airbusdefenceandspace.com), Toulouse, France, and BAE Systems launched a strategic alliance to produce, market and sell geospatial intelligence products and solutions using data collected by the TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X radar satellites. The two companies will market the products to U.S. government, commercial and select international customers.
Applanix (www.applanix.com), Richmond Hill, Canada, agreed to incorporate its direct georeferencing technology into American Aerospace Advisors Inc.’s unmanned aerial platforms. The collaboration will result in a professional mapping solution for civilian unmanned aircraft system applications.
BlackBridge (www.blackbridge.com), Berlin, secured $22 million (CDN)
from the Bank of Montreal and the Business Development Bank of Canada to develop its next-generation Earth imaging satellites, RapidEye+, and renew existing credit facilities. Expected to launch in 2019, RapidEye+ will be a constellation of five satellites that will include 14 bands, including a panchromatic channel with resolution better than 1 meter.
DAT/EM Systems International (www.datem.com), Anchorage, Alaska, announced plans to expand the DAT/EM brand to Europe. DAT/EM Systems Europe GmbH, a separate legal and business entity, will provide 3-D stereo mapping solutions to Europe and
Northern Africa.
Esri (www.esri.com), Redlands, Calif., launched a new Small Government
Departmental Platform Agreement, which allows for unlimited deployments of core ArcGIS software within one governmental department. Departments that have plans to integrate geographic information system technology in multiple workflows can use the program to rapidly achieve their goals. In addition, responding to President Barack Obama’s call to help strengthen education through the ConnectED Initiative, Esri announced it will provide a grant to make its mapping software, running on cloud infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services, available for free to the more than 100,000 elementary, middle and high schools in the United States. ConnectED is a government education program developed to prepare K-12 students throughout the United States for digital learning opportunities and future employment.
European Space Imaging (www.euspaceimaging.com), Munich, joined forces with e-GEOS and Digital-Globe to provide high-resolution satellite imagery and data processing services as part of a multiyear framework supply contract with the European Commission. The agreement will support the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy.
Exelis (www.exelisinc.com), Rochester, N.Y., announced it was awarded a contract by NASA worth up to $208 million to build the Radiation Budget Instrument (RBI). The satellite payload will provide more accurate measurements of reflected sunlight and thermal radiation emitted by Earth than the Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument currently flying on the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite. Exelis also announced it was awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to build the primary payload for the Greenhouse Gas Observing Satellite-2 (GOSAT), which Mitsubishi Electric Corp. will build for the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency. The Exelis-built payload will measure the density of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
GCS (www.yourdatasmarter.com), Missoula, Mont., installed the first commercial fiber optic broadband system in Missoula that uses the new gigabit Ethernet capability provided by Montana West. With a direct pipeline to international Tier 1 Internet providers in Seattle, the new broadband capability enables GCS to offer real-time analytics on massive geospatial data sets for clients anywhere in the world.
LiDAR Services International (www.lidarservices.ca), Calgary, Canada, announced it was awarded the second and final phase of the Mackenzie Valley Highway new route corridor survey in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The project is approximately 500 kilometers long and requires a 1-kilometer width of light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and digital imagery coverage. The company also was awarded a 700-square-kilometer LiDAR mapping project in Costa Rica. The project includes a detailed LiDAR survey for several potential hydroelectric dam sites in the country.
Lockheed Martin Commercial Launch Services (www.lockheedmartin.com), Denver, announced it will launch DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-3 commercial remote sensing satellite on Aug. 13, 2014, from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. With an average revisit time of less than one day, WorldView-3 is the first multipayload, superspectral, high-resolution Earth observation satellite.
Microsoft’s UltraCam Business Unit (www.microsoft.com/ultracam), Graz, Austria, announced Advance Aviation Group purchased the first UltraCam Eagle digital aerial camera in Australia. The company also announced Mexico-based GeoAir purchased an UltraCam Falcon digital aerial camera system and UltraMap workflow software.
Optech (www.optech.com), Toronto, celebrated 40 years of light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology innovation. The company was founded in 1974 by Allan Carswell, who saw the potential of lasers for remote sensing and began developing prototype LiDAR systems at Canada’s York University in the late 1960s.
Proteus (www.proteusgeo.com), Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and Bristol, United Kingdom, completed a demonstration project using satellite imagery to inventory tree plantations in Abu Dhabi. The Proteus team processed multispectral data collected by DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-2 commercial imaging satellite to identify the species and conditions of individual trees within the pilot area.
Woolpert (www.woolpert.com), Dayton, Ohio, announced it has become an authorized partner of solutions based on Google’s Maps for Business technologies. Woolpert will leverage the designation to implement custom solutions based on Google Maps Engine and other Maps for Business offerings as well geoenable processes and workflows by integrating Google Maps capabilities with corporate business systems.
People
Airbus Defence and Space (www.airbusdefenceandspace.com), Toulouse, France, along with the Netherlands Space Office, announced it was awarded the Geospatial World Innovation Award for Technology Innovation in Big Data for the Dutch Satellite Data Portal, which enables the government of The Netherlands to disseminate free satellite imagery to Dutch entities. The portal offers new imagery from the FORMOSAT-2 and Deimos-1/UK-DMC-2 satellites daily.
American Society for Photogram-metry and Remote Sensing (www.asprs.org), Bethesda, Md., announced long-time member and past-president Carolyn Jean Merry was killed June 3, 2014, in a highway automobile crash in her home state of Ohio. Merry was a retired professor and chair of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering at The Ohio State University.
Atlantic (www.theatlgrp.com), Huntsville, Ala., hired Brian Bugg to lead Atlantic’s Applied Technology
service line. He has more than 10 years of experience as a geographic information system consultant.
DAT/EM Systems International (www.datem.com), Anchorage, Alaska, hired Zhijun (Jeff) Wang as a photogrammetric software engineer. He joins DAT/EM from Quebec City, Canada, where he completed his post-doctoral degree in Geomatics from the University of Sherbrook and held the position of chief scientist in Geomatics at XEOS Imaging for seven years. In addition, DAT/EM Systems added Linda Mckeefery to its technical support team. She has more than 10 years of experience in the information technology and technical support industry.
Proteus (www.proteusgeo.com), Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and Bristol, United Kingdom, hired Chris Burnett to sell RapidEye imagery and future data sets. With a degree in mapping and cartography from Oxford Brooks University, Burnett has a background in surveying, geodesy and geographic information systems.
Products
Atlantic (www.theatlgrp.com), Huntsville, Ala., upgraded its ortho-production software to SimActive’s Correlator3D photogrammetry software. Correlator3D performs aerial triangulation and produces dense digital surface models, digital terrain models, orthomosaics and vectorized 3-D features.
BlackBridge (www.blackbridge.com), Berlin, announced its RapidEye imagery played an integral role in developing the first countrywide forest map in Central America. The tool is helping government authorities effectively plan the use and preservation of Costa Rica’s forest resources.
Blue Marble Geographics (www.bluemarblegeo.com), Hallowell, Maine, released Global Mapper version 15.2. The release features new functionality to automate the “New Feature Creation” process and adds numerous online data sources. The company also released the LiDAR Module for Global Mapper version 15.2, featuring added support for transforming light detection and ranging (LiDAR) point clouds and the option to filter selected LiDAR points to a specified elevation and/or color range.
DMC International Imaging (www.dmcii.com), Guildford, United Kingdom, developed a new system to calculate carbon from Earth observation data. The Remote Sensing for Carbon system, developed with Rezatec and University College London, delivers scientifically validated carbon market intelligence data, which will help organizations reduce deforestation and degradation.
Esri (www.esri.com), Redlands, Calif, released a Web app called GeoPlanner for ArcGIS, which brings the power of geodesign to land-based planning; updated its ArcGIS Runtime Software Development Kits with improvements to help increase user productivity; announced support of the new Open Geospatial Consortium GeoPackage Encoding Standard for direct use of vector geospatial features and/or tile matrix sets; and worked with NATO on an interactive, multimedia Web map called “NATO on Duty.”
Exelis (www.exelisinc.com), Rochester, N.Y., introduced CorvusEye 1500, a wide-area airborne surveillance system that can capture color video from multiple views day or night. The system includes an electro-optical sensor that can monitor areas over 3 kilometers in circumference.
Insitu Pacific (www.insitupacific.com), Brisbane, Australia, demonstrated for the New South Wales Rural Fire Service the utility of its ScanEagle unmanned aircraft system to monitor and report on the movement of a fire front at night—a task rarely undertaken at low altitude by manned aircraft due to the high risk factors involved. Insitu Pacific used General Dynamics Mediaware’s D-VEX video-exploitation system to stream full-motion video imagery alongside geolocation information in near real time.
Leica Geosystems (www.leica-geosystems.com), Norcross, Ga., introduced Pegasus:Two, a vehicle-independent mobile mapping platform. By calibrating imagery and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) point cloud data, Pegasus:Two delivers geospatial data in a 360-degree spherical view while providing two ways to extract data—either through LiDAR or photogrammetry.
MDA (www.mdacorporation.com), Richmond, Canada, announced its
Information Systems group launched a new imaging mode for the RADARSAT-2 satellite. The Extra-Fine imaging mode can provide single polarization synthetic aperture radar imagery at 5-meter resolution over a 125 km x 125 km area.
Orbit Logic (www.orbitlogic.com), Greenbelt, Md., announced the iPhone version of its SpyMeSat mobile app now offers in-app purchase of high-resolution satellite imagery. Users can preview a recent commercial satellite image of a specified location, select the desired image size and purchase the image for download.
PCI Geomatics (www.pcigeomatics.com), Richmond Hill, Canada, announced it is making its training textbooks available to the public online for noncommercial use. The company’s instructor-led training courses cover a wide range of topics for geospatial imagery users of all skill and experience levels.
Red Hen Systems (www.redhensystems.com), Fort Collins, Colo., released Media-Mapper Mobile, an Android app that lets users geotag and map photos, videos and audio notes. The app connects wirelessly to geographic information system programs.
Silent Falcon UAS Technologies (www.silentfalconuas.com), Albuquerque, N.M., announced a photogrammetric sensor package that flies aboard the solar-electric-powered Silent Falcon Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS). The package is designed to collect mapping-quality image data on long-endurance, extended-range UAS missions.
Trimble (www.trimble.com), Sunnyvale, Calif., announced Trimble Business Center Version 3.21, a new version of the company’s office software that adds automated mapping and plotting functionality. Also included is the ability to create 3-D PDF deliverables, so team members and clients can collaborate easily from any computer or mobile device using Adobe Reader software.