Are you ready to fly? In high-resolution imagery collection, UAVs are the latest standout. Join us as we discuss what it takes to collect and process top quality imagery. We’ll run through a sample flight checklist, discuss the importance of control points, and give advice on obtaining imagery while in flight. We’ll also share how we consume the imagery on Trimble devices and in LizardTech’s free GeoViewer application.

The keys to successful image collection with a UAV

The basics of processing and georeferencing aerial imagery including a comparison of software options

The end products you can create from aerial imagery, including orthorectified mosaics and DEMs

Robert Parker, Sales Engineer, LizardTech

Mitch Tweedy, Lead Tech Support, CompassTools

Geospatial Webinars

Getting Top Quality UAV Imagery - Best Practices for Image Processing and Collection

PenStreetMaps is a popular and well-known open source repository for address and GIS data. It may be tempting to want to use this free data to solve your business problems. In many cases, this data may be perfect for what you need; however, there are also many scenarios where a premium paid for a data set is required or preferred.

Join us as we focus on address-level data and geocoding and take a high level look at both data sets to explore the advantages and disadvantages of both options. We will also take a deeper dive into specific use cases, including:

A look at how the City of Burbank uses Premium address data to improve city services,

How a governmental agency like a county might use open source or premium address data,

Other possible business uses of both the open source and premium data sets that can cross industries from insurance, health care, to e-commerce.

Explore When to use OpenStreetMaps vs Premium Address Data

Designing and building smarter, more resilient infrastructure requires taking a broader view of the natural and built environment. The fusion of GIS (geographic information system) and BIM (building information modeling) enables stakeholders to put their projects, issues, and assets on a map, while gaining a deeper understanding of their interaction within the geographic context.

ArcGIS GeoBIM connects models, documents, and more in Autodesk Construction Cloud and BIM 360 with the power of GIS through an intuitive web-based experience. We will cover how GIS-BIM integration with ArcGIS GeoBIM help to improve collaboration and streamline communication from the planning and design phases, through to construction and maintenance. The presenters will also highlight the evolution of ArcGIS GeoBIM and potential capabilities with Autodesk.

Avoid costly and time-consuming file translation effort that impact successful projects

Put your project issues and component documentation on a map within the geographic context

Link GIS and BIM/CAD datasets for an intuitive way for teams and stakeholders to access up-to-date information

Unify processes to facilitate better communication of designs with key project stakeholders

Connect with future integrations between Autodesk and Esri

More about the product and associated workflows featured:

ArcGIS GeoBIM delivers an innovative, easy-to-use web-based experience for teams to explore and collaborate on building information modeling (BIM) projects and issues, using data from multiple systems in a geospatial context. Architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) teams can easily work with linked data from multiple systems in configurable web apps that simplify the communication and collaboration with teams and stakeholders.

Bridging GIS-BIM to Design, Build & Maintain Resilient Infrastructure

Access to detailed geographic information across Europe has taken a step toward simplification with the completion of the Open Maps For Europe 2 initiative, which has finalized a shared spatial resource spanning multiple countries.

The finished release makes it possible to view and use large-scale mapping information from ten European states within a single environment, removing the usual need to consult separate national systems. The material covers key spatial elements such as borders, transport routes, and surface water features, all aligned to a unified spatial framework.

Instead of stitching together maps maintained independently by different authorities, the project rebuilt the data into a common structure. Public records from land administration, cartographic, and cadastral bodies were processed through a centralized workflow designed to smooth inconsistencies where national datasets typically fail to align at borders. The result is a continuous geographic representation that can be accessed through one platform rather than multiple national portals.

This effort was carried out through collaboration among several European bodies responsible for official geographic information. EuroGeographics played a coordinating role, working alongside mapping and cadastral institutions from a number of EU member states, each contributing verified source material and technical expertise.

Project leaders say the approach demonstrates how cross-border geographic information can be made easier to use without forcing users to manage different formats, technical standards, or access points. By handling alignment and harmonization at the production stage, the system reduces the complexity normally associated with multinational spatial analysis.

The final output prioritizes three categories of information that consistently rank highest among public-sector and professional users: territorial administration, transport infrastructure, and inland water systems. These layers are intended to serve as a practical foundation for future Europe-wide spatial services, supporting policy implementation at the EU level and reflecting internationally recognized principles for core geospatial data.

Articles

Open Maps For Europe 2 Expands Coverage With Final High-Value Data Release

Are you ready to empower students? YouthMappers are college students making a difference with geospatial technology. Devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake, followed by a 7.5 magnitude aftershock, struck southeast Turkiye and northwest Syria.  The consortium organizes a global community of learners, researchers, educators, and scholars to create and use open geographic data that directly address locally-defined development challenges worldwide. Students and their faculty advisors in the US and in developing nations are invited to learn more about YouthMappers, an international university consortium on Mapping for Resilience.

About the great work completed by the YouthMappers

Dr. Patricia Solis, YouthMappers and Arizona State University

Dr. Thomas Mueller, Professor, California University of Pennsylvania and Adjunct Professor, Northeastern University

A Beginner's Guide to GeoHumanitarian Mapping Organizations

Molded Part Design brings together a range of tools to accelerate the development of injection-molded parts and improve the manufacturability of your products.

High altitude waivers for larger mapping projects

Kyle Miller, Business Development, Censys Tech

NX | Tips & Tricks | Molded Part Designer

Are you looking for powerful and comprehensive GIS solutions? Something that may meet all your GIS needs, but costs relatively low?

 To make GIS software friendlier and easier to access, Supergeo, the leading GIS software provider, collects GIS users’ ideas around the world, and vote the 10 most useful features of SuperGIS Desktop for you. The key features cover 3D data view, geodatabase support, advanced GIS analyses, automatic process designer, etc. 

 Join us and see what are the most popular and useful GIS tools to support your geospatial tasks.

 In this webinar you will learn more about:

Advanced geodesy data observation in 3D view

No worries: GIS data compatibility and continuity

Easy data production and applicable solutions

Intelligent GIS design, management, and analysis

Danny Wang, Product Specialist, Supergeo Technologies

GIS companies, GIS professionals, Consultants, Municipal Corporations, Public Work Department, Development Authority, Institutions/Academia

Top 10 Features of SuperGIS Desktop 3.2

 GeoPackage is an open standard that provides mainstream application developers an easy mechanism for accessing geospatial data in a format that can be used directly by mobile devices such as smartphones.  GeoPackage is based on SQLite. This webinar will provide an overview of the applications and resources for developers who want to utilize the new standard.

 How GeoPackage lets application developers of lightweight mobile apps tap into a mix of powerful cloud-based location services  and data

How GeoPackage works in situations where Internet access is intermittent or disconnected entirely

How GeoPackage is useful for applications in mobile workforce data capture, providing information during an emergency event

How GeoPackage APIs increase cross-platform interoperability of apps and Web services in a mobile environment

 Officials involved with public safety, public works, transportation and disaster management know that limited network access or network failure compromise access to mission-critical map data. And when the network is not reliable, map data must be loaded and stored on mobile devices. Often, existing GIS and mapping applications rely on unique, proprietary and expensive map data solutions that don’t support sharing across organizations.  GeoPackage helps solve these problems.  Developers who are not geospatial experts can implement this standard to provide government agencies with inexpensive and innovative location information solutions.  The OGC GeoPackage standard can also help government IT managers save money and time by providing their stakeholders with improved capabilities for sharing geospatial data.

 Jeff Harrison, President, CEO and Founder, The Crbon Project

Government officials who specify requirements for location solutions, and the providers who develop those solutions

Learn about GeoPackage:  A New OGC Standard for Mobile App Development

Understanding how human and natural environments have changed in the past and predicting what will happen in the future is increasingly important for studying climate change, urban sprawl, deforestation, and more. To address these concerns, this webinar will show you how to use the ArcGIS framework to understand historical trends, see change, and predict future scenarios with a time-series collection of imagery.

How to understand historical trends, see change, and make predictions using time series data

Esri, the global market leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, location intelligence, and mapping, offers the most powerful geospatial cloud available, to help customers unlock the full potential of data to improve operational and business results. Founded in 1969, Esri software is deployed in more than 350,000 organizations including 90 of the Fortune 100 companies, all 50 state governments, more than half of all counties (large and small), and 87 of the Forbes Top 100 Colleges in the US, as well as all 15 Executive Departments of the US Government and dozens of independent agencies. With its pioneering commitment to geospatial information technology, Esri engineers the most advanced solutions for digital transformation, the Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics.

Multidimensional Analysis: Trends, Prediction, and Change Detection

Raymond Camden from HERE Technologies will demonstrate how to use the web-based HERE XYZ Studio to build and design interactive maps. You'll see how to import map data, add it to a map, and then add custom styles. Finally, Raymond will show how you can share your maps with others.

Build a custom web map of National Parks using HERE XYZ, a location data management service

HERE, the Open Location Platform company, enables people, enterprises and cities to harness the power of location. By making sense of the world through the lens of location we empower our customers to achieve better outcomes - from helping a city manage its infrastructure or an enterprise optimize its assets to guiding drivers to their destination safely. To learn more about HERE, including our new generation of cloud-based location platform services

Building Awesome Maps with HERE XYZ Studio

How is the demographic landscape changing in your neighborhood? Join Esri’s Chief Demographer and Demographic Product Management team to learn how to perform quality data-based analysis for the communities that matter most to you. Discover how to recognize patterns and trends with the latest demographic data available on the market with an overview of trends, age, diversity, and housing affordability, including new data measures and indexes coming soon in Esri’s demographic updates.

How to perform quality data-based analysis and visualizations in the communities that matter most to you.

How to jumpstart your spatial analysis with ready-to-use demographic and business data for 135+ countries and 15,000+ variables.

How to recognize trends in your community and business with the latest demographic data available on the market.

Lucy Guerra, Product Manager, Demographics, Esri

Karisa Schroeder, Product Marketing, Demographics, Esri

GIS analysts, managers, professionals, specialists, and technicians,

Analyst Commercial real estate executives,

Explore Ready-to-use Demographic Data for Location Intelligence

Government agencies and commercial organizations must consistently do more with less, even when it comes to GIS. Boundless offers a way for these entities to see increased efficiencies in the way they create, edit, and share geospatial information across their organizations and with the public – without the limitations of named user logs or the frustration of unpredictable costs.

How to save on licensing costs, while extending access to anyone who needs it

How to achieve more flexibility and scalability in your GIS operations

How to quickly get your GIS to the cloud, without IT disruption 

All GIS leaders, practitioners, and users in commercial enterprises or Government agencies, and anyone interested in learning more about geospatial and location-based technology solutions based on real-world contributions from our guest panelists.

Boundless offers solutions that enable customers to create, publish, visualize, and share geospatial information across their organizations, without concerns about spiraling costs tied to licenses and number of users. Provide the access you need, right when it’s needed, with no costly roadblocks. 

Engage with Boundless to obtain an assessment of your infrastructure, and we will provide a complete migration path for your solution at no cost – Boundless will prepare a project plan, stand up the baseline cloud infrastructure, deliver a pathway for data migration and provide training and support to get you started. No other geospatial software company gets you to the cloud faster, at scale and with limitless user licenses - all at a lower total cost.

Learn How Boundless Enables Modern GIS for Complex Use Cases

Are you ready to empower students? YouthMappers are college students making a difference with geospatial technology. The consortium organizes a global community of learners, researchers, educators, and scholars to create and use open geographic data that directly address locally-defined development challenges worldwide. Students and their faculty advisors in the US and in developing nations are invited to learn more about YouthMappers, an international university consortium on Mapping for Resilience.

Learn How College Students Are Defining Humanitarian Mapping

In the rapidly changing world that is GIS, explore why careful attention to data sources and data quality is more important now than ever before. Issues such as citizen science and cloud services are changing how data can be accessed, used, and presented.

Join Dr. Joseph Kerski for a lively, informative, and practical session on why data quality still matters in your GIS work.

Explore Why Data Quality Matters

IT migration projects of any kind tend to be headache-inducing for the best of us. With various interconnected or competing systems, cloud and server-side technology, and custom apps and systems all needing to be smoothly ported over, it can become a challenging balancing act trying not to break anything. GIS is no exception.

Our friends at the City of Austin recently undertook a project to migrate their GIS to a new environment. They needed to move all of their GIS apps, workflows, and custom items to the new subdomain. Over the years they had created a large number of ArcGIS Online items with a variety of associated server URLs and license URLs. This made the migration difficult, as the URLs needed to be properly migrated and updated to avoid breaking anything.

After some trial and error, City staff discovered a powerful solution for their problem, which greatly simplified the process of finding and updating these URLs during the migration. They were so thrilled with the amount of time and effort saved that they've agreed to share their story with the DirectionsMag audience to help others who may be having similar challenges with ArcGIS Online item management.

How the City of Austin used VertiGIS Studio Item Manager to shave hundreds of hours off their GIS server migration project

How VertiGIS Studio Item Manager can be used to find (and easily replace) URLs for ArcGIS Online items you create

Some tips and tricks for using VertiGIS Studio Item Manager to efficiently manage your ArcGIS Online and Portal items

VertiGIS® is a leading GIS solution provider and software developer. Their focus is the development of software solutions and services that help utilities, land management, public sector, energy, telecommunications, and manufacturing customers build bridges between their business processes and location technology. VertiGIS is the maker of VertiGIS Studio®, which is used by thousands of customers to enhance the capabilities of the applications they build with Esri’s ArcGIS® and deliver a world-class experience to millions of end-users around the world.

Curious about how VertiGIS Studio Item Manager could help your organization make better use of ArcGIS Online? Great news! It is currently a completely free-to-use product! If you want to log in and give it a try: navigate to vertigisstudio and scroll down to find and launch Item Manager.

How the City of Austin Simplified their GIS Migration with Advanced ArcGIS Online Item Management

Have you looked at applying for specific waivers from the FAA? Join us and learn some of tips and tricks we use to get approvals and maximize ROI.

Tips & Tricks for Part 107 Waivers and Mapping

Unexpected damage to subsurface infrastructure is disruptive and often expensive. The good news? In most cases, it’s also preventable. In this webinar, we’ll look at the data on damage, its leading causes, and how combining GIS with new technologies can help reduce risk. See how streamlining workflows around 811 locate requests enables utility owners and operators the ability to empower locators in the field, manage seasonal influxes of tickets, and track damage prevention efforts.

The scale and impact of damages related to locating practices

How to handle different locating scenarios such as emergency requests, working with contractors, and complying with requirements for positive response or documentation

How managers, dispatchers and locators benefit from a GIS-centric ticket management solution

VertiGIS® is a leading GIS solution provider and software developer. Their focus is the development of software solutions and services that help utilities, land management, public sector, energy, telecommunications, and manufacturing customers build bridges between their business processes and location technology. VertiGIS is the maker of Geocortex®, which is used by thousands of customers to enhance the capabilities of the applications they build with Esri’s ArcGIS® and deliver a world-class experience to millions of end-users around the world.

Learn How to Streamline Locating Tasks and Prevent Damage to Subsurface Infrastructure with a GIS-Centric Approach

ArcGIS for Power BI is a custom data visualization tool built into Microsoft Power BI that brings mapping capabilities to your reports and dashboards. As of January 2021, ArcGIS for Power BI supports Publish to web and Embedded enabling you to share your Power BI reports—with Esri maps—within your organization. Not just that, ArcGIS for Power BI is now also available on Report Server. Now with any ArcGIS user type, you can view Power BI reports with privately shared ArcGIS content. To create maps within Power BI, you need a Creator or higher user type.

Learn how to easily bring maps created within your ArcGIS organization into Power BI.

Find how to use the new capabilities - embedded, publish to web and report server.

Get started – find everything you need to know about user types and licensing.

See a demo of the top 10 ArcGIS for Power BI tools that you can leverage today to map and analyze your data.

Make Beautiful and Accurate Maps within Microsoft Power BI with Esri’s ArcGIS for Power BI

By means of the … film … it would be possible to infuse certain subjects, such as geography, which is at present wound off organ-like in the forms of dead descriptions, with the pulsating life of a metropolis. - Albert Einstein.

It may be argued that the very heart of geography and GIS is constituted in large part by the practice of looking and is, in effect, the stuff of images. If we agree, then geo-visualization is highlighted as an important disciplinary and practical endeavor. The last two decades witnessed increasing recognition of the power of articulate, moving images to intervene in the ongoing transformations of everyday geography, and yet there remains a reticence within the geo-visualization community to fully embrace the emotional power of cinema.

This essay is about the intensification of emotional life that is possible through moving spatial images. Our primary assumption is that while data visualized through GIS can be provocative, it is often joyless and over-calculated, with a tendency for the program to overwhelm the content. Even the best GIS-visualized data is often more interesting to think about than to experience, more interesting to create than to comprehend - it is most often not the product of a searching soul but of a highly computer-literate mind. And so we argue that although today’s geovisualized data and digitally formatted movies may look different and may appear to have separate functions, they are both digital, pixelized, spatial data that engages users/consumers in similar ways. The problem for geographers and GIS specialists, we submit, is that cinematic landscapes, in which humans and human culture play a very important part, are a much more powerful producer of emotional geographies than static or animated cartographies, no matter how the data are visualized. If cinema is more concerned with engaging emotions than celebrating computerized visuals, then why should this not also be the case for geovisualizations? As neurologist Antonio Damasio (1994) has shown, emotions are a huge part of, and are not separate from, our intellectual reasoning.

Think back to the last time you lost yourself in a series of contours, shadings and cartographic symbols. Perhaps you have a treasured map at hand that will do the job for you right now (indeed, the boundlessness of imagination enables continuous return to the same map for fresh marvels). This process involves a particularly quirky engagement, pouring over the image to the extent that we may lose a conscious connection to our corporeality. The space between our conscious knowledge of our bodies and the borders of the map merge. Perhaps time disappears. We are lost to the task of imagining what it would be like to be in this place for the first time. We imagine tramping over the hills or along the streets depicted in the map. We pick up maps of exotic places and indulge our amazement at the contemporaneous heterogeneity of the planet, what Doreen Massey (2005, 15) calls "spatial delight." There may even be an imagining that projects knowledge of local weather, waves, tides, or of the ways mists curl around mountain tops – knowledge not directly accessible from the map.

And there is other knowledge not necessarily accessible from the maps, which gives us pause. Two decades of warnings from cartographers such as Brian Harley, Dennis Woods and Mark Monmonier highlight the inherent power of maps: the grotesque distortions of variety and uniqueness, the colonialism, the propaganda, the god-trick, the diminishing/submersion of certain subjects for others. Even with these admonitions and understandings, there is still wonder.

We argue, and this is our central twist, that more so than cartography, cinema produces wonders that affectively engage and absorb us - they intensify our lives, if only momentarily. There is no reason why geovisualized data should not do the same.

So, let us think for a moment about the mechanics behind the emotional wonders of moving images. Cinema is a particular kind of movement propagated by single picture frames passing rapidly in front of a projection light at a prescribed rate; in its digital form the movement is accomplished by changing hues and colors of the individual pixels that compose the viewing screen.

The active promotion of images in motion in the United States began on June 13, 1891 when Harper’s Weekly announced that Thomas Edison had invented a kinetograph, a combination of a moving picture machine and a phonograph. The 1902 Sears catalogue described the kinetoscope’s ability to render a "pictorial representation, not lifelike merely, but apparently life itself, with every movement, every action and every detail brought so vividly before the audience" (quoted in Denzin 1995, 16). What was revolutionary about the kinetoscope was its power over the image. By the 1920s Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein was breaking ground with kino-pravda (film truth). Eisenstein’s notion of "the-image-in-motion-over-time-through-space-with-sequence" was about filmic rhythm and the ways film time-space could be manipulated for fullest effect (see Figure 3 and Aitken 1991). Eisenstein’s image-event was not about presenting real life, or even film as a mirror of real life. The focus of kino-pravda on filmic rhythms, sequences, framings, spectacles, jump cuts and montages was about the creation of illusion to the extent that we, the consumers of the images, would suspend our disbelief.

From cartography, DiBiase and his colleagues (1992, 206), closely paralleling the earlier thoughts of Eisenstein, extend spatial images into the realm of non-static, animated representations existing within two or three spatial dimensions plus a temporal dimension. Their dynamic variables of duration (the number of units of time that a scene is displayed), rate of change (a proportion formed by the magnitude of change in an attribute and the duration of scene), and order (the logic of chronological sequencing of scenes associated with a time-series data set) are used to form dynamic representations. This is precisely what Eisenstein did with kino-pravda, but his focus was on the emotional impact - he called it shock-value - of the image-event.

Geographers learn from looking and the geovisualization approaches established by DiBiase, but also Cartwright, MacEachren and others, offer a unique way of interpreting visual representations. Indeed, MacEachren’s famous elaboration of semiotics to cartography is about a science and art that is closely connected to the study of film (see Aitken and Craine 2005). Let us assume that geography must move past pure semiotics and cognitive theory in order to open up the discipline to fresh investigation. Further, geovisualization must refuse to take vision for granted and should, instead, insist on "problematizing", theorizing, critiquing and "historicalizing" the visual process. As a case in point, data exploration through the use of "map metaphors," Cartwright (2004, 32) famously argues, is changed to "new forms of multisensory and multimedia communication" where visual information gathering is augmented with other sensory stimuli. Unfortunately, Cartwright stops short of exploring the important dimensions of affect and absorption.

With the recognition of multimedia as a viable way to communicate geographic information, we can examine how new technologies provide new modes of data exploration and new forms of analysis and cognition through affect. To take just one example, Platt (1995) shows how ‘storytelling’ offers the user the option of engaging the geography of a particular place. Video-gaming is a case in point where filmic digital images are merged with usable/controllable products to create innumerable storylines. Imagine the young gamer deftly avoiding missiles and light-beams from enemy fighters and courageously engaging the enemy in LucasArts’ Star Wars series as a Death Star brings its planet-destroying cannon on the unsuspecting world below. Her passion may for some border on addiction, but it is nothing if it is not self-absorbed. Do you recognize something important about the ways young people engage with these games? Watch her weave in and out of the canyons that comprise the surface of the Death Star. And like Luke Skywalker feeling the force, she successfully sends missiles down the postage stamp opening into the main reactor. Boom! We are treated to a spectacular conflagration. Next level and a new storyline. She is now ramping down a hierarchy of scaled images towards the planet below. The images coalesce in a way that suspends her disbelief about a myriad of pixels changing hue. Indeed, she has no knowledge of the mechanics of digital animation. She is simply hurtling towards the surface to chase some of the renegade enemy fighters that escape the conflagration aboard the Death Star. Now she is down in some desert canyons, chasing more enemy fighters. You are impressed at this time with the way she negotiates scale. The pixels change hue to form digital images of dynamic landscapes – aerial photographs if you will – from the planetary scale down to just above the desert floor.

We’d like to finish with a thought about the ways film and animation contrive the stories of our lives. We believe that this is about the power of moving images to create spaces and affect societal change. And it is about the subtle pervasiveness of these images in contemporary culture. Einstein (opening epigram) was right when he suggested that geographers do not appreciate the power of the moving image. Nor do we know how to use that power to better the world in which we live through emotion-charged geovisualization. Obviously, this power goes way beyond video-gaming. As we are absorbed into mobile geographic images, it is possible also to be affected by the power of those images to highlight social injustice, geographies of AIDS, or the tragedies of the global sex-trade. Affective geo-visualizations are soulful; they tug at our hearts to the extent that we may be mobilized to action.

Guest Editorial: Affective Geovisualizations

PCI announced its support for the deployment of the GXL system on the Amazon cloud, enabling faster, more scalable product development and delivery. By leveraging cloud infrastructure, the GXL platform enhances performance, flexibility, and accessibility for organizations managing complex geospatial and enterprise data workflows.

The move to a cloud-based environment reflects PCI’s ongoing commitment to innovation and to helping customers reduce infrastructure overhead while improving speed to market and operational efficiency.

The GXL system is designed to support data-intensive applications that require reliability, scalability, and rapid deployment. Hosting the system on the Amazon cloud allows organizations to dynamically scale resources, optimize performance, and ensure high availability without the constraints of traditional on-premises environments.

By using cloud-native services, PCI enables faster system updates, improved collaboration, and streamlined deployment across distributed teams.

Benefits for Product Development and Delivery

Deploying the GXL system in the cloud provides several key advantages:

Faster product deployment and update cycles

Improved system scalability and reliability

Reduced infrastructure and maintenance costs

Greater flexibility to adapt to changing business needs

These benefits help organizations bring products to market more efficiently while maintaining performance and security.

Supporting Innovation Through Cloud Computing

PCI continues to support cloud-based strategies that align with modern enterprise and geospatial technology requirements. The deployment of GXL on Amazon cloud infrastructure demonstrates how cloud computing can accelerate innovation, simplify system management, and support long-term growth.

This approach allows customers to focus on product development and business outcomes rather than infrastructure complexity.

PCI is a technology-focused organization supporting advanced systems and solutions for enterprise and geospatial applications. With an emphasis on innovation, scalability, and performance, PCI helps organizations adopt modern platforms that enable efficient data management and informed decision-making.

PCI Supports Deployment of GXL System on Amazon Cloud to Accelerate Product Delivery

The Town of Wausau, Wisconsin is a rural community in Central Wisconsin with a population of 2,229 (Census 2010). The geographic extent of the town is 37.7 square miles. The political boundary of the town coincides with one surveyed township of the U.S. Public Land Survey System (PLSS) and is subdivided into 36 surveyed sections, each with an area of approximately one square mile. The western boundary of the town is irregular due to annexations by the neighboring City of Wausau (population 39,106, Census 2010) (Figure 1).

The Wausau Town Board wanted to survey the town’s residents on the need for specific services, the willingness of community members to pay for specific services, and other key issues important to the community especially during an economic downturn. The town board contracted with the Wisconsin Institute of Public Policy and Service (WIPPS) in October 2010 to formulate survey questions, compile results, incorporate the survey results within a GIS, and complete a final report. WIPPS is a unit within the University of Wisconsin Colleges and the University of Wisconsin Extension, and is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization tasked with providing meaningful public outreach to the people of Wisconsin. The town realized a significant savings by partnering with WIPPS to complete the project. My role in the project, as a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin, was as co-principal investigator.

The Town of Wausau has a population density of 59 people per square mile. (By comparison, the City of Wausau, which borders the Town of Wausau on the east, has a population density of 2,082 people per square mile.) Examination of the Town of Wausau’s 2006 comprehensive plan indicates that various agricultural pursuits comprise the leading land use in town at 48.5%. Woodlands and wetlands account for 25.8% and 13.4% respectively of the town’s total land area. There is little commercial development, with only 0.4% of the land area devoted to commercial pursuits. Residential development accounts for 6.8% of the land use in the community and is greatest in the western third of the town that borders on the City of Wausau. Population growth has been slow over the last 40 years with a population change of 141 persons (6.2%) between the 1970 and 2010 censuses.

One of the major problems in conducting social surveys in rural areas like the Town of Wausau is the need to protect the anonymity of the respondents. The problem is enhanced when the information is incorporated into a GIS and portrayed as mapped data. The potential exists in rural communities with low population densities for community members to identify responses provided by individual households. Several members of the community expressed concern about this issue and it was a major discussion point between the town board and WIPPS in the formulation and design of the survey and the GIS. The problem was how to present the survey results in a mapped context without compromising the anonymity of the respondents.

The problem was solved by using surveyed PLSS sections of the township as a map grid by which the results of survey questions were reported (Figure 2). The responses to the survey questions were broken down by surveyed section using the MYSTAT (version 12) statistical software package and mapped using Caliper’s Maptitude (version 5) GIS. Surveyed sections are regularly used as the mapping units for various geological, biological and agricultural studies, but not for mapping the results of data collected from social surveys. I did an extensive search for projects using PLSS sections to map social data in rural America and didn’t find any others.

Surveys were sent to all households in the town in October 2010. The residential database of the town was the source of the addresses. Slightly more than 900 surveys were mailed and 505 households returned completed surveys, representing a return rate of 56% (Figure 3). The survey required approximately 10 minutes to complete. All survey responses were anonymous. The first question on the survey asked the respondents to identify the section of the township in which they lived. A map was provided for reference purposes. In Wisconsin, land records for deeds and taxation are kept using the PLSS system, so residents would be very familiar with a PLSS section map. We were confident that they would be able to successfully identify their section. Several background questions were asked of respondents which pertained to the socioeconomic characteristics of the household, including median age, level of educational attainment and household income. Specific questions related to key issues facing the town used a modified Likert scale to determine the strength of agreement or disagreement for each of the questions. The results of the survey had a 95% confidence level with an error range of plus or minus 3%.

The Town of Wausau is an older, middle class community with a median population age between 45 and 54 years and a median income between $50,000 and $74,999. Most of the respondents were high school graduates with some college. The average resident had lived in the community between 11 and 20 years and 95% of the residents owned their own homes.

Several survey questions were designed to gather information about the public services which residents wanted, and their willingness to pay for these services. These public services included: fire service, ambulance service, snow plowing and sanding, road maintenance, garbage and recycling pickup, asphalt roads, town constable and police, town ordinance enforcement, update and upgrade of equipment, and building upgrades and remodeling. The level of the importance of each service to the town’s residents and their willingness to pay for each service were each ranked according to the number of responses received. A Spearman ranked correlation coefficient (non-parametric test for ranked statistical data) was calculated to test for the level of agreement between the residents’ expressed need for specific public services and their willingness to pay for them. The calculated Spearman correlation coefficient was r = 0.983 at a 95% confidence level. The results of the statistical analysis revealed an almost perfect correlation between the public services desired by the residents and their willingness to pay for them.

The survey addressed many other key issues facing the town. Questions pertaining to these issues used a modified Likert scale to gather responses. With each of the questions, residents could express their level of agreement or disagreement. The Likert scale facilitated the mapping of the response data. Proportional pie charts were used to summarize the results for each question by surveyed section. One key issue facing the town is its future development. The question, “Do you think the Town of Wausau needs more commercial development such as offices, retail stores, or service business?” was asked to explore the residents’ opinions on future commercial development. The majority of residents responded that the situation was fine as it was (Figure 4). Another key issue of concern to the town was the aesthetics of the community. The opinion on this issue was about equal for and against, as seen in the responses to the question, “Should the Town of Wausau create and enforce ordinances to ensure appearance standards for lawns, yards, and home property generally?” (Figure 5).

Other issues addressed by the survey pertained to safety issues facing the community such as geographic restrictions on the use of firearms during deer hunting season, especially in more populated areas of the town. Figure 6 shows that most residents felt that there should be no hunting allowed in residential areas, along subdivision borders, or along the city border. A minority of the respondents felt there should not be restrictions to hunting on private land. The presence of certain dog breeds within the town limits was also a concern of the community because of the potential for attacks on the residents. Most residents felt there should be no restrictions to different dog breeds in the community in response to the question, “Should certain dog breeds be banned from the town of Wausau?” (Figure 7).

The use of surveyed sections of the PLSS as the mapping unit to present data collected from rural areas is a straightforward method to portray information in a geographic context. In the United States, access to digital geographic files for the PLSS is universal and easily incorporated into a GIS. The method allows for the preservation of the anonymity of respondents and also allows for the visual presentation of information to decision makers. This project also demonstrates that programs affiliated with state universities, like WIPPS, through their community outreach efforts can provide rural communities the expertise and resources needed to complete complex projects in a timely manner with a significant cost savings.

Integrating Social Survey Data and GIS to Determine the Needs of a Rural Community in a Geographic Context

Congratulations to Linda van den Brink, awarded the 2019 Gardels Award for being “an outstanding representative both internal to OGC and external.”

Linda van den Brink (left) receives the 2019 OGC Gardels Award from OGC President Bart De Lathouwer (right)

21 November 2019: Last night, at the November meeting of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Technical Committee in Toulouse, France, Linda van den Brink received the OGC’s prestigious Kenneth D. Gardels Award. The Gardels Award is presented each year to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to advancing OGC's vision of using location to connect people, communities, technology, and decision making for the greater good.

Linda van den Brink was awarded because of her effective coordination between the OGC and other standards and industry bodies. As noted by one of the nominating committee: “Linda has been an outstanding representative both internal to OGC and external. She has worked hard to gain OGC standards acceptance in the wider community.” Another committee member commented: “Linda’s value to OGC is reflected simply because of the number of areas in which she has participated. Over the years, Linda has been involved in CityGML, GeoSemantics, Linked Data, and the joint working group with W3C. In these groups, Linda has not only been involved, but also taken a very active part in each...”

Linda has co-chaired the GeoSemantics Domain Working Group and has also been very active in the GML and CityGML Standards Working Groups, often identifying issues based on experience gained through standards implementations. Linda has been the primary voice in highlighting the need to better align common elements in the CityGML, InfraGML, and IndoorGML standards.

“I’m very happy that Linda van den Brink has received the 2019 Gardels Award,” commented Bart De Lathouwer, President of OGC. “With her down-to-earth approach, she has been instrumental in significantly advancing semantic and linked data interoperability in the geospatial domain, together with our alliance partner W3C. Linda’s real-world based interoperability activities, and strong international community building skills, are appreciated not only by OGC, but also many outside of OGC. Kenn would be very proud.”

“We thank you for demonstrating the true spirit of the OGC in striving for what is best for the geospatial community,” commented Jeffrey K. Harris, Chairman of the OGC Board of Directors. “You have served countless hours in OGC activities, including leading, attending, and actively participating in Technical Committee Meetings and serving as a Technical Committee (TC) representative to the Planning Committee (PC), where you are charged to summarize PC discussions that impact the TC from the member perspective.”

In all this work, Linda has exemplified the principles, courage, humility, and accomplishment in promoting spatial technologies to address the needs of humanity that characterized Kenn Gardels’ career and life.

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international consortium of more than 530 businesses, government agencies, research organizations, and universities driven to make geospatial (location) information and services FAIR - Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.

OGC’s member-driven consensus process creates royalty free, publicly available geospatial standards. Existing at the cutting edge, OGC actively analyzes and anticipates emerging tech trends, and runs an agile, collaborative Research and Development (R&D) lab that builds and tests innovative prototype solutions to members' use cases.

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Geospatial Industry News

Linda van den Brink receives OGC’s 2019 Gardels Award

Easton, Maryland - AXIS GeoSpatial LLC is pleased to announce the addition of Allen Wainger, PE to their Project Management team. Wainger brings over 40 years of experience in the geospatial industry. He comes from Michael Baker International where he was directly responsible for growing a GIT Services and Information Systems Department in the federal and state sectors.

Mr. Wainger holds a Master of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Maryland College Park and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Lehigh University. He is an active member of the Maryland State Geospatial Information Committee, having served as treasurer and leader of the UAS working group.

“The addition of Al to our executive management team is one that I welcome with great enthusiasm. His professionalism, knowledge, and extensive geospatial experience will play an integral role in AXIS’ continued evolution of positioning strategy; predominantly in the areas of cost, quality, and flexibility. Having Al participate as a key member of the AXIS management team, I foresee noticeable enhancements in AXIS’ performance, services, and deliverables.”, said Justin Lahman, President of AXIS GeoSpatial.

Mr. Wainger is a Professional Engineer registered in the Commonwealths of Virginia and Massachusetts with technical specialty in Water Resources and Environmental Engineering. He combines the traditional engineering skills with an extensive background in field surveying, photogrammetry, and mapping.

“I was absolutely thrilled to join AXIS because I have, for a number of years, been impressed with its management team and the way it treats its clients”, says Mr. Wainger.

With an excellent track record specifying, developing, managing, and leading integrated geospatial solutions, he will lead and direct cross functional teams to deliver projects within the constraints of client schedule, budget, and scope.

Founded in 2001, AXIS GeoSpatial LLC, a national geocapture firm, employs innovative remote-sensing and measurement technologies to capture geospatial data for integration into civil engineering, land surveying and GIS applications. AXIS is headquartered in Easton, Maryland with additional locations in Delaware and Florida. During the past 18 years, AXIS has applied extensive, proven experience in producing high quality aerial imagery, LiDAR, CADD, GIS and other related geospatial datasets for civil engineering and government clients throughout the US and abroad. For more information visit www.axisgeospatial.com, join us on LinkedIn or follow us on Twitter @axisgeospatial

Allen Wainger, PE Joins AXIS GeoSpatial LLC as Director of Program Management

Today's GeoInspiration is Dr. Grant Ian Thrall, a man for whom I have gained much respect over the years, speaking with and listening to him at the business geography sessions at the American Association of Geographers conference and at the Applied Geography Conference. Dr. Thrall holds degrees in economics, business and geography — the last from The Ohio State University — and has been tirelessly merging these three fields for decades. He also bridges the academic, nonprofit and business sectors, serving as president of the American Real Estate Society, which produces six trade journals and has 1,650 members, while owning his own consulting firm, Business Geography Advisors. I view him as a true bridge-builder, helping scores of students, faculty and decision-makers in many different fields understand the value of decision-making with a geographic perspective. 

Dr. Thrall entered the field of geography a bit differently than our other GeoInspirations. Rather than being inspired by a class or mentor, it was experience itself which taught him the importance of geographic study.

"It was geographic phenomena and geographic reasoning that drew my interest to what I would learn, much later in my education, that some considered my interests [as actually focused on] geography," he explained.

"My parents were Route 66 people from central Ohio. My dad had been a college professor and a superintendent of a school district. They drove Route 66 to Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, turned left and bought a house. My dad accepted a teaching post at a high school. His job opportunities were limited because he had become physically handicapped as had Bob Dole in WWII; like Bob Dole, my dad had lost the use of his left elbow. This is important to this story only in that as many fathers would play sports with their sons, mine did not. Instead, my dad would drive the family in his car along each new interstate and to each new development in the high-growth Los Angeles of the 1950s. We would discuss what was being built and to be built, where and why. We were doing urban business geography, not knowing it was geography.

"I was fortunate to spend my junior year of high school in London, England. Twenty years after WWII, London was still rebuilding from the damage of the blitz. London was a very different urban place than Los Angeles. I could take the Tube most anywhere. London was a walkable city. In Los Angeles, I was geographically limited to where a driver’s license holder was willing to take me. I continued to think about urban space, land use, land use patterns, vintage of place.

"Upon returning to Los Angeles, my mother began working at General Electric. She became head of marketing for GE West Coast, one of the first three women executives at GE. Today we hear 'Fathers, take your daughters to work for a day.' In my case, it was my mother who took me to work. 'Grant, your assignment for the week is to calculate cannibalization of the surrounding GE white good franchises if GE agrees to add a new franchise at this address, and [determine] whether the new franchise will be viable.' This was in the era before big box appliance stores," Dr. Thrall continued.

"These projects expanded my interest and knowledge of how business decisions affect land use patterns, and what would be a good business decision for development of a location – not all locations have the same opportunity. Like-kind locations might have the same opportunity.

"My parents’ choice of purchasing a residence near the California Institute of Technology would also be a significant force in my academic orientation. Later, while I was majoring in economics and business at California State University at Los Angeles, and while working my way through college, one of my many job experiences was working at Caltech. I had the good fortune to become immersed in Caltech’s quality academic culture; that became the standard by which I have evaluated education institutions since that experience. I have been excited to watch Neil deGrasse Tyson’s commentaries on the 1960s faculty at Caltech; I knew these people. Many worthwhile experiences. I walked with Dr. Clair Cameron Patterson along Colorado Boulevard, and conversed with him about the harm of lead fumes to human life and the environment from gasoline additives. Clair Patterson sowed the seeds in me of environmental awareness and being a good earth steward.

"In a counseling session in the College of Business at CSULA, I told the academic advisor what I wanted to study. I was told there were no such classes at the university, no such academic discipline. Just fit in, do what is required and graduate. That advice left me unfulfilled.

"Lunchtime friends at CSULA were philosophy majors. They were excited that Professor John Hospers had accepted a position at CSULA and recommended that I enroll in his courses. I did. John would subsequently become chair of the Philosophy Department at University of Southern California – benefits of proximity and agglomeration – and he would be the first nominee for President of the United States by the Libertarian Party. I benefited and still allude to John’s teachings and writings; but I did not become an unquestioning disciple.

"John Hospers and Ayn Rand were intellectual partners at the time. John the academic, Ayn the populist, the communicator to the average person, the non-academic. A key axiom of their thesis is no relevant interdependencies, no relevant externalities; if there were such phenomena, the market would adjust, making the phenomena irrelevant with no harm done. Indeed, government action to control the externality would be worse than the harm caused by the externality. I found this impossible to reconcile with what I had learned from Clair Patterson at Caltech. Much later, my Ph.D. dissertation dealt with the topic of public goods and externalities; not being satisfied with my work on this topic, I revised the formulation and published in a Regional Science journal, “Public Goods, Externalities, and the Consumption Theory of Land Rent.” I received letters from very distinguished economists upon its publication that I had solved one of the most difficult economic topics of the time period. Motivation and relevant problem identification from experience.

"I graduated from CSULA and received an assistantship in economics at The Ohio State University. There, my graduate advisor was Dr. John Weicher, an urban economist. However, before I graduated, he left OSU to become assistant secretary of HUD. Knowing my interests, he recommended I enroll in some geography classes.

"At the same time John advised me to enroll in geography classes to fulfill my urban economics program, I was dating Susan Elshaw, also a graduate student at OSU, and whom I would later marry. Her apartment roommate was Allison, who was dating Dr. Reg Golledge, professor of geography at OSU. Geography and economics were at the time mixed up together in Hagerty Hall, the old business school building. Reg convinced me to finish my Ph.D. in geography with a minor in economics, rather than the vice versa of finishing in economics with a minor in geography. Easy sell, since my economics advisor had just left for HUD in Washington, D.C. So after my M.A. in economics, I enrolled in my first course in geography. I found the topics of urban economic geography relevant to my long-standing interest, and was attracted to the newly developing technology of GIS which would prove important to my empirical work. Professors Reg Golledge and Emilio Casetti were my co-advisors in geography," Dr. Thrall said

"My becoming a geographer, my particular value platform as a geographer, has been more of a process than a decision of which box to check when declaring a college major. It has been more an evolution from experiences than a single class or book; the class and book helped me to structure my thoughts on the topic in a comprehensible manner. Later I created the Scientific Geography Series ten volume collection of monographs in part to assist myself in understanding relevant geography literature, and structuring the body of relevant knowledge. I have been multidisciplinary, which fits with the geography discipline’s belief that it is integrative of other disciplines; I have found universities to be more about silos of disciplines. Geography has its own spatial reasoning and theory, its own GIS and spatial statistics methods, and its own set of substantive topics that are accepted as core to the discipline. I am fortunate and humbled that my contributions in business geography (location intelligence) have served to create part of what is now accepted as core, and not available when I was a student.

"Individuals that I hold as most important in my intellectual development in geography are geographers Reginald Golledge and Emilio Casetti; urban economist John Weicher; philosopher and Libertarian Party nominee for POTUS John Hospers; and the Homer Hoyt Institute," Dr. Thrall said.

Of what projects is Dr. Thrall proudest to have been a part? 

"The creation of Business Geography as an accepted university core curriculum whose graduates are in high demand by business; the creation of the AAG Business Geography Specialty Group; being elected to president of American Real Estate Society; having my work quoted in The Economist; my varied entrepreneurial endeavors; my ten volume Scientific Geography Series; Land Use and Urban Form: The Consumption Theory of Land Rent; Business Geography and New Real Estate Market Analysis which was subsequently used to jump start the rewriting with several ARES members and CCIM practitioners, CCIM 102 Real Estate Market Analysis Curriculum and CCIM/ESRI STDB.com; my monthly columns in GeoSpatial Solutions GIS trade publication from circa 1990 to circa 2007; and I would like to mention having been chair of Gainesville Redevelopment Agency, effectively providing me a “test tube” for my land use theory and business geography / location intelligence methods; the City of Gainesville awarded me two consecutive days as 'Grant Thrall Days',” he said.

With this vast experience from which to draw, I was eager to hear what issues Dr. Thrall sees as those most important to the geography community today. "Be equally rigorous and relevant," he told me. "Maintain focus on skills needed for employment within and outside the university. In addition to being academic as in “normal science,” be entrepreneurial. Be both a teacher scholar and a practitioner scholar.

His advice to new geographers? "Same as Indiana Jones gave to students in the library as he slid through on the back of his son’s Harley Davidson motorcycle: Get out of the library and classroom and experience geography as done by practitioners," he replied.

May we all heed Dr. Thrall's advice, be rigorous in our methods, think outside the box, blaze our own trails when there are none to follow, promote geographic thinking in many disciplines, and tirelessly serve the community.

If you are interested in reading more about Dr. Thrall and his work, he has an extensive library of resources on his website, YouTube channel and across various other media:

Dr Thrall’s YouTube channel focuses on location, spatial economics, consumer behavior, geography, education, geospatial data and technology, and related topics.

A selection of his books can be found on Amazon.

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