geoinformatics 2011 vol04

● EGNOS and Precision Applications ● Indoor/outdoor location information standards● FARO scanners ● Geological and Geotechnical Mapping

Magazine for Survey ing, Mapping & GIS Profess iona ls June

2 0 1 1Volume 14

4Prod_GEO411_Prod GEO66 13-05-2011 13:35 Pagina 1

Prod_GEO411_Prod GEO66 13-05-2011 13:35 Pagina 2

We want your dataSharing data with third parties can be a tacky subject. By making use of services ofcompanies such as Google or mobile phone companies, a consumer agrees to theconditions that these companies have created. The same goes for software thateverybody is using, such as a PDF reader. When visiting the CAPIGI event (reviewedin this issue), there arose a discussion amongst the participants on the sharing ofagricultural data with third parties. These third parties described the data as valuable (whether quantitative or qualitative is not the question here) for them, butthey are not the owners of it and therefore have no rights to use it. User cases werelimited, so there was something interesting going on here. How can third partiesinterest the producers of agricultural data to share their data with them, for instancefor academic research purposes? I found this discussion interesting and a little peculiar. Interesting, because the subject of data sharing is more topical than ever,especially when it comes to commercial companies who may use crowd-sourceddata from clients for commercial purposes. Also, because of the whole privacy issueinvolved with this data. Peculiar, because this discussion was held right after a presentation about the INSPIRE initiative, that is mainly about sharing data. Couldthese data sharing concepts be applied to agricultural data as well? One mightvery well ask.

Apparently, a strange vacuum exists between the interests of commercial business-es, governmental initiatives and producers of data (commercial or non-commercial).What interests me is not the quality of this type of data, but the interests of differentparties, and the intermediate role of governments in between. It seems to me thatquantity also plays a role here: the more data is gathered or produced, the harderit is to sort and find quality data. Despite initiatives such as INSPIRE, data owner-ship will continue to be an important topic for all parties involved. Or better still:because of INSPIRE, data ownership will continue to be a key issue. As for agricul-tural businesses, I learned about some very interesting initiatives and different waysof combining geospatial technologies and agriculture. Moreover, with this sectorjust discovering the advantages of geospatial (at least in some parts of Europe), I think they can learn from the mistakes other industries have made before them.

Enjoy your reading,

Eric van [email protected]

GeoInformatics is the leading publication for GeospatialProfessionals worldwide. Published in both hardcopy anddigital, GeoInformatics provides coverage, analysis andcommentary with respect to the international surveying,mapping and GIS industry. GeoInformatics is published8 times a year.

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C o n t e n t

A r t i c l e sINSPIRing recipes for a Diverse Data Palette 6

EGNOS and Precision Applications 10

Scanning and Imaging Building Interiors 14

Navigating the Indoor/Outdoor Location Standards Maze 18

Geological and Geotechnical Mapping 22

High-performance Distributed Computing 26

Future Immersive Experiences 30

E v e n t sSpatial Statistics Conference 28

The league of spatial superheroes 32

CAPIGI 2011 34

SPAR 2011 42

Report on the FTTH Conference 46

C a l e n d a r / A d v e r t i s e r s I n d e x 50

At the cover:Created using Safe Software’s FME, this artistic rendition of “HarmonisingData Across Borders” shows GML data in the INSPIRE standard, politicalboundaries and ortho photography overlayed on a DEM. Learn how theSwedish Transportation Administration, Metria, and con terra have all usedFME to harmonise data for INSPIRE-related SDIs. See the article onpage 6


42

6

14Data acquisition is undertakenusing advanced sensing tech-nologies, and data processingneeds reliable and expensivesoftware: this way, 3D textu-

red reconstructions are carried out.

22

With issues of spatial datasharing, availability, accessibi-

lity and interoperability stilldogging public authorities ne-arly everywhere, few disputethe admirable intentions andaspirations of the European

Community’s INSPIRE directive.

Lidar tools such as Optech’s IL-RIS not only allow for remote

collection of geotechnical data,but also provide more detailedsurvey information than pre-

vious tools such as a compass-clinometer.

Held March 21 through 24,the event showed how much ithas grown beyond its plantand process roots, with fivetracks of seminars, presenta-tions and roundtables that in-cluded the newest ideas andtechnologies in 3D imaging.

26Conducted experiments have de-monstrated the efficiency of the up-coming PHOTOMOD HPC Editionwhen exploited within a computingcluster, allowing a significant reduc-tion in processing time proportionalto the number of cluster nodes invol-

ved in the calculations.

46This year’s edition counted

more than 3000 participantsfrom 80 countries and offered

an overview of the currentstate of the fibre industry, as

well as the latest technologicaldevelopments.

18

Digital technology increasinglymediates our relationship toplaces, but popular locationbased services have creatednew demands – including in-

door/outdoor location integra-tion – that industry simply

can”t meet without a wider,more concerted standards ef-fort, writes OGC’s Carl Reed.

10EGNOS stands for EuropeanGeostationary Overlay

Service. It is Europe’s first ventu-re into the field of satellite navi-gation and paves the way forGalileo, Europe’s independentglobal satellite navigation sys-tem currently under develop-

ment.


With issues of spatial data sharing, availability, accessibility and interoperability still dogging publicauthorities nearly everywhere, few dispute the admirable intentions and aspirations of the EuropeanCommunity’s INSPIRE directive. Indeed, many have welcomed this high-level recognition that spatialdata feeds the core of the majority of today’s business applications and services, and therefore, itshould have a seat at the head table of Europeanwide IT innovation. And they have equally welcomedthe “forced collaboration” that INSPIRE demands.

“One of the best aspects aboutINSPIRE is that it has forced allof the administrations in

Sweden to work together,” says ThomasNorlin, a GIS specialist with the SwedishTransportation Administration (STA). “Nowwe have Web access to a range of valuabledatasets such as orthophotos and maps fromthe National Land Survey that we could notafford to acquire ourselves. That’s beenexcellent.”However, what has been arguable for GISprofessionals is how to successfully prepareand deliver their national and municipaldatasets to meet INSPIRE’s data-harmonisa-tion goals and its clearly defined principlesregarding data collection, management andinteroperability. Indeed, the very nature ofEuropean diversity is at once at odds withthe overriding objective to establish a stan-dardised, European-wide spatial data infras-

tructure (SDI). As such, even though the ECviews INSPIRE as a critical data-access solu-tion, it also presents data providers with crit-ical data-interoperability challenges.For the majority of spatial data providers,the most significant interoperability chal-lenge has been how to restructure and inte-grate their existing spatial data formats andmodels into INSPIRE-compliant deliverables. “The INSPIRE data models are very complexand require you to develop a scalable andefficient SDI to transform existing data anddeliver it into the specified GML format,”explains Anna Halvarsson, SDI project man-ager at Metria AB, a spatial data consult-ing company based in Gävle, Sweden. “Youneed to have an effective workflow that cansimultaneously combine, integrate and trans-form many spatial data formats and coordi-nate systems into a unified format as well asmake the data easily searchable, viewable

and available for download. And in manycases, you need to be able to provide on-the-fly transformations of requested data lay-ers in less than 30 seconds. Not many soft-ware tools can handle that entire datatransformation and delivery chain.” However, the STA and Metria, along withGerman company con terra, are just a fewexamples of how ingenuity mixed with inno-vative technology can be the right recipe forINSPIRE. Not only have these organisationssuccessfully met the INSPIRE interoperabilitychallenge, they have created proven, spa-tial-data platforms to feed further innovationinternally as well as harvest new businessopportunities.

An inspirational driveOne year young, the STA (Trafikverket) is anamalgamation of Sweden’s formerly inde-pendent rail and road administrations.Headquartered in Borlänge, the STA and its6500 employees manage the long-termplanning of the country’s entire transport sys-tem, including road, rail, maritime and airtraffic sectors, as well as the construction,operation and maintenance of public roadsand railways. In a country where people travel an aver-age of 40 km each day and road transportaccounts for 87 percent of passenger trav-el, intimate knowledge of the road networkand its features has been paramount for theroad administration. Thanks to a compre-hensive remodelling of its national roaddatabase (NVDB) in 2008, the STA’s roadand railroad department personnel haveeasy access to nearly 560,000 km of stateand municipal roads and 16,000 bridgesand maintain more than 2.5 million roadlinks and 100 feature types.The conversion of the NVDB, which used

6 June 2011

A r t i c l e

Experiences from the Field

INSPIRing recipes for a Diver s

Established in 1909, Sarek National Park is the most dramatic mountain landscape in Sweden. Stretching over 197,000 hectares, the park contains over 200 mountains and about 100 glaciers. Photo Credit: Rolf Löfgren.

By Mary Jo Wagner


Safe Software’s FME spatial data-transformation technology, provedopportune for two reasons. Since the STA receives transport datafrom municipalities and other public authorities, it provided person-nel with the opportunity to use the same FME technology to buildcritical quality-control workflows to automatically assess the validityand completeness of submitted data, as well as STA’s own data, andresolve any discrepancies. And second, when INSPIRE drove up toits doors in late 2009, the revamped NVDB lent itself fairly well tothe data-preparation work needed to navigate the transport-themedata specifications.“One benefit that we had was that our NVDB data model was notthat different from the INSPIRE data model,” says Norlin. “Once wehad read through the data specifications, we were confident thatwe could readily deliver the needed data layers and feature typeswith FME.”

Paving the first roadAs part of a two-stage process, INSPIRE first required a Web-basedview mapping service (VMS) that would provide a seamless, inte-grated national transportation network and 20 related feature typessuch as speed limit, bearing capacity, road surface, functional roadclass, one-way streets, owner authority, road number and streetname. The second phase instructs transport authorities to extend theirroad-network VMS to a download service, which will require theSTA to develop a system that allows users to acquire datasets in theformat of their choice. In January 2010 a team began work on the INSPIRE-based trans-port SDI. To prepare the sizable road data and its more than 2 mil-lion road links, they had to first identify which data layers and fea-ture types needed to be included in the VMS. From there, they couldapply the same successful transformation approach that Norlin usedfor creating the quality-control workflows for the NVDB. Using FME,the team created automated processing chains to integrate theNVDB, GIS data and other road-related data sources, restructurethe data and feature types into GML and export them to an INSPIREgeodatabase. In just four weeks, the team successfully changed the STA’s entireroad network and 20 related feature types into an INSPIRE-compli-ant VMS – well before the designated deadline of May 2010.“Given the staff’s workload and the significant task at hand, it wouldnot have been possible to meet the INSPIRE deadline without theability to quickly prepare our data,” concludes Norlin. “We were

able to handle large data volumes and produce our INSPIRE VMSat 20 percent of the typical cost.” With the transport VMS operational, Norlin and colleagues are nowworking on integrating the rail data into the NVDB and preparingthe data for downloading capabilities, both of which will offer chal-lenges that Norlin is confident they can easily resolve.

Inspired to protectDeveloping an INSPIRE-compliant data distribution service was alsoon the radar of Metria a few years ago, when it was apparent thatsome of its customers would be among the first tier of data providerstasked to become INSPIRE ready.Formerly a division of the National Land Survey (NLS), Metriabecame an independent state-owned company in May. With 300employees and 35 offices, Metria offers a range of spatial-data ser-vices such as system development, SDI development, data ware-housing and Web hosting. And it continues to serve many of thesame organisations such as the NLS, Swedish Armed Forces andthe Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which imple-ments nature conservation policy and develops strategies to protectSweden’s 29 national parks and approximately 4,000 protectedareas covering 10 percent of the country. Headquartered in Stockholm, the EPA (Naturvårdsverket) has taskedMetria with the majority of its GIS-development and data-hostingneeds, including building a metadata portal and a system to main-tain the EPA’s protected sites information. With such a close partner-ship and in-depth knowledge of EPA’s datasets and systems, it wasa natural fit for both organisations to work together to create a pro-totype download service for the protected sites information, anINSPIRE data theme.“The Swedish EPA has been very active in the INSPIRE initiative andhad been developing implementation strategies very early on,” saysBirgitta Olsson, manager of the EPA’s environmental information por-tal. “However the technical challenges in creating a download ser-vice were notable. As Metria developed the database systems wewould need for INSPIRE, we asked for their expertise.”Under the “protected sites” theme, the EPA needs to provide detailedinformation on each of its 4,000 protected areas, including all rele-vant metadata, and specific feature types such as boundaries ofeach site, their classification, name, description and date of estab-lishment. That would require Metria to move and convert more than200 tables of spatial-related data into INSPIRE’s GML system.


A r t i c l e

r se Data PaletteThe classic Cologne skyline, Germany’slargest city in North-Rhine Westphalia.

On the left is the tower of city halland piercing the night sky on the right

is Cologne Cathedral. Photo Credit:Philipp Adorf.



“When you work with GML, you have toconvert all of your coordinates to text,”says Halvarsson. “Converting one singleprotective site object to GML can pro-duce up to 200 hundred rows of text.The EPA has data on 4,000 sites andsome site polygons have 10,000 ver-tices. That is a huge amount of data togenerate, publish and distribute.”

Preparing the prototypeIndeed, to successfully build the INSPIREprotected areas download service, thesystem would need to integrate existingdata from different native sources andmodels, and convert the data both toand from a complex GML structure,enabling users to easily access, con-tribute and retrieve data without impact-ing their existing workflows or data tools.

Having used FME technology for previ-ous spatial data initiatives, coupled withthe software’s latest XML and GML sup-port, Metria partnered with SafeSoftware in the fall of 2009 to create theEPA’s scalable publishing and data dis-tribution prototype. Based on the dataspecifications, they identified the datalayers they needed and sourced protected sites data from the EPA,Natura2000 – a protected areas database for Europe – and Helcom,a database of protected areas for the Baltics, all of which have dif-ferent data models.Of concern was how to restructure data on-the-fly and deliver it in atimely manner within the INSPIRE GML structure. To ease the data-preparation burden, the team implemented a two-step process tofirst use FME to pre-process the data and store it in a PostGIS INSPIRE“staging” database and then publish and distribute the GML-readydatasets through an INSPIRE Web Feature Service (WFS). Using mas-ter templates and customized tools, Halvarsson and her team deviseda comprehensive, automated workflow to validate the in-coming spa-tial data and related features, change them to the GML schema andload them into the staging database. They then applied the sameapproach to create the distribution workflow that exports the data tothe INSPIRE protected sites node. “Data transformation to the GML model was the absolute key issuein developing a scalable system that can readily harmonize differ-ent data sources into the common GML structure,” says Halvarsson.“We succeeded because we had complete control of our data andhow we wanted to use it.” In mid 2010 Metria delivered the publishing and distribution systemto the EPA, which together with the EPA’s metadata portal and exist-ing Web-mapping services, serve as the foundation for the agency’sINSPIRE platform. Together with Metria, they are now developingthe prototype system further to create their operational INSPIRE pro-tected sites WFS by the 2012 deadline. “With this system, together with the download service prototype, wehave effective and efficient data management that enables us to max-imize our data by offering users with easy ways to access and viewour large amount of data,” says Olsson. “It will also make it mucheasier for us to add new data in the future.”Indeed, this prototype will not only serve as the EPA’s platform to

build INSPIRE data services, it is provid-ing Metria with a proof-of-concept SDImodel that it can offer to other organisa-tions facing data-interoperability and dis-tribution challenges.

Added ingredientsEasing the SDI burden for customers isalso one of con terra’s primary objec-tives. Located in Münster, con terra is aconsulting firm specializing in customisedbusiness solutions, spatial data infras-tructures and OGC/ISO/INSPIRE ser-vices and applications. Having providedconsulting services to a broad range ofcustomers across Europe, it was clear tothe company that many of its clientswould be facing the INSPIRE test andlikely need assistance in meeting therequirements, says Christian Heisig,head of con terra’s European FME ser-vice center.“One premise of INSPIRE is that organi-sations be able to provide data usingtheir existing tools, formats and datamodels” he says. “Very few will in factchange their existing data structure tocomply, so they need to use their propri-etary systems to integrate and harmo-

nize all the data to INSPIRE open-standard databases. So the bigchallenge is both to transform and integrate the existing INSPIRE-rel-evant data and deliver this through INSPIRE Web services.”The company’s response to this problem is its FME INSPIRE SolutionPack. The solution builds on the technology by adding customisedauthoring and support tools and tutorial workspaces to simplify dataintegration and transformation workflows, as well as quality assur-ance controls, to seamlessly shift existing data to an INSPIREdatabase. For additional support, the package provides integratedhelp texts and references to the official INSPIRE specifications. “The goal was to make the schema mapping process, which is nor-mally not that simple, as simple as possible,” says Heisig. “FME’sstrength is data fusion and transformation so it was a great platformon which to build additional, customised functionality for INSPIRE.”Available since March, a number of clients have already acquiredthe solution, including the Turkish Ministry of Environment andLANUV, Germany’s North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW) state agency fornature, environment and consumer protection. LANUV used the soft-ware to remodel and publish their entire protected sites data of theregion. Though the STA, Metria and con terra’s clients are all diverse organ-isations with unique spatial datasets and tools, they are all unifiedin the same data challenges that INSPIRE seeks to resolve: the abili-ty to maximize the use of their spatial data by improving data access,quality, availability and distribution. Based on these examples, itappears that their ingenuity and innovation, mixed with the rightsoftware tools, are indeed proving to be an effective recipe both tosatisfy INSPIRE’s harmonised-data palette and to create new coursesof innovation.

For more information, have a look at www.safe.com

A r t i c l e

8 June 2011

A popular starting point for hikes, Sweden’s Abisko National Park is surrounded onthree sides by lofty mountains and the Abiskojokka River pulsing through its valleys.In addition to breeding some of the rarest plants of the mountain regions, Abisko is

home to the protected orchid Lapp Orchid and rare wildlife. Photo Credit: Rolf Löfgren.

1 5 2:56 PM


http://www.safe.com

Copyright © 2011 Esri. All rights reserved.

Connect to the INSPIRE NetworkWith Esri® Technology, you can create a spatial data

infrastructure and services that ful� ll European Union (EU)

Member State obligations. Esri’s ArcGIS® for INSPIRE

provides an open source portal that allows your

geospatial data to be shared across the EU.

Learn more at esri.com/geoinfoinspire


Mapping as an emerging segment for EGNOS

EGNOS and Precision Applica tEGNOS stands for European Geostationary Overlay Service. It is Europe’s first venture into the field ofsatellite navigation and paves the way for Galileo, Europe’s independent global satellite navigationsystem currently under development. This article explains how it can contribute in expanding the useof GNSS in real time mapping solutions, what are the benefits and how the service works, as well asEDAS, the EGNOS Data Access Service.

EGNOS and MappingGlobal Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) provide an efficienttechnology for Mapping and are widely used by organizations suchas utility companies as well as regional and local authorities.The worldwide market for GNSS handset devices for Mapping appli-cations is experiencing significant growth mainly because of thegrowth of applications fostered by the needs of new clients and thegeneral trend towards digitization. Often, the use of GNSS in Mapping requires positioning serviceswith centimeter level accuracy, implying a substantial cost for theend users, significant investment in infrastructure for service providersor regional authorities as well as complex and costly equipment andsoftware solutions for professionals.

Now EGNOS, the European GeostationaryOverlay Service, can contribute in expandingthe use of GNSS in real time mapping solu-tions by providing free accuracy that is wide-ly available.Whereas in other surveying disciplines cen-timetre accuracy is needed, metre accuracyapplications can play a role in Mapping. Thisholds true for applications such as thematicmapping for small and medium municipalities(e.g. maps to outsource the maintenance ofgreen areas), forestry and park managementas well as surveying of utility infrastructures(e.g. electrical power lines).

This is an area where EGNOS is particularlyuseful and in which its accuracy is deemedsufficient for the main users” needs.Furthermore, with EDAS, the EGNOS DataAccess Service, EGNOS corrections are alsoavailable in areas of previously limited avail-ability in difficult environments.EDAS disseminates EGNOS data in real timewithout relying on the signals from the threeEGNOS” satellites. It supports the multi-modaluse of EGNOS (and later on Galileo) by dis-seminating advanced EGNOS” services inreal time and within reliable performanceboundaries. It can therefore be used in con-strained environments such as when signalsare blocked or are disturbed by interference.

EGNOS is currently present in most mapping devices. However, itis still not used to its full potential. In the near future, the situation isexpected to change and EGNOS is expected to play a central rolein the industry thanks to its ability to provide metre accuracy at lowcost and with enhanced availability afforded by EDAS.

Mapping: an emerging GNSS downstream marketfor EGNOSMapping, as it is considered here, is the study and practice of makinggeographical maps. There are two main maps” categories, generalmaps and thematic maps. General reference maps show where thingsare located “in space” and thematic maps depict patterns “aboutspace” (e.g., population density, life expectancy, demographic trends).

10 June 2011

A r t i c l e

By Reinhard Blasi

EGNOS can be used for agricultural applications.Credits: ESA-P. Sebirot.


The Mapping segment is comparable togeodesy, cadastre and surveying. The tech-nical criteria are mainly settled in terms ofaccuracy required for these segments.Whereas in general the latter areas requiresub-metre accuracy, metre accuracy appli-cations can play a role.

The worldwide market for GPS and GNSShandset devices employed in Mappingapplications is experiencing a significantgrowth due to more applications in moreindustries, satisfying growing client needs.Up until 2008 the market grew at 10% peryear: in the last two years, since the eco-nomic downturn, the market of GNSS pro-fessional devices addressed to Mappingsolutions has slowed down.However, for the coming years through until2013 the market for GNSS devices inMapping solutions is expected to grow ataround 6% (CAGR). It is expected to reacharound EUR 700 bn by 2013. The market is expected to grow quicker afterthe launch of additional GNSS systems suchas Galileo and GLONASS, which willincrease the availability and reliability ofsatellite-positioning signals.

EGNOS’ advantagesAdvantages for manufacturers using EGNOS:

Diversification Leverage GNSS experience across adjacentmarket segments: in an increasingly compet-itive GNSS market, it is important toincrease the scale of the operations by enter-ing adjacent segments using existing skillsand assets. EGNOS can support the diver-sification of the offer, integrating a position-ing technology to target new markets withbasic entry level products for less sophisti-cated users offering a mass market afford-able solution.

A r t i c l e

11June 2011

a tions

How EGNOS and EDAS workEGNOSStandalone GPS positioning

relies only on the receiver

range measurements and is

limited to an accuracy of a

few meters. EGNOS

improves the accuracy of

position measurements by

sending out signals that cor-

rect GPS data and provide

information on its reliability.

The EGNOS network is grow-

ing to more than 40 reference

stations across Europe. These Ranging and Integrity Monitoring Stations (RIMS) on the

ground pick up signals from GPS satellites, which are processed in Master Control Centres

(MCC). The accuracy of the original signals is determined and confounding factors, such as

electrical disturbances in the atmosphere, are corrected.

This data is incorporated into EGNOS signals and sent to its three geostationary satellites.

The satellites then relay the signals back to users on the ground, thus providing far greater

positioning accuracy than would be achieved through GPS alone.

Assuring signal availability by EDASIn order to receive the EGNOS signal via the Signal in Space (SiS) one needs to have direct

sight to one of the three geostationary satellites. EDAS has the potential to fill the gap left

when no satellites are within sight. EDAS -the EGNOS Data Access Service- allows you to

“plug into” EGNOS to receive the data collected, generated and delivered by Europe’s first

satellite navigation system. EDAS is part of EGNOS and therefore provides the opportunity

for service providers to deliver EGNOS data to users who cannot always view the EGNOS

satellites (such as in urban canyons) or to support a variety of other value added services,

applications and research programs.

Why EDAS?EDAS builds on the qualities of EGNOS to provide a reliable high level of service to users.

EDAS offers the following key advantages.

– Reliability and assurance: EGNOS will be a certified Safety-of-Life system requiring a

highly reliable and resilient infrastructure. This infrastructure is the basis for EDAS.

– Data delivery: EGNOS data is provided in real-time through a standard internet connec-

tion or via a direct fixed line.

– Data content: EDAS not only provides EGNOS broadcast data, but also raw data from

Ranging and Integrity Monitoring Stations (RIMS) and satellite status messages.

European and North African coverage: EDAS data is sourced from 34 EGNOS RIMS gener-

ating unique Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) datasets from Europe and North

Africa

EDAS content and accessA list of FAQs and the EDAS Help Desk can also be accessed at:

www.gsa.europa.eu/go/egnos/edas.

More on www.egnos-portal.eu

The EDAS system

Latest News? Visit www.geoinformatics.com


http://www.gsa.europa.eu/go/egnos/edas

http://www.egnos-portal.eu


Ease of useIt is very important to design simple and intu-itive user interfaces, especially as the complex-ity of the devices and solutions is constantlyincreasing. EGNOS is a “ready to use” (withno training needed) positioning technology.

Additional featuresEGNOS not only provides higher accuracythan GPS only but also integrity information,i.e. information about the reliability of the sig-nal. EGNOS offers integrity for free (no feefor the Signal in Space service).

Enlargement The industry is investing in reference station networks to provide thesignal with a regional coverage (evolving from post-processing ser-vices to real-time solutions). EGNOS can be integrated by the ser-vice providers in their reference network to increase coverage insome European areas: instead of installing new reference stationsthe service provider can use EGNOS to provide the signal in regionswith limited coverage – in real time.

ConclusionsThe affordable precision delivered by EGNOS is changing the acces-sibility to Mapping solutions. EGNOS is expected to play an increas-

ing role. In order to foster market awarenessand adoption further analysis and awarenessefforts will be undertaken. Finally, the new EGNOS webportal is nowavailable: www.egnos-portal.eu. It intends todevelop awareness of EGNOS for all com-munities of users, and provide support toapplication developers and to end users. TheEGNOS portal also contains user forums forthe different communities, intending to sharedevelopers and users experience, concernsand know-how. The results of market research

and of the EGNOS test campaigns will beavailable on the portal.

NOTES(1)EGNOS, the European Geostationary Navigation OverlayService,is Europe’s first venture into the field of satellite navigationand paves the way for Galileo, Europe’s independent global satel-lite navigation system currently under development. EGNOS OpenService has been officially operational and available for use since1st October 2009 and certified for Safety of Life applications sinceMarch 2011.

Reinhard Blasi, market development officer at European GNSS Supervisory Authority (GSA).

For more information, have a look at www.egnos-portal.eu

A r t i c l e

12June 2011

EGNOS will help improve transport services andtrace vehicles (Credits: ESA)




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Technology and Documentation

Scanning and Imaging Building IToday, terrestrial surveys of decorated and complex interiors of ancient buildings are being requestedmore and more for maintenance, management and monitoring uses and for creating multi-purposeBuilding Information Models. Data acquisition is undertaken using advanced sensing technologies, anddata processing needs reliable and expensive software: this way, 3D textured reconstructions are carried out. This paper outlines and analyzes the use of scanning technologies, with the support ofimaging, to document decorated interiors.

The terrestrial survey of decorated and complex interiors ofancient buildings is being asked for more often these days, pri-marily to assist with on-going maintenance, management and

monitoring aims and for creating multi-purpose Building InformationModels. Data acquisition is carried out using advanced sensing tech-nologies, and data processing needs reliable and expensive soft-ware: this way, 3D textured reconstructions are generated. Sensingtechnologies consist of passive and active systems. Passive systems,such as mono and stereo photogrammetry, produce raster plottingfrom images (orthophotos, photo-rectifications) or use images toextract datasets of object coordinates. Good accuracy is achievedwhen surfaces are covered with artificial or natural textures andhave well-defined edges.

Active systems, for instance a panoramic scanner, use laser beamsto collect object point clouds. The accuracy is connected both tobeam properties and its attitude, as well as to data redundancy.This paper outlines and analyzes the use of scanning technologies,with the support of imaging, to document decorated interiors. Therole of photographic documentation, gathered while scanning, issignificant in allowing model texturing and in providing raster sup-plements for vector representation (for instance, orthophotos used asa backdrop in cross-sections). Photographic data is also useful forenhancing the random geometry of scanning, in order to improvefeature edge detection and thematic investigations.

Data CollectionIn a more or less automated way, scanning and imaging collect pointclouds describing the indoor surface details of buildings. A meaningful parameter connected to surveying is relative preci-sion, which is expressed as the ratio between point precision andacquisition range; for scanning and imaging it is usually equal to orbetter than 10-4 (that is, few mm at 100m ).In the scanning approach, pulse-based technology allows long-rangecollection; alternatively, phase-based scanners, with a width-modu-lated wave, provide fast and accurate measurement of mediumrange (around 100m).The high acquisition rating (up to 106 points per second) makesphase-based scanners useful both in static and dynamic contextsand with slow return energy (a few %): this last condition relates tovery dark or very reflective objects (metal or marble, an aircraft fuse-lage, a wooden-hulled ship, etc.).

June 2011

A r t i c l e

By Luigi Colombo and Barbara Marana

Fig. 1 - The panoramic camera on its mechanical support

Fig. 2 - The St Martino church and its three Sacristies

14


It is possible to manage every operation via remote PC, thanks to aBluetooth wireless connection.The time required for collecting a panoramic scan (field of 360° -horizontal- and 310°÷320° -vertical-) is shortened to a few minutes,despite the high-density sampling.The sampling point density affects precision and the minimum dimen-sion of recognizable object details. Because of the high scanningspeed, it is convenient to choose a small sampling interval, in orderto improve the feature edge description of richly decorated scenes.

The Role of ImagingThe acquisition of images to be mapped over the point model is avery important phase in interior surveys, because of the strong envi-ronmental effects (artificial lighting, brightness, and shadows).The operation is carried out with different photo sensors:• a built-in photo-camera to allow automa tic point cloud texturing

while scanning (coloured clouds) • a motorized photo-camera, mounted on the scanner and man-

aged via software • a mechanical support for a reflex or panoramic photo-camera

(fisheye) to manually collect images (with a suitable overlap) 360°around the scanning position. For a fisheye camera (the field ofview equals 180°) the number of images requested is six or seven(Figure 1).

The set of images referred to each station is then stitched with phototools, for instance PTGui Pro (from New House Internet Services,Rotterdam, The Netherlands), in order to create a spherical panora-ma: this will be projected over the corresponding point cloud.However, it is always possible, but not advisable, to manually pro-ject one image at a time over the cloud, through a suitable numberof tie points and Least Squares procedures.

Scanned cloud joining, to produce one final model, is also performedvia Least Squares algorithms based on tie points fixed upon adja-cent clouds.The tie points consist of:• paper targets, previously located over the object surfaces (less

used)• mobile, plane or spherical targets with revolving supports, placed

in the space to be scanned• geometric object features (easily recognizable)It has to be said that plane targets are more suitable for automaticrecognition (their center) via management software; besides, the useof mobile targets and mostly of selected features avoids sullying thetextures of the final photo-model.The software plays a central role in interior surveys through scan-ning and imaging, both for the device control in acquisition (pointclouds and images) and for model reconstruction, editing and textur-ing.

Details of an Example The St Martino church in Alzano Lombardo, a city close to Bergamoin Northern Italy, with its fine 15th century stone bell tower, is wellknown for the three wonderful Sacristies created in the second halfof the 17th century, with rich wooden ornaments, inlays, frescoesand bas-relieves: a significant example of the Baroque in theLombardy region.An article by Franco Marcoaldi (from the La Repubblica newspaperof July 29, 2010) clearly describes the visual effect and the deepemotion felt by a visitor: “… the first Sacristy is like a call to orderand stability, while ferocious evil towards the church martyrs is themost striking effect in the second one, with its marvellous carvings.After, when the visitor walks from the second space to the third one,

A r t i c l e


g Interiors

Fig. 3 - The second Sacristy: Z+F scanner, equipped with the M-Cam, while scanning

Fig. 4 - The Sacristies” point model: reflectance values shown in false color, with transparency effects (top); the corresponding

wireframe model (bottom)



this last seems to be empty, even if it is not so. In fact, its elegantand light decorative Rococo style allows an appropriate pause for afinal reflection…” (Figure 2).

The interiors of these Sacristies were studied and surveyed by theGeo-technology Lab at the University of Bergamo: a 3D model withmultiple levels of detail was realized (scales from 1:20 to 1:50). A very reliable Zoller+Fröhlich Imager 5600i scanner was used,equipped with the industrial M-Cam (0.7 kg, 55° field of view, focallength of 4.8 mm, pixel class 5 MP). This camera is suitable for col-lecting images and for point cloud texturing over interiors of smalldimensions (Figure 3). For each station, 28 images are automatical-ly registered within three to five minutes, depending on illumination.This way, two panorama scans were produced inside the first andthe third Sacristies, three in the second and two others at the doorsconnecting the three spaces (Figure 2 - top).The scanning density was selected at the highest level provided byImager (Table 1), which consists of a linear sampling of about 2 mmover the room walls. Each scan is an 800 Mb panoramic cloud

(scanning time under seven minutes) and can detect details greaterthan 6 mm, with a 60% level of confidence.

It was decided to take images in daylight to avoid the negativeeffects (shadows, spots of light) of using artificial illumination in darkinteriors with complex morphology and decorated walls.Starting from the scan set, one measurable point model was creat-ed, through object features and with the support of Z+F software.Figure 4 shows the 3D reconstructed model, in false color and withtransparency effects (top), together with the extracted 3D wireframemodel (bottom).

The color images collected with the M-Cam were used for texturingthe point model and to produce orthophotos for cross-section back-drops. Figure 5 details some perspective views of the textured modelfor the second Sacristy, the most attractive and impressive. Ultimately,the 3D point model was managed via software to produce classic2D plotting (Figure 6), finalized for the geometric support of investi-gations and maintenance.

Final RemarksLaser scanning techniques, despite recent improvements in automa-tion, still underline the need for manual processing, particularly withthe existence of software problems that can arise as a result of thelarge amount of data being processed. The same concept can beextended to imaging procedures, especially when the interiors arerichly decorated and highly complex. These constraints have a great influence when extracting 2D geo-metric plots from 3D models, such as vector elevations, profiles andsections. The images demonstrate their utility in model texturing, butalso as a support to vector plotting, surface documentation and the-matic investigations. All this shows the great synergy among differ-ent sensing technologies, both active and passive, and highlights,once more, the central role of imaging in knowledge acquisition.

Luigi Colombo [email protected], is professor of Geomatics and Barbara Marana is assistant professor at the University of Bergamo -

Faculty of Engineering - DPT - Dalmine (Italy)

Thanks are due to the team and graduate students of the Geo-technology Lab at the University of Bergamo and

to 3DTarget for Z+F technology support.

A r t i c l e

16 June 2011

Fig. 5 - The second Sacristy: perspective views of point model, with photo-textures superimposed

Fig. 6 - Vertical and horizontal sections

Tab. 1 - Resolution levels for scanning

.

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Overcoming Location Stovepipes

Navigating the Indoor/Outdo o Digital technology increasingly mediates our relationship to places, but popular location based serviceshave created new demands – including indoor/outdoor location integration – that industry simply can’tmeet without a wider, more concerted standards effort, writes OGC’s Carl Reed.

Location apps are one of the hottest areas in mobile computing, butunassisted GPS is “lost” indoors. When a location enabled mobiledevice enters a building, sometimes the mobile device’s accelerom-

eters and compasses can provide what sailors call “dead reckoning,”calculating distance and direction traveled after the last GPS coordi-nates were collected. Sometimes indoor location is calculated by figur-ing proximity to multiple nearby location-aware WiFi hotspots or bymeans of in-building transponders such as RFID, or transponders thatcommunicate with mobile devices via Bluetooth or infrared. Many meth-ods are possible, including some that involve manual data entry. Butagain many of these technologies are proprietary and there are nostandard protocols or encodings that can be easily implemented acrossvarious location determination and provision technologies or hardwaresolutions.

For the purposes of this article, we do not care how location is deter-mined and we are assuming that building information is available.What matters is that location information and building information becommunicated digitally by means of open standard interfaces andencodings. The effective use of open, international standards wouldenable the seamless integration of location and building informationinto a broad range of applications. Connecting indoor location withoutdoor location is becoming a critical requirement for emergency anddisaster response, augmented reality, security, facilities planning and

management, real estate finance, insurance, location-based marketing,the smart grid, energy management, and management of air, water,gas and sewage. Some applications directly involve users, while othersinvolve machine-to-machine communication.

Further, from a more general market perspective, the use of standardsenable plug-and-play components to be more easily integrated intoapplications. They also enable re-use of legacy resources, greater effi-ciencies and economies, bigger markets, emergent and unanticipatedapplications and more rapid progress.

In many of these domains, stakeholders tend to focus their attention onthe communication medium: Will devices communicate via WiFi, cellu-lar transmission, Bluetooth, IP over power lines or some other physicalchannel? For the OGC, how the location is determined does not mat-ter. Any method will serve (though a communication medium standardwould enable plug-and-play components, re-use of legacy resources,greater efficiencies and economies, bigger markets, emergent applica-tions and more rapid progress). The OGC community does care abouthow the location is communicated, the structure of related payloads,the accuracy of the location, measures of uncertainty, and so forth. TheOGC seeks to facilitate the development of encoding standards, inter-face standards and best practices that enable seamless connection ofindoor and outdoor location in applications of all kinds.

18 June 2011

A r t i c l e

By Carl Reed


Where the OGC stands with other standard efforts The OGC is increasingly recognized as the main global forum forgeospatial standards discussions and it also recognized as an organi-zation that has an effective process for standards development andpromotion. The process includes maintaining industry alliances with themajor standards organizations that are working various aspects of theindoor/outdoor location problem. The OGC has alliance partnershipswith the international Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate(OSCRE), MISMO (US standards for residential and commercial realestate finance), OASIS, the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), the Web3DConsortium, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), IEEE, ISO andmany other standards organizations. Here are some results:

• The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Presence InformationDescription Format Location Object extension (PIDF-LO). PIDF“defines the base presence format and extensibility as specified inthe Instant Messaging / Presence Protocol Requirements IETF RFC[2779] and defines a minimal set of presence status values definedby the IMPP Model document.” The Location Object (LO) specifies adevice’s location information. Many of the use cases used to definethe LO object were defined based on 911 and emergency responserequirements in the wireless world. A lightweight profile of the OGCGeography Markup Language (GML) is the mandatory encodingfor geodetic location (coordinates) for PIDF implementations support-ing the “GeoPRIV” (privacy) element of PIDF-LO. A related draftDHCP document describes how Internet devices would opt to encodelocation and then provide a GML-encoded location during the DHCPhandshake that gives the device its IP address.

• Through OGC/IEEE cooperation, the IEEE 1451 “smart sensor” stan-dards have been made to work well with OGC Sensor WebEnablement (SWE) standards. SWE standards are likely to becomesignificant in in-building sensor applications such as energy man-agement and smart grid that require standard ways of representingindoor location.

• The buildingSmart alliance (bSa) is working with the OGC on build-ing information model (BIM) standards. Specifically, bSa is creatingifcXML standards, encoding earlier Industry Foundation Class file-based data standards into XML encodings designed to provide anindoor/outdoor connection through GML.

• The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) SmartGrid framework list of required standards includes the OGCGeography Markup Language (GML) Encoding Standard. Becausemany smart grid devices will be indoors, the smart grid is anotherdriver for indoor/outdoor location integration.

Profiles and RESTUntil recently, the OGC’s main focus has been on general-purpose ser-vice oriented geospatial architectures for enterprises, government spa-tial data infrastructures and the Earth imaging industry. Now, OGCmembers are increasingly engaged in developing profiles of OGC stan-dards for particular application domains such as aviation, hydrology,meteorology and ocean observation. Profiles are also being developedfor bare-bones location encodings that use lightweight profiles of theOGC Geography Markup Language (GML) in and Web content syndi-cation, such as the GML profile of GeoRSS.

This mass market interest extends beyond lightweight encodings: Inresponse to the requirements of scenarios that may involve thousandsof geospatial Web developers and millions of app users, members areexploring “RESTful” standards based approaches to location problems.REST advocates find simple links to URL-accessible location resourcespreferable to service interfaces to databases, and they find searchengine discovery preferable to catalogs. Existing OGC Web servicesdon’t meet all their requirements, and so their requirements are the topicof much discussion at OGC meetings, on OGC listservs and on geoblogs and OGC-focused LinkedIn discussions.

One major concern in these discussions is that wireless carriers, portabledevice makers, app developers, social network companies and othersin the location based services (LBS) value chain have not worked togeth-er the way GIS and Earth imaging companies have in the OGC – in“coopetition” – to make location information as available and open asthe World Wide Web. Web 2.0 is thus full of location stovepipes. Islocation interoperability for a mass market of individual users an inher-ently different problem from geospatial interoperability for organiza-tions? Did social networking and associated location services compa-nies simply grow too fast and compete too furiously to be concernedwith standards at the outset?

Whatever the reasons, there is a clear need, at least from the perspec-tives of users, developers and advertisers, for location information inter-operability among mobile devices running apps that do things like findfriends and navigate in urban environments. Indoor/outdoor locationinformation integration is part of this need.

A r t i c l e


o or Location Standards MazeSmartphone with map on map



The OGC’s attention to indoor/outdoorlocation integration is evident in the stan-dards activities described below:

• City Geography Markup Language(CityGML), an OGC standard for 3Durban modelling, facilitates indoor/out-door navigation. CityGML is an openinformation model and XML-basedencoding for the representation, storage,and exchange of virtual 3D city models.CityGML will certainly play a role inindoor/outdoor location integration,partly because of strong vendor support(Autodesk, Bentley, Oracle, SAFE, Esri,Interactive Instruments, Liquid, M.O.S.S.,Pirireis, Snowflake, and others), partly because of compatibility withthe widely used OGC standards framework, and partly becauseCityGML provides a comprehensive and well thought-out way torepresent multiple levels of detail about structures, indoor and out-door. Though CityGML is focused on 3D modeling, it also providesa practical standard way to integrate indoor/outdoor location, thatis, a standard way to integrate building location in Earth coordi-nates with building details in the Euclidean geometry of ComputerAided Design (CAD) systems.

• A candidate OGC standard, Open GeoSMS, offers a standard wayof tagging SMS messages with location. There’s amazing potentialin this, because more than 6.1 trillion SMS messages were sent in2010, and opt-in SMS is the most effective form of mobile ads inmany countries. SMS, of course, works indoors, so stakeholders allalong the mobile services value chain will want indoor/outdoorinformation integration. Open GeoSMS was brought into the OGCby ITRI from Taiwan, where Open GeoSMS is already widely used.The June 2011 Technical Committee meeting will be held inTaichung, Taiwan.

• To support the developing Augmented Reality (AR) community, theOpen Geospatial Consortium (OGC) will host the third InternationalAR Standards meeting in conjunction with the OGC meetings inTaiwan.

• A number of wireless infrastructure providers implement the OGCOpen Location Services (OpenLS) Interface Standard, which speci-fies interfaces and operations for a Directory Service, GatewayService, Geocoder Service, Presentation (Map Portrayal) Service,Routing Service, and Navigation Service.

• Last December the OGC issued a request for comments on an OGCdiscussion paper, “Requirements and Space-Event Modeling forIndoor Navigation” (http://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?arti-fact_id=41727). The paper presents a model for indoor navigationthat simultaneously addresses route planning, multiple localizationmethods, navigation contexts, and different locomotion types. Theresearch was carried out within the Indoor Spatial Awareness (ISA)project, a research and development project funded by the KoreanMinistry of Construction and Transportation. ISA includes partnersfrom academia and industry in South Korea, USA, Germany, andDenmark. It includes concepts for deriving a network topologymodel from a 3D CityGML building model based on a subdivisionof rooms into smaller cells. These concepts were introduced earlierin an OGC Engineering Report” (OGC Doc. No. 09-067r2). In a

related effort, the Netherlands is workingon an ambitious 3D model project for theentire country, using CityGML.

• The OGC is launching a 3D PortrayalInteroperability Experiment (IE) on April22, 2011 to advance best practice forimplementing standards for publishingand streaming 3D geospatial assets relat-ed to urban planning and landscapevisualization.

• The OGC has organized a workshop,“Expanding GeoWeb to an Internet ofThings” to be held at COM.geo 2011,23-25 May 2011, in Washington, DC.

OGC standards are meant to be implemented as profiles, often as verylight-weight instances, to meet specific needs. They are as complex asnecessary to meet a wide range of requirements, but profiles can beas simple as necessary to meet specific requirements. The OGC stan-dards process is designed to enable stakeholders to modify and extendexisting standards, which is the main activity in a number of OGCdomain working groups.

ConclusionsThe main obstacle to indoor/outdoor location information standards isthat different subdomains of interest within the larger domain ofindoor/outdoor location have different requirements and different per-spectives. 3D urban modelers, game developers, BIM/CAD standardsexperts, AR developers, emergency response experts, smart grid stake-holders, energy managers, location advertisers, architects, social net-work providers, insurers, appraisers and others all see the world differ-ently. Though these stakeholders” requirement sets are different, theyoverlap, and therein lies the basis of the solution to their interoperabili-ty problems.

The OGC doesn’t profess to have all the answers, but the OGC doeshave a proven consensus process in which technology stakeholderscan come to agreement on what needs to be done. The OGCInteroperability Program runs rapid prototyping activities – includingtestbeds, interoperability experiments, plug-fests and pilot projects – inorder to fast-track the introduction of specific industry requirements intothe formal standards development process. Sponsors set the goalsbased on real-world use cases. Participants work to meet those goals.The initiatives are followed closely by the OGC Technical Committeeworking groups focused on topics such as 3D urban models, workflow,security, disaster management and semantics. The OGC also invitesdevelopers of external standards to submit their standards for adoptionas official OGC standards, so that they can be maintained, evolvedand harmonized in a fair and open process.

A new OGC initiative has begun formulating an initial concept archi-tecture for a spatially enabled Mobile Internet, based on high priorityuse cases, including use cases that involve indoor/outdoor location.This activity is likely to result in the establishment of a testbed, for whicha Call for Sponsors will be issued. To express your interest or supportof this initiative, please contact:

Steven Ramage, [email protected], Executive Director Marketing & Communications, Open Geospatial Consortium

A r t i c l e

20 June 2011

3D floor plan


http://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?arti-fact_id=41727




Long-range High-density Lidar Surveying Equipment

Geological and Geotechnical M Together with the hardware, specialised geotechnical analysis software allows quarry operators togather and interpret rock-mass data from a safe distance, sometimes as far away as the periphery ofthe quarry. Lidar tools such as Optech’s ILRIS not only allow for remote collection of geotechnical data,but also provide more detailed survey information than previous tools such as a compass-clinometer.

Changing the RulesIn 1999 new regulations were passed thatgovern mining operations in quarriesthroughout the UK. The Quarry Regulationsstate that all excavations and tips must bedesigned and appraised in conformancewith specific protocols. If an appraisalidentifies any significant hazards, then ageotechnical assessment is required. Theregulations detail the manner in whichgeotechnical assessments be carried out,and ensure that required actions are com-pleted in a certain sequence, such as: SiteSurvey; Site Investigation; Findings ofAnalysis; Requirements during and afterconstruction.

Historically, geological and geotechnicaldata in a quarry has often been difficult toobtain safely. Consequently, in situations

where complete and accurate geotechnicalinformation was unavailable, analysis anddesign criteria could be flawed. Morerecently, however, lidar (Light Detectionand Ranging) has enabled geotechnicalengineers to acquire detailed geologicaland geotechnical data by scanning quarrysurfaces from a distance, out of harm’sway, using long-range laser imaging tech-nology.

Together with the hardware, specialisedgeotechnical analysis software allows quar-ry operators to gather and interpret rock-mass data from a safe distance, sometimesas far away as the periphery of the quar-ry. Lidar tools such as Optech’s ILRIS notonly allow for remote collection of geotech-nical data, but also provide more detailedsurvey information than previous tools such

as a compass-clinometer. Furthermore, alidar survey also provides a permanentrecord of the condition of the quarry faceson the day of the assessment; such adatabase can serve as the baseline forfuture change-detection studies.

Past and PresentIn the past, quarry surveys were typicallycarried out using a Real Time Kinematic(RTK) GPS or a tripod-mounted Total Station.Such surveys usually produced a series ofbreak-line data such as: top-of-face; bottom-of-face; spot levels from which ground con-tours could be derived. These techniques areusually sufficient for producing a topograph-ical survey for plan production, setting-out,or producing a reserve calculation. If moredetail is required, such as changes in geol-ogy fault planes, backscars from rock-fall,or simply more data points, surveyors coulduse direct reflective (DR) techniques to obtaina series of spot-levels on the quarry face.The drawback to this approach is that it istime-consuming as each spot level has to beaimed from the Total Station.

This is where today’s lidar scanners areespecially advantageous. With ever-increas-ing data acquisition rates (e.g., 10,000postings per second) and expanding range(up to 3,000 m), operators using the ILRIScan now scan quarry faces well outside thepotentially hazardous zone of the workingarea from the relative safety of an observa-tion platform.

22June 2011

A r t i c l e

By Adrian Wilkinson

Figure 2: Intensity image derived from an ILRIS scan of the Stancombe Quarry processing plant. The slope in the background is covered with heavy vegetation.


Lidar scanning produces a data point cloud:a series of very closely spaced points thatare geo-referenced in 3 dimensions (X, Y,Z). Lidar point clouds can also be endowedwith RGB colour values derived from thescanner’s on-board digital camera system.When the RGB values from the camera’simage pixels are aligned with the pointcloud’s XYZ points, a high-resolution photo-drape is attained. This is an image wherethe colours and topical details of a 2D pho-tograph are overlaid onto corresponding 3Dpoints from the same location; the resultinggraphical output is similar to a 3D photo-graph.

Data point clouds derived fromlidar scanners can be processedrelative to a “local” co-ordinatesystem or geo-referenced to thenational co-ordinate system as isdone with conventional surveys.A data point cloud can also beconverted to a triangulated meshor wireframe digital surfacemodel (DSM) that may includevegetation and buildings, or adigital terrain model (DTM)where points above an interpo-lated ground surface areremoved.

From the DSMs or DTMs, rele-vant data such as break-lines,cross-sections, meshes or XYZpoints can be exported into

other suites of software to produce plans, orfor further geological and geotechnicalinvestigations or analyses.

Site InvestigationIt is possible to extract both geological andgeotechnical information regarding the rock-mass from these point clouds, and this capa-bility contributes greatly to the site investi-gation element of Regulation 33,Geo technical Assessment. When a quarryface is scanned with a lidar sensor, the qual-ity of light reflected back into the sensor’sreceiver will vary depending upon the com-position of the target material. The relative

strength of the reflected light signal isreferred to as “intensity”. After processingthe data, one can output an intensity image,which resembles a black and white photo-graph (see figure 2).

In intensity images, targets with low intensi-ty values appear as dark grey points andtargets with high intensity values appear aspale grey or white points. In terms ofGeological Mapping, clays, shales and veg-etation tend to exhibit low intensity (mean-ing that a greater proportion of the laser’stransmitted light is absorbed and thereforenot reflected back to the lidar sensor’s opti-

cal receiver). In contrast, gran-ites exhibit high intensity valuesbecause they reflect more lightthan they absorb. Thus, intensi-ty images can be used toremotely map the geology of aquarry face.

Similarly, different grades ofweathering in the same geolog-ical material can also exhibit dif-ferent intensity values; moreweathered material typicallyexhibits lower intensity valuesthan less weathered material.Zones in the material that exhib-it similar intensity values can besegregated and assignedcolours, thus aiding visual andcategorical analysis (see figure3). The number of points within

A r t i c l e


l Mapping

Figure 3: Image derived from ILRIS scanner. The colours among the points are based on similarities in their intensity values.

Figure 1 : ILRIS set up to scan quarry face.



each group of similar coloured bands canalso be summed and expressed as a rela-tive percentage of the total number of points(in effect, producing a point samplingmethod based upon the exposed surface ofeach grade of weathered material).

In addition to geological strata mapping,geotechnical information can also beobtained from lidar scans in the form of dis-continuity data: dip, dip direction, spacing,persistence and roughness. Using a lidarinstrument to obtain such data can be a sub-stitute for traditional methods of discontinu-ity data collection such as using a compass-clinometer. Using lidar for this purpose offersa safety benefit because it allows the opera-tor to take readings from a safe distance,unlike using a hand-held compass-clinome-ter, which requires the operator to moveabout in very close proximity to potentiallyunstable quarry faces.

Findings of AnalysisAfter it has been collected, geological andgeotechnical data can be used to determinepotential modes of failure (kinematical anal-ysis), and to calculate critical factorsrequired by the Quarry Regulations, suchas “Factors of Safety” and “Probabilities ofFailure” for a given failure mechanism. Forexample, circular failures in weak rock-masses, soil slopes, embankments and

lagoons; and planar, wedge, and topplingfailures in rock-masses.

The enhanced survey detail obtained bylidar surveying greatly enhances the engi-neer’s ability to analyse the potential trajec-tories of rock-fall. Recent software develop-ments have used long-range high-definitionlidar surveys to assess potential locationsand hazards associated with landslides,railways and other infrastructure.QuarryDesign is working with a US-basedcompany to provide 3D simulations of thepotential trajectories of rock-fall from quar-ry faces.

One of the exciting potentials of this newsoftware is that it can account for the break-ing-up of larger blocks into smaller frag-ments and project their potential trajecto-ries as well as for the whole block. In Figure4, the trajectory path is clearly oblique tothe quarry face and would not have beenpredicted an a 2D analysis. In the 3D anal-ysis enabled by the lidar data, slopingledges are accounted for, and can beshown to cause rock-fall to bounce tangen-tially across as well as down a quarry face.

Requirements During and After ConstructionUsing lidar surveying techniques, it is pos-sible to monitor the status of slopes, tips andlagoon walls, and to calculate the rates of

any developing circular failures and winderosion of sand faces.

QuarryDesign is currently testing seasonalmonitoring of several natural and quarriedfaces to ascertain if small changes betweensuccessive surveys might enable the mea-surement of potential rockmass displacementcaused either by repeated freeze/thawcycles or a reduction in normal stress due to“unloading”. It is hoped that such displace-ment measurements might be used to pre-dict the location of future rock-fall eventsbefore they occur.

When the average spacing of fractures isobtained from a lidar point cloud analysis,then the correct rock-fall seeding locationand block size can be determined and usedin 3D rock-fall analysis software.

ConclusionLong-range, high-definition lidar surveyingtechniques can be used as part of an inte-grated approach to geological and geotech-nical mapping and to enable more accuratedata to be collected in significantly fasterand safer ways. Advances in both comput-er processing power and software engineer-ing are enabling more complex and realis-tic simulations to aid in quarry management.Along with reducing risks to workers, usinglidar surveying techniques in quarry assess-ment provides engineers with up-to-date,accurate and reliable data on which to basedesign or remediation plans.

Adrian Wilkinson, [email protected]

A r t i c l e

24June 2011

Figure 4 : 3D rock-fall analysis of lidar survey data.

t



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http://www.leica-geosystems.com

Digital Photogrammetric System PHOTOMOD

High-performance Distributed C The architecture of modern computing systems creates prerequisites for the fast growth in productivityof photogrammetric remote sensing data processing via the use of distributed calculations. Conductedexperiments have demonstrated the efficiency of the upcoming PHOTOMOD HPC Edition when exploitedwithin a computing cluster, allowing a significant reduction in processing time proportional to the number of cluster nodes involved in the calculations.

Distributed computing in photogrammetric processingProductivity, along with the quality of output data, plays a determinantrole in photogrammetric data processing. On the one hand, the pro-ductivity of sensors is constantly increasing, as is the input data flow.On the other hand, the quality of this input data enables a large partof processing to be done completely as a hands-off operation. Thesetrends attempt to increase productivity by scaling up employed comput-ing facilities. Increased productivity can be attained by utilizing remote sensing dataprocessing products (DTMs, orthomosaics) for on-line monitoring, forinstance, in emergency management, with availability within hours ofimage capture, independent of the site area and data volumes.The integration of manual and scalable automatic tools also increasesthe efficiency of standard photogrammetric production, by reducingthe time lost by operators waiting for the machine calculations. Multiple workflows can be performed fully automatically (tie point cal-culation, DTM creation, orthorectification) – manual intervention is onlyrequired for controlling the results and correcting errors in unavoidablecases, such as when the quality of the input data is insufficient for reli-able processing by automatic algorithms.In other operations, manual processing is still inevitable (for example,the identification of ground control points). However, these types ofoperations are steadily decreasing. In the former case, overall produc-tivity grows in proportion to the increase in processing power without

the involvement of additional human resources. There are two main approaches to the organization of parallel calcula-tions: calculations on multiprocessor computers with common memory(any modern PC with multicore CPU), and calculations in the array ofseparate computers united in a network (cluster). The latter option is more attractive because of the price outlook (thecluster system is usually cheaper than a single multiprocessor machinewith comparable computing power), and the use of similar softwaretechnologies in desktop and supercomputer systems. For these reasons, parallel calculations in photogrammetric softwareare generally oriented to the cluster model.Workflows of remote sensing data processing are well suited to paral-lelization. Most operations are local in nature (i.e. output data consistsof a set of elements, each of which is calculated independently fromthe others, from a subset of input data). For example, for a primarysearch of tie points in the overlap of some images, only those imagesare needed as input; for image orthorectification a source image anda terrain model are required; for creating DTM in a given area, onlyoriginal images covering this area are usually required, etc. Sure enough, some tasks demand a simultaneous operation on the com-plete image block (e.g. bundle adjustment when performing aerial tri-angulation, or automatic calculation of cutlines for orthomosaicking).However, the share of such operations for real projects is relativelysmall within total processing time.

26

A r t i c l e

By Zhaksybek D. Baygurin, Valery A. Khan, Izim N. Dyussembayev, Murat S. Omirserikov and Mikhail A. Drakin

Computing cluster of KazNTU Block layout

June 2011


Distributed calculations in PHOTOMODThe strategy of distributed calculation, as implemented in the PHOTO-MOD digital photogrammetric system, implies splitting the full comput-ing task into multiple subtasks, each of which is executed in the single-thread mode independently from the others. Using this approach the same engine can be used for the efficient useof both separate multicore or multiprocessor computers, and common-place local networks or cluster systems. The job scheduler, included in the system, controls the successful com-pletion of all tasks and provides a restart of the tasks which have failedas a result of network connectivity errors.Distributed execution of the key compute-intensive tasks is supportedby:

• Tie point calculation for aerial triangulation and satellite projectadjustment

• DTM creation• Image orthorectification• Orthomosaic creation (including calculation of cutlines)

According to the Top500 supercomputers rating (www.top500.org), inthe top ten supercomputers as of November 2010, seven systems havereached and exceeded the level of maximum productivity of 1 petaflops(A quadrillion [thousand trillion] floating point operations per second).According to the same rating, in the list of 500 of the world’s mostpowerful computers in terms of quantity, the first place belongs to theUSA (274), second – to China (41). Japan shares the third place withGreat Britain and France (26). Russia ranks number 7 among 28 pre-sented countries. It is noteworthy that this March a supercomputer with 1 petaflops rat-ing was launched at the Sarov nuclear center in Russia. This Russiansupercomputer will correspond to the 12th place in the Top500 mostpowerful computers rating, and to first place in the Top 50 list in Russiaand CIS. Usage of even a small part of such computing power allows, for exam-ple, the ability to perform fully automatic creation of a 1:10,000 ortho-mosaic from a block of satellite images for several hundred thousandsquare kilometers in just a few hours. Performing distributed calculations in networks (or computing clusters)consisting of a large number of nodes, sets additional requirements tothe software used. In particular, automatic deployment and a centralized system setup area must. Furthermore, network resources overhead for task managementshould not comprise any noticeable part within the total computational

resources consumption.With these requirements in mind, a special version of PHOTOMODdigital photogrammetric system, optimized for large-scale network pro-cessing, is currently being developed - PHOTOMOD HPC Edition.

Performance testing resultsA joint team from Racurs and specialists from the Kazakh NationalTechnical University, named after K.I. Satpaev, on the computing clusterinstalled in KazNTU, with peak productivity of 10.9 teraflops, under-took pre-release testing of the version. The experiment consisted of creating a 1:2000 scale orthomosaic fromaerial imagery with high-resolution DTM (DEM, refined by break lines)for an area of 1289 square kilometers (3558 original images, takenby UltraCam XP, average GSD 15 cm).

For analysis of reliability and efficiency of parallelized calculations, thesame task was executed in three configurations – with distribution to10, 20 and 40 computing nodes (every node is equipped with twoquad-core Intel Xeon 5500 processors). All the processes were com-pleted without any errors. Processing for 10 nodes (80 parallel threads)took about eight hours, for 20 nodes (160 threads) – five hours andfor 40 nodes (320 threads) – three hours. Some decrease of unit per-formance, with the increase in number of nodes involved, is determinedas the bottleneck of this experiment – access to original images, storedin the disk subsystem of the cluster. (see table on top of this page)

ConclusionThe architecture of modern computing systems creates prerequisites forfast growth of productivity of photogrammetric remote sensing dataprocessing via the use of distributed calculations. Conducted experi-ments have demonstrated the efficiency of the upcoming PHOTOMODHPC Edition when used within a computing cluster, allowing for a sig-nificant reduction in processing time proportional to the number of clus-ter nodes involved in the calculations. Further system developmentroadmap includes support for distributed calculations on multiple GPUs(NVIDIA CUDA technology), and a more sophisticated job schedulerdistributing tasks among nodes based on available CPUs and GPUs aswell as efficient usage of network and storage systems throughput.

Internet: www.racurs.ru

A r t i c l e

27Latest News? Visit www.geoinformatics.com

d Computing

Terrain model

June 2011


http://www.top500.org

http://www.racurs.ru


Statistics, Geoinformatics and Applied Science

Spatial Statistics ConferenceThe First Spatial Statistics Conference took place on the University of Twente campus in Enschede, TheNetherlands from the 23 to 25 March 2011. This conference was unusual in that it brought togetherthose whose primary field was statistics, geoinformatics and applied science (e.g., ecology, atmo-spheric science). This mixture delivered a varied and stimulating program. Some sessions dealt withcore statistical subject matter, such as regression, geostatistics and sampling whereas others dealt withapplications such as ecology, climate science and ecology.

The First Spatial Statistics Conferencetook place on the University of Twentecampus in Enschede, The Netherlands

from 23 to 25 March 2011. The scientificorganization was led by the conferencechairs, Alfred Stein (Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation(ITC), University of Twente), Edzer Pebesma(Universität Münster) and Gerard Heuvelink(Wageningen University) whilst the admin-istration was handled by Elsevier. The con-ference was sponsored by Elsevier, Esri,ITC and the CT de Wit Graduate Schoolfor Production Ecology and ResourceConservation.You may ask if this was really the FIRST spa-tial statistics conference. There have cer-tainly been many conferences that haveaddressed the subject of spatial statistics;however, these have tended to take a pri-marily statistical (e.g., METMA, TIES) orapplication-driven orientation (e.g.,GeoENV, Accuracy). This conference wasunusual in that it brought together thosewhose primary field was statistics, geoin-formatics and applied science (e.g., ecolo-gy, atmospheric science). This mixturedelivered a varied and stimulating pro-gram. Some sessions dealt with core sta-tistical subject matter, such as regression, geostatistics and samplingwhereas others dealt with applications such as ecology, climate sci-ence and ecology. There were also three rich and varied poster ses-sions.

Statistics for spatial extremesThe conference kicked off with a keynote speech by Martin Schlatherfrom the Universität Göttingen. He began with a talk that presented thetheory of statistics for spatial extremes in an accessible, but rigorous,way. When one considers the natural disasters that have occurred inthe past few years, it becomes clear that the modeling and identifica-tion of spatial extremes has clear and important societal applications.Professor Schlather was directly followed by Roger Bivand from theNorwegian School of Economics and Business Administration. He

called for openness and interdisciplinarityin the development of research projects,and the peer review of research output. Heproposed that open, re-useable code couldbe a bridge between disciplines. You maylike or loath this idea. The first day con-cluded with a welcome drinks reception,sponsored by the CT de Wit school. The second day of the conference includ-ed three inspirational keynote talks at thebeginning, middle and end of the day. Thisbegan with Noel Cressie, from the OhioState University, who showed how spatialrandom effects models and fixed-rank krig-ing could be applied to combining the out-puts from an ensemble of regional climatemodels. The value of these techniquescomes from their flexibility for modelingcomplex variables, whilst being able tocope with the processing of large datasetswith limited computing resources. Anapplication of this technique was also pre-sented by H. Nguyen the previous day.Professor Cressie continued his contributionto the conference with lively questions fol-lowing Harvard Rue’s (NorwegianUniversity of Science and Technology)keynote on the integration of GaussianMarkov random fields with Gaussian fields

(geostatistics). These are two topics that have, traditionally, developedseparately. Professor Rue showed how they could be integrated usingpartial differential equations. This is supported by software made avail-able at www.r-inla.org. The second day’s academic program conclud-ed with a keynote from Gilberto Câmara from the National Institute forSpace Research, Brazil (INPE). This continued with the theme of han-dling large datasets of satellite imagery for the identification of changein land cover (what is there?) and land use (what is it used for?). Thisremains a challenging topic from both a conceptual and technologicalperspective. It is particularly important in developing countries, owingto a lack of official statistics. This means that more emphasis is attachedto the use of satellite imagery. Dr Câmara showed how this is beingapplied in Brazil using a suite of open-source software based onTerralib. Dr Câmara closed with a call to go beyond “spatial”. Spatial-

28 June 2011

E v e n t

By Nicholas Hamm

G. Mariethoz receives her prize for the best oral presentation.


http://www.r-inla.org

temporal analysis tools and methodologies are required to answer thebig questions of today and tomorrow.

Downscaling in remote sensingThe final day of the conference kicked off with a keynote lecture byTomislav Hengl from ISRIC, Wageningen, who is also an ITC MSc andPhD graduate. He built on the theme of open research presented byProfessor Bivand on the first day. He presented an impressive array ofdatasets and proposed global modeling for local prediction. The dayproceeded with sessions on geostatistics, uncertainty and social sci-ence applications. Of particular interest was the talk and poster ofChris Small on mapping anthropogenic change in night light. The dayconcluded with the final keynote by Peter Atkinson from the Universityof Southampton. His talk was on downscaling in remote sensing anddiscussed previous and on-going research in this field – addressingboth categorical variables (land cover classes) and continuous vari-ables (temperature, reflectance etc).The conference concluded with the presentation of prizes for the bestoral and poster presentations. The prize for the best oral presentationwas awarded to G. Mariethoz from the University of New South Wales,Australia for a talk on “Parameterizing training images used for multi-ple-point simulations”. The prize for the best poster was awarded toS.V. Vantini and co-authors for a poster on “A clustering algorithm forspatially dependent functional data”. There was a general agreementthat the conference had been a success and there is a wish to proceed

with another conference. This will probably take place in approxi-mately two years at a different location. Elsevier will also release anew Journal of Spatial Statistics, which would seem to reflect the broadconference theme. There was a suggestion that the conference andjournal should be renamed “Spatio-Temporal Statistics”. Let’s wait andsee.

Dr Nicholas Hamm, Department of Earth Observation Science, Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, The Netherlands.


E v e n t



New Dimensions of Augmented Reality

Future Immersive ExperiencesFARO Scanners are at the heart of a paradigm shift as European scientists start adding an immersivedimension to sports broadcasting and photo-sharing.

Immersive experiences is a buzzword usedby event technology companies whoenhance the quality of an event with excel-

lent sound systems and lighting to create a mem-orable atmosphere. But now projects are under-way that will add a new dimension to themeaning of immersive experiences, by merg-ing the worlds of user-generated content, mobilesmart phone interactivity and 3D modelling.

At the same time, we are witnessing aparadigm-shift in terms of consumer involve-ment: broadcasters will put viewers in the TVdirector’s chair at football matches or concertsand tourists will experience augmented realityby simply pointing their camera at an objectof interest. One could argue that the projects covered in

this Special Report are simply the next step inthe evolution of interactivity and user-generat-ed content. After all, DVD fans have long beenable to select an alternative camera angle,and tourists routinely upload their geo-taggedphotos to Google Earth. However, theFascinatE and the VISITO projects demand atechnological leap because the consumerinteractions and databases are based on 3Dmodels. With institutional funding, entirelynew concepts, methods, scripts and tools arebeing developed by research groups from uni-versities and specialist companies, that willcreate the foundation for the new era ofimmersive interactive experiences.

Given the complexity of the tasks in hand, theFascinatE and VISITO teams were keen to start

with the best possible tools and data for theirresearch. FARO Laser Scanners were the 3Dscanning tools of choice for both projects.

VISITO“VISITO Tuscany” is a project co-financed byRegione Toscana and the European RegionalDevelopment Fund, carried out by a consor-tium of research and industrial partners includ-ing the Italian National Research Council(CNR ISTI), Alinari, Hyperborea and 3Logic.

The aim of VISITO Tuscany is to enhance thetourist experience before, during and aftertravel by allowing interaction with a 3D-modelbased database of historic photos and infor-mation. The ground-breaking feature is thatthe VISITO system will be able to work out

30 June 2011

By Faro

The FascinatE project will put the viewer in the director’s chair andallow immersive exploration of the available camera angles during alive concert or match.

A r t i c l e A r t i c l e


where the user is pointing the camera of theirsmartphone in order to augment their realityduring the visit. Thus for example, if you takea photo of “Hercules and Cacus”, in Florenceusing the VISITO App, then it will tell you thestatue was completed by Bandinelli in 1534etc. This feature will be realised using GPSpositional information from the smartphoneand by comparing a compressed upload ofthe user’s photo with the existing imagedatabase.

When you return home, after uploading yourfull resolution photos to your favorite photosite, you will be able to enter the 3D modelof the VISITO location. As you spatiallybrowse your photo collection, the system willrender your pictures onto the 3D model in theappropriate position in real time.

Dr Marco Callieri, member of CNR ISTI’sVisual Computing Laboratory (VC) explains:“Our group is responsible for getting the 3Ddimensional data, aligning the photos and cre-ating the software of the spatial browsing userinterface.”

“Scanning the Piazza della Signoria inFlorence, one of the three VISITO sites, took 2days using a FARO Laser Scanner. It is a verycomplex environment with rows of huge stat-ues, so data processing took about 3 weeks.We scanned our first site with a TOF flightcamera, but we were much happier once wepurchased the Faro scanner.

Once the 3D model was created, the next stepwas to manually prime the system with a selec-tion of photos from the Alinari photo library.Thereafter, the system takes over and can auto-

matically recognise other photos and addthem in the correct position.

FascinatEFascinatE, standing for Format-AgnosticSCript-based INterAcTive Experience, is anEU-funded research project that aims to allowend-users to interactively view and navigatearound an ultra-high resolution panorama ofa live event. The output will be intelligentlyadapted to suit anything from a mobile hand-set to an immersive panoramic display andthe audio will intelligently match the chosenshots. On the production side, this requires the devel-opment of new capture, scripting and formattransformation systems. New methods andhardware will also be needed to allow view-ers to control and display the content. Elevenpartners, all leaders in their respective tech-nologies teamed up to advance this vision. Work on FascinatE began in Feb 2010. As atest scenario for the software development, theproject members decided to capture a PremierLeague football game with a novel array ofcameras and microphones. One of the part-ners in the FascinatE project is the legendaryMunich-based Arnold & Richter Cine TechnikGmbH (ARRI). Having gained experience ofcombining camera footage with 3D scanningdata for CGI purposes, ARRI recommended aFARO Laser Scanner Focus3D laser scannerfor the geometrical calibration of the cameraand microphone positions and the scan of thewhole stadium. This will serve as the basis forcreating virtual camera movements.

Dr. Johannes Steurer, Principal Engineer atARRI, explained: “After the stadium wascleared, we scanned the whole stadium and

captured the positions of the microphones andcameras using reference cards and spheres.Thanks to a short rain shower before webegan, the air was clear, giving excellentresults. After 2.5 hours we had all 17 3Dscans on the SD card.”

An immersive futureThe FascinatE system will take the experienceof watching or attending a sports match orconcert to a whole new level. For example,thanks to the accurate positional informationgathered with the FARO Scanner, the systemwill be able to accurately and automaticallyblend the audio from different microphones inorder to suit the viewer’s chosen camera shot.

“FascinatE represents a paradigm shift wheredirectors surrender control to the end-viewer.However, the use of precise 3D positionalinformation to create a sense of actually beingthere will play a big part in the quality of expe-rience.” says James Needham of FaroTechnologies UK, one of the project’s enthusi-astic supporters.

Meanwhile, the VISITO project is focussed onthe user’s curiosity, bringing to life archivematerial and personal memories through 3dimensional browsing. The combination ofthese two approaches promises some trulyexciting and revolutionary new 3D immersiveexperiences.

Internet: www.fascinate-project.comwww.visitotuscany.it


New Dimensions of Augmented Reality

Future Immersive ExperiencesARRI recommended a FARO Laser Scanner Focus3D laser scanner forthe geometrical calibration of the camera and microphone positionsand the scan of the whole stadium.

A r t i c l e A r t i c l e


http://www.fascinate-project.com

http://www.visitotuscany.it


FME 2011 World Tour

The league of spatial superheroesAntwerp Zoo: place to be to watch animals and superheroes on April 6th. The last group willinglylocked itself up on this sunny spring day in order to learn about FME product updates and various customer stories.

Extracting, transformingand loading dataHow to become a superhero?More specific: a spatial super-hero? According to SafeSoftware FME is one way to go.This Feature Manipulation Engineenables you to view, edit andconvert all kinds of spatial datamodels and formats. In 1996Safe Software launched FME onto the market, resulting in not acommonly-used piece of softwareyet, but with lots of potential.

Large dataset conver-sionHow does it work? Well, itdepends on your needs, but FMEis most helpful when it comes tolarge datasets conversion. Shell for exam-ple is a company facing spatial data man-agement challenges. “Forty people on dif-ferent locations worldwide are daily usersof spatial data that are used throughout theentire oil life cycle. Our spatially enableddatabases contain CAD and GIS data,raster data and LiDAR data”, explains ShellGIS consultant Marc van Nes. “Thesedatabases are steadily growing and needto be consulted by a large vari-ety of software packages.”

FME Advantages forShellHere is when FME came to therescue. Van Nes: “FME containsa Reader and a Writer makingthe old MicroStation files usableagain. FME is able to read them,while MicroStation isn”t anylonger.” Van Nes illustrates the advan-tages of FME in daily use: “Notesare clipped to maps to reportconflicts for example. We can

also create differences maps when upload-ing maps from third party vendors. Thisgives the users insight in changes.”

The concept of data deliveryFor Shell FME is of help in transforming andsharing spatial data, but according to VanNes one aspect should never be forgotten:ensuring the right results. “The concept ofdata delivery will change. What needs to

be done in the backend to con-jure data in different ways. And:what do people need? Will apicture do, or is analysis of moreuse?”

Meeting (inter)nationalstandardsWhen it comes to workflow opti-mization and adequate datamanagement FME can give you“super power”. This might be agood thing to consider whenhaving to meet (inter)nationalstandards. The EuropeanINSPIRE legislation is one ofthese examples where these stan-dards need to be met.Managing director of GIM,Caroline Heylen and GIM’s cer-

tified FME professional Bruno De Lat illus-trate how. To refresh your memory: the oper-ational INSPIRE discovery/view servicesshould be operational Nov 2011, down-load services Dec 2012. “Data specifications are the most difficultpart of INSPIRE and FME can help”, Heylenstates. GIM colleague Mr De Lat points outthat there are two approaches: a one-stepapproach in which different data sources,

formats and such are preparedand delivered “on-the-fly”according to INSPIRE standards,and a two-step approach usinga staging spatial database. “Weprefer the last one since it over-comes limitations of logic, per-formance and scalability”, hesays.

Saving TimeDe Lat continues his demo byshowing where FME can help indata remodeling. “Part of thechallenge is to perform SchemaMapping, which is in fact

32 June 2011

E v e n t

By Sonja van Poortvliet

Visualizing LAS LiDAR data.

A Breakthrough in Handheld Accuracy

MobileMapper 100 will develop your taste for precision GIS. Discover it’s full features, performance and specs at www.ashtech.com.

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©2010 Ashtech LLC. All rights reserved. The Ashtech logo and MobileMapper are trademarks of Ashtech, LLC. All other products and brand names are trademarks of their respective holders.

China +86 10 5802 5174USA, NA +1 408 572 1103

[email protected]



©2010 Ashtech LLC. All rights reserved. The Ashtech logo and MobileMapper are trademarks of Ashtech, LLC.


FME 2011 World Tour

The league of spatial superheroes

E v e n t


MobileMapper 100 will develop your taste for precision GIS. Discover it’s full features, performance and specs at www.ashtech.com.

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restructuring data from a source model intodestination model. Normally this is intenseand time-consuming and needs a (domain)expert with knowledge of INSPIRE. This iswhere FME comes into the picture. WithSchemaMapper Transformer you can groupmultiple rules or values into one transformerwhich is applicable to several datasets. Thisis more sustainable than renaming attributes,types et cetera one by one.”Heylen summarizes the properties of FME.“Besides schema mapping there is data val-idation and there are facilities to publishthe data in several ways”. Consider usingFME not only for INSPIRE but also as a ben-efit for data management and optimizingpublication in general.”

Performance and complexity“Our ultimate goal is bringing FME to awider audience”, says Dean Hintz, SeniorAnalyst with the Professional Services team

at Safe Software. “Performance and com-plexity need constant attention. Automationis one of our challenges and that is why wekeep up with the evolution of current formats,brand new formats and new data types.”Besides talking about bug fixes, to be foundon www.fmeusercentral.com, Hintz alsoanswers one of the enhancement requestsfrom the audience: “how do I know whichtransformers are updated?” “We might dothis by showing these updates in a differentcolor”, is Hintz” answer.

Data overloadIn a presentation later that day Hintz focuseson workflow. “When you are involved in orresponsible for the GIS segment within yourorganization you are often overloaded withall kinds of data. This is when FME can meetyour needs. FME contains a data downloadservice that runs a process and writes theresult to a zip file, with a url link in a mail or

a browser. Live data streams is all about thedata itself instead of a link to a zip-file. Andthen there is data upload service, for pub-lishing source data. This is also a data streamand it reports the result of an upload.”Also quite useful might be the so-calledNetwork Validator. It checks the networkintegrity by running and testing it. If thereare bad files indications like “invalidattribute” are reported. “The NetworkValidator makes clear if and where there areloose ends. All meant to reduce resourcecontagion and to diminish the workload ofa GIS analyst.”

FME 2011What’s new in FME 2011? Hintz mentionssome highlights: “New parameter types anda choice with an alias, private parameters ,point cloud support and improved XML-trans-formers.” Hintz also introduces the “superhero rasterman”. “Since the first FME version withraster support in 2006 a lot has improved.There are more than 50 formats to choosefrom and we are able to reproject data, domosaicing and tiling and draping.Challenges are speed of these operationsand the automation of the memory manage-ment system.”

For more information, have a look at www.safe.comhttp://blog.safe.com: informative and sometimes even funny blog by

the “supermen” behind Safe Software.Online encyclopedia of FME technical information and examples

contributed by Safe staff and FME users: www.fmepedia.com

34 June 2011

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Geomatics and Agriculture

CAPIGI 2011Geospatial and agriculture could be close friends, in fact the two seem to be growing closer togetherall the time. The CAPIGI event offered three days of sessions, which demonstrated how these two fieldswhen combined, result in an overview of European products and services for organizing the agricultur-al workload in a much smarter way.

CAPIGI is an abbreviation of“Community on Agricultural PolicyImplementation and Geo

Information”. The community started in2005 by Wageningen University andResearch Centre, the ministry of Agricultureand Esri Europe, to share and discuss theadvances of geo-information applications in

the implementation of agricultural policiesin Europe, resulting in the first CAPIGI con-ference in that same year. The 2011 editionwas the fourth conference held by the com-munity and organized by the Dutch consult-ing company Aerovision. The event washeld in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, from4-6 April, and focused on the use of (geo-

)information (GI) to support agriculture andthe related value added chain of production.

The geographical scope was the whole ofEurope, with a lot of attention paid toEuropean legislation for collecting and shar-ing geographical data (such as the INSPIREprogram), satellite navigation systems andagricultural policy instruments, as well assolutions and services to agribusiness.Basically, the core focus of the event illus-trated how to reduce the cost of raisingcrops with geospatial technology. Thismeans organizing the workload in a smarterway. Since farmers have to deal with fixedprices on the market when selling theircrops, there are very few options availableto them to cut operating costs in order toraise their total price.Mapping, guiding and remote sensing werethe solutions discussed most during the vari-ous presentations throughout the event. With one hundred participants from thirteenEuropean countries, a total of forty presen-tations were held over a number of parallelsessions during the three days, so there wasa lot going on. What follows is an overviewof several of these presentations during thefirst two days of the event.

Opening Session – Spatial DataQuality in AmsterdamThe event started with some general presen-tations not specifically linked to the topic ofagriculture. The presentation by Ad van derMeer (Head of the unit Geo-Information inAmsterdam) was an interesting case on howto collect and manage geoinformation in alarge organization such as the city munici-pality, and keep everybody happy. His con-clusion that the benefits of geoinformationare hard to measure as compared to other

36 June 2011

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By Eric van Rees

Tamme van der Wal from Aerovision (source: Roosmarijn Haring)


costs that municipalities incur, was some-what sad: it showed that it is still hard topersuade people to invest more in the fieldof geoinformation (in other words: every-body wants it, but nobody wants to pay forit). It must have something to do with the factthat people take the existence of geographi-cal data for granted, although the oppositeis true.

European Space Dimensions -EGNOSTuesday, day two, offered a full programwith European Space Dimensions andMachine Guidance in the morning, followedin the afternoon by parallel sessions of,respectively, Information Exchange, GICommunity Sourcing and two sessions onSensing. The presentation on EGNOS, a satellite-based augmentation service, opened thesecond day of the event. EGNOS is theEuropean Geostationary Overlay Service,which improves the accuracy of positionmeasurements by sending out signals thatcorrect GPS data and provide information

on its reliability. The signal is free andalready widely used in agriculture, accord-ing to the presenter. As for the geographi-cal range, the service covers most of the EU,with further expansion to Africa, the MiddleEast and Eastern Europe planned for thisyear. For an explanation on how the serviceworks, see the article on page 10 in thisissue. EGNOS can be used as an afford-able, entry-level technology for a widerange of applications in precision agricul-ture. The term precision agriculture refers tothe use of satellite navigation, sensors, aeri-al imagery and other tools to determine opti-mal sowing density, fertilizer coverage andother inputs. Precision agriculture providesan answer to the challenges that faceagribusinesses, such as the rise in thedemand for crops due to populationincrease and bio-fuel demand. In addition,there is a limited increase in cultivable land,farmers face water shortages and energyprices rise. To meet these challenges, preci-sion agriculture provides an increase inyield production and better management ofresources. It helps to reduce chemical pollu-

tion, energy consumption and time. As forapplications, EGNOS can be widely used:arable, dairy, agro-logistic and legisla-tion/management are categories for whichthe service is ideally suited. The applicationdomain of EGNOS lies in the required accu-racy level between 1meter and 2.5 meters,such as for low-value crop cultivation (suchas cereals) and low-accuracy operationssuch as fertilizing and reaping. The addedvalue of the service is that it can offer anaffordable precision solution by enhancingthe benefits of precision agriculture, such asoptimizing crop yields and increasing profitmargins, and above all, saving time andmoney. In order to enhance market aware-ness and therefore create a bigger marketfor EGNOS, a strategy was outlined on howto penetrate the agricultural market in thecoming years, for instance partnering withindustry partners. These can be categorizedinto farmers, service providers, device man-ufacturers and vehicle manufacturers, thelast two being the key decision makers inthe value chain of GNSS in agriculture.

Machine Guidance – ClaasAgrosystemsClaas Agrosystems is an international com-pany that started in Germany. Their presen-tation on mobile data collection and datamanagement in modern agriculture seemedto be targeted at large agricultural business-es who want to optimize their workflows.Their brand called 'Easy' bundles all thecompany's electronic expertise, whether it'son board, in the field, on track or on thefarm. For precision farming and monitoring,the company offers two systems, ClaasTelematics and Agro Scout. The first is forperformance-data of machines online, thesecond for improving productive time in keytransport and logistics areas. The term'telematics' was used for combining infor-mation, control and support: with informa-

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Short presentations during the Pechakucha session (source: Roosmarijn Haring)



tion meaning the remote viewing of operat-ing data, performance data, and machine-related data in near-real time. Controlrelates to performance, location andmachine use, and support to service infor-mation, diagnosis and solutions. The remainder of the presentation offeredimpressive examples of experiences in thefield with the systems, such as performanceanalysis and comparison of differentmachines in a given time period, geofenc-ing (an alarm going off if a machine leavesor enters a preselected sector), yield mapsin Google Earth, and much more.

GI Community Sourcing -Volunteered GeographicalInformationCrowdsourcing can be an effective instru-ment for bottom-up initiatives that can causegovernments to act. Global and local initia-tives, discussed in two presentations on vol-unteered geographical information, offered

inspiring thoughts that can also be appliedto the agricultural community. The first pre-sentation was delivered by Grega Milcinski

from Sinergise, a Slovenian company thatprovides specialized development of high-quality geographic information systems forcomplex applications and demanding cus-tomers. The company is active in agricultureand also real estate management. Milcenski showed that after a slow rise inpopularity, crowd sourced initiatives such asWikipedia, are here to stay, but there a num-ber of critical conditions that have to be metfor such a project to succeed. The goal of aproject should be clear from the beginning,as well as its users and the data that is tobe collected and shared. Equally importantis the technology behind the project, andhow often and where the data is to beupdated and maintained. Two examples inreal-life exemplified these statements. Ofcourse, everyone will be familiar with OpenStreet Map, but less so with Geopedia, aSlovenian project that is in fact a VGI infras-tructure for the collection of all spatial datain Slovenia. Its basic content consists of gov-ernment data like topographic maps andaerial imagery. Plus it has a community of20,000 people, of which 5% are contribut-ing the majority of the data. The user baseis quite diverse, from cyclists to energy com-panies. An illegal dump registry caused thegovernment to take action and clean thesites, since there were many illegal dumpsin the country and the governmental datawas inaccurate. Milcenski concluded hispresentation by saying that VGI may notproduce perfect results, but neither do pro-fessional systems. I personally think thisstatement is too general, since data qualityvaries from country to country. However, Iagree with his statements that it can be goodenough for practical purposes, and that tech-nological improvements can make for betterdata in the future.

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38June 2011

Conference break (source: Roosmarijn Haring)

Conference break (source: Roosmarijn Haring)


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The second presentation on crowd sourcingmentioned a global project on land cover-age, named the Geo-Wiki project. It’s aglobal network of volunteers who wish tohelp improve the quality of global landcover maps. According to the project web-site, current ecosystem and land use sciencelacks crucial accurate data, for example fordetermining potential land use for agricul-ture. Behind all this lies the concept that astime progresses, land will be scarce andtherefore more and more important for theproduction of food, in the light of climatechange and a larger world population.

Volunteers contribute to the project byreviewing hotspot maps of global land coverdisagreement and determine if the landcover maps are correct or incorrect. Theydo this by comparing Google Earth dataand their own local knowledge. The resultsare recorded in a database intended for anew and improved future global land covermap. As for agriculture, the same conceptcould be applied to a 'farmers geo-wiki'.This remark touches on a topic referred toduring a number of presentations during thefirst two days, namely data sharing. Secondparties such as research institutes are inter-

ested in crop data, but they do not own thedata. What kind of data can be shared bywhom and under what conditions, is a topicto be explored in the future.

For more information, have a look at www.capigi.euEGNOS: www.egnos-portal.euGeopedia: www.geopedia.si

Geo-Wiki project: www.geo-wiki.org

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40June 2011

Conference participants (source: Roosmarijn Haring)

All presenters from the Pechakucha session (source: Roosmarijn Haring)

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http://www.geo-wiki.org

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For more information on Spectra Precision solutions please visit www.spectraprecision.com/info

FOCUS® 30 • Robotic, StepDrive™, and LockNGo™ models

• Powerful total station at only 5.0 kgs

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• Compact and lightweight

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• Spectra Precision Survey Pro™ onboard

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© 2011 Spectra Precision. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

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Showcasing new 3D technologies

SPAR 2011 In its eighth year, the annual SPAR International conference continued to grow and evolve, attractingrecord attendance of nearly 800 for the first time and more than 60 companies and associations to theexhibition hall. Held March 21 through 24, the event showed how much it has grown beyond its plantand process roots, with five tracks of seminars, presentations and roundtables that included the newestideas and technologies in 3D imaging.

It would be hard to imagine a better kickoff than the one providedby Brian Mathews, VP of Autodesk Labs, and David Lafferty, part ofthe Chief Technology Office at BP, during their morning keynote

addresses on day one. Mathews opened many eyes in the crowd with his predictions for thefuture of technology and how it would disrupt industry and mainstreamsociety alike. His thoughts on the democratization of reality capture,cloud computing, 3D printing, and how these technologies might con-verge in the near future had the room buzzing. Lafferty then followed with how he has practically applied 3D imagingto create a “game changing” experience at BP that has resulted in morethan $50 million in efficiency savings – although not without challenges.In fact, it was those challenges faced by many 3D professionals in fieldsas diverse as traditional surveying, facility management, and entertain-ment and gaming that the many new product releases at SPAR soughtto address.

Automated feature-extractionProbably most common among the new software innovations was amovement toward automated feature extraction. Kubit’s new PointSensesoftware is the first product from the company to address specific verti-cal applications, rather than simply be a catch-all point cloud enginelike previous kubit releases. First in the PointSense family is PointSensePlant, for industrial and process facility design, which allows users to

work with point clouds in an AutoCAD environment and more rapidlyperform modeling and feature-extraction tasks.

Kubit USA owner Scott Diaz said programmers have focused on a“semi-automatic” approach to feature extraction, so that automatic soft-ware actions don”t add more time in errors than they save in automa-tion. Similarly, ClearEdge3D launched at the SPAR conference its newEdgewise Plant, which also attacks this problem of time-consuming mod-eling. ClearEdge head of business development Tim Lowry said thesoftware “solves a problem, taking a lot of the time consuming manualeffort to go from point cloud to 3D model – we”re saving anywherefrom 35 to 70 percent of the modeling time.”

Not to be outdone, AVEVA also launched a competing product in thisspace at SPAR, its AVEVA Laser Modeller, which EVP Mat Truche-Gordon described as “totally changing the landscape for operators byallowing cost-effective creation of an accurate digital asset from theoperating facility.” Certainty3D’s product similarly is pegged at making point cloud datamore useful, post-collection, but is aimed directly at the transportationand mobile mapping marketplace. The company’s TopoDOT softwaremade waves not only for its ease of use, but also for its new pricingstructure, both of which open up the value of point cloud data to amuch wider audience within an engineering operation.All four of these software releases have as their goal making point clouddata more useful, getting closer to two basic ideals in the 3D imagingspace: 1. A completely, or nearly so, automated process of creatinggeometry from point clouds, and 2. An elimination of the need to extractgeometry at all, with intelligence able to be added to the point clouds,as is, effectively making the point cloud, itself, the model.

Revit and mobile trackThese goals are at the heart of the burgeoning scan-to-BIM market, and,indeed, the scan-to-BIM track drew great attention at SPAR, as Autodeskannounced its new Revit release would be able to incorporate pointcloud data. Perhaps the only technology getting more attention than this new soft-ware and scan-to-BIM was the mobile mapping technology on displayin the parking lot of the Woodlands Marriott, where the SPARInternational conference was held. Nine separate vehicles were offeringdemonstrations, and there was great interest in the different capabilities. Further, the Mobile Surveying track was very well attended, with pre-sentations kicked off by Tom Yarbrough, of the Texas DOT, and Ray

June 2011

By Sam Pfeifle

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Brian Mathews, VP Autodesk Labs, keynote presenter

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42


Mandli, head of Mandli Communications. Mandli took part of his timeto announce a new Geospatial Transportation Mapping Association,which will focus on creating standards for collecting infrastructure androadway data via laser scanning, as well as advocating for the prac-tice being used in government programs like the Highway Safety DataImprovement Program recently proposed by the Obama Administration.

A new 3D Imaging Data Exchange StandardIn other association news, John Russo of ARC announced the creationof the US Institute of Building Documentation, a new non-profit groupaiming to promote building documentation as its own distinct industryand, yes, create standards for building documentation. Further, KenSmerz of 3D Precision Scanning, announced the creation of the 3DProfessional Association, a group looking to bring together serviceproviders and others in the business of collecting and disseminating 3Ddata to create best practices and share information.

This intense new interest in industry associations and standards pointsto the fact that 3D imaging is still an industry in its infancy. Though itcontains within in it any number of well-established industries like sur-veying, facility management, forensics, and the like, the best practicesfor collecting and using 3D data in those fields are still being devel-oped.

That’s why there was some great interest in yet another standards-ori-ented announcement at SPAR International – that of the ASTM e57 stan-dards committee’s first release, the ASTM e2807 Specification for 3DImaging Data Exchange, V1.0. In a manufacturer’s roundtable discus-

sion on the impact of this new standard, headed by e57 committeechairman Kamel Saidi and membership secretary Tom Greaves (alsomanaging director of SPAR Point Group), there was intense discussionof how to make this standard useful for everyone in the technologychannel without it limiting innovation. However, the general consensusseemed to be that this is a good start toward making 3D data collect-ed via laser scanning much more interoperable and portable betweensoftware platforms.

Augmented RealityOf course, not all of the presentations at SPAR were focused on suchnuts-and-bolts matters. One of the more popular tracks focused on thenewest of the new. Third generation surveyor Sam Billingsley, ofGeophysical Data Management, gave an excellent presentation onhow surveyors could get involved in the rapidly growing field of aug-mented reality applications. Amadeus Burger of CSA Inc., demonstrat-ed the ability to call up 3D scan data on a mobile device and have itautomatically orient with the scene being captured by the mobiledevice’s camera. Elmer Bol, head of Alice Labs, demonstrated softwarethat can visualize literally billions of points at once. “The amount ofdata you can visualize now has virtually no limit,” Bol told a wowedaudience.

Answers to your questionsThere was the sense, too, at SPAR International that we have yet tocome close to seeing the limits of what 3D imaging technology canaccomplish. Applications are still being developed every day.Business models are rapidly forming and changing. Old ways ofdoing things are being merged with new technologies to form moreefficient workflows and rapidly deliver actionable data. As with any great conference, SPAR attendees mostly left with morequestions bouncing around their heads than answers. Perhaps they”llfind some of those answers at SPAR Japan next month in Kawasakior at SPAR Europe in the Hague in November.

Sam Pfeifle, Editor, SPAR Point Group.

Latest News? Visit www.geoinformatics.com June 2011

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A shot of the crowd at the keynote presentation

Lynx mobile mapping system, produced by Optech

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Host DVW e.V. German Society for Geodesy, Geoinformation and Land Managementwww.dvw.de

Conference organiserDVW GmbHEgbertstraße 46, 40489 DüsseldorfDGfK e.V. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Kartographie | www.dgfk.net

Trade fair organiser HINTE Messe- und Ausstellungs-GmbHBannwaldallee 60, 76185 KarlsruheFon: +49 721 [email protected]

www.intergeo.de

with 59th German

Cartographic Conference

September 27 � 29, 2011

Knowledge and Action for Planet Earth

Nuremberg, September 27th to 29th, 2011

September 27 � 29, 201with 59




September 27 � 29, 201with 59th German German

thwith 59



Cartographic Conference1


September 27 � 29, 201German German


wwwGeoinformation and Land ManagementDVW e.VHost

Kartographie | wwwDGfK e.VEgbertstraße 46, 40489 DüsseldorfDVW GmbHConference organiser

.de.dvwwwwGeoinformation and Land Management

, German Society for Geodesy. DVW e.VHost

.dgfk.netKartographie | www Deutsche Gesellschaft für . DGfK e.V

Egbertstraße 46, 40489 DüsseldorfDVW GmbHConference organiser

[email protected]: +49 721 93133-0Bannwaldallee 60, 76185 Karlsruhe

Ausstellungs-GmbHHINTE Messe- und rade fair organiserT


http://www.dvw.de

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The State of Fibre Technology

Report on the FTTH ConferenceAs in the past three years, the Fibre to the Home (FTTH) Council Europe organized its yearly conferencein another European city, this time Milano. This year’s edition counted more than 3000 participantsfrom 80 countries and offered an overview of the current state of the fibre industry, as well as the lat-est technological developments.

As in the past three years, the Fibre tothe Home (FTTH) Council Europeorganized its yearly conference in

another European city, this time Milano. TheFTTH Council Europe is an organizationformed by some 150 plus companies thatproduce, sell and advise in the area of FTTHnetworks. Given the “state” of the industry,much of the focus is on technology innova-tion as it pertains to the physical part of net-work construction. Another focus is on thebusiness and regulatory aspects that areneeded to justify all the investment required.Clearly, FTTH is an important renewal of thecommunications infrastructure that suppos-edly will bring economic advantages to theregions that deploy it. To be honest, for mostconsumers, more bandwidth for interactivevideo and a lower price for triple play ser-vices should come first. The difficulty forfibre is bringing up compelling arguments,which is difficult in the short term. It is theopinion of the authors that the “killer apps”will take some time, and a certain partici-pation level will be necessary, before FTTHis successful, much like the 4th generationsmart-phone.

ParticipantsNevertheless, the future for FTTH looksbright, certainly in terms of European politi-cal support. Every year the number of visi-tors to the Conference grows, and inFebruary 2011, there were more than3000 participants from 80 countries. Apartfrom the obvious vendor participants, alarge part of the “real visitors” come fromvarious companies and institutions thatinvest in, or construct fibre infrastructure.Given the fact that current investment perFTTH subscriber averages approximately€500, and on a European scale, even with60% participation, this is a massive amountof money. From the theoretical €500, about

46 June 2011

E v e n t

By Freek Boersma and Will van Doorn

Dr. Letizia Moratti, mayor of Milan (source: www.ftthcouncil.eu)


http://www.ftthcouncil.eu

€340 is for civil works and €160 is forequipment (electronics, fibres). From the€500, maybe €20 is reserved for engineer-ing design and surveying, the areas whereGIS-related technology is crucial.

SponsorsTherefore, the largest part of the conferenceis about non-GIS technology, the “Gold”and “Silver” sponsors of this conference areall vendors of cables and active equipment.Only at the “Bronze” level will we find com-panies like Bentley Systems and Esri thatdeliver telecom GIS solutions, or NetAdminfor network management and inventory(OSS); Infotech for GIS data entry or migra-tions.Although everybody understands that GISmatters, on the exhibition floor there is animpressive collection of tubes, electronics,drilling machines, oscilloscopes and thelike? Surveying, which of course is an impor-tant aspect of creating the new infrastruc-ture, has a minor presence, registering isseen as a commodity; the GPS-based datacollection is just part of the contractor’s workand deliverable.

PresentationsRegarding the presentations, Dr. LetiziaMoratti, mayor of Milano, opened the sym-posium and stressed the importance of fibrefor Milano’s health care and education sys-tems. Professor Carlota Perez brought up anumber of parallels between investment,construction of infrastructure and economicdevelopment. Obviously, 19th centurysteam, rail, and 20th century electricity aregood examples. FTTH should be the 21stcentury example, also enabling a sustain-able and green society.The most important speaker in 2011though,was Neelie Kroes, vice president of theEuropean Commission and responsible for

the Digital Agenda. Some citations from herspeech:“At the heart of the Digital Agenda is ensur-ing that Europeans can get all the advan-tages and benefits that come from access tosuperfast broadband. Succeeding in thisambition is central to our economic future.”“While the EU broadband market is movingtowards higher speeds because of fibre andcable, time is against us. The current rate ofnew connections – now down to 25,000 aday – is simply not enough to meet our

2020 targets. So we have to intensify ourefforts and get higher investments on theground.”

Coverage and TechnologyIn terms of FTTH coverage, for many yearsScandinavia and the Netherlands were onthe top of the list. However, in recent yearscountries like Slovenia and Portugal areincreasing, but also Russia, Germany andFrance have started important fibre initia-tives. In the Netherlands, the predominant

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The State of Fibre Technology

Report on the FTTH Conference

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company Reggefiber (40% owned by KPN)has indicated it wants to intensify its invest-ment. Also Rabobouwfonds CIF, which is anew party, apparently sees the benefits offibre to the home investment.Fibre technology in the meantime is develop-ing in terms of electronics, the “active equip-ment”. In many cases, fibre subscribers getan up- and downstream bandwidth of100Mbit/s. However, current technologyeasily delivers 1Gbit/s. As the usability ofthe tiny fibre cables becomes better, theycould be used for installation in apartmentsand homes.

Engineering Lastly, the GIS software seen at the exhibitionobviously focuses on the engineering side ofthe networks. Where the operational man-agement of telecom networks is a well estab-lished one of software architecture and func-tionality, designing mass deployment in newhomes is a new area. The traditionalAutoCAD and Excel-based engineering pro-cesses that are popular in engineering com-

panies greatly lack data quality assurance.The Belgian company Comsof showed itsresults in automatic fibre design with theirproduct FiberPlanIT, developed in conjunctionwith the University of Ghent (UniversiteitGent). Comsof was present at the BentleySystems booth, and with Comsof cooperationthe company has expanded its Bentley Fibertelecom GIS with this advanced technology.The main advantage is being able to quicklydesign and calculate the cost of a network.Comsof illustrated this with a calculation for2500 homes, with full network design at fibrelevel. In just one minute, it displayed theresults in Bentley Fiber with a complete costoverview in Excel now used as a calculationand reporting tool.The next FTTH Conference will be held inMünchen, 14-16 February 2012.

Frederik Boersma [email protected], Business ConsultantEMEA Utilities & Communications, Bentley Systems

Will van Doorn, [email protected].

“At the heart of the Digital Agendais ensuring that Europeans can getall the advantages and benefits

that come from access to superfastbroadband. Succeeding in this

ambition is central to our economicfuture”, said Mrs. Neelie Kroes,vice president of the European

Commission.

(sourc

e: ww

w.ftthcou

ncil.e

u)







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June

01-03 June 4th EARSeL Workshop on RemoteSensing for Land Use & Land CoverCzech Technical University, Prague, Czech RepublicInternet: www.earsel.org/SIG/LULC/index.php

01-03 June 5th EARSeL Workshop on RemoteSensing of the Coastal ZoneCzech Technical University, Prague, Czech RepublicInternet: www.earsel.org/SIG/CZ/5th-workshop/index.php

02-03 June 1st EARSeL SIG Forestry workshop:Operational remote sensing in forest manage-mentCzech Technical University, Prague, Czech RepublicInternet: www.earsel.org/SIG/Forestry/call.php

05-11 June Summer Institute on “VolunteeredGeographic Information”Florence (Firenze), ItalyE-mail: [email protected]: www.vespucci.org

06-09 June HEXAGON 2011, Building a SmarterWorld (Leica, ERDAS, Intergraph & HexagonMetrology)Orlando, FL, U.S.A.Internet: www.hexagonconference.com

08-10 June The Power of The Image The BritishCartographic Society Annual SymposiumShrigley Hall, Nr Macclesgield, Cheshire, U.K.Internet: www.cartography.org.uk

13-17 June URISA Leadership AcademySt. Louis, MO, U.S.A.E-mail: [email protected]: www.urisa.org

14-17 June WG IV/2 Workshop “High ResolutionEarth Imaging for Geospatial Information”Hannover, GermanyE-mail: [email protected]: www.commission4.isprs.org/wg2

15-16 June Navigation Strategies Europe 2011andel’s Hotel, Berlin, GermanyInternet: www.thewherebusiness.com/navigationstrate-gieseurope

19-25 June 11th International MultidisciplinaryScientific Geo-Conference and Expo - SGEM 2011Albena sea-side and SPA resort, BulgariaInternet: www.sgem.org

22-23 June The Geodetic Infrastructure in EuropeUmea, SwedenE-mail: [email protected]: www.aspect.se/ASPECT-seminarier-clge-juni-2011.html

22-24 June 11th SEASC 2011 and 13th ISC 2011Kuala Lumpur, MalaysiaInternet: www.seasc2011.org

27-30 June GIS in Public Health ConferenceAtlanta, GA, U.S.A.E-mail: [email protected]: www.urisa.org

27 June-08 July GISLERS - Summer School 2011 on“Bridging GIS, Landscape Ecology and RemoteSensing for Landscape Planning”Salzburg, AustriaE-mail: [email protected]: www.edu-zgis.net/ss/gislers2011

27 June-08 July Summer School on “Spatial DataInfrastructure for environmental datasets”Salzburg, AustriaE-mail: [email protected]: www.edu-zgis.net/ss/envisdi2011

28-29 June ISEPP: International Symposium onEnvironmental Protection and Planning:Geographic Information Systems (GIS) andRemote Sensing (RS) ApplicationsGediz University, Izmir, TurkeyInternet: www.cevkorconferences.com

29 June-01 July ICSDM 2011 and BJ-IWGIS 2011Fuzhou, ChinaE-mail: [email protected]: www.icsdm2011.org

July

03-08 July ICC 2011 - 25th InternationalCartographic ConferencePalais des Congrès, Paris, FranceE-mail: [email protected]: www.icc2011.fr

05-08 July GI_Forum 2011Salzburg, AustriaE-mail: [email protected]: www.gi-forum.org

09-12 July Esri Education User ConferenceSan Diego, California, U.S.AInternet: www.esri.com/educ

09-12 July Survey SummitSan Diego Convention Center, San Diego, CA, U.S.A.Internet: www.esri.com

11-15 July Esri UCSan Diego Convention Center, San Diego, CA, U.S.A.Internet: www.esri.com/events/user-conference/index.html

August

09-11 August International Symposium on Imageand Data FusionTengchong, Yunnan, ChinaInternet: http://isidf2011.casm.ac.cn

15-18 August URISA/NENA Addressing ConferenceNew Orleans, LA, U.S.A.E-mail: [email protected]: www.urisa.org

15-19 August AGSE 2011 “Geoinformation for abetter world”Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology,Nairobi, KenyaE-mail: [email protected], [email protected]: http://applied-geoinformatics.org

21-25 August SPIE Optics + Photonics 2011San Diego Convention Center, San Diego, CA, U.S.A.Internet: http://spie.org

29-31 August ISPRS Laser Scanning 2011WorkshopCalgary, CanadaInternet: www.ucalgary.ca/laserscanning2011

September

05-07 September SoC2011: Society ofCartographers” 47th Annual Summer SchoolUniversity of Plymouth, Plymouth, U.K.E-mail: [email protected]: http://soc2011.soc.org.uk

05-09 September IAMG 2011 – Mathematical Geo -sciences at the Crossroads of Theory and PracticeSalzburg, AustriaInternet: www.iamg2011.at

06-08 September CoastGIS 2011 InternationalConference and ExhibitionOostende, BelgiumE-mail: [email protected]: www.coastgis.info

12-14 September GIS in Public TransportationConferenceSt. Petersburg, FL, U.S.A.E-mail: [email protected]: www.urisa.org

12-16 September FOSS4G 2011Denver, CO, U.S.A.Internet: http://2011.foss4g.org

13-15 September Remote Sensing andPhotogrammetry Society Annual Conference‘Earth Observation in a Changing World’Bournemouth University, Bournemouth , U.K.Internet: www.rspsoc2011.org

27-29 September Intergeo 2011Nuremberg, GermanyInternet: www.intergeo.de

19-22 September 11th International Scientific andTechnical Conference “From imagery to map:digital photogrammetric technologies”Tossa de Mar, SpainInternet: www.racurs.ru/Spain2011/en

28-30 September UDMS 2011 28th Urban DataManagement SymposiumDelft, The NetherlandsE-mail: [email protected]: www.udms.net

October

05-07 October Geomatics Atlantic 2011St. John’s, Sheraton Newfoundland Hotel,CanadaInternet: www.GeomaticsAtlantic.com

Please feel free to e-mail your calendar notices to:[email protected]

C a l e n d a r 2 0 1 1 / A d v e r t i s e r s I n d e x

Ashtech www.ashtech.com 33

ERDAS www.erdas.com 21

Esri www.esri.com 9

Foif www.foif.com.cn 39

GeoInformatics www.geoinformatics.com 48

Intergeo www.intergeo.de 45

ITC www.itc.nl 44

Leica Geosystems www.leica-geosystems.com 25

NovAtel www.novatel.com 17

Optech www.optech.ca 35

Racurs www.racurs.ru 29

Safe www.safe.com 52

Sokkia www.sokkia.eu 51

Spectra Precision www.spectraprecision.com 41

Stonex www.stonexeurope.com 2

SuperMap www.supermap.com 49

Topcon Europe www.topcon.eu 13

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50 June 2011

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http://www.earsel.org/SIG/LULC/index.php

http://www.earsel.org/SIG/CZ/5th-workshop/index.php



http://www.earsel.org/SIG/Forestry/call.php


http://www.vespucci.org

http://www.hexagonconference.com

http://www.cartography.org.uk


http://www.urisa.org


http://www.commission4.isprs.org/wg2

http://www.thewherebusiness.com/navigationstrate-gieseurope19-25



http://www.sgem.org


http://www.aspect.se/ASPECT-seminarier-clge-juni-2011.html

http://www.aspect.se/ASPECT-seminarier-clge-juni-2011.html

http://www.seasc2011.org




http://www.edu-zgis.net/ss/gislers2011


http://www.edu-zgis.net/ss/envisdi2011

http://www.cevkorconferences.com


http://www.icsdm2011.org


http://www.icc2011.fr


http://www.gi-forum.org

http://www.esri.com/educ

http://www.esri.com

http://www.esri.com/events/user-conference/index.html

http://isidf2011.casm.ac.cn







http://applied-geoinformatics.org

http://spie.org

http://www.ucalgary.ca/laserscanning2011


http://soc2011.soc.org.uk

http://www.iamg2011.at


http://www.coastgis.info



http://2011.foss4g.org

http://www.rspsoc2011.org


http://www.racurs.ru/Spain2011/en


http://www.udms.net

http://www.GeomaticsAtlantic.com


http://www.ashtech.com

http://www.erdas.com

http://www.esri.com

http://www.foif.com.cn



http://www.itc.nl

http://www.leica-geosystems.com

http://www.novatel.com

http://www.optech.ca

http://www.racurs.ru

http://www.safe.com

http://www.sokkia.eu

http://www.spectraprecision.com

http://www.stonexeurope.com

http://www.supermap.com

http://www.topcon.eu

C a l e n d a r 2 0 1 1 / A d v e r t i s e r s I n d e x

GNSS Rece i ve r

The entirely new Sokkia GNSS system provides unsurpassed versatility and usability for RTK,network RTK and static survey, enhancing efficiency in all types of field work.

www.sokkia.eu

Scalable - Affordable - Triple Wireless Technologies

ULTIMATEVERSATILITY


http://www.sokkia.eu

geoinformatics 2011 vol04

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