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Blog: Chris Harlow on ITSearch The Harlow Report Archives
Over the last 15 years, about $1 billion USD has been spent on purchasing systems, software and images containing geographic information.
The Central Statistics Organization’s (CSO) head said due to the absence of Geographic Information Center in the country, government institutions and global institutions have spent enormous amounts of money to purchase necessary information from abroad.
However, this is set to change and following a cash injection of $1 million USD from the Asian Development Bank, a geographic information center will be established under the umbrella of the CSO.
Host Zarmina Mohammadi discusses the topic with Shakiba Rahimi head of the new department at the CSO.
Read full story at Tolo News…
first published week of: 10/18/2021
Intermap Technologies Corp. announced it has acquired the shares and ongoing operations of MultiMedia Computer s.r.o. (MMC), a Czech Republic software development company. The acquired business includes a current customer base, a recurring revenue stream, and a unique software development platform that Intermap has previously used to develop customer applications. MMC has also successfully used its software and the technical expertise of its 20-person staff to develop and deploy flood-mapping applications while securing strong relationships within the European insurance industry. The acquisition of MMC will enable Intermap to evolve its product offerings from pure data sales to solution-based applications for specific markets where strong demand for 3D digital elevation data exists.
“The acquisition of MMC allows Intermap to quickly deliver highly innovative solutions to our customers worldwide,” explained Brian Bullock, president and CEO of Intermap Technologies. “MMC's current success in the insurance industry will be leveraged into additional markets within our geographic reach. For example, MMC's technological expertise will help propel Intermap into the emerging recreational PND and advanced driver assistance systems arenas. Additionally, MMC will support our continued efforts to bundle progressive solutions for existing enterprise and government markets.”
first published week of: 11/01/2021
ANS addresses three basic challenges through its Precision Inertial Navigation Systems (PINS) and All Source Positioning and Navigation (ASPN) efforts: 1) better inertial measurement units (IMUs) that require fewer external position fixes; 2) alternate sources to GPS for those external position fixes; and 3) new algorithms and architectures for rapidly reconfiguring a navigation system with new and non-traditional sensors for a particular mission.
Complementing DARPA’s Micro-PNT program, which is developing chip-scale inertial sensors that are navigation grade or better, PINS is developing an IMU that uses cold atom interferometry for high-precision navigation without dependence on external fixes for long periods of time. Atom interferometry involves measuring the relative acceleration and rotation of a cloud of atoms within a sensor case, with potentially far greater accuracy than today’s state-of-the-art IMUs.
However, because even long-duration IMUs require an eventual position fix, the ASPN effort is developing sensors that use signals of opportunity, which are non-navigation signals from sources like television, radio and cell towers, and satellites, as well as natural phenomena, such as lightning.
Integrating and tuning different sensors, maps and other components into a navigation system is expensive and slow, resulting in platform and mission-specific solutions. To address this integration challenge, the ASPN effort is also developing new fusion algorithms and plug-and-play processing architectures for rapid integration and near-real-time reconfiguration or upgrading of sensors, IMU devices, maps and databases on a navigation system. By allowing flexible combinations of existing and new navigation sensors, ASPN seeks improvements in accuracy, robustness and cost of navigation systems across a wide range of platforms, environments and missions.
Both PINS and ASPN are currently in Phase 2 of development, and are working toward subsystem field demonstrations on a variety of platforms in FY14, followed by an end-to-end system demonstration of GPS-independent PNT planned for FY15.
first published week of: 11/22/2021
TomTom RoadDNA’s propriety technology delivers a highly optimized lateral and longitudinal view of the roadway. By matching RoadDNA data with vehicle sensor data in real-time a vehicle knows its location on the road, even while traveling at high speeds or when changes occur to the roadside.
TomTom announced the launch of TomTom RoadDNA, an innovative new product for vehicle localization that'll help make automated driving a reality, faster. Designed with vehicle data storage and processing limitations in mind, RoadDNA delivers highly accurate location information that can easily be integrated into the on-board system of a vehicle.
“We know that the future of automated driving hinges on the ability of a vehicle to continuously know exactly where it's located on the road,” said Harold Goddijn, TomTom CEO. “TomTom RoadDNA is the only technology of its kind* that delivers highly accurate vehicle localization content in an efficient and cost effective way.”
TomTom RoadDNA’s propriety technology delivers a highly optimized lateral and longitudinal view of the roadway. By matching RoadDNA data with vehicle sensor data in real-time a vehicle knows its location on the road, even while traveling at high speeds or when changes occur to the roadside.
By converting a 3D point cloud of road side patterns into a compressed, 2D view of the roadway, RoadDNA delivers a solution that needs little storage space and limits processing requirements, without losing detail. TomTom RoadDNA eliminates the complexity of identifying each single roadway object, but instead creates a unique pattern of the roadway environment. This makes the technology robust and scalable.
TomTom RoadDNA, combined with the TomTom HAD Map, delivers accurate and robust technology by providing real-time information about a vehicle’s precise location on a map whilst coping with changes in the environment. continued…
first published week of: 11/08/2021
In 1982, under the direction of Bill Goran at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL), two GIS development efforts were undertaken. First, Lloyd Van Warren, a University of Illinois engineering student, began development on a new computer program that allowed analysis of mapped data. Second, Jim Westervelt (CERL) developed a GIS package called "LAGRID – the Landscape Architecture Gridcell analysis system" as his master’s thesis. Thirty years ago, on 29 July 1983, the user manual for this new system titled "GIS Version 1 Reference Manual" was first published by J. Westervelt and M. O'Shea.
With the technical guidance of Michael Shapiro (CERL), the software continued its development at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (USA/CERL) in Champaign, Illinois; and after further expansion version 1.0 was released in 1985 under the name Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (GRASS). The GRASS GIS community was established the same year with the first annual user meeting and the launch of GRASSnet, one of the internet's early mailing lists. The user community expanded to a larger audience in 1991 with the "Grasshopper" mailing list and the introduction of the World Wide Web. The users' and programmers' mailing lists archives for these early years are still available online.
In the mid 1990s the development transferred from USA/CERL to The Open GRASS Consortium (a group who would later generalize to become today's Open Geospatial Consortium -- the OGC). The project coordination eventually shifted to the international development team made up of governmental and academic researchers and university scientists. Reflecting this shift to a project run by the users, for the users, in 1999 GRASS GIS was released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). A detailed history of GRASS GIS can be found at https://grass.osgeo.org/about/history/.
first published week of: 11/15/2021
Maps have come a long way since cartographers used mermaids and dragons to cover up the gaps in their knowledge.
1 Welcome to real-time traffic data
Currently, traffic data largely consists of ad hoc reports from the ground and analysis of camera feeds. Companies such as Waze, acquired by Google for $1.1bn in 2013, are changing that. Users of the service contribute to a real-time data stream that maps a city's traffic with unprecedented detail.
2 Let's take this inside
Modern navigation systems can get you to the door, but rarely any further. Now that's slowly becoming a thing of the past. Google now offers indoor maps for Android users at around 10,000 locations and rival Microsoft is doing the same with Bing Maps, including indoor maps at locations such as Heathrow.
3 Open alternatives
Although Google Maps dominates the mapping industry, there are viable open-source alternatives that have no copyright restrictions and let the crowd update the map. OpenStreetMap is the leading name in this area and powers travel app Citymapper.
4 A military upgrade
Britain's armed forces are beginning to go beyond GPS with "quantum positioning". By using powerful lasers to detect the effects of gravitational and magnetic fields on super-chilled atoms, the navy hopes to track its submarines to centimetre precision. continued…
first published week of: 09/20/2021