Bluesky 3D Photomaps Help Manage City’s Green Space

The Parks Trust, the charitable organisation responsible for parks and green spaces in Milton Keynes, UK, is using a range of highly detailed geographic datasets from Bluesky to manage its portfolio of property and open spaces. Deployed in the Trust’s GIS, the high resolution aerial photography, detailed laser mapped height models and National Tree Map (NTM) data are informing a range of projects, including grounds maintenance contract awards, encroachment monitoring and new development plans. “The data offers the most up to date and accurate view of our parks and green spaces,” commented James Cairncross, Landscape Infrastructure Manager at The Parks... (read more)

2017-01-14 05:16:44

Plymouth University

Welcome to Plymouth We are a world-class, modern university*. Vibrant and friendly, with a strong reputation for innovation. Times Higher Education described us as one of the newly-emerging ‘modern global elite’. Your student experience We are one of the largest universities in the country with around 27,000 students studying a variety of courses from farming to photography, business to biology, and design to dentistry. Our roots go back more than 150 years to the School of Navigation, but it is our modernity that gives us energy and direction. It gives us the freedom to define our strategic priorities and our values. It... (read more)

2016-07-13 01:55:43

Why GIS Users (Still) Need to Know About MOOCs

Need to update your skills? Want to learn a new GIS? Adena Schutzberg has sound advice for those turning to the online world to learn new skills. The topic of this issue’s column comes from an email exchange with GiSPro Publisher, and my longtime friend, Stephen Booth. I shared news with him about my new position on the education team at Esri and I noted that I’d be working on MOOCs and with universities. He replied that he was unfamiliar with MOOCs until he looked up the acronym. I suspect a reasonable number of readers are in the same boat.... (read more)

2017-01-03 05:06:11

The Blueprint Towards Gender Neutrality in IT

London recently played host to over 3,000 GIS professionals. What made it different from many other IT events was the large proportion of female industry experts in attendance, making it arguably, says Sarah Lewin head of pre-sales and tech research at Esri UK, the most gender-neutral IT event the industry has ever seen. We have become used to seeing news stories on the lack of women in IT with the general consensus being that on average only 17% of IT workers are female). Yet, at the Esri UK User Conference, it was almost double that. In fact, drilling down further... (read more)

2017-01-17 11:23:56

Finding your Geospatial Learning Community

MOOCs are in the news on this side of the ocean. GiSPro first highlighted these online learning communities in the August 2016 issue and Oxford University recently announced a MOOC in Economics. In her regular column, Adena Schutzberg examines how they work and suggests some sources for those keen to update their skills. I received an email a few weeks ago from a potential Esri Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) student. He wanted to know why he had to wait until the start date to begin the course. “Why,” he asked, “can’t we start whenever we want?” It’s a great... (read more)

2017-01-25 05:04:53

New Book: ‘GNSS Survey & Engineering’

Geomares Education introduces a new book, called ‘GNSS Survey & Engineering’, written by Huibert-Jan Lekkerkerk. 'GNSS Survey & Engineering' is aimed at providing the everyday professional GPS user with enough background information for the understanding and correct operation of satellite navigation equipment in general and particularly GPS. The new book is based on the lectures the author has written for the Skilltrade course in hydrographic surveying as well as a series of articles on satellite navigation systems. Today, GPS is almost synonymous with simple navigation and positioning in nearly all sectors. There are many brands and models to choose from... (read more)

2017-01-25 02:53:49

Future Directions for the Space Industry

Space is no longer the sole province of the military and telecoms. The market is growing for earth observation, cybersecurity, navigation and positioning products, while tourism and mining loom, explains Niall Conway. During a recent IoT event, I heard an observation which seems to reflect the changing status of the space industry in today’s world. In the 1960s, the speaker said, some of the greatest minds on the planet worked towards putting a man into space. Today, he added, some of the world’s greatest minds are now focused on increasing the number of views on a YouTube video. Although this... (read more)

2017-08-03 04:33:34

3D Repo Joins Open Building Information Modelling Revolution

3D Repo, a provider of cloud software solutions for collaborative Building Information Modelling (BIM), has signed up to the Open BIM Programme. Designed to provide a universal approach to the collaborative design, realisation and operation of buildings based on open standards and workflows, Open BIM is an initiative of leading software vendors using the buildingSMART Data Model based on open standards such as Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and BIM Collaboration Format (BCF). Through the use of its award winning open source software solutions, available to try free of charge at www.3drepo.org, and its support of the Open BIM programme, 3D... (read more)

2017-03-17 11:46:09

GIS Comes of Age

An important issue for all our readers as we focus on education and training for GIS professionals plus the growing market for remotely sensed data from space. Just over two years ago Sir Mark Walport, the UK Government’s chief scientific advisor, told delegates at the AGI GeoCom conference that “geospatial now underpins everything government does”. That applies to local government and the emergency services too, through the PSMA and the work of GeoPlace. Our focus on education and training in this issue underlines how geospatial and geography have truly come of age. Our interview with the RGS’s director Dr Rita... (read more)

2017-04-04 02:58:14

My First Experience - SatSummit 2017

Open, engaging, informative and diverse was how Steven Ramage found his first SatSummit in Washington D.C. The event, to examine the satellite business in support of global development, was bullshit free! My first SatSummit in Washington, D.C. was only the second ever such event. It was fabulous. Open. Engaging. Informative. Diverse. I had the privilege of sitting on a panel with ESA, NASA and the CEO of Radiant, an organisation being set up by Omidyar and the Gates Foundation to talk about open data and government, but more on that later. The event was made possible by a number of... (read more)

2017-04-04 04:03:07