Every week here at Geo Week News, we have been highlighting some of our favorite stories from around the internet that cover the geospatial, 3D, and AEC industries. Whether it’s a fascinating case study, insights from an industry thought leader, or deep dives into new tools, there is never any shortage of great writing and storytelling in this industry. So, below you can find links to three stories that we loved this week.
Creating urban digital twins in GNSS-denied environments
Alexander Reiterer | GIM International
Researchers at Fraunhofer IPM are building small, lightweight sensor systems that use SLAM navigation and onboard AI to map underground tunnels and other GNSS-denied environments, including a roughly 10kg sensor box for the RoboTUNN project that was recently tested on a robot dog in a disused Black Forest silver mine. The same miniaturization is also reshaping above-ground mobile mapping, from a plug-and-play roof box that turns garbage trucks and taxis into city-scanning vehicles to a handheld scanner that processes and semantically enriches building data in real time.
Leica BLK360 Maps Rome’s Ancient Catacombs in 3D
Editors Desk | GEO Informatics
Leica Geosystems used its BLK360 laser scanner to capture about 50 scans in one hour inside Rome’s Catacomb of Pretestato, reaching reported accuracy of 2 to 3 millimetres despite narrow passages, high humidity, and low light. The 3D model will feed into a Vatican-backed GIS catalog to create a digital reference for monitoring and restoring the city’s roughly 150 kilometres of fragile underground galleries, many of which are closed to the public.
First images from Sentinel-3C’s land, ocean instruments
jnally | Spatial Source
Just two weeks after launch, Europe’s new Copernicus Sentinel-3C satellite has returned its first images of Italy, the Canadian Arctic, and the Caribbean from its Ocean and Land Colour Instrument. Early data from its radar altimeter also shows the instrument performing well, matching reference sea-surface height measurements and Greenland Ice Sheet elevation models as mission controllers begin five months of commissioning.
