As we rejoice the tip of a difficult yr and look forward to what 2022 holds, many people are grateful for the great well being we maintained whereas a lot of our family and friends members weren’t as lucky. The pandemic has imposed many each day challenges and created a way of urgency that we had by no means witnessed earlier than. This was pushed by the necessity to rebuild our economies and regain some sense of normalcy and has impressed the necessity to bridge the huge digital divide between superior geospatial professionals and people who require these options however are much less technologically savvy.Regardless of the place individuals fall on that continuum, the necessity to work and talk just about has permeated all sectors of world society. “Zoom” grew to become a standard family time period for all ages and talents, whereas that platform and others like Microsoft Teams has supplied very important company lifelines around the globe. Curbside grocery pickup and digital physician visits additionally grew to become the norm, whereas health facilities have been changed with distant Zumba courses and residential gyms. These digital calls for offered nice alternatives for the development of cloud-based information sharing and processing, which instantly and not directly resulted in improved 3D processing and modeling. Despite the pandemic altering how we conduct enterprise, geospatial sensor producers and applied sciences continued their upward development, though extra modestly than anticipated. In the next sections, I’ll revisit my predictions in geospatial tendencies made presently final yr, whereas wanting forward to what’s anticipated in the business this yr. Virtual Collaboration Rooms and Mixed ActualityAlthough developments in digital and augmented actuality began lengthy earlier than 2021, the lowered prices of information processing, computing energy, algorithms, information compression and the cloud processing platform have superior these applied sciences from video video games to engineering and environmental options with direct societal advantages.Newly developed software program platforms enabling digital collaboration have taken digital and augmented realities to new ranges.The launch of Microsoft Mesh, a software program platform for digital collaboration, has taken VR and AR to a brand new stage. Within Mesh, staff members who’re continents aside can have interaction by way of eye contact, facial expressions and gestures as 3D avatars in a shared house, collectively discussing and implementing modifications to a 3D duplicate of their challenge or design. Team members can take part in a Mesh session utilizing Microsoft HoloLens 2, VR headsets, cell phones, tablets or PCs by way of a Mesh-enabled app. HoloLens 2 is a self-contained holographic pc that allows hands-free and heads-up interplay with digital fashions by way of eye goggles.These accessible platforms generate the necessity for 3D information whereas offering a brand new means of information modeling and interpretation. The geospatial business reaps the technological fruits of those platforms when these purposes contain 3D information modeling for engineering and environmental tasks. Bentley, for instance, has launched its combined actuality platform, SYNCHRO XR. SYNCHRO XR is an app designed for visualizing 4D (3D information plus time) building digital twins that additionally makes use of HoloLens 2.An identical strategy was launched this yr by NVIDIA with its NVIDIA Omniverse platform, which is described as “a scalable, multi-GPU, real-time reference growth platform for 3D simulation and design collaboration, based mostly on Pixar’s Universal Scene Description and NVIDIA RTX expertise.” Omniverse allows quite a lot of consumer purposes, renderers and microservices to share and modify representations of digital worlds.Deep into Miniaturized SensorsApple achieved an amazing milestone in 2020 with the introduction of a lidar sensor on its iPhone 12 Pro, and it continued that functionality on the iPhone 13 Pro. As a outcome, we now have witnessed extra surveyors and subject technicians utilizing smartphone-based lidar. A technician who’s repairing a defective circuit in an underground manhole can use this straightforward lidar device to doc and create an above-ground or underground 3D mannequin. There have been many articles revealed final yr that summarized purposes and information accuracy verification of lidar level cloud from iPhone 12 and that iPhone 13, offering an increasing and accessible method for individuals to profit from geospatial applied sciences.Miniature lidar has been used on automated automobiles for just a few years, and comparable expertise has been adopted for superior house cleansing robots just like the Samsung Jet Bot AI+ Robot Vacuum Cleaner. The cleansing robotic is provided with a lidar system and SLAM navigation {hardware} to scan and map rooms in a constructing, guided by geofencing to handle outlined cleansing wants. The producers of those vacuums will not be utilizing the laser for vary discovering and impediment avoidance; the laser is a part of a real mapping system. In addition to Samsung, Dreametech, Narwal and that iRobot have adopted an identical design and added lidar to their merchandise. These developments needs to be welcomed by our business as they illustrate how miniaturized lidar techniques can be utilized, with slight modification, onboard mapping drones. These increasing purposes will propel extra advances in lidar manufacturing and can assist carry down the price of lidar techniques. BIM and GIS, the Foundation for Digital Twin and Metaverse2021 introduced a noticeable deal with the digital twin, with the business studying extra about its worth to society. We additionally began listening to the time period “metaverse,” which is synonymous, or no less than shut, to digital twin. Often misunderstood and confused with a 3D mannequin, a digital twin is far more complicated. It encompasses a number of ideas—corresponding to scan-to-BIM, 3D modeling and GIS—to produce the specified atmosphere. Over the course of the yr, the business has discovered {that a} digital twin:Is a dynamic, up-to-date duplicate or illustration of a bodily object, an asset or system with a whole assortment of information in one placeEvolves with the circulate of real-time enter from sensors and different sourcesIs not a static 3D mannequin or simulation; it continues to evolve with added information and knowledgeThis development is necessary as a result of, with no full understanding of the digital twin and its worth, the time period would stay an summary buzzword. The tri, digital twin, BIM and sensible metropolis ideas all share the overarching aim of managing information and knowledge as a wise and interactive technique of enhancing information accessibility for higher decision-making and asset administration.The digital twin accelerates asset operational readiness because it transforms an asset’s life cycle with using upkeep and efficiency information. Figure 1 illustrates the phases in an asset’s life cycle when seen by way of the digital twin lens. In that determine, design particulars don’t find yourself as a static archive in somebody’s workplace however evolve right into a dwelling hyperlink to inform the asset proprietor or the operation supervisor to produce knowledgeable selections. Experts consider that about 70% of the return on funding in an asset design ecosystem is realized by way of asset operation and administration. Today’s asset proprietor desires digital information on the outset, so challenge designs and fashions don’t find yourself trapped in information (i.e., PDFs, spreadsheets, and so on.); they reside in dynamic objects which are simply accessed and managed. Without the digital twin strategy, analog, unclassified and disconnected information current administration challenges. This connection between the digital and bodily worlds presents enhanced life cycles, knowledgeable decision-making and predictive capabilities. Although our data of those revolutionary ideas and their purposes grew at a wholesome tempo in 2021, there nonetheless wants to be extra outreach to educate shoppers and the business about their collective advantages. Fortunately, a rising variety of companies and property house owners perceive the ROI and are keen to make investments in constructing a digital twin for tasks or property. Architecture, engineering and geospatial (AEG) companies have an amazing alternative to serve their shoppers by gathering, modeling, and managing information and constructing an built-in digital twin/BIM atmosphere. This offers for higher entry to information and knowledge to assist environment friendly and efficient asset administration. The digital twin additionally opens large alternatives for the geospatial neighborhood because it depends on companies like scan-to-BIM, lidar scanning, GIS and different mapping companies.High-Definition Maps for Autonomous Driving The ideas of sensible cities and clever transportation techniques continued to make progress in 2021. In specific, developments in autonomous driving made strides as an rising variety of automobile producers labored towards placing their autonomous automobiles on the highway in the following 5 to 10 years.While related and autonomous automobiles are outfitted with quite a lot of sensors and synthetic intelligence algorithms to assist navigate the highway, additionally they require high-quality maps to see past the imaginative and prescient of the onboard sensors and to help throughout inclement climate. These maps will not be just like the navigation maps you see on a smartphone or a regular automobile navigation system; they’re high-definition maps. High-definition maps present the automobile management middle, i.e. the mind, with in depth, exact data. This consists of the lane quantity the automobile is in, freeway exit lanes, pedestrian crosswalks, bridges, overpasses, tunnels, places of visitors management gadgets, easy 3D trajectories for highway edges and bounds which are correct to the centimeter stage, meter-by-meter highway grade and highway superelevation, amongst different particulars.The geospatial business has an immense alternative to work with nationwide and world transportation companies to put ahead a set of requirements to govern the manufacturing of high-definition maps to assist autonomous automobiles. Lidar and imagery information, as collected right here in Florida in 2020, would assist the accuracy of these maps. (Image courtesy of the Florida Department of Transportation)Most self-driving automobile producers are planning to develop these maps for his or her automobiles. The exception is Tesla, which ascribes to autonomous navigation utilizing sensors alone. Opponents of this sensors-only strategy cite the next benefits to using high-definition maps, saying they:Have an extended vary than sensors, with views for miles that wrap round corners and curvesHelp the automobile drive easily round curves versus the jumpy updates of reside sensorsProvide extra correct positions than sensorsEnable continuous updates and enhancements; sensors are static except you get a brand new carCan be used for automobile geofencingAre not impacted by climate circumstances like sensorsCan be used to verify and confirm the well being of sensors, offering an additional layer of safetyCan correlate visitors lights to lane assignments However, though these are confirmed advantages, high-definition maps for the worldwide roads community don’t but exist for autonomous automobiles. Tremendous work and world cooperation are wanted to remap the roads community to this stage of element. Some automobile producers are trying to construct these maps themselves however are discovering the job daunting. Additionally, these automobile producers are producing maps in accordance to their very own specs, which not solely leads to a duplication of efforts but additionally creates an inherent and troubling lack of standardization. The geospatial business has an immense alternative to work with nationwide and world transportation companies to put ahead a set of requirements to govern the manufacturing of high-definition maps to assist autonomous automobiles. The business can’t solely make sure the maps are created appropriately however can earn a considerable market share of the companies and applied sciences wanted to produce high-definition maps for a worldwide roads community.Drones, Drones All over the placeWhile unmanned plane techniques have been used for engineering and geospatial mapping purposes for just a few years, final yr lastly noticed business standardization. On the regulatory facet, the Federal Aviation Administration issued optimistic modifications to Part 107 pointers concerning flying restrictions over individuals and flying at night time. This standardization has helped drones turn into integral to skilled aerial information acquisition operations. Improved enterprise practices and advancing applied sciences have helped drones show that, when it comes to small tasks, there are not any different acquisition platforms that may compete with their functionality and affordability. The different robust dynamic that 2021 introduced to drone operations was the rise in UAS-based lidar. This wholesome progress was helped by the discharge of DJI lidar system, Zenmuse L1. Zenmuse L1 integrates a Livox Lidar module, a high-accuracy inertial measurement unit, and a digicam with a 1-inch CMOS on a 3-axis stabilized gimbal. Zenmuse L1 is obtainable with DJI latest drone, the Matrice 300 RTK, and DJI Terra. DJI Terra is DJI’s suite of software program for mission planning, information seize, and information processing and evaluation. The differentiator for the DJI lidar resolution is the decrease value as in contrast with different market choices, which attracted the eye of small companies and solo operator firms.It is value mentioning right here that whereas the Zenmuse L1 offers an inexpensive resolution for a lot of purposes, it is not going to be appropriate for purposes that require the best accuracy. Zenmuse L1 is marketed with 5-centimeter vertical accuracy and 10cm horizontal accuracy (as RMS). While 5cm vertical accuracy is appropriate for a lot of purposes, it is not going to meet requirements for highway design as required by departments of transportation. I anticipate this rising development in gathering lidar information by way of drones will proceed by way of 2022 and in the years to come.From Coastal and Deep into the SeaAs I predicted final yr, bathymetric survey and information assortment made business information in 2021. That is partly due to the course the worldwide economic system is taking to assist and defend the blue economic system. Multiple features of our life—from fisheries, aquaculture, maritime transport, coastal and marine and maritime tourism to the rising utilization of marine areas to harness coastal wind vitality—contribute to the evolving blue economic system and require up to date approaches and applied sciences. Photo by Pedro Henrique Santos on UnsplashHere in the United States, deep ocean survey and superior strategies for coastal and deep ocean mapping are in excessive demand, propelled by two high-profile initiatives of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): National Strategy for Ocean Mapping, Exploring and Characterizing of the United States Exclusive Economic Zone (also called the NOMEC Strategy) and Alaska Coastal Mapping.On the coastal and inland water mapping entrance, mainstream lidar producers continued to make improvements and enhancements for topographic and bathymetric techniques. Recently we witnessed some inventive developments in bathymetric lidar initiated by business members outdoors conventional producers. An instance of this was the current introduction of the primary high-altitude topo-bathy lidar system, based mostly on Geiger-mode expertise. The Bathymetric Unmanned Littoral LiDar for Operational GEOINT (BULLDOG) system was developed by the Woolpert Maritime Research Lab for the Joint Airborne Lidar Bathymetry Technical Center of Expertise (JALBTCX). Additionally, deep ocean hydrographic surveys witnessed good progress in the sector of uncrewed deep water mapping applied sciences. Companies like SailDrones and different producers are anticipated to proceed to innovate to meet demand.Whirl Around the Coastal RegionsSpeaking of coastal wind vitality, with the present U.S. administration backing renewable sources, that business is anticipated to flourish in the approaching years. Last yr, the nation’s first large-scale offshore wind farm was permitted about 12 nautical miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. More tasks are both already permitted or in their last phases of approval. This growth discovered a soft-landing spot inside the geospatial business because the planning, design and building of wind farms requires geospatial and surveying companies, together with bathymetric lidar survey.Data Democratization: Big Data Needs Big InstrumentsIn my opinion, the sector of information democratization grew sluggishly in 2021 as companies struggled to survive a difficult yr. We didn’t see clear indicators from the mainstream geospatial business on the expansion of inventive strategies and instruments wanted to mine, extract and convert geospatial information into data, and due to this fact we’re nonetheless restricted in our growth of instruments that may collect data from lidar level clouds and imagery utilizing automated strategies. Despite that, the business continued its curiosity in information mining and machine studying because it relates to software growth.Outside the geospatial business, crowdsourcing, massive information and information science continued to develop. This was largely fueled by a sizzling marketplace for tech firms promoting location-based and social tracing information to the best bidder, whether or not for enterprise functions, advertising and marketing or in any other case. The various sectors using these location-based applied sciences—together with planning, building, utilities, transportation, authorities and vitality—will proceed their progress and potential purposes in 2022 and the years to come. AI and Deep Learning are Living in the CloudIn my earlier articles on annual geospatial tendencies, I acknowledged that progress was made by companies transferring computing powers to the cloud. More firms are providing enterprise fashions for cloud information internet hosting and processing. However, Amazon, Google and Microsoft proceed to lead that market and provide customers and builders subtle platforms like serverless cloud computing.As I discussed earlier than, these platforms allow builders to run apps and companies with out having to handle and function pricey and sophisticated server infrastructure. One attention-grabbing growth is the elevated use and a focus to the Microsoft platform Azure. Azure is a cloud platform that accommodates greater than 200 merchandise and cloud companies designed to allow companies to construct, run and handle purposes throughout a number of clouds, on-premises and on the edge, with the instruments and frameworks of their selection.One very optimistic attribute of Azure is that it isn’t restricted to Microsoft software program and purposes. It helps off-the-shelf and open-source applied sciences, so a consumer can make use of the instruments and applied sciences that swimsuit their wants. Azure helps the digital work atmosphere, enabling companies to run any centrally hosted purposes utilizing their information supply and working system and gadget. Because it’s digital, the Azure atmosphere eliminates the necessity to arrange a workstation with firm purposes and software program for each worker individually.As for geospatial application-based AI inside the business, on the business software program stage, Esri continues to push the envelope to assist customers streamline workflows with AI instruments inside ArcGIS. For instance, in 2021, Esri added three ready-to-use geospatial AI fashions in the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World. The first two fashions, which use satellite tv for pc imagery, extract constructing footprints and carry out land-cover classification. The third mannequin classifies level clouds. The attention-grabbing factor about these fashions and algorithms, in addition to their potential to take care of large quantities of information, is that they’re self-trained and require no further information coaching by the consumer.On the AI-based companies facet, solely modest actions have been noticed this yr. Companies like Airwork provided a cloud-based resolution for extracting data from imagery and lidar level clouds. Although this Airwork providing has been welcomed by the surveying and mapping business, large work nonetheless wants to be carried out with AI, machine studying and deep studying to marry automation with GIS and geospatial purposes to assist mining the large quantity of information right now’s sensors purchase. In my opinion, with out federal and public funding to entice creativity in this subject, GIS and the geospatial purposes will see sluggish variations of AI, ML and DL capabilities.Lidar for EveryoneDuring 2021, lidar use and applied sciences continued to advance. But, except for the bathymetric growth famous earlier, there was not the large breakthrough from a significant lidar system producer I had hoped for this yr in the event of AI-based purposes. This growth would assist system customers derive data from the large and rising variety of level clouds with minimal handbook processing. However, this lack of funding could have been a casualty of the pandemic and its affect on the economic system.The miniature lidar system was the section that superior probably the most in 2021, pushed by automobile producers, gadget producers like smartphones and drone use. Most upscale fashions of vehicles are actually outfitted with lidar sensors, that are necessary for autonomous automobiles. This is main automobile producers to make investments closely in miniaturized lidar by buying manufacturing firms that produce small lidar or not directly supporting its growth.Our business reaps the advantages from this funding, as Velodyne is likely one of the greatest suppliers of miniature lidar for the car firms. Velodyne revealed throughout Auto Guangzhou 2021, held in China in November, that its newest improvements assist superior driver help techniques (ADAS), autonomous automobiles, robotics, sensible metropolis infrastructure, supply, industrial purposes and extra. Fortunately, Velodyne has not but been acquired by a automobile producer and nonetheless presents reasonably priced lidar techniques for our drones. Shadow of the PandemicThis is my fifth annual tendencies article, which started as a weblog on the Woolpert web site in 2018. In the final couple of years, the pandemic has adversely affected many segments of our business whereas offering some reduction to others. This has made it tougher to precisely predict the place our business and expertise are heading. However, one factor has turn into even clearer throughout this troublesome time: Our success as an business requires the collaboration of a number of tiers of presidency, the non-public sector, public utilities, neighborhood activists, constructing house owners, common residents, and so on., to really advance. We will get by way of this, and we might be stronger for it individually and collectively. Happy New Year! About the Author: Woolpert Vice President and Chief Scientist Qassim Abdullah, Ph.D., PLS, CP, has greater than 40 years of mixed industrial, R&D and tutorial expertise in analytical photogrammetry, digital distant sensing, and civil and surveying engineering. When he’s not presenting at geospatial conferences around the globe, Qassim teaches photogrammetry and distant sensing programs on the University of Maryland and Penn State, authors a month-to-month column for the ASPRS journal PE&RS, and mentors R&D actions inside Woolpert.This article is operating on Geo Week News and each PE&RS and Lidar Magazine.
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Dr. Quassim Abdullah: Top Geospatial Trends to Watch in 2022 | Geo Week News
