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IBM today announced new efforts that apply its geospatial AI technologies, including IBM’s geospatial foundation model developed in collaboration with NASA, to climate efforts including analysis of urban heat islands in the United Arab Emirates (UAE); reforestation across Kenya; and climate resiliency in the United Kingdom (UK). IBM continues to advance its AI model strategy ...

New York City is poised to get a lot more trees. Last month, the city council passed a measure calling for 30% canopy cover by 2035, up from its current cover of 22% – which could mean 250,000 new trees. More trees, with all their cooling benefits, is a clear win for the environmental justice ...

As Philadelphia plants thousands of trees to help cool heat-stricken sections of the city, residents can use a new online tool to see how the decade-long project might help their neighborhoods. You can slide between two overlapping maps of the city: one that reveals how bad the summer heat problem is on a detailed, block-by-block ...

Four Clemson University researchers are part of a national team that has developed a Flood Evacuation Tool to help forecast floods, identify at-risk roads and verify safe evacuation routes. The tool partners artificial intelligence (AI) with human knowledge. Researchers are using this human-AI teaming (HAT) partnership to create an intelligent model for addressing flood evacuation ...

From tracking disease in Ponderosa pines to managing mosquitoes, Geographic Information Systems are doing more and more to help utilities, government and scientists in the Flathead Valley. Flathead Electric Cooperative is using GIS to map vegetation along its powerlines, said Jake Harte, a data specialist with the Co-op during a talk last week that featured ...

Finding and removing land mines is an excruciatingly slow process. Human deminers scour contaminated ground inch by inch with handheld metal detectors, waiting for the telltale beep of a magnetic anomaly. Although trained dogs are sometimes used, metal detectors have remained the go-to clearance method since the end of World War II. “There’s a very ...

Industry leaders are relying on the interoperability of geographic information systems (GIS) and building information modeling (BIM) to reduce costs and boost efficiency across construction projects. In support of these organizations, Esri, and Autodesk have cultivated a strategic alliance to unify GIS and BIM, delivering real business value to architects, engineers, planners, and contractors. Deepening ...

Satellites, drones, security cameras, sensors, and more capture vast streams of imagery each day, much of it in the form of video. Yet, deriving meaningful insights from video data can be challenging and time-consuming. To help organizations that must analyze this invaluable source of information and harness the full potential of video content, Esri, the ...

Oregon State University will receive $6.5 million in federal funding over a five-year period for research related to updating the National Spatial Reference System, a coordinate system that defines geographical elements ranging from longitude and latitude to height and orientation, the college said. OSU officials said common uses for the NSRS include surveying and mapping ...

After a summer that broke all sorts of dismal records in terms of cataclysmic wildfires across North America, there is now an even greater awareness of poor air quality—its myriad health impacts and the overwhelming need for sustainable solutions. To that end, Yu Yang, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering in Lehigh University’s ...

A new scientific technique could significantly improve the reference frames that millions of people rely upon each day when using GPS navigation services, according to a recently published article in Radio Science. For the first time, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin’s Applied Research Laboratories and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have formed ...

Advances in imagery collection and photogrammetry techniques have increased demand for digital representations of the physical world, or geospatial digital twins. To meet this demand, Esri will integrate 3D Tiles into its ArcGIS software. With the ability to work with a variety of data types, including open 3D data standards, customers can develop innovative solutions ...

Track-a-Truck is a pilot program with the City of Hendersonville. This online application available on the City’s website shows the near real-time location of garbage and recycling trucks as they drive along their collection routes. It is also a way to see what day of the week your garbage will be collected in an interactive ...

Trimble has announced a partnership with the HALO Trust, the world’s largest landmine-clearing non-profit organization, to help expand its demining operations across Ukraine. The grant from the Trimble Foundation Fund will focus on strengthening the HALO Trust’s capacity to locate and remove landmines, unexploded ordnance and other explosive hazards from civilian areas to create safer ...

Global water resources are stretched by climate change and human population growth, and farms and cities are increasingly turning to groundwater to fill their needs. Unfortunately, the pumping of groundwater can cause the ground surface above to sink, as the aquifers below are drained and the architecture of the ground collapses. For the first time, ...

MDA selected SpaceX to launch its Chorus next-generation Earth observation constellation, planned for launch in the fourth quarter of 2025. The mission will launch on a Falcon 9 rocket, MDA announced Wednesday. MDA CEO Mike Greenley said Chorus production is well underway. MDA announced the constellation in December 2021. It will build on the company’s ...

Over the next few weeks, NASA aircraft will fly over South Africa’s Greater Cape Floristic Region and collect ultraviolet, visual, thermal and other imagery of its terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. These preliminary images will be publicly available and posted online here within hours of the aircraft landing each day. Combined with satellite imagery and field ...

Secretary of State Wes Allen announced last week that his office will provide Geographical Information System (GIS) services for the purpose of districting voters and administering elections in all 67 Alabama counties. Voters register with the county’s Board of Registrars and are mapped in the county’s precincts based on their address. “Alabama law states you ...

Lidar technology improvements will help NASA scientists and explorers with remote sensing and surveying, mapping, 3D-image scanning, hazard detection and avoidance, and navigation. Light detection and ranging, or lidar, is a remote sensing technology related to sonar and radar. Lidar uses pulses of light to measure distances and properties of objects accurately, by measuring the ...

Referred to as solar activity, ionospheric disturbances peak every 11 years. The next major disruption, Solar Cycle 25, is expected to peak between 2024 and 2026. Ionospheric activity can directly impact the quality of GNSS signals, leading to the degradation of position accuracy. While this type of disturbance has the greatest impact on high precision ...

On October 12, 2023, Department of City Planning Director Dan Garodnick announced that the NYC Street Map will now include access to the original street mapping of the City. Users can see the width, angles, and other dimensions of the City’s over 32,000 streets when utilizing the interactive map for requests to change their street, ...

Ever wonder where you were at an airport or transit station and needed to find your gate or a restroom? GoodMaps, based out of Louisville, Kentucky, is working on an app to use your smartphone’s features to help you find your place. GoodMaps will come to a venue like an airport or a transit agency ...

Google is temporarily disabling live traffic conditions on its mapping service apps, Google Maps and Waze, in Israel, the tech company confirmed Monday, as the country prepares for a potential ground invasion into Gaza. “As we have done previously in conflict situations and in response to the evolving situation in the region, we have temporarily ...

A new study, using a first-of-its-kind approach to analyze satellite imagery from boreal forests over the last three decades, found that fire may be changing the face of the region in a way researchers did not previously anticipate. Historically, fires in North American boreal forests have led to coniferous trees being supplanted by deciduous trees, ...

Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology (KICT, President Kim Byung-suk) has developed building scan to BIM (Building Information Modeling)-based reverse engineering technology required for 3D geospatial information modeling domains such as digital twin information modeling. Scan to BIM-based reverse engineering technology was studied to prevent errors and rework caused by manual work when ...

The more the merrier. That common saying could be the motto for an effort within the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to create a near real-time system that would track the safety and accessibility of our nation’s inland waterways. Taking advantage of vessels already on the water, an effort in the works at the ...

Monterey Bay, California, is known for its beaches. Big Sur in the north is a favorite destination among surfers, and Moss Landing in the south is a bird-watchers paradise. But just off the coast lies a stunning geographic landscape that few know about—and even fewer have seen with their own eyes. It’s called the Monterey ...

Cal Poly Humboldt students and faculty across various disciplines are embarking on an ambitious project to map out vegetation in the Klamath Mountains. This data will have many applications, including understanding how vegetation regenerates after fires, and how plant communities are being affected by a drying and warming climate. In the long term, this project ...

The U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Embassy Ghana, and the University of Mining and Technology (UMaT), Tarkwa are convening mining stakeholders from across Ghana to brainstorm tech-enabled solutions to illegal mining. As part of “Tech Camp Takoradi” this week, fifty stakeholders including representatives of mining communities and companies, scientists and innovators, policymakers, environmental activists, ...

When the Cold War grew chillier around 1950, the U.S. military worried about a communist land invasion of the United States. So pilots were employed – many of them veterans of World War II – to photograph the entire country using aircraft. This 70-year-old archive of overlapping photos was taken at different angles, providing topographic ...