Summer Reading: The Drones Are Amongst Us

Transformation geospatial technology is emerging as a “must have” in government GIS programs

Last month Governor Kathy Hochul announced the completion of the Skydome facility at the Griffiss Business and Technology Park in Rome, Oneida County. Located in a former airplane hangar, the indoor facility is the largest indoor drone test facility in the nation and a major investment in New York’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Test Site.  This investment adds to the already impressive UAS and high-tech ecosystem in the Empire State centered along the Syracuse-Rome corridorIts no news at this point that UAS are a transformation technology in the GIS and geospatial space with cutting-edge research and development going on right here in our backyard.  The Northeast UAS Airspace Integration Research Alliance (NUAIR) website provides a great example of this growing technology space which includes government, industry and academia.

The governor’s announcement made me go back looking for my notes on the Systems and Technologies for Remote Sensing Applications Through Unmanned Aerial Systems (STRATUS) 2022 Conference held May  23-25 at SUNY ESF which I wanted to participate in and attend, but the scheduling didn’t work out.   The 2022 show was the fifth STATUS conference which brought together more than 100 professionals from across the United States and Canada.  New York’s geospatial community, including those from a host of academic institutions and local and state governments, was well represented in the nine technical sessions which included both oral and poster presentations covering topics including mapping and surveying, agriculture and forestry, flood and water quality monitoring efforts, hardware and software, and flights and operations. Great homegrown UAS research work coming out of Cornell, Rochester Institute of Technology, SUNY Binghamton, Hobart and William Smith College, and SUNY ESF.   One of the keynote speakers was Ken Stewart, Chief Executive Officer of NUAIR who I interviewed as part of a 10 Questions column last fall.  The STRATUS 2022 program guide, including abstracts and presentations can be found here

And for those coming out of college or those looking for a mid-career change – its a great job market.   If not a great job skill to augment any current geospatial position.    Commerical UAV News reports the top five drone pilot industry markets (in order) include:  mapping and modeling, thermal imaging, real estate photography and videography, inspections, and movies and television.  Another publication predicts that by the year 2025, at least 100,000 jobs will be created for drone pilots. (btw – while putting together this article, came across an update on New York State drone laws and regulations as of July 21, 2022).

Seemingly now present in every significant geospatial data collection effort at all levels of accuracy and need, drone usage will grow exponentially throughout government in the years ahead.  As governments continue to remain concerned over drone liability, privacy, and cybersecurity issues,  industry and consulting firms will continue to provide the bulk of drone and UAS operations.  This may change slowly over time, but the near future work will be supported largely by the non-government workforce.  One exception to this will be in the public safety arena where government staff will continue to be aggressively trained and licensed internally.   

In other areas it will be most likely specific drone consulting firms or engineering companies will step-in and provide drone/UAS services.  Many engineering companies have already  positioned themselves well in supporting government geospatial projects by building GIS capacity and offering a wide range of services skillsets – both on the desktop and in the field.  And drones are a perfect fit as part of their surveying and mapping consulting work particularly for smaller to mid-size governments with limited or no technical staff.      These same engineering firms now offering full service GIS programs including the managing of online products such as ArcGIS Online to data warehousing.  Particularly advantageous to local governments as datasets get larger and larger as the televising of infrastructure systems (sanitary, storm, potable water, etc), above ground 3D modeling, building information models (BIM), and high resolution imagery continue to be captured and developed in municipal governments.  Continued advancements by the major software companies such as ESRI and AutoCAD, and their business partners,  on the integration of drone generated data such as lidar only extends the ease of use and accessibility of drone/UAS technology for government organizations.

And with high accuracy mapping and surveying being one of the most common applications of drone/UAS use, particularly in context of the quality of imagery captured and increasingly larger geographic footprints of data being collected, might it lead to  the discussion as to how the emerging drone/UAS technology augments larger publicly – funded efforts such as the USGS 3D Elevation Program (3DEP)?  While the 3DEP program covers much larger geographic areas and is plane-based, is there a way to add smaller project areas which are drone/UAS  based and meeting appropriate federal lidar specifications to public data warehouses and inventories such as the U.S. Federal Mapping Coordination website?  Expand the State elevation library to include locally collected data?  There is so much elevation data being collected across the state by so many sources.

Summary

Government GIS/geospatial practitioners will do well to follow and participate in technology specific conferences and associations such as those represented at STRATUS 2022.  Many of which are becoming more accessible by being available online.   Industry specific conferences in engineering, public works, public safety – even agriculture – now serve as an excellent source of specific applied geospatial technology tools.  And drone/UAS technology is a common thread among them all. 

Coming to a geospatial application close to you soon. 

Highest Lakes in New York State

While planning on some Summer 2017 High Peaks hikes and overnights with my sons, I got to thinking about some previous communications I had with long time colleagues John Barge at the Adirondack Park Agency and Doug Freehafer at the U.S.Geological Water Science Center in Troy about other state highest geographic features.   Most know about the “46ers” – a.k.a the 46 mountains in New York State above 4,000’.  (Yours truly having bagged about ½ of them.)  But what about other geographic features and facts that might make good trivia questions –  like what are the “highest” lakes and water bodies in the Empire State?

No problemo.  Doug pointed me to the U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) search engine in which I queried for all New York State lakes over 2,500’ and the search returned 35 lakes  based on the National Elevation Dataset.  Surprisingly not are all in the Adirondacks.

The GNIS query builder is easy-to-use and allows users to search on names for geographic features such as harbors, islands, harbors, basins, summits and much more.

Saving the search results and converting to a spreadsheet, it’s easy enough to add the lake X,Ys to a  ArcGIS Online viewer (or any viewer of choice for that matter) called the Highest Lakes in New York State.   As shown in the following images, the highest lakes are located near Mt. Marcy (Lake Tear of the Clouds at 4,321’ and Moss Pond at 4,4,252’) with Hodge Pond showing up at 2,592’ (#26 highest)  much further south in Sullivan County.

Eight out the ten highest lakes are in Essex County though not all are found on the Mt.Marcy USGS quadrangle. What other quads are in play?

USGS 1:24,000 quadrangle grid covering the Adirondack High Peaks region from The National Map viewer application.

Won’t find any summer lifeguards on duty at these lakes and the water temperature probably won’t be the same as your shower water, but it’s nice to know if your back country trips might take you close enough to potential swimming or fishing holes?  (Our lastest route and trip manifest did not include any of these water bodies.)   GNIS is a great source of national and Empire State geographic features which we’ll occasionally explore in future eSpatiallyNewYork posts.

Enjoy your summer!

2016 National Map (TNM) Products and Services for the Empire State

For almost ten years, The National Map viewer has served as one of the more prominent and visible products of the of the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) National Geospatial Program (NGP).  It represents a significant collaborative effort between the USGS and other Federal, State, and local partners in disseminating  nationwide geospatial data, and where available, content from state and local sources as well.

The National Map is easily accessible for display through a web viewer and boasts a rich catalog of map services which can be consumed by and augments a wide range of browser viewing clients.  It now includes the “new” viewer (the original TNM viewer will be retired this year) which provides users with access to geospatial datasets, geographic names, the Historical Topographic Map Collection (HTMC), and the increasingly popular post-2009 US Topo quadrangle product – all for easy access and download.    US Topo maps are modeled on the familiar 7.5-minute quadrangle maps of the period 1947-1992, but are mass-produced from national GIS databases on a three-year cycle.

Selected TNM viewer functions which can be used by the New York State geospatial community will be highlighted in  the  following  sections  including an update on two of NGP’s  most current and visible  projects –  the 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) and National Hydrography Dataset (NHD).  Both of which are made available in the TNM viewer.  If you’re not familiar with the National Map viewer, an easy way to get started is by using newly released USGS TNM tutorials.

3D Elevation Program (3DEP) Continue reading