If you’ve read this far, you are fully aware of the massive transformation taking place in GIS and imagery. Never before have so many information feeds of imagery and geographic information been accessible to the rapidly growing GIS community—with no computing or storage limits. This is true not just for extremely large enterprise computing configurations in big organizations, but also for virtually everyone via ArcGIS in the cloud. You are limited only by your imagination of what might be possible.
With the growth in cloud computing, along with advances in ArcGIS and the explosion of imagery and remote sensing feeds, it’s an exciting time to be a GIS user. A great transformation is underway. GIS is becoming more social, more accessible, and more effective. Every day, we are seeing how GIS can make a real difference and add meaning to people’s lives. GIS is becoming a human activity—how people apply ArcGIS as a framework to collaborate with each other, to work more efficiently, to make better decisions, to increase understanding, to communicate better, and to make a real difference in the world—to intelligently effect change. And imagery is playing a big part in this transformation.
What is clear is that these new environments invite and encourage—and, some would say, demand—collaboration and information sharing across organizations and communities. We believe that these opportunities are so significant that the concept and vision for GIS has forever changed. Not only are you working on your GIS for your organization, but your work is also a vital part of the larger “GIS for the world.”
Your own GIS is simply your view into this larger collaborative system. It’s a two-way street. You consume information that you need from others, and in turn, you feed your information back into the larger ecosystem for exploitation and use by other organizations.
Can there be any doubt that imagery is leading the way for this revolution in information sharing and use?
GIS has grown to encompass use by over 350,000 organizations worldwide and is being applied in virtually every field of human endeavor. Imagery provides the engine that lights up GIS, and it is enabling unprecedented adoption across the world. That’s the power of imagery—we all understand something when we can see it.
Since the early days in GIS, people realized that to be successful they would need imagery and data from sources beyond their immediate workgroups. People quickly recognized the need for data sharing. Open GIS and data sharing were gaining traction quite rapidly across the GIS community, and these features continue to be a critical aspect in GIS implementation.
GIS provides a kind of integration engine, and this is a profound idea. By all of us focusing and working on our own geographic information systems, we’re assembling this very promising, comprehensive GIS for the world. This is growing and getting richer every day. There’s a global collection of imagery information that’s being assembled and updated daily. These feeds and services are further built out by the entire GIS user community—all in a series of information layers that reference the earth, making it simple to integrate information from multiple sources.
GIS is moving to the cloud, to this great computing network that makes information available, enabling all of us to have access to these rich collections of information. Every layer has a URL—a web address—that is findable and makes the data easily usable. You now simply reference a data layer’s URL to bring it into your GIS and use it for real work. Mash up layers from different sources, save it all into a web map, publish it as an app, and all of a sudden you’ve created a brand-new, powerful information product that can be shared with virtually anyone. This new era of geo-authorship enables us to take a point of view, make a case, and persuade and influence others.
Imagine a future where every GIS user has access to a catalog of imagery, remote sensing information, and other geographic layers shared by many organizations for all areas of the world. Further imagine that this imagery catalog is being updated with new scenes every day. And that new sensors are being launched on a daily basis. And that much of this information is being publicly shared. The future is now.
This modern GIS that has emerged is participatory and social. Given our society’s information needs, these modern systems don’t just encourage participation—the system users demand it. It’s worth recognizing and drawing your attention to many of these key advances that are changing our view and our vision for what is possible with the synergy of imagery and GIS.
GIS and imagery require not only big data, but also big computing. And any level of computing is possible now in cloud systems that you can turn on when you need them. Today, you can run your high-end analytics near your data sources. Storage capacity is virtually limitless. More is available when you need it. Users rarely buy large computing configurations—instead they gain access using cloud computing.
In the early years of image processing, many imagery sources were expensive to collect and would take months to gather. Today and in the future, many satellites and other platforms are delivering high-value information using multiband sensors, lidar, and many other data sources. Users now expect that highly suitable imagery will be available to support their work. Like never getting lost, thanks to GPS smartphones, or having cinema-quality large displays in our living rooms, 24-7 access to all the world’s imagery is the new normal. The implications of this transformation are just starting to be recognized.
GIS is all about analysis and combining multiple layers using intelligent analytic models. ArcGIS provides a rich and varied collection of analytic tools for you to harness and apply to your work and problems. These analytics can be applied to data residing anywhere—on personal desktops, in large enterprise computers, or in ArcGIS Online in the cloud. Imagery analytics comprise one of the most dramatically expanding capabilities for big imagery processing.
The age of drones has arrived, along with our ability to fly personal missions to map our own small geographies and to apply GIS in whole new ways to a new range of problems—assessing street pavement; flying utility corridors; conserving fish and wildlife habitat; responding to emergencies and disasters; monitoring our climate, forests, and agricultural fields; and managing our small microgeographies.
New sensors are being launched every day and are helping us build focused imagery collections. These contain spectral bands that enable analytic processing to divine information and results that enable us to better monitor and manage our operations and missions.
In the future, not only will you download raw imagery data from satellites, you will also download processed imagery in which analytic computations are performed on the fly to serve your imagery.
ArcGIS contains analytic capabilities that can be deployed virtually anywhere, from the sensor to your local computer to cloud processing of your intelligent imagery. Further, this analytic processing is happening in near real-time. So the information feeds you see coming from these platforms are more than raw image data feeds—they provide imagery intelligence that has already been processed into useful information to better support your operations and activities.
How many people do you think have access to 10,000-plus computers as Google does? And who could afford that? Actually, the reality is that all ArcGIS users are gaining access to massive computing resources in the cloud for distributed raster storage and analytics.
GIS and imagery provide an integration engine by combining geographic information layers of many kinds. As community participation and sharing grows across thousands of organizations, the information and imagery layers in the GIS of the world become richer and more capable. ArcGIS, along with cloud computing, is enabling insight about our planet.
It’s enabling users to integrate these layers both visually and analytically, providing new and deeper insights and perspectives to better understand and manage our world.
The photos and video gathered from drone missions are captured either pointing straight down, for the purpose of creating orthocorrected mapping products, or from oblique angles at buildings and other infrastructure, typically for inspection applications. Both approaches generate GIS-ready data. Below are examples of the 2D GIS data outputs that are generated from Drone2Map sessions; below that is a gallery of 3D outputs.
A LAS file is an industry-standard format for storing airborne lidar data. In this rendering, each point has been assigned an RGB value from the source photo, creating a photorealistic effect.
The same LAS point cloud can also be rendered based on attributes in the data, such as elevation as shown here. The red color is the highest elevation in the scene.
The 3D mesh is a composite of all the points, connected together in a constellation of triangles, or facets. This allows for a navigable 3D scene.
The raw oblique photos taken by the camera serve multiple purposes. First, they are the source for 3D data layers. In addition, each photo also serves as a stand-alone inspection product.
How many times have you heard a “digital immigrant”—someone born before social technologies came online—say something like, “My 5-year-old nephew had to show me how to use an app on my smartphone”? The majority of today’s students have never experienced life without smartphones, desktop computers, tablets, laptops, or GPS devices. They have nearly always been digitally connected to the world through the Internet, mobile technology, and social media, which means they are the first true “digital natives”—a term used by the Pew Foundation that means they have never had to adapt to digital technologies. This has transformed how modern students interact with others, how they view the world, and how they use technology. Growing up digital has also significantly impacted how students learn.
GIS, global positioning systems (GPS), and remote sensing are fundamentally changing the way students learn about their world. The same tools that government agencies, businesses, environmental groups, and health care industries are using to solve problems and make decisions in their respective fields are now being employed by students to explore and address real-world issues in their classrooms.
GIS is a real-world, problem-solving tool. GIS users outside of the educational setting—those in government, business, natural resources management, health care, and so on—employ this powerful technology for that very reason. It is, by far, the most versatile and effective problem-solving tool available. Whether the subject is science, math, or economics; whether the classroom is elementary, middle school, or high school—when students learn with GIS, they learn how to use technology effectively to holistically address questions and they are better prepared to meet the challenges of work and life in the twenty-first century.
Educational leaders have long argued for a problem-based approach to learning. Problem-based learning is open ended; it is a process of inquiry that examines alternatives and possibilities rather than memorizing a single, correct solution. The use of GIS in the classroom fosters problem-solving skills such as asking relevant questions; acquiring data with which to investigate those questions; observing and analyzing patterns in that data; drawing inferences and conclusions from data analysis; and acting on the findings of the investigation. GIS prepares students for the workplace, where problem-solving skills are essential. A GIS-enabled classroom is a stepping-stone to the future. GIS, by its very nature, is interdisciplinary and serves as an ideal tool for the integration of knowledge and skills from varied core subjects. In GIS, mathematics and geography merge to form a foundation for the observation and analysis of data from history, civics, environmental science, biology, earth science, sociology, linguistics, literature, and other fields of study. Through interdisciplinary analysis, GIS not only encourages the transfer of learning across a range of content areas, but it also reinforces the learning in each by demonstrating its applicability and relevance.
In the past 20 years we have witnessed a sea change in GIS, and those changes have profound implications for the classroom. Twenty years ago, GIS was a desktop-based software. To use it in classrooms, educators had to confront the often-difficult issues of software installation and data storage. Sharing and collaboration among students could be laborious. Today’s educators and students can bypass those issues by using ArcGIS Online, enriching their own data with infinite open data resources, and fostering data analysis, sharing, and collaboration through the powerful capabilities of an ArcGIS organization. Further, the proliferation of data collection apps for mobile devices means that students can now take their GIS beyond the classroom walls to their real-world study areas.
GIS engages students in ways that no other teaching tool has ever done. With GIS, students have the power to address problems in their own communities and confront problems in which they have a personal interest. GIS enables them to be the agents of their own learning. As they collect, evaluate, and analyze data relevant to the questions they ask, the GIS workflow forces them to process that information and come to data-driven conclusions. As one teacher put it, “The student who makes the map is the student who learns.”
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a public-private organization formed in 2002 to advance a new model of learning, asserts: “There remains a profound gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need in typical 21st-century communities and workplaces.” The integration of leading edge technologies (and GIS in particular) across the curriculum creates an essential bridge across that gap.
Here are three main thoughts. First, pay attention to your students. At least some part of your experience has to be observing and interpreting how your learners react to new software, and new curricula. Try to keep in mind that this community of students brings a whole new set of expectations and skills to the table. The first time we introduced The ArcGIS Book: 10 Big Ideas about Applying Geography to Your World to students, within 20 minutes a group of them opened the book’s PDF version on their phone, leaving their laptop screen for their online mapping. We remember looking at each other, thinking, “Is this going to work?” Yes, it did work, and in another five minutes, most of the other students were doing the same. Second, use what your students know to your advantage. Their skill with their mobile devices and apps means that you are not responsible for writing pages of instructions. Last, but most important, let your students ask their questions.
According to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) statistics, there were already more than 400,000 UAV (drone) pilots operating in the United States as of March 2016. Worldwide this number probably exceeds one million. So while this is an exciting time for drone hobbyists and professionals alike, it’s important to understand the rules around drone flight in the nation. Other countries have their own rules (or not). Make sure you check with your local aviation authority before launching your mission. The following partial list is provided by 3DR, a leader in the citizen and commercial small drone space.
In this lesson, you’ll run a complete inspection and mapping mission for an office building in Etterschlag, Germany, which is within the municipality of Worthsee. You’ll download the trial version of Drone2Map and the sample data, and then use the software to process the data just as it looks as it comes off the drone. You’ll set up the parameters that will create a number of 2D and 3D outputs, including an orthomosaic; 3D mesh; digital surface model; and even a special kind of sharing document, a 3D PDF. At the end, you’ll publish your data tile service in ArcGIS Online.
Drones provide an affordable means of capturing images of natural and man-made, land-based features and areas that may be difficult to access or fully cover because of size or terrain. Inspection of critical infrastructure using drones is a growing practice that improves the ability to inspect fixed assets, including those that span vast areas.
