Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications

Editor in Chief Joe Francica provides an encapsulated review of publicly traded geospatial information and location technology companies. The global economic turmoil has had a dramatic impact on this technology sector, with few companies delivering positive gains for shareholders. The roller-coaster ride of the last two years is unlikely to change but opportunities exist for investors who believe that location-based information is still an essential driver of business.

In December, Infotech Enterprises and DTS GIS participated in a Directions Magazine webinar to present a cost-effective solution to the NERC-mandated transmission line monitoring. This webinar sparked more good questions than could be answered during the allotted time. Here those answers are presented in detail.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection reports that the Marcellus Shale underlying much of Pennsylvania and portions of New York and West Virginia is believed to hold trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. This formation has long been considered prohibitively expensive to access but recent advances in drilling technology and rising natural gas prices have attracted new interest in this previously untapped formation. Updated lease maps of the area are critical to tapping this vast energy resource. Editor in Chief Joe Francica spoke to Brock McCarty of

Executive Editor Adena Schutzberg picked out the top All Points Blog posts and "Worth a Click" items from the last six months. If you missed them the first time around - here's an opportunity to catch up!

Editor in Chief Joe Francica picked out the top articles from the Directions Magazine archives. The criteria was a balance between "editor's choice" articles, and those that were most popular according to our reader statistics. If you missed them the first time around - here's an opportunity to catch up!

Ignacio Guerrero is currently a principal for Andes Consulting and has held senior management roles with Intergraph and Rolta. He attended the Rocket City Geospatial & Alabama GIS Conference, which took place in mid-November in Huntsville, AL. He offers a recap and his assessment of the conference.

Western Monmouth Utilities Authority, a wastewater treatment service provider for several towns in the New Jersey area, had both a GIS and a SCADA system, and 18 vehicles in its fleet canvassing a large geographic area spanning 195 miles of sewer lines and 27 pump locations. This article describes how the company implemented a GPS fleet tracking solution that could interoperate with its GIS and SCADA.

This article describes how the San Francisco Department of Public Works used a very high-resolution digital elevation model to study urban storm water hydraulics. The base data came from a 1-meter horizontal resolution LiDAR aerial survey of San Francisco that was acquired in June 2007. The FBI ordered the survey prior to that year’s baseball All-Star game for use in security analysis, and provided the data to the city for free after the event.

Directions Magazine has followed the issues related to potential interference with the global positioning system (GPS) from LightSquared’s broadband initiative. Symmetricom, a provider of precise timekeeping technology, weighs in on how some of the interference problems could be mitigated through technology it offers. “At the end of the day this is not just a LightSquared issue, but an industry issue associated with known vulnerabilities to GPS,” says Symmetricom’s vice president, Manish Gupta.

Editor in Chief Joe Francica is attending the Hexagon 2011 International Conference, which is currently taking place in Orlando, FL. He offers these blog posts from Wednesday, June 8. Posts from Tuesday, June 7, are