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. Now, we’re expanding this section a bit. We will still be highlighting three stories from around the internet every week, but in addition, we will also be adding some information about some of the news that came through the industry over the last week.
So, below you will first see links to three stories that we loved this week, and then under that, check out some of the biggest news that came across the wire over the last seven days.
Stories of the Week
All around the world, the demand for either building new infrastructure or maintaining the existing assets is growing. Populations are increasing around urban centers, drawing more demand on our power and sending more people into our transportation systems. Technology is at the heart of a lot of this work, but so is skilled talent, as this article from Woolpert explains.
Pete Kelsey is one of the biggest names in the reality capture and larger geospatial industry, taking on some of the most interesting projects all around the world. That includes, of course, his leading of a project to scan all of Alcatraz, which he presented at this year’s Geo Week. Recently, Gavin Schrock interviewed Kelsey in a wide-ranging, must-read conversation.
Over the last five-to-ten years, natural disasters are increasing around the world, affecting a number of different industries. For construction, it means there is greater focus on building our cities to be more resilient to these events. How much, if at all, can AI help with this process? It’s a question that Peggy Smedly explores.
News of the Week
With the Fourth approaching in the U.S., it wasn’t a terribly newsy week, but we got a few big nuggets, starting with a major announcement from the Overture Maps Foundation. Last week, the organization announced the general availability of its Global Entity Reference System, or GERS. After building up a user base and a group of participating organizations to form the foundation of OMF, releasing GERS has been next on the checklist. Their hope is that this is the move that starts to unlock the real value of their open map data, enabling all types of organizations to utilize this data with ease, tying unique IDs to specific entities like buildings, addresses, and more, rather than coordinates.
The joining of the AEC and geospatial industries is at the center of the Geo Week ethos, and it’s a movement that has long been in place but is gaining steam in recent years. Perhaps no partnership is a better symbol of this idea than the one between Esri and Autodesk, which extended even further last week. The former announced a new integration between ArcGIS and the latter’s Forma, a cloud-design platform. Now, the two sides say, professionals will be able to access ArcGIS data and services from the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World directly within Autodesk Forma’s design environment.
Moving over to the remote sensing sector, Earth Systems made an announcement last week that they have launched a new Remote Sensing and AI Solutions service. They say in their release of the news that the service will specialize in delivering geospatial intelligence through the integration of satellite imagery and AI, supporting environmental analysis and monitoring across a variety of industries.
