Aerial Data in the Cloud
It only seems natural that aerial data be stored in the cloud. For contractors, the use of technology to capture and record geographical information has created new possibilities, as well as new challenges—e.g., how to store such data.
For construction, GIS (geographic information system) plays a vital role in capturing and analyzing geographical data. Like any good technology, for GIS the advantages to construction don’t come without their own set of challenges. Such challenges include data complexity, mobile workforce requirements, and sharing data with multiple members from construction through operations.
Another challenge for contractors could come with storage of such vast amounts of data associated with GIS information. A company called Pictometry, www.pictometry.com, Rochester, N.Y., believes it has the answer with the launch of its Pictometry Connect. This cloud-based solution is designed for aerial imaging and combines a library of 145 million, high-resolution aerial oblique images from the company with customer-specific GIS data. It creates solution set for on-demand visual intelligence.
According to the company, some of the existing solutions on the market can create installation and ongoing interoperability challenges with some current software packages. With its cloud-driven approach, the Pictometry Connect product allows turnkey integration with leading GIS and CAD applications, as well as existing workflows. This means users can deploy the solution at the desktop, via a local server, or through a Web browser interface.
Such a solution can eliminate some high-volume storage concerns for contractors. Due to the high-quality of aerial imagery, storage and management of such data can often encompass terabytes of imagery on internal servers. Through a cloud solution, which provides up to 10 years of imagery, this data can be instead uploaded securely and remotely. The data is then layered on the images alongside proprietary measurement and analytics tools to deliver unparalleled visual insights.
According to the company, unlike traditional orthogonal--or top down--aerial and satellite capture, the high-resolution oblique images from the company show each side of every structure, roadway, and other outdoor objects, with views from all four cardinal directions. Each pixel is individually geo-referenced, allowing users to measure geographic position, height, distance, and altitude directly on the images in realtime.
"Pictometry Connect represents a significant advance in how our commercial and government partners will be able to derive even more value from their GIS data," says James Smyth, chief marketing officer, Picometry. "Not only will they be able to map their own exclusive data against the world's highest quality aerial oblique image library, but they'll also have optional access to additional, Pictometry-produced data sets. It's an elegant, streamlined solution that has the potential to further empower their in-house teams, projects, and programs."