Leaderboard

DARPA is seeking information on state-of-the-art technologies and methodologies for advanced mapping and surveying in support of the agency’s Subterranean (SubT) Challenge. Georeferenced data – geographic coordinates tied to a map or image – could significantly improve the speed and accuracy of warfighters in time-sensitive active combat operations and disaster-related missions in the subterranean domain. Today, the majority of the underground environments are uncharted or inadequately mapped, including human-made tunnels, underground infrastructure, and natural cave networks. Through the Request for Information, DARPA is looking for innovative technologies to collect highly accurate and reproducible ground-truth data for subterranean environments, which would potentially disrupt and positively leverage the subterranean domain without prohibitive cost and with less risk to human lives. These innovative technologies will allow for exploring and exploiting these dark and dirty environments that are too dangerous to deploy humans. “What makes subterranean areas challenging for precision mapping and surveying – such as lack of GPS, constrained passages, dark or dust-filled air – is similar to what inhibits safe and speedy underground operations for our warfighters,” said Timothy Chung, program manager in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office (TTO). “Building an accurate three-dimensional picture is a key enabler to rapidly and remotely exploring and searching subterranean spaces.” DARPA is looking for commercial products, software, and services available to enable high-fidelity, 3D mapping and surveying of underground environments. Of interest are available technologies that offer high accuracy and high resolution, with the ability to provide precise and reproducible survey points without reliance on substantial infrastructure (e.g., access to global fixes underground). Additionally, relevant software should also allow for generated data products to be easily manipulated, annotated, and rendered into 3D mesh objects for importing into simulation and game engine environments. DARPA may select proposers to demonstrate their technologies or methods to determine feasibility of capabilities for potential use in the SubT Challenge in generating and sharing 3D datasets of underground environments. Such accurately georeferenced data may aid in scoring the SubT competitors’ performance in identifying and reporting the location of artifacts placed within the course. In addition, renderings from these data may provide DARPA with additional visualization assets to showcase competition activities in real-time and/or post-production. source : https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2019-03-07

cool, but costly. i would better recommend https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/eo-browser/?

Esri, the global leader in location intelligence, today announced the acquisition of indoo.rs GmbH, a world-leading provider of Indoor Positioning System (IPS) technology and Esri partner. The indoo.rs software will become part of Esri’s ArcGIS Indoors, a new mapping product that enables interactive indoor mapping of corporate facilities, retail and commercial locations, airports, hospitals, event venues, universities, and more. The acquisition will also provide users of Esri’s ArcGIS platform with imbedded IPS location services to support indoor mapping and analysis. The indoo.rs headquarters will also serve as a new Esri R&D center based in Vienna, Austria focused on cutting-edge IPS capability. The capability to accurately map, manage, navigate, and plan indoor spaces is a rapidly emerging market that promises to decrease costs, increase safety, and provide users of indoor spaces with a better workplace experience. ArcGIS Indoors does this by providing floor-aware 3D maps and focused apps to support a variety of workplace and facility users, including owner/operators, maintenance and service personnel, security staff, employees, and visitors. “indoo.rs is a leading provider of IPS software and services, working with organizations across the globe such as international hub airports, major rail stations, and corporate headquarters, and I am excited to welcome the company to the Esri family,” said Brian Cross, Esri director of professional services. “indoo.rs’ technology, experience, and leadership in the IPS field will be of tremendous benefit to our customers who want to bring the power of GIS to indoor spaces.” The new Vienna-based Esri R&D center will also provide support for IPS within ArcGIS Indoors and across the ArcGIS line of products. Existing indoo.rs customers will now have access to ArcGIS, adding the most powerful GIS software to their indoor mapping uses. “Becoming an integral part of Esri’s product catalog allows us to continue the provision of our services at the highest professional level,” said Bernd Gruber, founder of indoo.rs. “It also fosters new and exciting future developments as well as securing our leading-edge approach.” “We have seen the IPS market skyrocketing over the last few years,” said Rainer Wolfsberger, CEO of indoo.rs, “and our enterprise customers showed a high demand for deep integration of IPS technology to release the benefits of such a solution at all levels of their organization.” The initial release of ArcGIS Indoors will include the acquired indoo.rs IPS capability to enable ArcGIS Indoors mobile apps to work with iBeacon-based IPS systems, which provides “blue dot” accuracy on mobile devices. ArcGIS Indoors supports other IPS formats such as Apple’s indoor position service, and will add support for other IPS providers in coming releases. source: https://www.geospatialworld.net/news/esri-acquires-indoo-rs-and-announces-arcgis-indoors-release/

I think it is more like asset management and navigation for indoor. This is helpful for managing personnel or assets within roofed infrastructure (ie. a large factory, multistorey building or underground construction site who cannot use GPS) by utilizing IoT devices and GIS software. I heard about similar tech when I was at Esri Singapore for few days.

I need to work on spatial interpolation using multivariate regression of observed AWS precipitation data by introducing variables such as slope, aspect etc. Is there any option in ARCGIS?