Interactive Cityscapes and Transgressive Digitalization

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SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2022 » VOLUME 12 » ISSUE 05 | ISSN 2277—3134

Interactive Cityscapes and Transgressive Digitalization Evolution of urban spheres has closely coincided with technological advancements. With the near ubiquity of digitalization and the far-reaching significance of spatial dynamics across all walks of life, BIM, Digital Twins, and Metaverse are bound to offer a simulative way of urban infrastructure planning and design.

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CONTENTS COVER STORY / 10

FUTURE IS HERE Metaverse for Building Next-Gen Infrastructure While the very concept of Metaverse and what constitutes it continues to be defined, its potential to unleash the next wave of digital disruption is obvious, especially in the infrastructure space.

SPACE SPECIAL

24 / Collaboration, Data Fusion Key to SAR Commercialization

Dr. Motoyuki Arai Founder & CEO, Synspective Inc. IN-PERSPECTIVE

16 / Three Ways GIS Can

Modernize Health Infrastructure for Smart Cities

INFRA SPOTLIGHT

34 / Key Transformative Trends in European AEC Sector

40 / Rebuilding American Infrastructure

INTERVIEWS

20 / Role of Demography and

Statistics in City Planning

Stefan Schweinfest Director of the United Nations Statistics Division and the UN-GGIM Global Secretariat

EXPERT OPINION

46 / The Geospatial Collective:

Facilitating Data Convergence

Daryl Madden P06

Vice President, Geospatial Systems, Textron Systems

VOLUME: 12 / ISSUE: 05 Editor-in-Chief Sanjay Kumar Managing Editors Prof. Arup Dasgupta Sanjay Singh Editor-at-Large Americas Anusuya Datta Contributing Editor Geospatial Infrastructure John Kedar Contributing Editor Global Defense and Security Keith J. Masback Consulting Editor Spatial Analytics and Location Intelligence Nicolas Duggan Associate Editors GW Prime Aditya Chaturvedi Asia Pacific Sarah Hisham Europe Meenal Dhande

31 / Smart City as a Perennial

Americas Rituparna Sengupta

Sergio Fernandez de Cordova

Chief Sub Editor Nibedita Mohanta

Conversation

49 / T-Rex: One Start Up at A Time

Corner Office

Chairman, PVBLIC Foundation, and a Permanent UN Observer CONFLICT ZONE

27 / Assessing Infra Damage in War-torn Ukraine

Sub Editor Sachin Awana Chief Designer Subhash Kumar Visualizers Pradeep Chauhan Saurabh Srivastava Disclaimer

CASE STUDY

38 / Mapping Biodiversity Via Advanced Technologies

REGULAR FEATURE

04 / Editorial

Geospatial World does not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed in the publication. All views expressed in this issue are those of the contributors. Geospatial World is not responsible for any loss to anyone due to the information provided.

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EDITORIAL

Ubiquitous Digitalization for Everyone

F

Prof. Arup Dasgupta

arup@geospatialworld.net

or long, the term digital, in all its connotations, has been a recurring keyword in the field of geospatial. Digital versions of analogue technologies have led to robust data acquisition, storage and analysis systems. Digital data is ubiquitous, persistent, and immutable over generations, thus enabling sharing and multiple use-cases. The evolution of common data standards, within and across the systems, has led to widespread use of data for a range of purposes.

Urban planning and management is one of the areas where this is most visible. Architecture, Engineering and Construction ( AEC) started with simple maps, then moved towards digitization and CAD, and from 2D to 3D, onto GIS integration.

Today, Digital Twins has become the trending buzzword. It constitutes an entire virtual representation of a real world environment that can be created using CAD, BIM and GIS. By adding data from IoT enabled devices, the changes in the real world can be replicated in the virtual world enabling better and efficient management of the urban environment.

Digital Cities represents another aspect of Industrial Revolution 4.0 where people, data, processes and objects form a virtual continuum in a digital representation of the world.

While Digital Twins replicate the inanimate world, the Metaverse has the capability to populate such an environment with avatars of real persons.

Just like in movies, these avatars can virtually visit locations which would be difficult to access physically.

4 | www.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2022

While the urban landscape does provide the most visible example of such an integration, it leaves no doubt that this concept can be extended to other areas. As an example, the European Commission is promoting a concept of Destination Earth where Digital Twins will be used to model the global weather and be able to predict weather extremes and climate scenarios.

Geospatial systems are used in many fields, urban planning being one of them. However, all individual systems like urban, agriculture, forestry, to name a few, are also intimately interrelated and each has its influence on the other in complex ways. The future therefore is not only Digital Cities, but Digital Everything.

The task of Digital Cities itself is humongous. The evolution of the technology itself, particularly from the points of interoperability, scalability and openness is yet to be achieved in full measure. The human dimension has to be addressed by internalizing the requirements of sustainability and resilience, not only by the administration and industry but also by mainstreaming social inclusion in all types of projects and throughout all project phases.

If we can achieve this in all other spheres, then we can begin to work towards Digital Everything.

In the future, issues of security, safety and privacy will get more complicated. Social and human factors may be impacted as well as we move into a Digital Universe. The road ahead is difficult but challenging nevertheless.

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COMMERCIAL INDUSTRY HAS GREATLY TRANSFORMED THE GEOINT SPACE Commercial data providers have immensely increased the coverage of Earth but also with different types of sensors and modalities. But you need to analyze all that data to glean greater and more accurate insights, says Daryl Madden, Vice President, Geospatial Systems, Textron Systems.

How do you see the geospatial intelligence scene evolving and what are the top trends?

The clear-cut answer is Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ ML); however, the community has moved from the “buzz word” to implementation and the challenge is the details.

Going back 10 or 20 years ago, if you wanted to get insight, analysts were dependent on national resources when it came to satellite-based earth observation. With the advent of commercial satellites, there was an abundance of imagery.

However, there was always that risk of missing a threat simply because there were not enough analysts to process the data.

With AI/ML, you could take these hundreds or thousands of images and run them through a pre-processor. Again, this doesn’t work magically, and it’s not straightforward. You need to build enough training sets on specific types of imagery, and then determine what answer is “good enough,” and, can we get users to buy in.

Different users build different training sets and use different models. Additionally, users do not want to bounce around between different applications. What we have done with the RemoteView™ software is taken an adaptable

approach of being able to integrate various applications within the tool of choice for imagery analysts.

You mentioned the abundance of imagery with the onset of commercial satellite industry.

In a way, the commercial industry’s participation in the GEOINT space has expanded the democratization of data and technologies. How do you view this trend?

The commercial industry has greatly transformed the GEOINT space. Commercial data providers have immensely increased the coverage of Earth but also with different modalities; for instance, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), radio frequency (RF), multispectral, hyperspectral, etc. So, now you are not only getting a lot of pictures of the Earth, but you are getting a lot more information about those pictures. For example, if you are getting pictures of a ship, you can tie that into the RF signal to see if the vessel is emitting a signal that could give its location. If it is not emitting that signal, that may be an indication that the ship is doing something it’s not supposed to.

Multispectral imagery will give you information like tree cover, or certain types of materials,

6 | www.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2022

like iron oxide, so you can look at different bands within the imagery to give you more information about what is on the Earth rather than just a picture and a human trying to decipher what it is. So, this is leading to multi-event correlation.

There is just immensely more information out there from commercial satellite providers, but you do need to merge and analyze

that data to glean greater and more accurate insights.

Tell us about some of the innovations and top-of-theline products from Textron Systems.

We at Textron Systems continue to enhance our industry-leading imagery exploitation tool, RemoteView, but have added two new full-motion video products to our offerings. SeeGEO®, a web-based solution with the ability to ingest, display and store/discover full motion video (FMV) with an easyto-use user interface, and Optice™, a desktop solution utilizing GPU technology for high-performance analytics such as object tracking.

For over 25 years, RemoteView has played a critical role in the intelligence agencies monitoring bad actors and critical situations around the world, including natural disasters.

One example is the tsunami in Thailand, where you could look at before and after images and see what roads had gone, where relief supplies could land, or what is the status of hospitals. RemoteView has done that and been critical to national security.

Additionally, over the past few years, we have added software products that are purpose-built to enhance interactions with full-motion video (FMV) sources. Our SeeGEO and Optice software are two different products that utilize FMV real-time viewing from a drone. With Optice, you can track a vehicle… an example could be if there was a bank robbery, you could click on the car and see if they have thrown something out of

the window and track where they landed. With SeeGEO, you can store that and retrieve it for later to go back and compare it to something you saw a few days ago or show all the areas the drone has flown and the area it has covered.

The Feature Analyst software can extract the extent of flooded areas and determine how many sq. miles or acres were affected, or are still currently flooded.

The red areas indicate change between before and after photos to observe the flooded streets and displaced watercraft.

Textron Systems has been at the center of the geopolitical climate and safety of our nation, and we continue to ramp that up with newer products in the area of FMV.

As the GEOINT space is evolving, so are its applications. Geointelligence is no more just about defense and security. As a business leader, how do you see Textron Systems’ client base evolving?

We are truly seeing this. SeeGEO and Optice were originally designed for the defense market, but actually, our first customer of Optice was a local sheriff’s drones department, which was operating search and rescue missions. Although we see similar needs and workflows, we realize that they are two totally different markets with different users, infrastructure and purchasing models.

We are seeing an emergence in the first responder market in terms of drone technology, and our products meet their needs. Some of the core things you would do in the military are what first responders do. For example, rescues, search and discovery, mapping areas, or monitoring ongoing situations.

However, their infrastructure is less mature than the military, where you have the network set-up to pass FMV back to the headquarters.

So, we are partnering with commercial solutions so we can pass that FMV with metadata

The Feature Analyst and LIDAR Analyst software are used jointly to identify and delineate port infrastructure. The software is extracting and counting how many structures are in each of the terminal zones.

remotely. This is not only in defense and security, but homeland security as well. SeeGEO, Optice and Feature Analyst™ software will soon be available commercially on our new e-commerce site.

Extreme weather events and natural disasters are on the rise and are requiring more attention in predictions, monitoring and post-disaster situations to make valuable contributions in the related mitigating efforts. How is real-time GEOINT making valuable inroads in this matter?

Back in 2017 when Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, Texas, we reached out to see how we could help with our RemoteView product for flood analysis. We quickly realized that all of the overhead imagery (electro-optical) was useless because of the cloud cover.

Having the ability to use different modalities of data sets was imperSeptember-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 7

CORNER OFFICE

The LIDAR Analyst software is shown extracting buildings from an office park as well as counting the number of trees and tree canopy, which are converted into valuable spatial data that can be modeled in 3D.

ative to help solve different challenges. In this case, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) would allow you to “see through the clouds.”

So, certainly, natural disasters fit within the geospatial arena.

Evolution of smart, urban cities is grabbing much attention for urban and related policymakers. What is Textron Systems’ vision towards equipping the urban development sector?

Textron Systems has worked in this market for several years. One example is the city of Durham in North Carolina, to support its storm water runoff prevention strategy through object-oriented feature extraction (pervious and impervious areas). Automated feature extraction software enabled the North Carolina Public Works GIS group to process and analyze data more efficiently, at a higher level of accuracy, and on a much larger scale than through manual processing. Through a case study completed with the city using our Feature Analyst™ software, the results demonstrated the potential of automated feature extraction to accomplish a task that would

normally take days, to be accomplished in mere minutes. We are looking forward to continuing to equip the urban development sector with accurate and efficient solutions. The full case study can be found on our website.

Smart natural resource management is being looked at as the greener way to create overall development goals for any region. How are you providing support to the natural resource areas management goals?

Textron Systems has a wide range of users. Our Feature Analyst software can be very useful for developing overall development goals for resource management.

One example is the use of Feature Analyst to identify all logging in the New York City Watershed, which encompasses more than 1 million acres in upstate New York.

The non-profit Watershed Agricultural Council’s (WAC) goal for the New York City Watershed was to balance water quality protection with a viable rural economy.

The WAC chose to use the Feature Analyst extension for ArcGIS to identify logged areas

8 | www.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2022

within the watershed. They accomplished this by first training the Feature Analyst software with examples from known logging areas, then refining the classification results using hierarchical learning, and then using the final trained model to batch classify other National Agriculture Imagery Program aerial images and extract logged areas in those images. The results of this logging identification project using Feature Analyst allowed resource managers for the first time to know the full extent of logging in the New York City Watershed, and to calculate the impact of logging on the watershed’s water quality.

Recent advances in the miniaturization of sensors and data fusion capability, and increasing digitalization and workflow integration, how do you view the future – in terms of both opportunities and challenges?

As exciting as the past years have been, we can expect even more innovations to come. We have seen hardware get smaller and processing power increase. Therefore, more and more data will be available, resulting in sifting and fusing this data to derive useful insights will become more challenging.

As always, we continue to work closely as teammates, listen to the analysts' needs and show the art of the possible (from a technology standpoint) to provide the best tools and processes to meet the ever-demanding needs of the intelligence community. We are excited to continue to play a major role in this geospatial revolution!

Interviewed by: Anusuya Datta

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COVER STORY

FUTURE IS HERE Metaverse for Building Next-Gen Infrastructure While the very concept of Metaverse and what constitutes it continues to be defined, its potential to unleash the next wave of digital disruption is obvious, especially in the infrastructure space.

By Anusuya Datta “We believe Metaverse will be the successor to the mobile internet… We’ll be able to feel present – like we’re right there with people no matter how far apart we actually are.”

Mark Zuckerberg, October 28, 2021

M

etaverse has become the most widely bandied neologisms ever since the Facebook CEO laid out his vision and rechristened the social media giant to Meta.

Although, the concept of Metaverse has existed long before Zuckerberg actually created the hype and gave it a ‘consumerist’ spin — several organizations experimented with and attempted to successfully implementing it in pilot phase across in various spheres.

“Many people think of the Metaverse in terms of social and gaming experiences. But businesses have always explored the potential of virtual or augmented realities,” says Juergen Dold, Executive Vice President, Hexagon. He explains that the real-time 3D visualizations that companies like Hexagon are creating are actually solving real-world problems, as they are anchored in the physical world — a street, a construction site, a factory, a park, a building, even products like cars and phones.

And because today’s Metaverse is an evolution of the virtual universe of the past, its use and significance in all things related to infrastructure — be it construction of standalone buildings, transport infrastructure or even entire cities — is obvious.

For instance, as Benson Chan, Chief Operating Officer, Strategy of Things, explains, 10 | www.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2022

DID YOU KNOW? The term metaverse first came up in Snow Crash, a 1992 science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson. In this fictional world, humans, as programmable avatars, interact with each other and software agents, in a 3D virtual space that uses the metaphor of the real world.

in its simplest form, the Metaverse is the digital extension of the smart city. The city’s Metaverse is an online version of the city and works in lockstep alignment with the physical city and community. “Smart cities utilize the physical data from its many sensors, building information models, digital infrastructure and geospatial information, to replicate and create models in the Metaverse that enable it to work and behave like the physical city.”

Similarly, the Metaverse, also known as the Web 3.0 is a collection of digital data that represents the real-world and enables more intuitive, immersive, interaction with that data. The Metaverse for construction, or the Industrial Metaverse, is really just an iteration of the ‘digital twin’ concept.

provides different complex systems in the same space. Thus, the flow of data is understood to make better decisions to manage the infrastructure to obtain solutions. “Multiple assets create something unique and entirely new by collecting real-time data and gaining insights,” elaborates Henrique Reis, 3D Geospatial Analyst (Digital Twins) at AAM.

What is the Metaverse?

The Metaverse can be most succinctly defined as the next stage in the evolution of the internet, where boundaries between the physical and the virtual merge.

But it is a bit more complex.

Cesium CEO Patrick Cozzi explains, the Metaverse is a progression of the internet from something that’s 2D to fully immersive 3D. The ‘fully immersive 3D’ is the underlying factor here.

“The media types on the internet have gone from text to images, to video, and now we have all the technology to enable immersive 3D experiences,” he adds.

And that is why, as Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of NVIDIA had recently said, the combination of AI and computer graphics will power the Metaverse.

“It’s a 3D embodied Web, where we can connect inside virtual worlds that look and feel to us as rich and complex as the real world. We can play, socialize, work and create within these interoperable worlds despite being separated by great distances in the real world,” elaborates Jeff Kember, Director, Omniverse Technologies, NVIDIA. Naturally, many Metaverse experiences will also be in a digital twin of the real world, whether that be for productivity applications for work, or it be monitoring a construction site, or it be training for GEOINT purposes.

The underlying technologies, such as 3D, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), digital twins or real-time streaming, have finally matured and are converging. “In many ways, the

“An immersive representation of the physical and digital worlds combined as one that enables us to better understand how these representations of a given project interact with one another,” says Nathan Patton, Product Marketing Manager, Strategy & Innovation, Trimble.

The connection between the digital world and the physical world in which Metaverse interaction

Source: Radoff, J. (2021, April 7). The Seven Layers of the Metaverse. Medium.

September-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 11

Graphic courtesy of Strategy of Things

COVER STORY

Metaverse we are talking about is the ultimate modeling and simulation environment with the pieces finally coming together,” emphasizes Nadine Alameh, CEO, Open Geospatial Consortium.

While the very concept of Metaverse and what constitutes it continues to be defined, its potential to unleash the next wave of digital disruption is obvious. Mckinsey estimates that in the first five months of 2022, more than USD 120 billion have been invested in Metaverse technology and infrastructure, which is more than double the USD 57 billion invested in all of 2021.

Geospatial Foundational to Metaverse If the Metaverse has to be a realtime representation of the physical world, it’s a no-brainer that the concept of location or geography is central to that idea. Everything about the Metaverse is geospatial, emphasizes Alameh. “You need to know where you are; where things are; where things are relative to each other,” she says.

Staying tethered to our real geography – not just accurate coor-

dinates but everything, the real environment, around us — will be essential if we want to capitalize on the full potential of what is envisioned as the Metaverse.

Imagine, while planning a city you are able to not only model but also experience the changes to the city’s physical environment such as traffic congestion, environmental emissions, and sea level rise. Or imagine constructing a building actually seeing the view from the windows of your new office.

“Geospatial information will be fundamental to combining the technology that propagates through the command of the physical world to make us understand different environments. This social-digital interaction is intrinsically geospatial and will rely heavily on interoperability to combine data/information to gain new insights, interactive actions of digital twin technologies for modelling and simulation that affect the real world,” says Reis.

Digital realities already handle air traffic; autonomous trains already move between terminals.

Now, imagine first responders never

12 | www.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2022

making a wrong turn; industrial plants predicting and performing maintenance; or autonomous technologies making mines and construction sites completely safe and sustainable; elaborates Dold.

And this is being made possible by advances in technology that will help city leaders to quickly solve the problem of infrastructure system to improve operations and maintain efficiency in resource analysis, saving cost to develop different strategies to provide quality of life for citizens from a certain place.

Metaverse for Smart Cities One of the biggest lessons from the pandemic is that we need a fresh take on the nature of real estate as cities across countries. Seoul is one of the first cities to announce plans for a Metaverse in 2021 with a virtual communication ecosystem for municipal administration.

Similarly, China has invested in exploring the Metaverse in Shanghai. Santa Monica, California in the United States offers a Metaverse experience for tourists.

Recently, on October 15, Dubai announced a Metaverse strategy.

Dubai had also recently announced a Higher Committee for Future Technology and Digital Economy, which will play an integral part in the city’s mission to spearhead the Metaverse and Web3.

Many more cities are engaging with technologies related to the Metaverse, such as digital twins, blockchain, and IoT to help them with hosting municipal events, tourism, or even post NFTs in virtual spaces that could then appear on real apartment walls!

However, for most cities, these technologies are more useful and interesting than the more immersive versions of the Metaverse that currently exist, thinks Lena Geraghty, Director of Sustainability and Innovation, Center for City Solutions.

Here, big cities that are often on the cutting edge of technological innovation will likely continue to invest in a more immersive version of the Metaverse.

Geraghty thinks many other cities will also continue to incorporate IoT and digital twins into their operations as these tools become more accessible and as their utility is further explored.

“Technologies such as digital twins have tremendous potential to help cities with a range of goals, from planning for infrastructure changes to lowering building emissions. They allow city leaders to view their cities with a granularity that allows them to play out hypothetical scenarios to anticipate specific impacts of new buildings, street changes, or other land use decisions.

Cities, including Boston, Orlando,

Las Vegas, and Phoenix, have already invested in this technology.”

Chan points to an interesting angle. Cities have long faced challenges with providing equity, accessibility and quality of life for vulnerable residents, and with the pandemic resetting smart city priorities, these once again have emerged on top of the agenda. Mobility issues have limited senior citizens and physically disabled residents from fully accessing services, visiting businesses and attending events.

Residents in lower socio-economic communities do not have the same services as other areas have, nor do they have the same access to quality education and health services.

While the Metaverse cannot solve all these challenges fully, Chan believes its immersive nature offers the potential to make a meaningful impact in ways not possible before.

“For example, senior citizens and physically disabled residents with limited physical mobility, are no longer restricted in where they can go or do. In the Metaverse, they can visit and engage with friends, attend classes and events, exercise, access services, and do so in ways that are similar to in-person activities. City leaders and managers can use the Metaverse to host more effective community engagement and collaboration meetings with its residents and businesses,” he explains.

The Metaverse could also change how people return to work in a post-pandemic world.

However, cities also must be proactive in considering how the Metaverse will impact them. “We

have seen that new technology can provide innovative solutions to better cities when local leaders plan for it but can also be detrimental to cities when it arrives without foresight,” Geraghty says.

Metaverse for Construction Digital twins are already an integral part of construction processes.

The immersive side of Metaverse will further drive a desire for better ways of interacting with the data that describes a construction project, points out Trimble’s Patton.

THE LAYERS Some of the ways we interact with the Metaverse is different from how we interact with the physical community in the smart city. However, the city’s Metaverse creates the same outcomes that are aligned to the same needs and priorities of its residents, businesses and visitors as the physical smart city.

Therefore, it is helpful to think about the metaverse in layers.  T echnology layer: This is composed of some of the components like VR/ AR and digital twins.  Data layer: This feeds the digital twin and other reality models and services in the metaverse.  Connectivity layer: This allows residents, businesses and visitors to access the metaverse and interact with each other.  Content and experiences layer: These are the interactions and engagements between the community and other members that bring the metaverse to life, grow, and sustain itself.  Innovation layer: This includes the tools and the means for metaverse community members to continuously create the content, experiences and services for the metaverse.

September-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 13

COVER STORY

As the metaverse begins to take shape, virtual worlds such as Decentraland, The Sandbox, Somnium Space and Cryptovoxels are equipping users with avatars, notes an EY paper. There are companies which are using the virtual land to create new marketing channels through immersive experiences, digital goods like NFTs and sponsored content. EY says over 200 major consumer brands have reportedly bought virtual land in the metaverse, including Atari and Wari Music Group.

And that applies to not only in the typical sense of immersing ourselves in 3D models but also in the digital representation of the project schedule, the costs, the materials, and the timeline.

“All of these things are digital representations of the construction project that I feel will be made more intuitive through some iteration of the Metaverse. For example, a legal title for a building is signed over as a paper document that is recorded in a county’s ledger, in the future the digital data will represent the building itself and can be sold and verified through the Blockchain as opposed to a physical library,” he explains.

Agrees Stephanie Lin, Senior Director, Global Retail Strategy at Matterport. “From real estate, architecture, design, engineering, retail, travel and hospitality, we know that giving virtual access to physical space has tremendous value.”

ronments adds a completely new level of authenticity and reliability to the countless simulations and training sessions. This can range from immersive job training for difficult or hazardous conditions to severely cutting down the carbon footprint and pollution generated by humans today. Being able to test and validate a Metaverse proofof-concept prior to physical world execution can be immensely valuable and cost saving.

work Cesium does with its partner Komatsu — creating digital twin of the construction site. “We envision a future where you may have an operator on site wearing AR glasses, seeing overlays of stockpiled volumes and cut film maps, and they'd be connected to someone off site wearing VR and both pointing at the same areas and maybe a third person in an operations center with a big screen,” he says.

Simulation brings enormous opportunity for all enterprises as simulating projects thousands of times virtually before producing in reality will save on cost and waste, and increase operational efficiency and accuracy. “Applying accurate physical simulation to the digital twin gives us incredible superpowers. We can teleport to any part of the digital twin just like we can in a video game, and inspect any aspect of it reflected from the real world. We can also run simulations to predict the near future, or test many possible futures for us to pick the most optimal one,” says Kember of NVIDIA.

Similarly, the Matterport digital twins are ready-made for the Metaverse. “Through our partner platform, augmented reality and virtual reality technologies are integrating with digital twins to create seamless and immersive experiences in these digital environments.

We believe digital twins can be one of the core foundations for building the Metaverse,” explains Lin.

NVIDIA’s Omniverse is a prominent example in this area, and already powering several businesses — whether by DNEG or Sony Pictures Animation to build accelerated USD media and entertainment workflows; by Foster + Partners or KPF to bring architectural design to the next level; by Ericsson to create a digital twin of a city for 5G deployment optimization; by BMW Group for building factories of the future; or by Lockheed Martin to build simulation environments to better predict wildfire spread.

Replicating real-world envi14 | www.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2022

Cozzi gives the example of the

Is Metaverse Enhanced Virtual Reality?

It seems no! As Cozzi explains, the Metaverses will be much more than VR. VR will be one way to engage with the Metaverse just like your phone today is one way to engage with the internet, but you also engage with the Metaverse through AR wearables and through your laptop and phone as you know it today.

Photo courtesy of NVIDIA

VIRTUAL LAND FOR SALE!

NVIDIA Omniverse - BMW AI Factory of the Future.

other vertical areas of opportunity. Computers were originally seen as devices geared towards only gaming, but over time, the technology advanced to the point where there were more tangible benefits that extended into business (advanced calculation, digital visualization of information, etc.) that made it a bonafide requirement for successful operations.

The same is happening to immersive technologies now, Patton says.

Chan explains that interpretation is a bit simplistic of what makes a Metaverse. “From a technology perspective, digital twins and VR/AR are some of the more top of mind components that enable the Metaverse, but it’s not the sole component,” he says.

Future Economic Impact Now that we have the technology to create true-to-reality digital twins of the physical world, this evolution of the web will be much larger than ever before. Creators will make more things for virtual worlds than they do in the physical world, enterprises will build countless digital twins of products, environments and spaces — from object scale to planetary scale, says Kember

Geraghty concurs: “These technologies are iterations of what the Metaverse may one day become.

Technologies like 3D modeling and digital twins are developments that move towards blending the physical and digital worlds, which is what the Metaverse posits to do. As technology advances, these tools may improve to become even more lifelike and useful in various sectors.”

However, Patton largely agrees that the ‘Industrial Metaverse’ will be an iteration of the digital twin concept with deeper interaction, collaboration, and immersive capabilities. “Essentially, it seeks to be the Digital Twin concept actually realized.”

The concept of the ‘Industrial Metaverse’ is really no different than these other iterations of virtual worlds that we’ve seen in the past, but now the emphasis is to introduce genuine value in

There are estimates that the economic impact of the Metaverse will touch USD 1 trillion in the next few years. Gartner has predicted that one in every four consumers will be using the Metaverse for at least an hour each day by 2026.

The next era of industries and AI will be enabled by the Metaverse — these interoperable virtual worlds.

For one, 3D workflows are now essential to every industry. After all everything that we design and build are typically first built in a virtual world. Be it a car, or bridge, or factory or a city — everything is first designed with various CAD tools, before they are built.

Dold thinks as more and more users adopt these innovations —

Photo courtesy of Cesium

“For example, we do work for digital twins of the construction site while we work with Komatsu.

And we envision a future where you may have an operator on site wearing AR glasses, seeing overlays of stockpiled volumes and cut film maps, and they'd be connected to someone off site wearing VR and both pointing at the same areas and maybe a third person in an operations center with a big screen,” he elaborates.

Conceptual model of a construction site in the metaverse, where real world location data from real-time 3D scans and intelligent machines are combined to create fully immersive and interactive digitized worlds.

and because companies continue to make advanced technologies easier to use – these solutions become suitable for an ever-widening base of users, extending beyond traditional industrial or governmental customers, to entertainment, healthcare and fashion.

“Imagine we can model our entire earth and ecosystem and do simulations to understand the impact of policies on climate change; from local to global and global to local,” says Alameh.

The Metaverse can help us better connect with the world around us, interact more deeply, and get to the root of issues. There will be a larger market, larger industry with more designers and creators building digital things in virtual worlds.

And just like the initial internet did, Web 3.0 will spark many new economies, larger than our current physical economy.

Anusuya Datta Editor-at-Large Americas anusuya@geospatialworld.net September-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 15

EXPERT OPINION

Three Ways GIS Can Modernize Health Infrastructure for Smart Cities As leaders across the spectrum aim to build more resilient and equitable communities, it’s not just transit and water systems that need upgrading. The infrastructure of our public health and healthcare systems also must be modernized. By Este Geraghty

16 | www.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2022

S

mart cities are taking a geographic approach to health—using maps, AI, and sensors to understand the needs of their communities, allocate essential resources, and streamline operations. And many federal, state, and local public health agencies as well as clinical providers of healthcare are integrating geographic information systems (GIS) into their infrastructures.

So, how are these organizations benefiting from the location intelligence GIS technology delivers?

•

• •

Maps are providing geographic context to healthcare practitioners, allowing them to understand the makeup and needs of communities and deliver more equitable care.

Public health officials use spatial analysis and predictive modeling to plan and prioritize where and when to allocate resources.

Hospital staff are using indoor mapping and wayfinding to automate and improve patient care while making operations more efficient.

These three geospatial innovations are laying the groundwork for how a modern health infrastructure will be an integral part of a smart city.

Maps Contextualize Health Equity and Visualize Care Services To improve access to services and address health equity, leadership at a large, 51 hospital healthcare system mapped their Community Health Needs Assessments (CHNA) process.

By integrating location data into the CHNA, hospital staff were able to focus more on people and their environments than rote box-checking for regulatory requirements. They saw first-hand where geographic information related to improving outcomes.

By adopting GIS, the new digital needs assessment allowed staff to overlay data layers, including demographics, onto maps.

such as homelessness, chronic disease, and substance abuse—in real-time. They can also share the information with the public to drive awareness and inform collaborative outreach efforts, both through their community benefits program and a multi-hospital consortium working together to better serve their common population. At the leadership level, location intelligence from GIS maps guides strategic decisions around healthcare operations and initiatives and enables monitoring of local impact to measure success.

In the US state of California, San Bernardino County is the largest by area and officials there have used GIS for years to monitor the health and well-being of more than 2 million people. Seeing the impact that office shutdowns and

stay-at-home orders from the COVID-19 pandemic were having on the 25 public services programs the county offered, analysts turned to GIS to develop the state’s first COVID-19 Hub. The team also created an interactive GIS dashboard to share information about how the virus was spreading in the county. This empowered decision-makers with near real-time information to act on travel restrictions, quarantines, screenings, and other response efforts.

Now, San Bernardino County analysts have leveraged that same geospatial technology beyond emergency response and daily program analysis for other projects.

For example, county staff noticed their Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program participation was at an extreme low after declining for

Photo courtesy of Esri

Staff use the map-based CHNA to visualize community issues—

An infrastructure guided by smart maps— layered with local demographic and healthcare resource data—will be crucial to achieving equity in smart cities.

Sophisticated network analysis methods can help allocate surge resources based on projected hospital demands.

September-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 17

Photo courtesy of Esri

EXPERT OPINION

Health departments can use the CHIME forecasting model to show geographic information about cases, test results, and hospitalizations.

several years. By interviewing clinic personnel, the team learned that accessibility may be a key barrier to participation. In response, GIS professionals created smart maps with data layers showing where current and past program participants lived throughout the county and their geographic relation to local clinics. The WIC research also included aggregated data, bus routes in the area as a potential mode of transportation, and visual buffers to indicate walkability. This evidencebased analysis helped officials identify underserved communities and determine where new clinics should be built to serve those in need.

An infrastructure guided by smart maps—layered with local demographic and healthcare resource data—will be crucial to achieving equity in smart cities.

Answering Where and When with Spatial Analysis and

Predictive Models Public health professionals use GIS to understand their communities—to see what is happening now, what could happen, and where more resources are needed.

This ability proved essential when COVID-19 evolved into a pandemic. Slowing disease spread at the local level required a coordinated and data-driven effort from national agencies, local governments, and private organizations.

In the US state of Pennsylvania, the Predictive Healthcare team at a multi hospital healthcare system built an analytic model intended to predict COVID-19 surges, support decisions to “flatten the curve” of cases, and help lessen the burden on local hospitals. The resulting COVID-19 Hospital Impact Model for Epidemics (CHIME) algorithm incorporated critical data like susceptible populations, hospi-

18 | www.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2022

talization rates, and the average number of infection days. With the spatial perspective added to CHIME, decision-makers could visualize spread patterns and changes in the moment and also predictively map future spread based on data about average hospital stay length, ventilation percentages, and intensive care patient numbers.

In other locations, public health and hospital administrators, as well as government authorities, compared the CHIME model against their own data on current hospital capacity, available beds, ventilators, and supply data. This provided officials with a comprehensive view of the community to craft precise responses to spikes in case rates.

Policymakers were also able to test scenarios to flatten the curve and plan what resources were needed and where.

Given the rapid advances in real-time technology and affordable sensors, indoor mapping innovations and applications will be a key part of future healthcare infrastructure.

Such precise analysis and predictive modeling capabilities will be critical for addressing future health crises.

Optimizing Hospital Operations with GIS-based Processes Some hospitals have already integrated geospatial technology into their processes to improve patient care. In one case, a hospital treating 1.5 million outpatients per year relied on an electronic health records (EHR) system to manage patient data such as personal records, location, and status. But the EHR could not provide context and analysis on patient flow or give a holistic view of what was happening day to day in the hospital. Seeking to improve patient care, management integrated their EHR and enterprise GIS technology systems.

Using their new integrated system, staff gained real-time operational intelligence on patient location and status—with dashboards that visualized key metrics and data

rich maps. The integration allowed employees to identify hot spots and other emerging trends for cross department coordination. Then, the hospital introduced GIS-based indoor navigation, enabling patients to quickly find the correct buildings, parking lots, clinics, and offices for their appointments.

Indoor maps also helped hospital decision-makers optimize space planning and facility management around patient needs.

In addition to creating efficient operational practices, hospital staff used GIS to enhance patientfacing dashboards. This automated process features wayfinding applications for appointments, wellness maps with locations for nutritional food and exercise, and care options to help patients manage chronic disease. Because the dashboards are also integrated with the hospital EHR, the patient experience is completely individualized to their location, their personal health needs, and their care team and community resources.

Given the rapid advances in real-time technology and affordable sensors, indoor mapping innovations and applications will be a key part of future healthcare infrastructure.

Beyond Emergency Response, GIS is a Crucial Tool for Healthcare Infrastructure While public health emergencies like COVID-19 capture global attention and provide valuable lessons, populations depend on public health departments and medical providers for vital services every day. Many in the health community have seen firsthand the benefits of integrating location intelligence into their infrastructure.

Health departments and medical providers are using GIS to predict where care and services will be needed most, meet those needs more equitably, and create more efficient ways of operating and delivering services. A geospatially smart health infrastructure is a crucial part of any smart city, and GIS is a necessary tool for empowering public health and healthcare professionals to create those systems.

Dr Este Geraghty Photo courtesy of Esri

Chief Medical Officer, Esri

GIS enables healthcare organizations to efficiently visualize the vast quantities of data being gathered through their engagement with community partners and residents.

egeraghty@esri.com

She leads strategy and messaging for the Health and Human Services sector at Esri, helping organizations use GIS technology to advance global health. Her work includes finding solutions for disease management, homelessness, health preparedness and response, strategic planning, healthcare access, resource allocation, and inequity. She is also the recipient of HIMSS Most Influential Women in Health IT Award 2021.

September-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 19

INTERVIEW

Role of Demography and Statistics in City Planning Good city planning needs to be backed with very detailed economic, social, demographic, and environmental data to support all of the important decisions that need to be taken, says, Stefan Schweinfest, Director of the United Nations Statistics Division and the UN-GGIM Global Secretariat, in an interview with Geospatial World.

What is the Role of Statistics in Urban Planning?

Statistics is absolutely critical in urban planning because we are surrounded by numbers. And at the local level, they offer the best opportunity of integrating different statistical information. Most of the statistical information is collected at the local level because surveys and censuses are done at the local

level, which is why it is easiest to see and understand the need for the integration of information.

What roadmap should cities adopt for a precise database actionable approach?

At the city level, you have the same challenges that are there at the national level. There’s a need to bring different players together

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Demography has always been been the first contact point for geospatial information because census cartography has always existed. The first marriage or encounter between statistics and geospatial information was via visualization for integrated information and information-based decisions.

For instance, traffic planning will have many repercussions on the local economy, and on local access to social services, education and health.

Proper city planning has to be backed by very detailed economic, social, demographic, and environmental data to support all important planning decisions that have to be taken.

Perhaps the clearest way to see that is at the city level where you can really see the immediate connection between the various dimensions.

Demography is at the heart of all city projects, and for that, we need accurate information.

How do you view statistics geospatially for a sustainable future?

Demography has always been the first contact point for geospatial information because census cartography has always existed.

In order to conduct the census, which is the most basic demographic data operation, we need good cartographic and geospatial information.

Nowadays, all of the information that is collected is geocoded.

In the future, it will provide us with a whole new wealth of opportunities on how we can

identify social and economic needs at the decision-making level, including the local municipality level.

What are the major challenges associated with the evolution of roles and mandates of national geospatial agencies?

I think one of the key challenges which many national geospatial institutions will tell you, is resources.

Many are struggling with these challenges and demands that are put before them. We need to invest in good geospatial infrastructure and data systems at the national level because it gives us a better understanding of where we are and where we are going. This will bring returns to investment and help us to put our money, our skills, resources, where they are most effective.

How can IGIF make cities more human-centric, inclusive, and help people check on emissions?

I think the IGIF is first and foremost a national-level concept.

Though of course, the fundamental idea of planning, identifying the policy information needs, what are the priorities, and then bringing different types of information and different stakeholders that have different information together.

It is an important philosophy that can also be executed at the city level. This is actually an interesting idea, whether we could

implement a program, an IGIF program at the city level.

There are certainly some cities, especially in India, that are bigger than many other countries, which is why we need to take the same philosophical approach, and we can probably take that to the city level. It would be a very interesting experiment.

How does location data help in more interactive visualization of statistical data so that it can be easily comprehended by all stakeholders?

The first marriage or encounter between statistics and geospatial information was via visualization, because of course, statistics are normally presented in tables, rows and columns, and that is not necessarily very appealing. However using geospatial visualization tools makes it much easier to communicate the key messages that are contained in the numbers and in the data.

Fundamentally, the marriage between statistics and geospatial information goes way beyond visualization. I think we need to understand what is the content and the knowledge that is contained in both the geospatial information and the data.

And if they are fully integrated, I think it will give us a better understanding of the reality that data and geospatial information are mapping.

September-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 21

INTERVIEW

In many countries, we have the Integrated Geospatial Information Framework, (IGIF) that is to be translated into a specific action plan, which would require that all the stakeholders are identified and become a part in an ongoing dialogue Are you currently working on any project, with any country?

We have launched a sustainable development goals (SDG) data alliance with a number of partners, and we are trying to implement that in 20 countries with the objective to create SDG data hubs.

These SDGs are the highest policy priority of the United Nations, so assisting countries, and in this case 20 pilot countries, to put SDG data hubs together to implement the Integrated Geospatial Information Framework at the country level, that's one of

our most exciting tasks at this moment.

With the increasing adoption of geospatial technology and data across sectors, how can any agency keep track of the evolving demands and requirements of the users?

Communication, communication, communication. I think there has to be a very intensive user-producer dialogue at all stages so that the users understand what can be produced and what can be done, and what is also efficient.

Because good, reliable and sustainable data and information are costly, high-quality information is costly. So the users need to understand that they cannot just present an endless list of demands, but there has to be a dialogue between the producers and the users of what are the priorities and what can and what must be produced first.

How does the agency engage or collaborate with users or other geospatial technology or data providers to develop a better understanding of the user’s evolving demands and new use cases?

I would definitely hope so and we are trying to make this happen. And in many countries, we have this Integrated Geospatial Information Framework, (IGIF) that is to be translated at the country level into a specific action plan. And that would require that all the stakeholders are identified and brought together in an ongoing dialogue on how the geospatial information framework in the country is shaped.

We definitely advocate that very strongly at the national level and at the global level, we are trying to make it happen through our architecture because we have the Global Committee on Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM), which has many sectoral working groups and networks, the private sector network, the academic network, the united international organization's network, and the international associations' network.

We are trying at the global level to bring all of these players together in a continuous dialogue.

Interviewed by: Nibedita Mohanta

22 | www.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2022

SPECIAL FEATURE

Collaboration, Data Fusion Key to SAR Commercialization

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is set to drive the expansion of the Earth Observation industry in coming years. Dr. Motoyuki Arai, Founder & CEO, Synspective Inc., talks about its potential and what it takes to accelerate the journey towards commercialization.

You have a vision of establishing a SAR satellite ecosystem, including a constellation of 30 satellites by 2026. What is your motivation to make this a reality?

The SAR satellite constellation can capture a lot of data, including ground terrain data, infrastructure assets, and economic activity. With the capability to provide high-frequency data in any weather condition, SAR can monitor the distribution of resources and economic productivity, as well as natural and human-induced changes to the Earth.

At the same time, data science and analytics technology are picking up which are helping us understand how best to leverage SAR data with machine learning techniques. The combination of a satellite constellation and analytics platform will lead us toward a “Learning World” where customers across industries are enabled to make data-driven, timely decisions. This is a big motivation for us.

At present, for example, there is no technology that can fully assess flood damages. SAR satellites can identify and capture a flood area in near real time. When this gets fused with 3D maps and other raw data, responders can plan search-andrescue missions with the latest and most reliable information.

We are in the process of building a full constellation of 30 satellites to facilitate disaster mitigation efforts and support sustainable and resilient infrastructure. A constellation of 30 satellites can provide data anywhere on Earth every two hours. It will take an additional hour to downlink the data for analysis. That means that responders can get access to comprehensive data of affected areas in less than three hours after a disaster. This is crucial because the human survival rate decreases after the first 72 hours.

Which sector will benefit the most from SAR technology?

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Infrastructure, most definitely. SAR data, integrated with BIM, CIM, and other data such as land survey data or base maps can be used in every step of the infrastructure value chain, from assessment to the design and engineering, construction and maintenance including disaster response and mitigation.

One of our clients, a big construction company, uses our land displacement monitoring solution to detect sinkhole or landslide risks at its construction sites. The data provided by our small SAR satellite “StriX” constellation can also apply to their daily operations.

Our flood damage assessment solution can be used for disaster mitigation and even for regular maintenance processes, for example, for the maintenance of a large dam or pipeline network or another similar type of infrastructure.

SAR data integration can provide new value to users in each of the infrastructure phases. As a result, the entire value chain can be connected and visualized.

What is the role of partnerships in strengthening your customer engagement in the market?

Data fusion is very important in generating solutions from SAR data. Therefore, we need to work with partners who have the industrial know-how on the actual user requirements and potential use cases of our data.

We can provide SAR data, land survey data, or land deformation data, but solutions are developed through discussions with experts

in construction, engineering consultancy, and insurance companies.

area, which helps to calculate CO2 emission more accurately for CO2 credit or trading.

We can provide data that identifies a flood area and the estimated depth of the flood. However, in order to measure damage from the flood for insurance purposes, we need to fuse the data with appropriate statistical data owned by the insurance company. In this case, partnerships with insurance companies and consulting companies are very important for us.

Another potential use case is in offshore wind farm assessment.

Wind speed can be estimated by measuring the wave fluctuation on the sea. SAR satellites can generate this data.

How do you foresee business expansion within and beyond the infrastructure, construction and insurance markets?

The SAR market is still in its development phase. The early adopters in each of the industries that are already testing SAR are very good partners for us. We look forward to expanding our business with them, either directly or through our resellers. So infrastructure development, construction and insurance companies are promising customers.

In addition, I can see that the traditional defense and intelligence sector will be a big customer of SAR data. We can make the base revenue through data business with them and gradually start creating solutions. It has great potential to scale up and become a very important business for us.

We are also eyeing business opportunities for climate-related applications and clean-tech sectors. For example, forest monitoring. Traditional forest monitoring only covers forest areas. But with SAR satellites, we can identify the volume of biomass in the forest

Synspective recently launched StriX-1, its third satellite after the success of StriX-α and β. What is your expectation from this launch?

Synspective has been developing techniques and accumulating know-how regarding multiple operations with two satellites already in orbit. With the addition of the first commercial satellite, StriX-1, we will gain experience in the manufacturing process and increase the amount of data we collect, accelerating business expansion. We have also signed several significant contracts with governmental and industrial customers with verified solutions.

With StriX-1 in orbit, we can scale up the customers’ needs in terms of data volume. In this sense, Strix-1 will demonstrate the scalability of our commercialization from a production point of view as well as from a business point of view.

The number of commercial SAR satellites in orbit is growing exponentially – all with varying sizes, tasking speeds revisit rates and image resolution. How will this impact the larger Earth Observation ecosystem?

From several conferences that I’ve attended in recent years, I noticed that the number of analytics compa-

September-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 25

SPECIAL FEATURE

nies and satellite operators has increased drastically compared to 3 or 4 years ago. From an analytics and solutions provider point of view, this is a very good trend.

There are many different datasets that can be provided from various types of constellations. The increase in data type and data volume makes proof of concept (POC) or a pilot project easier and more practical.

Partnership and collaboration will be key to determining what type of dataset or data fusion is required to create appropriate solutions. Experience and know-how will determine whether or not we’ll be able to commercialize the growing dataset. We’ve gone through big changes this last year. We signed new contracts with the defense and intelligence sector, as well as the infrastructure development sector. We also had discussions with foreign government and analytics companies, and some construction consulting companies.

SAR data is rich in information, but it is also less intuitive than traditional satellite images. Will this prolong the realization of its full potential in the market?

I think the lack of industrial know-how is the barrier to expanding SAR’s use cases in the market. We already have many satellite operators providing data, and many analytics companies to developing analytical tools. What we need to do is create more and more solutions.

Actually, there are many academic players – professors and researchers – who have thought of various solutions using SAR

Partnerships will be key to determining what type of dataset or data fusion is required to create appropriate solutions data. But those solutions need more frequent datasets and a biggervolume. Now, as the first step of commercializing SAR, we’re working with these experts to verify their ideas with actual data and create solutions or packaged services for customers.

We’re in this ‘verification’ phase currently. The next phase of creating new solutions through discussions or accumulated know-how with new datasets will take another two or three years to build up. It does take time. There are also sectors already aware of the actual use cases, but they don't know about satellite datasets. So we need to connect our data to their needs and then we can build up usable solutions. There is a lot of potential but we need to find out the appropriate route to get there.

Customers today are looking for better analytics rather than more data. What’s your take on this?

I think packaged analytics is preferable for customers because then they don’t have to hire special professionals for their in-house solution developments. I believe analytic solutions would be the main revenue generator for companies like ours.

At the moment, the defense and intelligence sector has so much power in consuming SAR data compared to other sectors. There are many startups focusing only on defense and intelligence applications that are making enough

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money from this sector, especially considering the current global national security landscape. But I think in three or four years, the solutions market will grow and overtake the data market.

This is because data sales are mainly limited to the defense and intelligence sector while there are many industrial sectors waiting for valuable data and analysis. If we cover the analytics development part, we will be able to at least provide analytics services, and hopefully, package it with solutions. I think this will be a standard service for the SAR market.

SAR is known for its ability to record accurate measurements even amidst severe weather. Do you see the technology as a gamechanger in the fight against climate change?

Yes, but SAR data alone cannot make big changes. Data fusion is definitely required. SAR data can cover a broad area with very high resolution and in any weather condition. But we need ground truth data to be able to use SAR data with enough credibility and maturity.

I think we need to spend a few more years to create and raise the quality of SAR data services.

To achieve that, we need several ground truth datasets provided by IoT sensors, smartphone GPS or manual assessments. The combination of these datasets will be game-changing.

CONFLICT ZONE

ASSESSING INFRA

All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal ~John Steinbeck

DAMAGE IN W WAR-TORN UKRAINE Satellite imagery, AI and geospatial technologies are being extensively used in conflict zone Ukraine for not just search and rescue missions, relief and rehabilitation efforts, and frontline emergency communications, but for accurate assessment of the magnitude of infrastructure damage as well. By Nibedita Mohanta

hen American author John Steinbeck visited the enthralling Kyiv in 1947, it was still recovering from the destruction wrought by the Second World War, and being rapidly reconstructed to match its majestic grandeur.

Decades later, Ukraine has become the turf of the biggest conflict in Europe ever since the World War, which has upended the security architecture and brought the continent to a standstill, reviving the anxieties of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and endangering the future of energy security and green transition.

The war has torn down critical infrastructure facilities, industrial enterprises, roads, highways, residential apartments, and farms, reducing large parts of Europe’s largest country and formerly vibrant cities to rubble.

Unpredictability looms about which direction the war will take. Ukraine continues to make advances in the four eastern regions annexed by Russia, while the Kremlin’s missiles are hitting as far as western part of the country. As critical civilian infra, including power plants is being hit, accurate damage assessment is essential for post-war repair, reconstruction, and rehabilitation efforts.

According to a recent statement

by Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, “30% of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed,

September-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 27

CONFLICT ZONE

DATA COLLECTION  Preparing hard-proof documentation for the lawsuits  Data collection and database management  Development of digital tools for data acquisition  Drone owners and drone operators  Geospatial expertise: orthorectification, imagery processing and ETL processes of geospatial data  Machine Learning specialists  Reconstruction cost assessment  Assessment of additional indirect cost of inflicted damage, such as cost of the downtime of industrial infrastructure

causing massive blackouts across the country.”

As a result of the conflict, Ukraine’s economy is expected to contract by 35% this year, and more than 14 million people are estimated to have been displaced so far, says a World Bank report.

The war has also dimmed the prospects of a post-pandemic economic recovery for emerging and developing economies, exacerbating record-breaking inflation and acute food and fuel crisis.

If World Bank estimates are to be believed, recovery and reconstruction across social, productive, and infrastructure sectors would require at least $349 billion, which is more than 1.5 times the size of Ukraine’s pre-war economy in 2021.

"Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered one of the biggest human displacement crises and exacted a heavy toll on human and economic life,” said Anna Bjerde, World Bank Vice President for the Europe and Central Asia region. “Ukraine continues to need

enormous financial support as the war needlessly rages on as well as for recovery and reconstruction projects that could be quickly initiated."

Tracking the War Toll Since the onset of the Ukraine war in February 2022, the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) Institute, a leading think tank and the analytical unit of the KSE, along with the Office of the President of Ukraine, Ministry of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine, Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine, Ministry for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine has been spearheading an initiative called Russia will pay/ damaged.in.ua.

The initiative collects, evaluates, analyses, and documents information provided by government agencies, local authorities, citizens, and others, on the damage inflicted on civilian infrastructure resulting from the Russian invasion. It is effectively an opensource data project to evaluate and track the cost of war.

According to the KSE Institute, the damage inflicted on the country’s infrastructure has been estimated at a cost of $114.5bn as bombs devastated buildings, public utilities, power plants, and road networks.

“We collect the data in every possible way and then try to verify and compare these data sources.

We cooperate with both local and state authorities that receive information, be it from our own reporting channels, from credible media, business associations or individual witnesses,” says

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Maksym Nefyodov, the KSE Institute Project Lead.

They use other digital tools which structure and facilitate the process, such as their website, the Telegram chatbot (https://t.me/ Damage_in_ua_bot) and the widely popular Kyiv Digital and Diia apps originally used for access to state services. “We also collect the data from ortho-rectified drone images taken in liberated zones. For war zones and larger communities we cooperate with companies proficient in analyzing satellite imagery,” adds Nefyodov.

Data to Rescue To assess the damage and procure accurate data about the war-torn infrastructure, KSE Institute has partnered with Tensorflight, a Polish/US company that uses satellite, aerial, and street-level imagery to automate commercial property inspections and claims to process helping underwriters with risk assessment and to better understand their portfolio exposures.

Since April 2022, Tensorflight has been providing and analysing imagery from state-of-the-art satellites to assess the damage caused to infrastructure within Bucha, Irpin and Mariupol, on a pro bono basis, to the KSE Institute. These cities had a combined pre-invasion population of almost 570,000 and span an area of approximately 387 square kilometres.

This partnership is enabling Ukraine to access additional expertise in satellite, aerial, and streetlevel imagery to eliminate inaccuracies within data, and to develop Machine Learningmodels to speed up imagery processing.

Satellite Imagery © Maxar Technologies Provided by European Space Imaging

Destroyed homes and vehicles at Vokzalna Street, Bucha, Ukraine

With the help of high-resolution satellite imagery, combined with geolocation, and AI, infrastructure damage is being determined.

Need for Accurate Assessment Till date, 61188 buildings in Mariupol, 3927 in Irpin, and 2510 in Bucha, have been identified and analysed using Tensorflight’s Deep Learning model.

In addition to supporting the KSE Institute to track the cost of war, the project is also helping the Ukrainian government assess the reconstruction requirements of the country. For example, the intelligence will help inform whether to prioritise the rebuilding of a power station or to prepare for the winter months ahead or a hospital or school based on the needs of residents in affected areas.

the build-back better principle, which are usually considered out of bounds for embattled communities on the verge of destruction.

“The total amount of infrastructure damage since the start of war has reached hundreds of billions of dollars and is increasing on a daily basis. Tracking the damage resulting from the Russian invasion is an immense undertaking, and we are providing our expertise pro bono, to support the KSE Institute,” said Jakub Dryjas, CEO of Tensorflight.

According to Nefyodov, as access to information is improving, the project seeks to go down to the most granular level of analysis.

Ukraine's Ministry of Communal Development is building a GIS-based Geoportal that will provide data-based insights and analytics, allowing accurate planning of reconstruction efforts employing the latest urban development concepts and

“We anticipate to analyse even more images of Ukraine's infrastructure to ensure data-driven decisions during the recovery process of impacted areas," Nefyodov added. “We also are a part of the RISE.org.ua coalition that aims to design transparent and accountable ways of managing these recovery projects once they start, as well as proper civil oversight and reporting to the donor community.”

Identifying Damaged Areas War-torn areas are difficult to access and so is getting a clear picture of the infrastructure.

Scheduling an optical satellite requires a number of conditions September-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 29

CONFLICT GROUND ZERO

to be met: daylight, cloudless weather, appropriate position of the satellite and free time in the satellite imaging schedule.

urban war zones and have more examples to re-train the model, our models will incrementally improve,” he added.

“The technology used to detect damaged buildings in areas not accessible by drones or planes is our standard product modified and optimized for the detection of damage caused by shelling”, said Władysław Surała, Head of Partnerships, Tensorflight.

Surala explains that after the imagery is delivered to their servers, they pre-process to sharpen it. If there is auxiliary data available, such as footprints of the buildings, this is the step when they prepare it - they load the coordinates of the footprints to help detect the buildings. Next, the image is loaded into the neural networks, designed and trained to detect the buildings, and then they are classified as damaged or intact.

“We rely on high resolution satellite imagery analyzed by neural networks trained specifically to detect building damage.

The images are taken from the top (~0 degrees from the axis) and oblique (30-50 degrees from the axis) so as to not omit damaged buildings with roofs still intact.

As we collect more imagery of

Tensorflight’s Deep Learning models then estimate the level of the damage to the buildings. This is further categorized into classes indicating the degree of damage,

e.g. from completely demolished, to suitable for repair. On top of that, the engine can load historical data about the damaged building and estimate the cost of reconstruction - this is also part of their standard product.

“Another area of our project’s expansion is accounting for more complex types of damage and losses - ecological, de-mining, lost harvest, movable property, and many more.

A very sad example is damage to the properties of deceased owners.

The next stages of our work will gradually cover these areas,” Nefyodov added.

Nibedita Mohanta Chief Sub Editor Geospatial World Nibedita@geospatialworld.net

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INTERVIEW

Smart City as a Perennial Conversation “Everything is interrelated, and smart cities is an evolving conversation. I always tell people that you don't build a railroad or a highway twice, instead you improvize, making it better, faster, and more efficient through the use of technology”, says Sergio Fernandez de Cordova, Chairman, PVBLIC Foundation, and a Permanent UN observer, in an exclusive interview with Geospatial World.

Post the pandemic disruption, there have been a lot of socioeconomic transformations, as well as individual and collective behavioral adaptations.

Now the talk of the town everywhere is designing resilient cities. What role do you think geospatial technology can play in this?

Resilience means understanding your environment and being ready to act, not just through data, but also figuring out how climate impacts our communities, cities and critical infrastructure. Look at how Singapore's Land Authority is using geospatial to not only look at resiliency, but also for education and transforming how people live, how they engage with the city, how they are actually buying new homes or moving, or how they are finding their next job.

Singapore is an incredible example of how we all aspire for our communities and our cities to be. In order to build resilience and smart and intelligent communities, we need to have multi-stakeholder

engagements. We need public-private partnerships to ensure that we are not leaving anyone behind.

There’s a need to build infrastructure to advance how people engage with each other, and how a city listens because a city is not just about what it's creating for its habitants, its residents, and its visitors, but also, how it listens, learns, and interacts.

City planning has undergone many underlying transitions over the years. Earlier, the focus was on just designing infrastructure, but now, there has been a conscious shift towards a human-centric city, an urban sphere that would prioritize human needs and aspirations above all.

How do you think can this be synchronized with the sustainability imperative?

The evolution of the conversation on smart cities is about smart digital infrastructure. As I said, cities need to absorb information and listen to improve the services for people, create security, and advance services.

What we have witnessed in the first world countries is that the disparity between ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ has become greater, because the infrastructure's only been focused on the people that have the ability to afford it – the affluent communities and the taxpayers.

Again, when we relook at this evolution of smart communities and smart cities, a vacuum has been created in the last ten years.

There are communities that have nothing: no infrastructure and no intelligence inputs to secure a better life for themselves.

We have retrofitted and built this infrastructure for the first world users. And I think that, from our perspective, this is one of the greatest opportunity areas to work upon and ensure we become totally inclusive and utilize sustainable development goals so that no child misses education, and with the right access to information we are able to build a better future for everyone.

To me, everything is interrelated.

Smart cities is an evolving converSeptember-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 31

INTERVIEW

To build resilience and smart and intelligent communities, we need to have multi-stakeholder engagements, and public private partnerships sation, and I always tell people that you don't build a railroad twice, instead, you improvize, making it better, faster, and more efficient through the use of technology.

Unfortunately, some government leaders, civil society leaders, and entrepreneurs lack the foresight in terms of evolution, constant improvement, and ensuring that no one is left behind.

As population explodes and the trend towards urbanization and the migration to urban hotspots continues, we see mega cities everywhere in the world getting more cluttered and congested. This means declining opportunities, shrinking spaces and lack of inspirations that were offered to the previous generations.

How can we solve this conundrum?

Well, it's an excellent point, because what you are talking about is a lot like what we call the hub and spoke model.

We have seen people make that shift. The reason why everybody is flooding to mega cities is because they offer an opportunity to make more money and secure a better living for their families.

If we start to unpack the dynamics of why people migrate from say Central America to live five people in a bedroom in the United States, it is to dispatch money back home. But on the other hand, some of the beachside places where they come from, are those where many Americans plan their retirement.

Where we're seeing this technology evolving is that, as long as we have good infrastructure, and we are not building it in a mega core, it's what we call the hub and spoke model, like a bicycle wheel.

So there’s a hub that can afford the most expensive infrastructure, but then, at the same time, we have spokes that create these communities where people could live their own life, they could drive a car,

go play in the park and not be in a smog city and actually live healthily.

There are GIS-based tools and applications that enhance the efficiency of municipal services, law enforcement, and delivery of goods to the public. Can there be integrated digital applications that will make municipal decision-making easier and cities more participatory, inclusive, democratized, and decentralized?

What we've seen with the evolution of Android and Linux, is that open architecture has allowed us to upgrade and create all these solutions that we use today– although some of them are more successful than the others.

At the city level, we have the opportunity to give all this geospatial information on economic development opportunities, education opportunities, and give people the tools to build at the local level.

That's what we are doing with the SDG Data Alliance.

For instance, we all mostly use Uber, but why can't there be a local alternative, or why can't there be a local platform that's used for only those people in the city, for bicycles, for all transportation?

Over the past decade, a lot of these developments have happened, especially in India. Then there are different elements peculiar to different countries, be it India, Kenya, Chile, Brazil, or America.

When we aggregate them all, then the conversation starts.

We are seeing more young people now realizing that they can be a part of that change where

32 | www.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2022

we need the technologies at the government level to allow that open architecture to access that data.

additional layers on top of that infrastructure. Singapore is really the leader in this.

Sometimes it takes enormous disruptions like a pandemic for people to sit at home and realize.

I am really excited about the next generation, especially in the global south, because people there are seeing the real world and coming up with solutions.

Governments like Singapore and Dubai have done an amazing job. Australia launched the National broadband network. Due to it, everybody in the country has access to connectivity.

Which cities, in your opinion, have made tremendous progress in the smart digital transition?

What Singapore is doing is just fantastic. Maybe some of the cities in China as well, but that's not open architecture. What we are referring to is how a group of us can come together and create

Throughout Africa, they are building these sort of connected villages and metro parks. In Latin America, a lot of work is being done in such connected areas, but ultimately, they are not areas where you want to live, just areas where you want to work.

What we need is smarter political leaders. I think we've reached the precipice where there are a

lot of innovators, but public and private are not coming together. If you're the Minister, and you don't have time for me, and you don't understand what I'm trying to say to you, then there is a big gap.

There's a disparity between political leaders and where the future is heading. A lot of the work that we do is to try to help bridge that gap to bring the innovators, multi-stakeholders, civil society groups, and NGOs together. They might have a different view, but that doesn't mean that you have to shift things.

It means that you're listening.

That's why accurate data is important because it gives us the ability to listen at a geospatial level.

Interviewed by: Aditya Chaturvedi

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INFRA SPOTLIGHT

Key Transformative Trends in European AEC Sector

Uncertainty looms across Europe, compounded by major geopolitical shifts, economic volatility, risk of impending energy crisis, and post-pandemic new normal adjustments. With the AEC sector geared towards stability, sustainability, and digital transformation, we look at the major trends shaping its future. By Sachin Awana

T

he introduction of BIM and GIS has catapulted the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry towards a new direction.

External socioeconomic factors such as COVID-19, the RussiaUkraine war, and disruptive supply chains have created obstacles.

Now, while the need for sustainability gains prominence, the road to stability looks desolate for Europe’s AEC industry.

The technologies of tomorrow are up for grabs, and the AEC industry globally is taking advantage

and developing rapidly by incorporating newer practices. While Europe’s AEC industry leads in digital technology adoption worldwide, within the region, it is the lowest-ranked economic sector in digital uptake. Digitalisation and the use of technologies, such as Building Information Modelling (BIM), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning (ML), are often politically and socially overlooked.

While there has been an increasing recognition within Europe’s AEC industry of the many benefits of advanced technologies there is still enough scope to further

34 | www.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2022

adopt advanced technology across infrastructure lifecycle projects.

As per an upcoming white paper titled Mega Trends Driving Digital Transformation in Europe's AEC Industry, released

by Geospatial World and prepared as a result of a thought-provoking discussion amongst the European members of the Autodesk-Esri Customer Council Group, here are four megatrends that affect the European AEC industry as a whole.

Sustainability Climate change has been affecting every country; disrupting econ-

According to the white paper, “Sustainability in the AEC industry is defined as a dynamic relationship between developers of new solutions, investors, architects, engineers and contractors , professional consultants, industry suppliers, and other relevant parties towards achieving sustainable development goals."

Sustainability in the AEC industry can be looked at from various perspectives. The ethical and greener approach to designing and managing buildings, choice of materials, and amalgamation of urban and economic development are some. Moreover, factors also change from country to country, as some focus on using their resources as efficiently as possible, whereas other countries might prioritise social inclusion and economic cohesion.

The EU Roadmap The European Union charted out five points for the construction sector to upkeep its sustainable competitiveness– investments,

Economic Forecast: Russia's War Worsens Outlook

GDP Real GDP is forecasted to grow by 2.7 percent in 2022 and 1.5 percent in 2023 in the EU. In the Euro area, 2.6 percent growth is expected in 2022, and 1.4 percent in 2023.

INFLATION Inflation reached a record high in July 2022 to 8.9 percent, energy prices rose by almost 40 percent, while food prices rose by more than 10 percent. As the pressures from energy prices and supply constraints fade, inflation is expected to decline steadily thereafter and to fall below 3% by the end of 2023.

RISKS

The outlook remains subject to high uncertainty and the balance of risks titled towards adverse outcomes.

of climate change. The focus of Europe’s AEC industry is to promote the durability and adaptability of built assets in line with circular economy principles for building design and construction.

jobs, resource efficiency, regulation, and market access. The European Union’s policies for the AEC industry aim at an integrated approach to cover sustainability beyond low-carbon discussions, but for energy and resource efficiency, health, and safety issues.

“Alternatively, a paradigm shift has been occurring in the industry by adopting a Circular Economy model, which aims for restorative, regenerative, and disruptive design. In construction, circularity means reconfiguring the supply chain according to environmental sustainability criteria to address global resource scarcity and climate change," the white paper report said.

This will make the built environment less resource-intensive, climate neutral, less polluting, and more resilient to the effects

Digital Technology stands to improve the construction industry’s productivity as much as 60% - delivering as much as $1.6 trillion annually in incremental value.

As adopting sustainable methods becomes more prominent; innovating, practicing, and implementing solutions at large would once again hinder the sail of the AEC industry in Europe.

As of now, Europe’s construction industry is responsible for over 35 percent of the EU’s total waste generation. Moreover, the greenhouse gas emissions from material extraction, manufacturing of construction products, as well as construction and renovation of buildings are estimated at 5-12% of total national GHG emissions.

Incidentally, the EU is aiming for a 30% cut in its annual primary energy consumption by 2030, according to the white paper.

Geopolitical Risks The Russia-Ukraine war has impacted the European AEC September-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 35

Source: Summer 2022, Economic Forecast - European Commission

omies and the day-to-day lives of people. Subsequently, policies for the adoption of ethical production, construction, and consumption are being accelerated by governments worldwide. Major dialogues and treaties between governments such as the Paris Agreement have all called for gradual policy changes to incorporate more sustainable practices in every industry.

INFRA SPOTLIGHT

Outlook Slow Growth in 2020

Slow growth witnessed since 2020 due to significantly decreased market output worldwide, geopolitical risks across regions and reduced investor confidence.

10.7% CAGR Global AEC Market to witness a 10.7% CAGR between 2021 and 2028; expected to grow from USD 7.8 trillion in 2021 to USD 15.8 trillion in 2028.

Digital Transformation The Global AEC industry is undergoing a digital transformation.

Technologies such as Cloud, Artificial Intelligence, Drones, Building Information Modelling (BIM), geospatial, 3D Printing, and Robotics are gaining traction within the AEC industry.

industry profoundly. The already complex supply chains have been disrupted, while a cloud of uncertainty still looms around. Stock market decline also aggravated the situation as the overall economic prowess of Europe showed no positive indices.

Signs of distress came into the picture soon after Russia started invading Ukraine. The euro sagged to a 20-year low against the dollar recession fears started inculcating economies, and an crisis seemed inevitable, all while the economies were rebounding from the Covid-19 slump. Most parts of the continent relied on Russia’s energy supply, while energy-intensive industries such as steel faced ambiguity at large.

20 15.8 14.1 15

12.6 11.2 9.6

10

8.7

10 7.1

7.8

Source: GW Consulting Analysis

5

0 2020

2021

2022E 2023F 2024F 2025F 2026F 2027F 2028F

Global AEC Market 2020-2028 (All numbers in Trillion) E- Estimated / F- Forecasted 36 | www.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2022

“Europe's construction continues to be deeply impacted by geopolitics especially in the background of the Russia-Ukraine war. Some of the geopolitical issues relate to nationalism, trade, supply chains, financing, labor, security, and the environment, affect the ability to complete projects, regardless of size or scope," the white paper report said.

Europe’s War Dilemma The European AEC industry has not yet completely shifted its heavy reliance from the insecure supply chains amidst the war. The disruption and search for an alternative supply-chain have translated into reduced demand within Europe’s construction industry, with many projects stalling, postponing or cancelling altogether. Russia being a major energy source for many European countries, rising energy prices will also prove to be another major factor that will once again disrupt the supply chain and increase material costs.

Moreover, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus supply a sizeable proportion of Europe’s long steel products. The war interrupted production which translated into a steel squeeze. The war in the region has thus constrained not only the production and import of steel but steel mills across Europe. While the inflationary impact may be felt in the medium term, the geopolitical shifts are likely to have longterm effects which could shape new regionalised trade models.

Economic Volatility The construction industry is one of the most volatile and failure-prone.

With razor-thin margins and a complex and cash-hungry payment

structure, construction companies can be among the first to feel the effects of economic uncertainty or poorly made bets in an economically volatile market.

Volatility in economies across Europe shot off the roof due to Covid-19 and the subsequent lockdowns. As projections seemed to gain a few green points, the RussiaUkraine war propelled the economies into another major collapse.

Now, the talks of another major worldwide recession are making rounds, and both, the investors and the government are treading the pasture carefully.

Economic Uncertainty Economic uncertainty has been looming around world economies for a while and due to the cash crunch, and tightly regulated monetary policies, the construction industry is facing significantly more volatility. The COVID-19 pandemic provoked an unprecedented economic crisis, with FACTS

35%

Europe’s construction industry is responsible for over 35 percent of the EU’s total waste generation.

5-12%

Greenhouse gas emissions from material extraction, manufacturing of construction products, as well as construction and renovation of buildings are estimated at 5-12% of total national GHG emissions.

30%

EU is aiming for a 30% cut in its annual primary energy consumption by 2030

European Union GDP contracting by 5.9 percent in 2020.

“Local market structures and ease of entry in the European AEC space have resulted in a fragmented landscape (both vertically and horizontally). Additionally, the regional economic disruption has limited the economies of scale for mostly all small AEC companies. Alternatively, high unpredictability and cyclicality have led Europe’s AEC industry to rely on temporary staff and subcontractors, which is hampering productivity, limiting economies of scale, and reducing output quality and customer satisfaction," the white paper report said.

Post-Pandemic Workforce Trends Even though the grave effects of the COVID-19 slump started to diminish in Europe's economy, the shift in working trends has been ravaging many industries, more so seriously in the AEC. The concerns and viability of the hybrid workforce environment are taking a u-turn, as productivity is limiting.

The ability to meet job demands has also taken a hit as the new normal shows its true nature.

and virtual collaborations are here to stay to make the industry more efficient, collaborative, and flexible”, says the white paper.

Uncharted Area Digitalization in Europe’s AEC industry is driven by the need for sustainability and resiliency in infrastructure projects, not technology innovation. The halfhearted attempts at incorporating new methods and shedding off the traditional practices have begun to impede the European AEC’s spirited future.

Post-Covid Human Resource Challenges A quarter of construction companies are facing scarcity of skilled design and construction workers in several Member States, including Germany, Austria, Spain, etc. “Europe’s AEC industry is finding it challenging to retain qualified workforce, causing significant project delays and cancellations, loss of project bids, and failure to innovate. Thus, there is a need for the regions’ AEC industry to realise remote work

The European AEC industry has some uncharted potential when it comes to digitalization across various project lifecycles. This brings out the need to shift from linear economic models to circular economic models – leveraging the power of data, technology and other digital solutions to move beyond the ecological boundaries.

Sachin Awana Sub Editor sachin@geospatialworld.net

September-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 37

CASE STUDY

Biodiversity Mapping Via Advanced Technologies

The marine and coastal life forms exhibit great diversity, making it an extremely complex system, which is difficult for the space-based monitoring systems to assess. cosine is developing the technology for a constellation of small satellites that provides crucial information for better understanding and monitoring of marine organisms.

By Marco Esposito and Marco Beijersbergen from cosine

T

he North Sea, the tidal areas and the dunes that characterize the Dutch landscape are areas where the original processes of nature have remained relatively intact.

Here the marine and coastal life forms exhibit great diversity, making it an extremely complex system that is difficult to assess.

Similar habitats that combine high biodiversity with high productivity are distributed globally and need frequent and broad systematic assessments.

A space-based monitoring system can greatly help to take actions based on clear information on the status of biodiversity. Recent developments in advanced optical instruments for space offer the possibility to monitor biodiversity from space much more frequently. cosine is developing the technology for a constellation of small satellites that provide high-frequency hyperspectral and spectropolarimetric measurements, in comple-

ment to existing and planned hyperspectral missions from ESA and NASA. The Spectral signature provided by hyperspectral imaging in each pixel gives information about the type of landscape and its detailed properties, such as soil moisture, the type of soil, water stress in vegetation and biodiversity (figure 1).

and varying bottom visibility with and without macrophytes.

For example, a lake receives and recycles organic and inorganic substances from within the lake, from its watershed and beyond, such as atmospheric deposition.

The visible and near-infrared reflectance spectra contain absorption, scattering, and fluorescence signatures of functional phytoplankton groups, colored dissolved matter, and particulate matter in the topmost water layers, and of biologically structured habitats.

As recently recommended by a feasibility study conducted on behalf of the Committee on Earth Observing Satellites (CEOS 2017), observation of the Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) that change rapidly with temperatures, storms, pollution, or physical habitat destruction over scales relevant to human activity (Muller-Karger et al. 2018) requires a new generation of satellite sensors.

Most of the challenges in water remote sensing are due to their optical complexity. Aquatic ecosystems can be a mixture of optically shallow and optically deep waters, with gradients of clear to turbid and oligotrophic to hypertrophic productive waters,

The Italian PRISMA and the German ENMaP missions provide hyperspectral data at high spatial resolution, a constellation of small satellites equipped with cosine’s HyperScout® and POLA™ sensors drastically reduce the revisit time and add multi-angular

38 | www.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2022

polarisation measurements.

HyperScout® and POLA™, are miniaturized hyperspectral and spectropolarimetric imagers that are sufficiently small for nanoand microsatellites.

The onboard data processing system makes it possible to generate geophysical parameters onboard, drastically reducing the amount of data to be downloaded.

The instruments combine a very small instrument envelope with a large swath (Table 1).

Figure 1: Alice Mulga, Australia, hyperspectral image acquired by HyperScout®2

This combination allows for much more frequent observations, crucial for better understanding the atmosphere-water system and monitoring of marine organisms at short time scales.

References CEOS. 2017. A. G. Dekker and N. Pinnel, editors. Feasibility study for an aquatic ecosystem Earth observing system. Report v. 1.1.

Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization(CSIRO).

CSIRO, Canberra, ACT, Australia.

Figure 2: Hyperspectral instrument HyperScout manufactured by cosine

Parameter

HyperScout 2

POLA

Swath

280 x 150 km2

280 x 280 km2

67 m

140 m

Ground sampling distance

Spectral range

Spectral resolution Polarisation Signal to noise ratio

50 VNIR spectral bands

450 – 950 nm

3 TIR spectral bands

8 – 14 µm

3 – 6 spectral bands in VNIR spectral range

~ 15 nm

20 – 40 nm

—

I, Q, U, V

~100 >250 (co-addition and/or binning)

50 – 100 >250 (co-addition and/or binning)

Muller-Karger FE, Hestir E, Ade C, Turpie K, Roberts D, Siegel D, Miller R et al (2018) Satellite sensor requirements for monitoring essential biodiversity variables of coastal ecosystems. Ecol Appl. https:// doi.org/10.1002/eap.1682 Marco Esposito Managing Director cosine Remote Sensing m.esposito@cosine.nl

Marco Beijersbergen Managing Director cosine m.beijersbergen@cosine.nl September-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 39

INFRA SPOTLIGHT

Rebuilding American Infrastructure The state of public infrastructure in superpower USA has become decrepit over time due to neglect, disrepair, and inadequate funding. There’s an urgent need for sustained investments, futuristic roadmap, concerted action, and re-engineering new infrastructure using cutting-edge technology to ensure socio-economic transformation, seamless connectivity, and citizen welfare.

By Rituparna Sengupta

T

he American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has given United States a score of C minus in its 2021 report card. Once the pre-eminent nation in robust infrastructure globally, the present-day creaking infrastructure calls for critical attention, and the need to strengthen and build back better.

The ASCE Report Card is not alone in its dire assessment. The same has been highlighted in an earlier report from the World Economic Forum — the 2019

 There is a water main break every 2 minutes and 6 billion gallons of treated water is lost daily in the US.  Growing wear and tear on our nation's roads have left 43% of our public roadways in poor or mediocre condition.  There are 10,000 miles of levees in the US whose location and condition are unknown.

2021 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, American Society Civil Engineers

Global Competitive Index — which ranked the American infrastructure quality at 13 among 141 countries.

Ageing Infrastructure and Funding Woes In November 2021, a White House statement at the launch of the US Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill shared examples of the nation’s ageing infrastructure. More than 45,000 US bridges and one in five miles of roads are in poor condition. Millions of Americans still get water from lead pipes, even though

40 | www.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2022

exposure to lead has irreversible health effects. The list goes on.

The 2021 ASCE infrastructure quality score highlights noteworthy infrastructure gaps, especially in technology integration. One of the most significant reasons for this steep decline in infrastructure quality has been the low levels of public investment over the years, which has fallen by more than 40% since the 1960s.

The need to adopt smart, digital and innovative strategies to refur-

Three Pillars of National Plan to Transform American Infrastructure

FEDERAL FUNDING

DIGITAL INNOVATIONS

bish the crumbling infrastructure cannot proceed without the availability of adequate funding.

The United States invests less in infrastructure than its peers and substantially less than it used to, Congressman Don Beyer, Chairman, US Joint Economic Committee (JEC), noted in the JEC report ‘Infrastructure and its Impact on the US Economy’ released in May, 2021.

“The US economy, which in 2020 produced USD 21 trillion worth of goods and services, is powered by the interconnected web of roads, waterways, electrical grids, and communications, education, healthcare and childcare systems that make up its infrastructure.

This infrastructure is in a state of disrepair, and ‘dangerously overstretched’, with a funding gap valued in the trillions.

To compete in the 21st century, we must learn from our own past success and replicate the bold public investments that have supported each transformation of our economy in the past,” he added.

Agreed Tim McManus, Chair Board of Advisors, Smart City Works Venture Studio. “If you look

DECARBONIZATION STRATEGIES

at the global construction industry it represents about 13% of global GDP. So it’s one of the largest ecosystems in the world. However our industry has had one of the lowest level of investment in research and development in technology than any other industry,” he said while speaking at a recent discussion on ‘The Digital Transformation of American Infrastructure’ organized by CityAge.

Three Pillars of American Infrastructure Rejuvenation The correlation between a thriving economy and well-maintained infrastructure networks is indisputable, so all efforts, discussions, action plans in this direction will boost the country’s economy, create new job

opportunities, and enable a strong safety network for the citizens.

The perfect combination of federal funding, digital innovations and bold decarbonization strategies within the spectrum of an overall National Plan are perhaps the formula to achieve the muchneeded transformation to rebuild the American infrastructure.

Federal Funding – the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, was enacted by US President Joe Biden in November 2021. In its amended version, it earmarked funding of USD 1.2 trillion for American infrastructure.

“The US is currently in a once in a generation moment with regards to infrastructure, due to the passage of the USD 1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, USD 437 billion in Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and the more flexible USD 1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) stimulus package,” Leanne Kaplan, Alliance and Policy Manager, New Urban

“When we invest in infrastructure, we’re really investing in opportunity. These are investments that will build a better America. It sounds like hyperbole, but it’s real."

Joe Biden

President of the United States

September-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 41

INFRA SPOTLIGHT

Economic Impact

Mobility alliance (NUMO), World Resources Institute, told Geospatial World in an interview.

Poor infrastructure is not only an inconvenience for citizens but directly hurts the economy. Delays caused by traffic congestion alone cost the economy over USD 120 billion per year, or delayed and cancelled trips due to the poor state of the nation’s airports cost the economy over USD 35 billion per year, according to the book ‘The Road Taken: The History and Future of America’s Infrastructure’, by eminent Historian Henry Petroski.

On the other hand, public infrastructure investment boosts the economy.

“An increase in public infrastructure by itself raises the productivity of private capital, as public capital is a complement to private capital. Higher private capital increases the productivity of labor and leads to higher wages and lower interest rates (borrowing costs), encouraging additional work and incentivizing higher investment in private capital. More work and private capital lead to higher GDP,” according to ‘Penn-Wharton Budget Model’ from University of Pennsylvania.

“This presents an opportunity to embed community-led solutions, equity, and climate priorities in our nation's infrastructure,” she added.

The key areas of focus of this historic funding includes improvement and rebuilding of roads, bridges, public transit, rail, ports, and airports. Ensuring safe, leadfree drinking water for everyone, supporting climate friendly car and bus transport, transitioning to clean energy and providing access to high-speed internet were all identified as focus areas for the dissemination of this funding.

Actual release of the funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law planned for key infrastructure components have now begun.

Most recently on October 11, the US Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) announced that it has released USD 59.9 billion in Fiscal Year 2023 apportionments for 12 formula programs to support investment in critical infrastructure, including roads, bridges and tunnels, carbon emission reduction, and safety improvements. The funds are being directly disseminated to all 50 States, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

“America’s roads and bridges are the vital arteries of our transportation system, connecting people and goods across the country,” US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said while making the announcement.

Grants from the Bipartisan Infra-

structure Law’s competitive Bridge Investment Program hav‑e been initiated for 23 projects in 23 states.

Digital Innovation – Accelerating the Process Even with the right funding, meaningful progress cannot be achieved in building tomorrow’s infrastructure with yesterday’s technology.

American Infrastructure remains one of the least digitalized sectors of the economy in the US. For instance, nearly 7 in 10 construction firms contracted to carry out projects for state and local departments of transportation still rely exclusively or primarily on pen-and-paper systems throughout their projects, according to the Coalition for Smarter Infrastructure Investments (CSII).

CSII, the “first-of-its-kind” industry body calling for smarter investment in infrastructure in the USA, came up in March 2021 and has organizations such as Mott MacDonald, Bentley Systems, Greenroads International, HaulHub and HeadLight as founding members. Its primary mission is to look at effective promotion of federal policies to modernize the

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ageing US infrastructure by advocating the beneficial incorporation of proven technologies to build and maintain infrastructure in a transparent and efficient manner.

“Digital infrastructure and technology have different needs and that needs to be addressed in the funding,” Laura Chace, President and CEO, Intelligent Transportation Society of America said at the City Age discussion.

Building it back smarter and better will need the bold adoption of digital practices such as Building Information Management (BIM), digital engineering, digital asset management, Digital Twins, and smart infrastructure.

The United Kingdom has mandated BIM in every government construction project. This means that only companies that are BIM level 2 compliant are able to take on government projects. In fact, all of Europe is a key player in BIM adoption, with a consistent drive for its implementation seen across the region. Countries including Singapore, UAE, China and Australia have also made considerable progress in the implementation of BIM.

In a Nutshell Some key elements of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocations areas: Better Roads and Bridges USD 110 billion has been announced for new funds for repair and rebuilding the country’s roads and bridges.

Historic Investments in Public Transit The legislation includes USD 39 billion of new investment to modernize transit.

A large number of additional job opportunities are being created.

The Law is looking at creating 700,000 new jobs a year.

No More Lead Pipes Investments of USD 55 billion has been committed to expand access to clean drinking water across the country.

Ensure every American has access to reliable high-speed internet.

A historic investment in broadband infrastructure deployment with investment of USD 65 billion has been announced to ensure that every American has access to reliable high-speed internet.

On the contrary,in the United States, the implementation process has been slow due to the lack of a government mandate.

issues and stakeholders to support advances in building science and technology to improve America’s built environment.

The US National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) have developed a plan for the launch of the US National Building Information Management (BIM) Program for digital transformation of the nation’s built environment, Johnny Fortune, US National BIM Program Director of NIBS, told Geospatial World.

“There are many initiatives and activities aimed at improving digitalization of infrastructure. We see the need for common practice standards and processes across the built environment. Infrastructure is a key focus area of the US National BIM Program,” Fortune added.

Photo courtesy: www.infrastructurereportcard.org

NIBS serves as a convener between government and the private sector to bring relevant

Singapore has been a trendsetter in Industry 4.0 Innovations with its flagship project Virtual Singapore, which employs a digital twin for city planning and commu-

nications. Virtual Singapore taps into static and real-time sources for information on demographics, movement, and climate to create an accurate 3D model which further helps in visualizing the entire city, from common town areas to building interiors.

In the UK, the National Digital Twin programme (NDTP), launched in July 2018, aims tocreate an ecosystem of connected digital twins.

Recognition of the industrial advantage of digital twin is now gaining momentum in the US as well. According to a new global report from Guidehouse Insights, annual revenue from municipal digital twins is projected to grow to USD 2.5 billion by 2031, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25%..

NIBS will soon launch a committee that involves participants from the Digital Twin Consortium and US National BIM Program. “This group will collaborate amongst a wide array of industry stakeholders and seek to drive integration of BIM and digital twins,” explained Fortune.

A McKinsey study called ‘Reinventing Construction’ notes that the greatest opportunityfor improving performance in the American construction industry is through infusion of technology and innovation.

The pandemic necessitated a shift to digitized processes and workflows in the construction sector. With federal funding for the infrastructure sector, there is a great opportunity to digitally September-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 43

INFRA SPOTLIGHT

transform and streamline projects to improve efficiency and foster project sustainability. It is time for stakeholders to prioritize digitalization “We need to figure out how we get digital solutions to be part of the conversation, so that it's planned for not just from a onetime solution, but a continual stream of funding to address these issues,” said Egan Smith, Acting Director, Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office, US Department of Transportation, while speaking at the City Age discussion.

Decarbonizing Environment Decarbonization of the transport sector as well as the built environment would be a critical way to ensure refurbishment of the nation’s infrastructure. ‘’This transformation imperative is driven by the need to rectify the harm left by legacy infrastructure to people to pivot towards zero emission travel for our environment and to deliver a future where freedom of movement is accessible to all,” noted Ximon Zhu, Senior Manager, Accenture.

Bolstered by the federal funds, several initiatives are being witnessed in different parts of the country Last month, the Department of Transportation announced Electric Vehicle (EV) infrastructure deployment plans for all 50 States, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, whichgives access of USD 1.5 billion to all states to build EV chargers covering approximately 75,000 miles of highway across the country.

“America led the original automotive revolution in the last century.

And today, thanks to the historic resources in the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we’re poised to lead in the 21st century with electric vehicles,” said US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said while announcing the plans.

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has recently approved a rule requiring 100 percent of new car sales in California to be zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) by 2035.

Kaplan of NUMO had another important issue to highlight: “Many cities, particularly in the US, have been designed for cars, not for people. Besides worsening the climate crisis and air pollution, not everyone is able to, can afford to, or wants to drive.”

Access to safe and reliable public transportation increases access to jobs, education, eases the burden of existing transport infrastructure, and gives people more mobility alternatives.

Active actions are being taken to reshape the built environment and increase building efficiency to keep up pace with green adoption. The US General Service Administration (GSA) has incorporated initiatives to lead the way in green building design, construction, retrofit and sustainable operations and maintenance.

Globally, the decarbonization of the building sector is being recognized as a critical component in the overall decarbonization goals along with allied transport sector goals. In this, the United States. will do well to take lessons from Canada, which announced its ‘Green Building Strategy’ in August 2022, which envisions nationwide net-zero emissions

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Innovative Examples Several digital initiatives are slowly coming up in different parts of the US. Boston One US city that's ahead of the curve in embracing digital transformation and paving the way to make itself sustainable and resilient is Boston. This forward-looking city has successfully deployed a number of smart technologies, and steadily collaborated with businesses, universities, and the public to lay the groundwork for its digital transformation plans. The Boston Planning and Development Agency had approved the Smart Utilities Program in 2018 and its goal aimed at coordination of the adoption of technology to ensure Boston's utility infrastructure is prepared for the effects of climate change.

Los Angeles Forbes has recently identified The Los Angeles Department of Transport’s (DoT) implementations as one of the best Digital Twin adoptions in the country. The Los Angeles DoT has partnered with the Open Mobility Foundation to create a data-driven digital twin of the city’s transport infrastructure. They have begun the initiative to use this technology to model the movement and activity of micro-mobility solutions such as the city’s network of shareduse bicycles and e-scooters.

Then they plan to expand to cover ride-sharing services, carpools, and new mobility solutions that will appear, such as autonomous taxi drones.

Michigan state The Michigan Department of Transportation reached a net benefit of over 6% in cost savings by reducing construction bids and change orders after implementing 3D modeling technology.

The perfect combination of federal funding, digital innovations and bold decarbonization strategies within the spectrum of an overall National Plan are perhaps the formula to achieve the muchneeded transformation to rebuild the American infrastructure. and climate-resilient buildings sector by 2050, with an interim goal of 37% emissions reduction from 2005 levels by 2030. ‘’Reducing embodied carbon in construction materials such as steel and concrete is a key opportunity to further lower emissions in the buildings sector,” said Michael MacDonald, Spokesperson, Natural Resources Canada, Government of Canada.

Today’s world is witnessing the dawn of resilient cities, stemming from the need to tide through unanticipated disruptions and future shocks caused by climate risks, ecological degradation, and other uncertainties and volatilities For instance, Laura Chace shared that the Los Angeles DoT is using open APIs to create a zero-emission delivery zone in certain areas of the city. “They are using these tools to manage their infrastructure in a more dynamic and a nimble way that allows them to deliver the benefits that they are seeking to communities,” she added.

Need for a National Road Map Several interesting initiatives towards digitalization of urban infrastructure are being witnessed in different states. However, a common National Policy binding all such initiatives together is missing.

Perhaps the evolution of such an umbrella nationwide policy may integrate all such efforts more effectively and efficiently.

“We don't have a national strategy for a phased national approach to digital infrastructure,” emphasized Chace. “I think there's a great desire to collectively develop a common directive, so that we don’t just have these pockets of innovation in certain areas.”

“We have an interstate highway system today because someone at some point of time in the 1950s took a map and drew some lines.

We had a a national plan back then, but today we don’t have it connected vehicles ,” concurred Blaine Leonard, Transportation Technology Engineer, Utah Department of Transportation.

Citing the examples of the states of Ohio and Georgia, Leonard said there was an urgent need to collaborate and talk. “Federal government can now give us a plan and give us a road map on how we can deploy,”

Community Involvement The overall success of all smart, green and digital innovations and strategies to rebuild the American infrastructure hinges on the active support and acceptance of the people at the community level – the real users of the nation’s infrastructure.

“It is critical to include communities in the decision-making process for infrastructure investments and to start first with identifying a community’s needs and potential solutions that can improve sustainability and equity.

Past infrastructure investments in the US have often harmed communities and extracted wealth,” said Kaplan of New Urban Mobility alliance (NUMO).

The World Resources Report, Towards a More Equal City, includes seven transformations needed for more equitable and sustainable cities and is based on five years of research. The key is to provide all residents access to services (daily needs such as healthcare, education, housing, food, etc.) and access to economic opportunity.

“It’s also important to look at infrastructure holistically – it is not just roads and bridges, but social and digital as well,” said Kaplan.

Bringing people from the community at the decision-making table is a critical element, as they would be the strongest advocates in all infrastructure transformations According to Chace, “The digital tools are essential to create the type of communities that we all want to live in, but people don't understand it so they don't ask for it.”

Urban planning and development pathways in the US are now being designed to incorporate data and digital technologies to provide better public services and tackle citizen-centric challenges.

Rituparna Sengupta Associate Editor Americas Rituparna@geospatialworld.net September-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 45

SPECIAL EXPERT OPINION FEATURE

The Geospatial Collective: Facilitating Data Convergence Whether a government agency or utility service provider, an engineering firm or earthworks operator, geospatial solutions sit at the heart of most every action and reaction. By Scott Crozier

While transformative geospatial solutions facilitate earth surface mapping, help interpret spatial patterns and document environmental accountability, they are also foundational to the emergence of smart city digital twins and our collective ability to enhance the quality and performance of services while reducing resource consumption.

bility with Science-Based Targets.

We are committed to ensuring that our mission, solutions, and initiatives align with and support the objectives of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) — which serve as a globally adopted sustainability roadmap.

One specific focus for us and our customers is the Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure SDG target.

Through technology, we can help our customers drive sustainability by increasing productivity, quality, safety and transparency. The wide-

spread application of technology contributes to performance and efficiency gains while solving complex real-world sustainability problems.

Case-in-point, construction firm Ecovie sees itself as a sustainable company, one that is compelled to deliver quality solutions with optimized materials and lower carbon emissions. Meeting its operational mandates requires the right tools.

The project team used a mobile mapping system that combines precise LiDAR data and immersive panoramic imagery to map the

Photo courtesy of Øystein Ulvestad, Sweco

G

NSS, GIS, Lidar technologies and the associated applications like mapping, scanning and monitoring, are firmly embedded into the construction of roads, bridges, dams, tunnels, the mining of critical resources, and even the structures in which we live and work.

As we look ahead to 2023, three areas of focus will be essential to the advancement of technology: sustainability, connectivity and autonomy.

Sustainable opportunities Like many other leading businesses, Trimble has placed sustainability front and center, increasing operational and product sustaina-

Norway’s Randselva Bridge is the longest bridge in the world to be built entirely from 3D design files. A 3D-first approach allows users to leverage full data traceability throughout a project's lifecycle, leading to safer, more efficient, and more sustainable results.

46 | www.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2022

demolished road’s conditions and map that model to design intent.

The point cloud was then used to create a 3D map of the roadway that was sent to earthwork machines, allowing the grader operators to deliver a well-compacted, stable and smooth pavement to to a centimeter or better accuracy.

The US Federal Highway Administration program is also using digital as-builts, built from geospatial data from a variety of sources, to identify and rapidly deploy innovations to make transportation systems adaptable, equitable, safer for all… and sustainable.

Accelerating Connections Fostering greater connectivity, smarter workflows, and more efficient use of resources is an essential piece of increasingly technology-enabled workflows. The idea of a “connected workflow” is to minimize data conversions, particularly when sharing data with surveyors and contractors in the field.

Whether mapping roadways for inspection and maintenance or creating modern smart city digital databases, the challenge moving forward will be to securely store, manage and use the data gathered in a timely way. Success will certainly require some planning and considerable connectivity between various solutions.

Expect to see considerably more discussion around cloud-based common data environments (CDE) and collaboration platforms. These are ideal resources for managing a wide variety of data between multiple people or groups. A CDE solution brings designs together from multiple sources to assess

clashes and manage design changes, and perhaps more importantly, facilitates the transfer of that data across the construction continuum and into operations and maintenance.

A great example of the value of connectivity was demonstrated on the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s Highway 169 Redefine project. For this project, WSB, a national engineering and consulting firm, and Ames Construction, the general contractor on the project, teamed up with Trimble and Bentley to develop a 3D model-based collaboration platform. The idea was to assure the smooth transfer of digital data using an integrated data model collaboration platform.

Through this connection, Ames has the ability to perform quantity takeoffs in the design phase, and, ultimately, send models to machine control solutions. In one case, the engineering team sought to raise one of the bridges by six feet. WSB and Ames used that same design file to balance earthwork quantities at the different stages, reduce the number of retaining walls and even minimize noise.

Some transportation agencies, including the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), now require all rightof-way utility work be sent to the agency as a digital as-built. They use the data to improve worker safety by identifying the exact locations of potentially dangerous underground utilities. Further, according to the FHWA, Iowa, Minnesota, and Utah DOTs are recording as-built information on assets during construction.

Michigan DOT is developing a

Watch for advancements in task automation, like the horizontal steering control functionality in the Trimble Earthworks Grade Control Platform for Soil Compactors, which help make heavy equipment operators’ jobs easier and more enjoyable.

digital as-built approach for utilities during permitting. Several states, including Oregon, Indiana, Montana, and California, are working to incorporate digital data into more effective construction delivery and management workflows. DOTs in New York, Iowa, and Utah are providing contractors with enhanced contract documents using the 3D model as they consider more integrated and streamlined approaches to project delivery.

A cloud-based 3D-first approach allows users to adapt to any format, from drone-based imagery or ground-based mobile mapping data, create 3D deliverables and leverage full data traceability throughout a project’s lifecycle – and, of course, lifecycle data inform decisions leading to safer, more efficient, and more sustainable results.

Automated Actions From agriculture, mining and construction machines to the emergence of smart cities, autonomy continues to be a hot topic in the industry — and that trend will continue in the coming year with position, navigation and timing systems paving the path forward.

September-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 47

EXPERT OPINION

of physical things in motion, duplicating physical orientation, shape, position, gesture or motion.

In this image from a dataset captured in Sesto Fiorentino, Italy, using the Trimble MX9 Dual Head system and processed in Trimble Business Center software, the first run shows a standard highway environment (surface details, road marking, lamp poles and more). A second run shows an urban area with city lamp poles, buildings, trees, and more.

Autonomous solutions, together with precise positioning technology with centimeter-level positioning accuracy for cars, tractors, heavy construction equipment and more, are helping push entire industries toward a fully autonomous future. At the heart of Trimble’s autonomous solutions lie core technologies that include object recognition, satellite positioning, path planning and machine control.

Mobile mapping systems are being used to create the base maps that autonomous cars use to navigate. In practice, these solutions mean users — from farmers to heavy equipment operators to regular drivers — can guarantee their machine or vehicle operates in a precise, defined area.

Trimble has a legacy in automotive and agriculture activities.

For instance, in 2021 the company announced a partnership with HORSCH extending a collaboration for autonomous machines and workflows in agriculture. Other collaborations are ongoing with General Motors, Dynapac, Qualcomm, Roborace and others to put Trimble positioning and autonomy tech-

nology to work automating vehicles, equipment and tasks of all kinds.

The ability to automatically control blades and buckets through 3D models and GPS is expected to become the norm in the construction industry, as manufacturers incorporate the functionality directly into the machines and technology providers develop necessary connections to add machine control capabilities in the aftermarket. Manufacturers are working more closely with technology providers like Trimble to advance the technology on their machines from the factory.

But autonomy and automated data are also a foundation for the smart city — that ideal environment where sensors and IoT technologies manage the energy consumption and mobility of a community — and enable ‘living’ digital twins.

Digital twins incorporate aerial data, LiDAR scanning and mobile mapping systems. When supported by connected sensors, digital twins can become intelligent reflections

48 | www.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2022

Spatial digital twins can be the foundation for smart city planning and measuring national and global carbon emissions. By generating feedback loops of human-infrastructure interactions, these digital twins enable city governments and planners to make hyperlocal data-driven decisions, incorporate community and stakeholder priorities and evaluate policies and initiatives through “what if” scenario analysis and prediction. The digital twin is ideal for studying population growth or climate change.

A smart city digital twin is already in evidence in Singapore.

Virtual Singapore is a 3D digital replica of the city with real-time dynamic data developed by the National Research Foundation, the Singapore Land Authority and the Government Technology Agency.

This whole-of-nation approach collectively maximizes the use of geospatial information and technology and makes authoritative geospatial data available for decision-making, public security and cost-effective businesses.

The full digital workflow transition will place more burden on geospatial professionals to have the right tools — these individuals will be the essential data managers, moving and managing data with ease and accuracy to digitally connect people, products and places with purpose.

Scott Crozier Vice President, Survey & Mapping, Trimble scott_crozier@trimble.com

FEATURED

T-REX: ONE START UP AT A TIME Geospatial Innovation Center provides strong entrepreneurial complement and addition of NGA Moonshot Labs to The Globe Building and Square in St. Louis Downtown North Innovation District. By Dick Fleming

W

hile the early focus of St. Louis’ Downtown North Insight District has been on the dramatic adaptive reuses of both the 226,000 square foot former HQ of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch becoming the new home for 1,400 employees of Square and CashApp, and of the 720,000 square foot Art Deco Globe Building becoming the St. Louis “location of choice” for major Geospatial Intelligence and other tech firms — a third founding partner in the creation of this new Urban Insight District at the Heart of America is T-REX. T-REX, located virtually around the corner from The Globe Building, was founded in 2011 as nonprofit technology innovation and entrepreneurial development facility with a mission to support inclusive economic development in these areas.

The organization provides programming to support entrepreneurs, researchers and workforce providers, and affordable flex space for some 200 entrepreneurial firms and innovation support organizations.

In addition to T-REX’s working partnership with fellow District Founders Jim McKelvey and John Berglund, redevelopers of the former Post-Dispatch HQ Building and Steve Stone, developer of The Globe Building — T-REX President and Executive Director Dr Patty Hagen has added a broad spectrum of enhancements to the early-stage tech ecosystem in the District, focusing

on the development of early-stage Geospatial Intelligence firms.

Hagen notes, “With public sector and philanthropic support as a physical base, T-REX developed The Geospatial-Innovation Center, powered by Bayer — in T-Rex 16,000 square foot creative workspace dedicated to “connecting and growing our geospatial community — where startups, researchers, government partners and supportive GEOINT sector leaders can collaborate and share resources in an atmosphere of active learning classrooms, cutting- edge interactive and remote technology, and spacious state of the art office space.”

T-REX recently received a federal grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) to build out an Extended Reality and Simulation Lab with the latest equipment and technologies that can support early-stage entrepreneurial development as well as university researchers and students.

Innovation Center, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) partnered with T-REX to open a new geospatial technology lab of its own.

Moonshot Labs is advancing efforts between NGA, industry, and academic players in the region.

Moonshot Labs is “NGA’s first ever unclassified innovation space where NGA professionals can work directly with colleagues in the geospatial intelligence community”.

The presence of Moonshot Labs and the T-REX Geospatial Innovation Center has also attracted the presence of individual mentors to startups, such as Planet, Esri, Teknoluxion, Freedom Consulting, Riverside Research, Peraton, UNCOMN, 1904 Labs, and OmniFederal.

Partnership Intermediary Agreement (PIA) and Other Partnerships Dr Hagen also noted the recent successful creation of a five-year Partnership Intermediary Agreement (PIA) with NGA, in which

Additionally, T-REX has established “Proving Grounds,” another new resource that is providing datasets and data science expertise in partnership with Riverside Research to advance testing and development by startup companies and university partners.

NGA’s Moonshot Labs at T-REX In addition to this new Geospatial

General Dynamics is the latest GEOINT firm to locate at The Globe Building in St. Louis’ Downtown North District.

September-October 2022 | www.geospatialworld.net | 49

FEATURED

St. Louis Downtown North District civic partners Patty Hagen, CEO, T-Rex; Steve Stone, Owner/Managing Partner, The Globe Building; John Berglund, Managing Partner, The StarWood Group; meeting with U.S. Senator Roy Blunt at The Globe Building

T-REX is serving as the NGA’s outreach and implementation partner for the region in the areas of workforce, education, technology transfer and innovation. In this partnership role, T-REX brings together national and local partners to accomplish NGA objectives.

Some of the national partnerships T-REX has established in its programmatic plans include the Wright Brothers Institute, Open Geospatial Consortium, US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, and Riverside Research. Local partners include Gateway Global, Small Business Empowerment Center, Small Business Development Center, the Minority Business Development Center, and multiple universities.

Continuing progress at Square and The Globe Meanwhile, progress continues in other portions of the Downtown North District at both Square/CashApp and The Globe Building — and, of course, at the USD 1.75-billion, 3,100-job NGA/ West 100-acre campus, just five blocks north of the new District.

The 3,100-job NGA/West HQ is scheduled to open in early 2026, along with adjacent developments in the 1,500-acre NorthSide Regeneration Mixed-Use Development surrounding the 100-acre NGA HQ Campus.

Jim McKelvey and John Berglund of The Starwood Group continue to onboard employees from Square and CashApp in the renovated former HQ of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which will ultimately accommodate 1,400 employees — even as Starwood considers future development opportunities in and around the new District.

Apropos of St. Louis’ focus on Geospatial Intelligence and proximity to the new NGA/West HQ, the Global Institute on Innovation Districts are “actively advancing strategies that support geographies uniquely positioned to drive new waves of innovative, inclusive, and sustainable growth, namely, Innovation Districts.”

With firms such as Maxar, Sweden-based T-Kartor’s US headquarters, Ball Aerospace, and Geospatial Magazine’s US HQ ---The Globe Building has recently added General Dynamics as a key Geospatial tenant.

The Global Institute describes these Innovation Districts as: “the ultimate mash up of anchor institutions — [such as Square, The Globe and T-REX] — companies, start-ups, and ecosystem intermediaries in hyper-local geographies that leverage density, proximity, and accessibility — actively advancing a ‘collaborate to compete agenda’ to some of the world’s most complex challenges.”

Further, the build-out of a one-ofits-kind Midwestern multi-tenant national security infrastructure in the District adds a vital GEOINT asset.

Magnitude of the opportunity The recently published Global Industry Outlook Report documented that “the Geospatial Intelligence sector is projected to grow to USD 1.44-trillion by 2030.”

Speaking to the emerging geospatial ecosystem in the Downtown North Insight District, Senator Blunt recently observed, “St. Louis now has the opportunity to become more competitive from an economic and entrepreneurial development standpoint in attracting and expanding geospatial intelligence firms of all types.”

The magnitude of growth of both the defense and commercial Geospatial-Intelligence sector underscores the immense potential for St. Louis and the Downtown North Insight District to become a centerpiece of St. Louis’ emergence as a Global GEOINT Hub.

50 | www.geospatialworld.net | September-October 2022

These elements and values are at the heart of this new Downtown North Insight District in St. Louis, in response to the potential represented by the geographic proximity to the new NGA/West HQ Campus, just several blocks away.

A “collaboration to compete” environment is quite evident in the civic partnership between The Globe Building developer Steve Stone; Starwood Development Partners Jim McKelvey and John Berglund; and T-REX’s Patty Hagen.

With completion of the NGA/West HQ slated for early 2026, the parallel development of the Downtown North Insight District can be a unique asset in St. Louis’ quest to become a Global Geospatial Intelligence Hub.

Richard C.D. Fleming CEO, Community Development Ventures, Inc., St. Louis regionalstrategy@me.com

GEOINT LOCATION OF CHOICE IN ST. LOUIS • Home to General Dynamics, Maxar, Ball Aerospace, T-Kartor—USA and more • Blocks away from the new NGA West campus • Featuring Tier 1-carrier class-fiber and power infrastructure • Located in the emerging Downtown North Insight District 710 N. Tucker Boulevard, Suite 100, St. Louis, Missouri 63101 jsalvatori@globebuilding.com | www.globebuilding.com 314 241 0450

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