Tag Archives: surveying

New York State Thruway Authority Drone Program Continues to Soar

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Trained and certified operators work closely with state and local agencies in a myriad of data collection and inspection programs

Over the past three years, the New York State Thruway Authority‘s Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) program has been expanding the application of drone technology across multiple areas of state governments. With support and encouragement from executive leadership coupled with dedicated staff in operations, the program has grown quickly and the benefits continue to be realized. The program is based on a commitment to safety, innovations, and increased government efficiencies.

The use of drones reduces the cost and time of bridge inspections significantly. This image shows the Skydio S2+. Here is a great/short Skydio video on bridge inspections.

From Bridge Inspection to Bird Boxes: A Diverse Program

While the program began by exploring applications for UAS in bridge inspections, opportunities to apply the technology have grown agency-wide. Efforts by the UAS team in 2023 lead to a $1.5 million Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing
Transportation (SMART) Grant U.S. Department of Transportation as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to update workflows and inspection procedures, and develop exciting capabilities like structural monitoring and digital 3D modeling.

Done missions in the last year has included the UAS team traversing the State of New York to inspect bridge mounted falcon boxes, searching for the presence of beaver in flooded areas, verifying the condition of rock in drill holes more than 40 feet deep for bridge piles, gathering data for corridor mapping along the right-of-ways, and covering commemorative events for media relations.

The drones offer a fast and safe way to survey locations of bird boxes located on Thruway bridges across the state. The process can be done without disrupting the birds versus having an inspector do the work. Using drones for the inspections is much more efficient and cost effective. This bird box is on the Castleton on Hudson Bridge outside of Albany.

Building a Skilled Team: Rigorous Training and Certification

The Thruway’s UAS team of FAA licensed, Part 107 pilots, which now exceeds a dozen, originate from a wide array of professional backgrounds including Land Survey, Environmental Planning, Traffic Management, and Highway Design. The program is currently refining the agency training program, while adhering to Federal, State, and local regulations, offering in-house practice opportunities, and live flight training across the system.  Additionally, the program benefits from the exceptional training programs supplied to state agencies by the NYS Department of Homeland Security. This includes equipping the team with advanced skills and knowledge from Part 107 Test Prep, Basic Flight Operations, Night-Flight Operations, Drone Thermography, and certification classes for Remote Pilot Proficiency Evaluation. With some of the T-pilots certified as Level 1 Thermographers, staff can utilize infrared cameras to analyze concrete and pavement as well as provide support for emergency services for search and rescue and Haz-Mat detection. The Thruway trains along with NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, NYS Troopers, County Sheriffs, and other first responders at the NYS Division of Homeland Security & Emergency Services mostly at the State Preparedness Training Center (SPTC) in Oriskany.

Drone cages have evolved to help protect device propellers in confined spaces, particularly inside structures and infrastructure systems. Here, the Thruway is using drones as part of the inspection process during the construction of bridge footings.

The team also works closely with representatives from Northeast UAS Airspace Integration Research Alliance (NUAIR). The not-for-profit drone research coalition provides subject matter experts as consultants to ensure that the program keeps up with evolving regulation, as well as testing and showcasing for new drone technologies.

Drone thermal imaging can also be used in a myriad of public safety applications including search and rescue operations.

Tech Exploration: Choosing the Right Tools for the Job

With more and more manufacturers entering the market, hardware options are becoming more specialized for individual tasks. And with the greater availability of hardware and technology options comes the increased scrutiny required to select the right tool for drone-related work. Much of the Thruway drone fleet consists of domestically produced, National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) compliant aircraft, in conformance with the Buy American Act. The program also have a specialized drone designed for confined spaces with fully caged rotors and supplemental lighting added. Training drones are inexpensive, durable, in-door only drones that have no flight stability assistance or GPS which new pilots use to develop “stick skills” before progressing to live outdoor flights. The Thruway UAS pilots are always on the look out for the next aircraft which will improve efficiencies in data collection and continue to promote user safety.

Data Acquisition and Processing: After the Landing

While flight time in the field remains the most exciting draw to the program – it’s the data processing portion of the job where the real work is done. Just as hardware options expand, so does the software. As such, Thruway drone staff continue to explore various software platforms for mapping and modeling. Packages like Bentley’s iTwin, and Pix4D are currently in use while the team looks to expand knowledge of other options provided by companies like ESRI’s Site Scan for ArcGIS. The UAS team also continues to collaborate with the Thruway’s internal IT department and the GIS team to create effective data handling solutions for the large datasets created and associated with drone technology.

Summary

Upon creation of the program, the NYS Thruway Authority discovered a coalition of state agencies in New York and beyond which routinely gather and communicate to share experiences and knowledge about the UAS industry. All state agencies operating drone programs meet to train together and explore different aircraft and software platforms. Along the way building a team of drone experts which will promote safe and efficient inter-agency operations. NY State Fire, NY State Police, NYSDEC, NYSDOT, several county sheriffs, Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), and many other agencies all work together to provide drone support state-wide. In doing so, benefiting from the collective experience and shortening the learning curve. “In addition to reducing costs in data collection and mapping efforts, drones offer new efficiencies and safety benefits to our organization”, notes UAS Department Director and Senior Surveyor, Andrew Kosiba, “Thruway staff continues to identify new uses and applications of the technology as our program branches out wider than we originally thought possible.”

Contact:

Joel Kayser, PLS
Land Surveyor & UAS Remote Pilot
NYS Thruway Authority HQ
200 Southern Boulevard
Albany, NY, 12209
Joel.Kayser@thruway.ny.gov

 

5 Barriers to Building GIS Programs in Small Governments in New York State

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Some barriers instead might be considered missed opportunities but there continues to be specific issues which stifle geospatial growth

Over my 30+ years of managing the Westchester County GIS program, I worked extensively with local governments across the County.  Forty-three in all, ranging from Yonkers, now the third largest city in New York State to several villages which are little more than one-square mile in size such as Buchanan along the Hudson River with a population of 2,302 (2020 Census). All uniquely different in their attempts – and interests – to build geospatial capacity.  Some have been successful while many others have struggled for a myriad of reasons.  This is particularly true among the 23 villages.

Now “on the other side of the firewall” (thanks, Sue Knauss) and working for myself, I’ve been able to see and work further into the organizational framework of these smaller governments.  Confirming many of the observations I made while working with Westchester County that I believe inhibit the development of building geospatial programs at this level of government. Admittedly, the small Westchester County village just north of the Bronx is different in many ways from a small village in Chemung County and one could argue the sample size is too small to be reflective of the entire state of New York, but I would suggest these obstacles to geospatial development are conceptually very similar across the state.   Furthermore, the term “Village” is not necessarily synonymous with small government as the Village of Port Chester 2020 population here in Westchester County was 31,581 – larger than many towns across the state.  So as a point of reference for this article small governments generally mean those with a population of less than 5,000.  Plus or minus.

GIS implementation “how-to” articles, management and primer books, and cautionary experiences shared by software vendors and consultants often include recognized issues such as budget constraints, limited technical expertise, or the lack of a realistic, phased implementation plan, as major culprits in initiating geospatial efforts.   I experienced and witnessed many of these same reasons, though the following are five specific barriers which I believe have a major impact in building GIS programs in small governments across New York State. 

In no particular order:

  1.  Staff Continuity: On the urban fringes, professional staff, particularly in the front offices, turn over at an amazing rate.  Assistants to Village Administrators, Managers, and department heads/commissioners – those who are often tasked to coordinate or serve as a liaison to special projects covering several departments such as GIS implementation – are often on the move.    And it’s not just in the administrative offices where staff turnover is impactful, but also throughout key program offices and departments which touch on GIS implementation such as planning, assessment, public works, and water departments, among others.     Any successful GIS Manager will tell you one of the most important factors in building the program, or any new government initiative, is staff continuity.  Including those who are in charge of managing consultants involved in helping build the GIS program.  Losses in these areas are often a major setback and derail any progress that may have been made in the GIS effort.  In some cases, losing years of work.  It doesn’t matter how good the implementation plan was or the technology being deployed.  

2.  IT Support:  Many small governments often do not have full-time IT staff and normally contract out for this support.  And with it, much of the focus is on infrastructure items such as the network, desktop and peripheral hardware components, client software installations/upgrades and as is the case in all governments and businesses now – maintaining the firewall and supporting cyber security efforts. These contracts, which are often with smaller IT firms, rarely include the support or guidance on multi-department applications such as geospatial programs which increasingly include mobile applications and its peripheral components.  This is not to say smaller IT firms cannot support GIS, it’s just not normally in their wheelhouse.   In small governments, needed GIS support from IT resources for a “government-wide perspective” is often extremely limited.

3.  Software Application Silos:    In small governments where there is often an absence of an overarching “IT committee” and/or the like, as well as combined with the lack of full-time IT staff as noted above, it is not uncommon for individual departments to be left to themselves to make their own business software decisions.  And as software vendors continue to push for and offer cloud-based/browser only solutions for their software products, it is even easier for individual departments and programs to go rogue and operate further in obscurity from the primary or seemingly “adopted” computing environments in the organization.  In fact, it’s not uncommon for IT support in small governments (I’ve even seen this at the City level) to not even know what browser-based business solutions some departments are using on a day-to-day basis.

What makes this difficult in the GIS space is that practically all business software solutions now include some kind of “mapping” component –  if only to render the application data on some form of generic base map.  Most often Google Maps.   Often the user interface even includes the term “GIS” when simply viewing program data on a map – this being the extent of the “GIS” functionality.  And if and when the broader discussion of a GIS for the government is ever started, these same departments are slow, if ever, to join the effort.  Not knowing the larger intricacies and benefits of a shared, multi-department GIS program – the response is normally  “We already have a GIS“.  Little interest in the shared data model, to say the least of a common address file which most business software products normally ship  to support geocoding.  This cloud-only software application delivery model (mobile apps, too) is very common now in local government permitting, code enforcement, inspections, and even public safety disciplines to name just a few.

If it’s not broken, they are not going to try and fix it.  Let alone spend more money.  Making it very difficult to garner interest for a government-wide discussion on a unified GIS solution.  

4.  VIPs with an Attitude:    That may sound a little harsh, but the fact of the matter is that  just one dominant personality in small governments can impact the  decision making process over a wide range of internal technology issues – not just GIS.  Such individuals exist in all levels of government, but in smaller ones, where staff are few in numbers and  VIPs normally being senior staffers – frequently with decades of service – his or her opinion is often unquestioned.  Your first onsite meeting with folks who are genuinely interested in the GIS goes well – that’s why you’re there in the first place.  But during the second or third on-site meeting which is held to take a deeper dive into the concept – the VIP with an Attitude shows up out of nowhere acting like Lord Vadar.  Often packing a lightsaber.

Because of their decades of institutional knowledge, they have been ordained to know what is best for the good of the order.   Even if he or she isn’t even directly involved in geospatial.  Like a good defense lawyer, raising just an iota of doubt on what is deemed such a good idea by so many others.

Magically the VIPs have the ear of the Budget Director, Comptroller, Finance Director, fellow high ranking directors, or highest elected official.  Or the Town Board.  And so forth.  Across the municipal landscape they can be found in one of many program areas:  Public Works, Finance, Building Department, maybe a small Planning office, or even a long standing consultant who isn’t even on the payroll.  For whatever reason, he or she feels threatened by the technology which is being considered and increasingly adopted elsewhere.    Particularly if the VIP has not taken the time to understand the benefits that geospatial programs can bring.

But it’s not going to happen while they are still around and/or have something to say about it.  In my hometown, early GIS efforts were thwarted by the Receiver of Taxes.  Yes, Receiver of Taxes.  Largely because this office was responsible for “computer related” expenditures.  And nothing was going to compromise his/her annual computer software and hardware needs.  To this day, the program has never gotten on track.

There is really no good solution for the VIP with an Attitude problem in small governments. Sometimes retirement and attrition takes care of the problem though this may take years.  A change in administration sometimes helps, but in small governments new administrators rarely question long standing, senior staff members.  If anything they embrace the input and advice of VIPers.

And the beat goes on.  

5,  Consulting Engineers: Small governments often do not have a professional engineer on staff and normally contract out needed engineering services.  Engineering firms, whether small or large, which secure these services can have a profound impact on the use and development of GIS in small governments.  Though many small governments today do not see or consider their consulting engineers in this capacity.  Most aren’t even aware of the possible connection.

Back in the day of desktop/client GIS solutions, such support by consulting engineers was unrealistic.  But now, with easy-to-use cloud-based offerings such as ArcGIS Online, consulting engineers, along with their arsenal of AutoCAD related products and technologies, can simply envelope this “GIS service” into annual support services contracts.  At many levels of government, and particularly true in smaller ones, consulting engineers come in contact with all types of municipal geospatial data.   While infrastructure data (storm, sanitary, water distribution systems) are often the most obvious, consulting engineers duties also often include staffing local Planning Boards, serving as a liaison to utilities and a myriad of regional, state, and federal programs which include geospatial connections, as well as being involved in a host of local surveying and land/property record issues.    Depending on the in-house GIS resource capacity the consulting engineer maintains and the licensing agreement with the software vendor,  consulting engineers can offer a range of GIS capabilities to get small governments started for minimal investments. 

The reasons are many why this connection is not more common, but this “barrier” is more of a business relationship that more small governments should try and leverage with their consulting engineers.  There are positive and long term benefits for each party.   

Summary

At the end of the day, yes, the scale of small government operations and the scope of the geographical area covered may not seem to justify the investment in a comprehensive geospatial program.  Leading to a perception among the local elected officials, perhaps even department heads, that the benefits may not outweigh the costs.  Though the path I took in and out local government buildings, a basic lack of education and awareness of the geospatial benefits was still always an issue.  Particularly among the highest elected official and governing boards.  But it doesn’t stop there as I believe there still continues to be a significant lack of awareness or understanding of the broad spectrum of geospatial technologies among elected state representatives as well.    

For years, I’ve passively monitored the websites of New York State Association of Towns and New York Conference of Mayors as a source of ideas for articles for this blog.  Both organizations represent elected officials (including council members, boards, clerks and other municipal staff members as well) and are an excellent source of advocacy for small government programs and funding where geospatial technologies can be applied (i.e., transportation, infrastructure, public safety, environmental protection, etc).   Even New York State Association of Counties (NYSAC) for the most rural of our state counties serves in this capacity as well.  If one takes the time to drive around and research each of the association websites, including using key word search tools, there is little reference to GIS or geospatial technologies.  Or for that matter, little of the technologies that geospatial is wrapped into. 

These organizations would be an excellent source of geospatial awareness at their newly elected training programs or annual conferences – which are extensive.  Helping connect geospatial to the programs they fund and how the tools are applied locally.   (For this article I looked for similar training sessions for newly elected New York Assembly members but could not find any specific programs).  Perhaps an opportunity for organizations like the NYS GIS Association or our emerging academic programs to provide training session/seminars to these associations.

There will continue to be exceptions, but until the opportunities and awareness of geospatial technologies are better understood, small government GIS programs in New York State will continue to struggle.

10 Questions: ChatGPT for New York State GIS

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I thought I was going to get out in front of all the ChatGPT for GIS discussion for the New York State GIS community, but that turned out to be off by a magnitude of sorts.  YouTube is already replete with ChatGPT for GIS tutorials and if we wait until next week there will probably be another ChatGPT alternative.  (I found the Matt Forrest YouTube video a good ChatGPT for GIS intro – actually formed a question after one of his examples).  Even Amazon jumped into the frey recently with their Amazon Bedrock option.  Take your pick, Bing Chat, Chatsonic, YouChat, Google Bard (available via a waiting list) and a whole host of others on the market in 2023. 

No, the robots aren’t taking over and I suspect we won’t see any of the early Terminator Cyberdyne Systems androids applying for your local GIS Analyst position anytime soon – though it might be a solution for those long dreadful digitizing jobs in the cart lab.  One way or another, Chatbot AI technology is definitely here to stay, evolve, and become another piece of the geospatial toolbox.  

Nothing specific or implied in any the questions.  Just random chains of thought though it does take a little getting used to putting the questions together vs. a basic Google search.  And it does seem to help to refresh and ask the same question twice – or even three times – to get more detailed results.  Never was a programmer, so a little short on questions in that space.

A lot here.  Actually 17 questions in all.  Straight copy and paste. Skim through as you want – find a topic/question you might be interested in.  There are tons more which could have been included.

Without any further adieu, my first machine interview: 

eSpatiallyNewYork:  What freshwater fish datasets are best for mapping fish population based on water depth in the Great Lakes?

ChatGPT:  There are several freshwater fish datasets that can be useful for mapping fish populations based on water depth in the Great Lakes. Here are a few options:

  1. Great Lakes Acoustic Telemetry Observation System (GLATOS) – This dataset provide information on the movements and behaviors of tagged fish in the Great Lakes.  It includes data on depth, temperature, and location, which can be used to create maps of fish populations based on water depth.
  2. Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC) – The GLFC maintains a database of fish populations in the Great Lakes.  This dataset includes information on fish specifies, size, and location, which can be used to map fish population based on water depth.
  3. Great Lakes Environmental Database (GLENDA) – GLENDA is a comprehensive database of environmental data for the Great Lake region.  It includes information on water depth,  temperature, and environmental factors that can be used to map fish populations.
  4. USGS Great Lakes Science Center – The USGS Great Lakes Science Center conducts research on fish populations in the Great Lake and maintains a database of fish surveys.  This dataset includes information on fish species, abundance, and location which can be used to map fish populations based on water depth.

Ultimately, the best freshwater fish dataset for mapping fish populations based on water depth in the Great Lakes will depend on the specific research question and the type of analysis being conducted.

eSpatiallyNewYork:  To what degree of accuracy can I map features from New York State orthophotography?

ChatGPT:  The degree of accuracy with which you can map features from New York State orthophotography depends on various factors such as the resolution of the imagery, the accuracy of the ground control points used for georeferencing, and the skill and expertise of the analyst.

New York State orthophotography typically has a resolution ranging from 0.5 to 1 meter, which means that individual features such as buildings, roads, and other infrastructure can be identified and mapped with a reasonable level of accuracy. However, mapping smaller features such as individual trees, shrubs, or small structures may be more challenging, as these features may not be visible at this resolution.

The accuracy of mapping also depends on the quality of the georeferencing. The accuracy of the ground control points used for georeferencing should be of a similar or higher resolution than the orthophotography itself. This ensures that the imagery is correctly aligned with the ground, allowing for accurate measurements and mapping.

The skill and expertise of the analyst are also critical factors in the accuracy of mapping features from orthophotography. A trained analyst with experience in image interpretation and feature extraction techniques can accurately identify and map features with a high degree of accuracy.

Overall, mapping features from New York State orthophotography can provide a reasonable degree of accuracy for larger features such as buildings, roads, and other infrastructure. However, mapping smaller features may require higher resolution imagery or other sources of data. It is always important to validate and verify the accuracy of the mapping results through ground truthing and other quality control measures.

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Warren County GIS: A Showcase of Geospatial Content for County and Local Government

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Program’s modest beginning started in the late 1990s with AutoCAD files and a copy of ArcInfo

Now spending a significant amount of time upstate New York in Essex County, we now find ourselves looking for different routes to take back and forth from southeast New York State instead of the “go-to” I87/Northway option every time.  Just to mix things up – the four-plus hour drive going the normal route can get to be a bit monotonous.

So it was in September I came south out of Ticonderoga headed to Hague (yes, named after The Hague in the Netherlands) on the northern end of Lake George – an area I had never been to.  And it did not disappoint.  Though ultimately to State Route 8 (aka Graphite Mountain Road) to a new Adirondacks trailhead:  Swede Mountain Firetower.  Even though the round-trip hike isn’t that long and relatively easy, it was getting late and I didn’t even get out of the car while in the trailhead parking lot.  Instead, making a note to print out a trail map when I got home.  A couple days later and not having a clue what trail maps were actually available, I Googled “Swede Mountain Firetower trail map” and a candidate list of URLs and image options were immediately returned.  Randomly selecting the one below,  the cartography caught my eye and I quickly looked for the map’s author.  There on the bottom left:  Warren County GIS.  

It was quickly then off to the Warren County GIS website.  Which became the genesis of this article.

Warren County GIS

Just by coincidence, this article coincides with the release of the new Warren County GIS Hub as announced by long-time county GIS Administrator, Sara Frankenfeld.  Overseeing a countywide GIS program judiciously developed over the course of more than two decades – from the days of ARC/INFO coverages to 2022 mobile field apps and interactive online viewing applications.  Also available through the program and Hub is a rich repository of dozens of hardcopy maps available for download covering areas such as countywide outdoor recreation, history, demographics, municipalities, planning and the environment and much more.   An amazing amount of content bundled into three main categories:  Web Maps and Apps | Maps for Print | Download Data.

Background

Originally from the northside of San Francisco Bay in Marin County and earning a degree in Geography from Northern Arizona University, Frankenfeld came to the east coast to initially start work with Dutchess County.  After a short stint with NYSDEC she ultimately made her way to Warren County in 1999 where she got started with a copy of ARC/INFO on a standalone computer in the county building basement.   The county had created a new GIS position in the Planning Department to help convert the tax maps to AutoCAD and then over a period of time converting from AutoCAD to ARC/INFO and then later to geodatabase. 

Over the next four years, she was successful in winning over several other departments on the value and usefulness of GIS technology which she accomplished by focusing on easy, visible “wins” such getting people to use the newly available digital tax parcel data (linked to the RPS data) as quickly as possible and making hardcopy maps.  Lots of maps.  The visibility of the Warren County program also expanded by her working with municipal government zoning administrators and assessors and providing access to the new digital parcel data and including zoning maps,  wetlands data, and FEMA floodplain maps.  A New York State Archives and Administration (SARA) grant enabled the development of a parcel viewer app sby AppliedGIS – where she would later go to work for several years – called the Spatial Data Viewer.  The groundwork was also laid for the implementation of ArcIMS and Imagemate Online.  Somehow she also found time to include outreach programs to local schools and GIS Day.  

After a period in the private sector with (then) AppliedGIS/Fountains Spatial, she returned to Warren County in 2013 where she remains today.  

Today’s Environment

In 2022, the Warren County GIS program is built totally around the ArcGIS Online (AGOL) environment.   Frankenfeld states AGOL has “totally transformed the workplace” and furthers her two main goals of (1) improving public access to data and (2) streamlining/improving processes for county departments and organizations the GIS program supports.  She, along with GIS Specialist Amanda Beck, have embraced StoryMaps, Dashboards, Hubs and Survey123 in ways to make it easy for non-tech users to create and maintain data and access it.  While many of the combo Survey123/dashboard applications are internal facing, others, like the Lake George Milfoil Harvesting real-time app is available to the public.  And so is the Capital Improvement Project Planning viewer.  Both respond to GIS requests from local municipalities, local organizations including  the Adirondack/Glens Falls Transportation Council (AGFTC), Lake George Park Commission and the Lake Champlain Lake George Regional Planning Board – all of which have tech support contracts the County.  Projects range from data compilation to hardcopy map preparation to creating and supporting online apps.  Usually these three organizations know exactly what they want, but GIS staff we do often try to suggest ways to streamline or improve their requests.  For example, County GIS staff helped AGFTC come up with a method to inventory sidewalk/crosswalk/curb ramps for ADA transition plans that proved really popular and resulted in a training session for all the Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO) in the state.

Dashboard for Adirondack/Glens Falls Transportation Council’s Transportation Improvement Program projects.

Having transitioned to ArcGIS Pro to support data editing, cartography and more complex analysis, Warren County GIS staff do a majority of their work in AGOL which includes the mobile pieces Field Maps and Survey123.  They still collect GPS data as needed (usually related to recreation or e911) and support field operations, such as collecting milfoil harvest or infrastructure data, for other users.  They also have Trimble boosters and cell phones which can be checked out to both county staff and municipalities for field data collection along with field worker licenses.   While there are still a few remaining ArcGIS desktop users, most users are using AGOL with named users in Planning, Soil and Water, Public Affairs, the Sheriff’s Department, Office of Emergency Services, Public Works, and Parks and Recreation.  Address and road centerlines are uploaded to the state twice a year and parcel data once a year.  A large current project Sara and Amanda are currently working on is building additional GIS capacity and functionality in County Department of Public Works.

Except for Queensbury which has its own full-time GIS staff person, Warren County GIS supports all municipalities in the County.  At the beginning of the program, Sara had  set up each municipality with desktop GIS as well as providing training and support.  In hindsight and it comes as no surprise this desktop support  was the most time consuming element of her job in the early years.  With the advent of online GIS, County staff has transitioned most of the towns off of desktop GIS, although there are a small number of towns which still use the desktop client.  Most local communities across the County now utilize new AGOL applications.   “We often will take the initiative with projects for the towns that relate to work the County Planning Department is doing such as the Warrensburg buildout analysis“, notes Frankenfeld, “as well advocating the adoption of Field Maps for maintaining water and sewer data.”

New GIS Hub

As noted previously, the new Warren County GIS Hub contains three main areas of content:  Web Maps and Apps | Maps for Print | Download Data.  Each area is then broken down further thematically into categories such as recreation, environment, transportation and infrastructure, planning and zoning, history, citizen reports and more.  With an established user community in County government, most of the time departments and organizations now approach GIS staff directly with applications to develop to support their business needs such as the Safe Pace, Opioid Dashboard, Storm Reporter, TIP viewer, etc).  Other projects have been initiated by GIS staff themselves such as the covid hub and election polling locator.   GIS staff work frequently  with other Planning Department and and apply grant funding to create projects such as History Mapper and the letterboxing challenges (Letterboxing Trail and Historians’ Challenge).

Geospatial viewers are excellent for publishing public transportation systems content. In addition to making time tables and schedules available, ones such as the GGFT also include important public sites such as health care facilities.

Today the COVID Hub is the most popular app though much simplified from early COVID and no longer maintained by the GIS team.   It’s had around 1.5 million views  since its inception in April 2020 – not bad for a county with a population of 64,000   The next most popular is the parcel viewer app (Community Map), which gets about 12k views a month.  After that, the First Wilderness website (about 7k views a month) and the Recreation Mapper which gets a couple hundred views a day, higher in the summer.  Warren County’s primary industry is tourism and is an outdoor recreation destination, so trail maps and recreational resources are popular content and Sara and Amanda spend a substantial amount of time creating and maintaining recreation data and providing access to it.

Warren County GIS provides technical support to the Lake Champlain Lake George Regional Planning Board which extends beyond the Warren County footprint. This viewer contains both American Community Survey and 2020 Census data for areas in the five north country counties covered by the Regional Planning Board

Though the application was closed in August, another public facing app focused on the American Recovery Plan Act (ARPA).  Survey123 was customized to create an application for those organizations interested in applying for ARPA funding.  The applications were made available to committee members for review through a Dashboard, and scoring was completed using another Survey123 form.

American Recovery Plan Act (ARPA) grant monies provides funding for investment in a wide ranges of community programs and services including geospatial efforts in the rehabilitation and mapping of infrastructure systems.

Sara’s Law

There probably aren’t many geospatial professionals working today across the Empire State that are familiar with Sara’s own little piece of New York State GIS history.  The year was 2002 and it was during her first stint with Warren County.  While using a GPS unit to map the locations of fire hydrants in the North Creek area, she was “challenged” by the professional surveying community of mapping features in a manner/way she was not qualified to do so.   Her post to New York State GIS listserve at the time describing the events read:

“In January, I(Sara) was contacted by an investigator from the New York State Education Department’s Office of Professional Discipline.  They had received a complaint from a surveyor stating that I was surveying without a license.  I was using a Trimble Pathfinder Pro XR GPS unit to collect fire hydrant locations and then plot them on a reference map.  Two investigators met with myself, our planning director, and our county attorney.  The investigators were unfamiliar with GPS and GIS and were basically on a fact-finding mission.  The investigation has progressed, and today we met with the two investigators, an attorney from the Office for Professional Discipline and a surveyor from the New York State Board of Licensed Engineers and Land Surveyors.  The state’s attorney told us at the beginning of the meeting that after reviewing the facts in the case, they do feel that we are guilty of practicing surveying without a license.  She then gave our county attorney a chance to state our case, which I thought he did very well. We were informed that the board will make a decision within the next week.”

At the time, it WAS a really big deal in the statewide geospatial and surveying communities – particularly New York State Association of Professional Land Surveyors (NYSAPLS) and the subject of much discussion and debate.  Significant in that it marked, for the first time, the visible intersection of emerging GIS/geospatial technologies and the professional discipline of surveying – and by extension, engineering in New York State.    While legislation (A01927 & S04396) was proposed in the 2007/2008 timeframe looking to “enhance the definition of land surveying with current standards and tools, i.e., GPS”, nothing was ultimately passed.  And along the way over the course of several years, the discussion and the proposed legislation became known as “Sara’s Law”.  

Little did she know the backpack GPS unit she was using in 2001 in North Creek would one day be the beginning of bringing these different, but similar geospatial technologies together as they are today.   Sara’s place in NYS GIS lore is secure.  

Summary

In addition to the broad presence the Warren County GIS program has throughout county government, it also represents the great relationship and guidance county geospatial programs can provide and offer to local governments.   Local governments that often have both limited financial and technical resources can benefit greatly from county GIS which have technical expertise and infrastructure in place.  A model that can be replicated in other areas across New York State.   

Contact

Sara Frankenfeld
GIS Administrator
Warren County GIS
Warren County Municipal Building
Lake George, NY 12845
frankenfelds@warrencountyny.gov
518-761-6410

Geospatial Business Spotlight: Maine Technical Source

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NY Locations:     787 Old Sergeant Palmateer Way, Wappingers Falls NY
                              2634 James Street, Syracuse NY

Website:               www.mainetechnical.com 

Employees:          18

Established:         1973

 

 

 

 

The Company:

Maine Technical Source (MTS) sells, services, and supports high-end instrumentation for the geospatial industry as well as the surveying, engineering, and construction sectors throughout New England.  New York State offices are located at 787 Old Sergeant Palmateer Way in Wappingers Falls, & 2634 James Street in Syracuse. 

Gus MacDonald started the company over 45 years ago and more than half of the MTS employees have been with the company for more than fifteen years.  In June 2017, Stuart MacDonald purchased the company with a commitment to continuing the legacy of meeting customer needs.   Maine Technical Source employees are singularly focused on providing exemplary customer service.

MTS is a member of the New York State Association of Professional Land Surveyors (NYSAPLS).  

Products and Technology:

MTS provides a wide range of traditional industry products as well as state-of-the-art components now available in emerging and laser scanning technologies.  A complete listing of products can be found as part of the MTS online catalog.  

Illustrative products common to the geospatial, BIM and AEC applications include:

Field Mapping

Leica Zeno Mobile is a complete tool for high accuracy field data capture with the simplicity of an Android app.  Managing assets has never been easier via it’s intuitive user interface and functionality.  Users can export collected data to the PC as shape files, ASCII or KMZ, either in classic way via cable, USB or using the cloud with Dropbox. The app also comes pre-loaded with aerial imagery.  Learn more about Leica Zeno GIS technology via online training videos here.

UAV Solutions

MTS offers complete UAV solutions for the surveying, mapping and construction industries enabling fast and flexible data collection.  Systems capture, process and analyze millions of data points depicting highly accurate spatial information of the natural and built environment.   One of MTS’s more popular drone solutions is the DJI Phantom 4 RTK which is one the most compact and accurate low altitude mapping UAV devices. 

The Leica Aibot SX focuses on UAV data capture in the surveying geomapping, and asset  disciplines enabling users to create orthophotos, point clouds, and 3D models for cadastral survey and data collection. Leica Aibot CX focuses on UAV data capture in the construction industry providing up-to-date views over construction projects and earthmovings.  It also opens opportunities for daily progress documentation, stockpile monitoring and resource tracking to increase efficiency.

WingtraOne Gen II is a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) sUAS for mapping of small and large areas.  It utilizes a high resolution Sony DSLR camera platform and post-processing kinematic(PPK) to provide precise geotagging of the images.  As a VTOL drone it can take off and land like a quad-copter and then transition into level flight as a fixed wing.  With the high-resolution camera it can fly missions higher and faster than a quadcopter with outstanding ground sampling distance (GSD) results.

MTS is a Pix4Dmapper reseller which is the the leading photogrammetry software for professional drone mapping.  Users can capture RGB, thermal, or multispectral images with any camera.  Pix4Dmapper’s photogrammetry algorithms transform  ground or aerial images in digital maps and 3D models. 

 

Field Tablets

Leica CS30 Data Collector is the best of both worlds – light weight (1.67 lbs) and compact yet with a screen size (7”) big enough for use all day long.  Equipped with an LCD IPS screen to provide an optimal color clarity, as well as a much improved and increased viewing angle. The unit also has an ambient light sensor for improved visibility in all lighting conditions.  Portable to fit into a field bag or typical pickup truck glove box.  Other similar devices MTS offers include the Carlson RT4 and the Sokkia SHC6000. 

Laser Scanners

MTS focuses on providing and supporting Leica Systems laser scanning technology including the new highly portable RTC360.  Intuitive and designed for maximum productivity, this unit efficiently combines the RTC360 high-performance 3D laser scanner, a Leica Cyclone FIELD 360 mobile-device app or automatically registering scans in real time, and the Leica Cyclone REGISTER 360 office software.  Depending on the specific application area of use, MTS also offers HDS software for integration into the AutoCAD, Revit, and MicroStation platforms among others.  Here is a RTC360 video. 

For a complete listing of all MTS products, visit their website.  

Contact:

Stuart MacDonald, President smacdonald@mainetechnical.com
Bill Treadwell, GIS Sales btreadwell@mainetechnical.com
Brad Beeler, Wappingers Falls brad.beeler@mainetechnical.com
David Filipski, Syracuse dfilipski@mainetechnical.com

Geospatial Business Spotlight: Bergmann (GIS Services and Solutions)

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Company Name:               Bergmann (GIS Services and Solutions)

Location:                               Rochester, NY

Website:                                bergmannpc.com

Employees:                        400+

Established:                      1980

Bergmann is a full service, multi-disciplinary design firm employing a wide range of professionals and practitioners in the geospatial  industry.  The company represents four decades of a culture built on the work of client-focused experts. Its core business segments include Transportation Systems, Civil Works, Building Design, Land Development, Community Planning & Design, and Program Services.  Within these areas, Bergmann’s rich portfolio of work features everything from restoration of historical landmarks, to the comprehensive bridge and highway design, to waterfront master planning.  Specific client geospatial support services include:

  • Client Consulting: enterprise strategy, system planning & GIS coordination.
  • Implementation & Support: architecture design, system configuration & optimization & technical support.
  • Software Development: software extensions (ArcGIS & Geocortex), custom solutions (web/mobile/desktop) & system integration.
  • Data Services: database design, data development, and management & data migration.

The Bergmann GIS Services team is a nationally recognized leader in the field of Geographic Information Systems (GIS).  Project Managers, GIS developers, GIS analysts, and 3D Design Specialists offer clients advanced and unique technical skillsets to solve complex information challenges. The company focuses on building strong, collaborative partnerships with clients to create applications, data, and workflows which bring efficiencies and value.

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10 Questions: Christine Gayron, Gayron de Bruin Land Surveying and Engineering, PC

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Christine Gayron currently serves as President of Gayron de Bruin Land Surveying and Engineering, PC (GdB) based in Melville, New York.   The company provides a wide range of geospatial products and services for clients in the Empire State.  As part of eSpatiallyNewYork’s continued effort to reach out to the statewide geospatial professions, we were able to meet and have a conversation at the 2019 New York State Association of Licensed Surveyors (NYSAPLS) annual conference.

eSpatiallyNewYork:  GdB was created in 2010.  The company has made a lot of progress in a relatively short period of time and adding a lot of new technologies along the way – GIS, drones, laser scanning, etc. – how is the company making it all happen?

Gayron:  I only hire people who are awesome. They are the ones who make it happen. I just bring in the work and create a company culture that makes the employees want to be the best at what we do. I have to credit my partner, Greg de Bruin, for constantly pushing the envelope, and insisting on investing in technology, and Jason Graf, my partner in charge of operations, for putting the technology in everyday use. Greg introduced GIS in the 90’s before I started my career. I actually think my contribution was my ability to run the business and bring work in, creating a revenue stream that would allow us to afford to make the investments. So I grew the company and oversaw things and generated profit, while the technology nerds in the company figured out how to customize software and put new technology into use.

eSpatiallyNewYork: Tell me a little bit about your education.   B.S. in Geology – how did you make the jump to surveying?

Gayron: I have a BA in Geology from CUNY Queens College and a minor in secondary education. I thought I was going to be an Earth Science teacher, but a month into student teaching, I realized teaching was not for me. I wasn’t sure what to do. My stepfather saw an ad in the paper for GIS Specialists at an engineering firm called A. James de Bruin & Sons, the predecessor firm to Gayron de Bruin.  It was in Bethpage, NY, the next town over from where I live. I had taken one class in GIS in college. The mapping aspect of geology interested me more than the rocks and minerals part, so I applied for an entry level position. I was hired to draft utilities and base maps for utility company conduit design drawings. Then I worked with one of the engineers on the conduit design. I designed hangers to support conduits underneath a couple of bridges over the Long Island Expressway (LIE).   I also designed horizontal directional drilling of conduit underneath the LIE. When the conduit design work dried up, I started doing more boundary surveying and control surveys for NYSDOT.  I used GIS to plan control networks.  At 23 years old, I was managing design survey projects. There was lots of opportunity at the small family owned firm and I was good at seeing what needed to get done. As I approached licensure in 2010, my boss, Greg de Bruin, and I decided to partner and form Gayron de Bruin.  It was time for Greg to start planning for retirement and I was the successor.

eSpatiallyNewYork:  Early on, traditional surveying and engineering companies were a bit slow embracing GIS technology/software but today this intersection is complete.  GdB is part of the ESRI Partner Network and has ArcGIS Online Specialty Did GdB have ESRI capacity from the beginning?

Gayron:  We’ve always been an ESRI shop. We saw how ESRI had discounted licenses for schools and government and we knew that was key. As we are geospatial data collectors and data managers we push GIS as a data management tool to our clients.  We try to provide this to all of our clients. GIS is just one of the tools in the toolbox. It used to be a hard sell to get clients to use GIS, but ArcGIS Online (AGOL) has made that a lot easier because we can set up the GIS tools, bring the data in, and show them how to view, analyze, and manipulate it.

eSpatiallyNewYork:  Are the new/younger generation of surveyors – and engineers – who are just getting into the work force have a broad enough understanding/experience with GIS software?

Gayron:  We hire a lot of people right out of college with GIS education. We find that they have a basic understanding of what it can do, but how we use it in surveying and engineering is usually new to them. Most of it is learned along the way. I think this is true of most industries – college gives a basic foundation and only scratches the surface. Getting into the workforce is where the detailed applications and user expertise is developed.

eSpatiallyNewYork:  Speaking of data, what has GdB’s experience been in obtaining government data?  I see that elevation certificates and tax parcel data are key business components in your space.    What’s been your experience in getting this digital data across New York State?

Gayron: Orthoimagery has been very attainable and useful. Parcel data is useful for elevation certificates as you suggested. Tax map line work is valuable for getting an idea of what the parcel layout may look like, but it can be deceiving. We try not to use it on our drawings because we are licensed land surveyors and if we put a line on the drawing, it’s got to be in the right place. We love to see government offices scanning their maps and storing them in a GIS and making them available, but this is still rare.

eSpatiallyNewYork:  Drone technology is becoming a geospatial game changer.  What’s the GdB read on this evolving technology?

Gayron: So drones are all the rave, but they are really just another cool option in the geospatial tool box – a glorified robot camera holder.   It’s really the software that connects drone flights to GPS and uses drone photography to create point clouds and 3D surface models that I find impressive. Like other tools such as LiDAR, it is the accurate and precise control that yields accurate 3D models. The software is key in reconciling the data with the ground control.

eSpatiallyNewYork:  This is impressive  – “GdB is ranked in POB Magazine as one of the top 100 Geospatial firms in the United States.”

POB magazine gathered data in 2015 and 2016 on revenue in the geospatial community. I’m attaching the articles so you can see how they used the data to rank firms. They stopped doing it after 2016, but I’m certain we would rank even higher on the list now!

eSpatiallyNewYork:  How does Honeoye Falls, New York fit into the GdB business plan? It’s a long way from your Long Island headquarters!

Honeoye Falls is just outside of Rochester. So we wanted to expand the company and it seemed we had the choice to expand geographically providing the same services or we could expand our range of services to include more civil engineering. We decided to stick with what we are good at and do it farther away. My partner, Jason Graf, LS, found New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) data available online. It listed NYSDOT projects by location and contract budget. He manipulated the data in GIS and created a heat map to see where NYSDOT was spending the most money. The New York City area glowed the brightest, of course. The next “glowiest” cities were Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse. With Rochester in the middle of those three cities, it seemed like a place to look into. We had some contacts there and did our research. Within one year of starting to think about a Rochester office, we had the branch office open with 5 employees. 18 months later, we have 11 employees and they are all busy! Scott Smith, LS, the Branch Manager, is building an all-star team upstate. I truly believe that the bringing on the right people drives our success. As we grow, we are putting effort into making our operation more structured and efficient, but as stated above, we only hire people who are awesome, and I want them to feel appreciated for their ideas and contributions.

eSpatiallyNewYork:  What are some of GdB’s current larger or unique projects using geospatial technologies? 

Power companies are putting out very large corridor projects requiring surveying and mapping of several miles along a proposed power line route. I think these projects are coming about as new forms of energy generation are being developed. They need transmission lines to connect the new power plants, solar panel fields, and wind farms to traditional power grids. We also do large mapping projects for design of infrastructure in New York City. The city’s infrastructure is crumbling and needs upgrading. One of the first steps is mapping the existing conditions. These jobs are always a huge rush.

eSpatiallyNewYork: Considering all of GdB’s business – what is the breakdown between private and business clients? 

Most of our work is for government agencies. The breakdown is aboutt 80% government agency work, and 20% private clients.

eSpatiallyNewYork: Tell us about the online teaching you do through GeoLearn?

I met Joe Paiva, the founder of GeoLearn, before I got licensed because I took his review course when I prepped for the Licensed Land Surveyor test, and then I would see him at conferences a couple times per year. Joe is an excellent presenter. Joe knew that I was doing some presentations to professional organizations and he knew that my company was using GIS and other new technologies in Land Surveying – so he asked me to present courses on GIS for GeoLearn.  I prepared power point slides just like I would for a live presentation. I flew to GeoLearn’s studio in Kansas City to record them. It’s actually much easier to present this way, because you only have to present 10-15 minutes at a time to create the segments. Being in the studio was a very cool experience!

eSpatiallyNewYork:  Work aside, I understand you’re a triathlete and compete in many similar events.  What’s next on your calendar? 

Last year, I qualified for XTerra World Championship race in Maui. This is an off-road triathlon consisting of an ocean swim, mountain bike, and trail run. Unfortunately, I was injured a couple weeks before the race and didn’t go. This year, I am not signed up for any races, which is an interesting experiment, because I’m still training, but without the pressure of an upcoming race. So I know I’m doing it because I really love it. I usually wake up at 4:30am and train early in the morning. I’m done by 8am in time to get my kids off to school and get to work. I am married to a NY City Firefighter and we have three amazing children, who are very active. Right now, I’m ok with putting my racing career on hold to attend their lacrosse games, concerts, and cheer competitions.

Contact:

Christine Gayron, President
Gayron de Bruin Land Surveying and Engineering, PC
cgayron@gayrondebruin.com

NYSAPLS 60th Annual Conference January 28-30 Saratoga Springs

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eSpatiallyNewYork had the opportunity to participate in the recent New York State Association of Professional Land Surveyors (NYSAPLS) annual conference in Saratoga Springs in late January.  In doing so, I was able to meet with numerous NYSAPLS members, including briefly with current NYSAPLS President Greg de Bruin, as well as several vendors in the exhibit hall.  Having run almost exclusively in the statewide GIS circle for the past 25+ years, and having really no reference point what to expect at the show – I was not disappointed.

The three-day conference brought together 704 registered attendees with the overall total reaching 775 when including 31 exhibitor representatives.  While I was almost certain to see components of the traditional surveying profession (i.e.,  leveling rods, measuring tapes, tripods, safety equipment/clothing, nails and spikes, monuments,  flagging and marking paints – the customary surveying equipment fare), I was pleasantly surprised to see in both the exhibit hall and throughout individual presentations evidence of the statewide surveying community investing in a variety of developing technologies such as laser scanning, drones, 3D, advanced GPS and photogrammetry, and an abundant number of emerging mobile and field programs.   Quite noticeably, surveying firms offering a broader range of geospatial products and services.   It was clear on the exhibit hall alone how the Empire State surveying community is embracing state-of-the-art geospatial technologies in 2019.

The exhibit hall at this year’s NYSAPLS conference offered an impressive line-up of vendors. The daily Strolling Lunch with Exhibitors engages attendees with the exhibitors.

The conference offered a very diverse range of presentations, classes and workshops.  Of particular interest was to see presentations focusing on Building Information Modeling (BIM), 3D Building Rights and Air Rights, and several focusing on the drone/UAV.  Given the surveying profession’s important role in the development and maintenance of statewide tax maps, there were a number of sessions dedicated to the issues associated with land ownership including easements and right-of-ways, tying into and using historical documentation, tides and tidal datums, highway law, and even canal boundary retracement.  Though I was unable to attend, a class on stone walls focusing on their importance in land records and property boundary definition  was held.  Even a class on “Dendrology for Surveyors” class was included on the agenda. Of course there was a very visible presence of the field of photogrammetry which remains a staple throughout the profession, while new capabilities in the field of underground and subsurface mapping were also on display.  Making reference to the range of content at the conference, Ben Houston, Professional Engineer, Associate Member of NYSAPLS and NYS GIS Association Board Member commented  “This year’s NYSAPLS Conference offered a nice mix of training and social/networking opportunities. I was particularly impressed at the number and variety of professional services and geospatial data vendors in the exhibit hall.”

Of course there was ample time for mixers and social events at this year’s NYSAPLS conference. One of the Special Events at the show was the Field Olympics. Participants were able to compete against others in three events one of which was Tree Identification. Is that Ginkgo Biloba in #4? And here are the winners of this year’s map contest!

An important takeaway for me from the NYSAPLS conference was the focus on the business of surveying.  A geospatial profession largely dominated by private practice, business and industry, and enabling itself to create a presence in Albany.  As part of this presence, NYAPLS has recently created a Political Action Committee (PAC).  PACs are a type of political committee, once properly registered, which can engage in promoting candidates for election to public office that share the views, interests, and concerns of the land surveying community. This new committee is one of several active NYSAPLS groups working on issues such as standards and strategic planning.  Outreach and communication to the professional engineering communities and the State Board for engineering, land surveying, and geology remain priorities as well. (New York State professional surveyor accreditation and licensing is administered through the NYS Education Department Office of the Professions.)  “This year’s conference was outstanding”, notes current NYSAPLS President Greg de Bruin, “the facility, content, conference coordination were all first rate.”

For those involved in mapping technologies within the Empire State, it’s worth the time to visit the NYSAPLS website to see the many areas and programs this professional organization touches across the geospatial community.  There are a multitude of opportunities for collaboration.

Contact:

Amber Carpenter
amber@nysapls.org
518-432-4046

Greg de Bruin
gdebruin@gayrondebruin.com
516-805-4118

Digital Agriculture Continues to Evolve in New York State

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Agriculture is important to New York State’s economy, and takes place in almost every region of the State as nearly one-quarter of New York’s total land area is utilized as farmland. There are a plethora of statistics which document the vastness of the agriculture industry across the Empire State:  An annual economic impact of over $42 billion, over 36,000 farms, 1.5 million head of cattle, 40,000 acres of apple trees, $25 million worth of maple syrup and 14.9 billion pounds of milk.  And #1 in the nation in the production of over 700 million pounds of yogurt.  The list goes on.

It’s refreshing to see this important statewide industry begin to intersect with geospatial in a more expanded and robust means.  The movement began to see traction a little over three years ago with the New York Precision Agriculture Workshop held in Geneva, NY in December 2015.    The goal of the workshop was to help assess the use and development of precision agriculture in New York State and was held after a directive from the New York State Legislature instructing the Commissioner of Agriculture and Markets to “issue a report assessing the use and development of precision agriculture in the state with recommendations pertaining to rural broadband accessibility, use and support for the farmer, as well as cost savings and higher crop yield.”   Over 50 individuals from the New York agricultural community were in attendance representing higher education, research, agronomic business, farmers, technology, government and more.

Nearly a year later in November 2016, the 151-page Digital Agriculture in New York State:  Report and Recommendations was published through Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.  One of the primary recommendations which was ultimately established was the Cornell Initiative for Digital Agriculture  (CIDA).  Recently, CIDA hosted its inaugural Digital Ag Workshop October 9, 2018 on the Cornell University campus. The event was titled “Transforming Agriculture and Food Systems” and was attended by 200 individuals.  The Workshop included a wide range of presentations and resulted in the establishment of four interdisciplinary Digital Agriculture (DA) Working Groups:  Rapid Phenotyping, Socioeconomic Analysis for Digital Agriculture, Weather, Climate and Agriculture, and The Software-defined Farm.  It will be interesting to see how CIDA evolves in its outreach, research, and building partnerships with government and industry.  Cornell University was rated one of the Top 25 Best Colleges for Precision Agriculture in the United States.   For those interested in following the program, upcoming events and webinars, sign-up for updates and e-News from this CIDA webpage.

Other signs of growth in the statewide Digital Agriculture (also often referred to as “Precision Agriculture”) space augmenting CIDA’s mission includes a recent  ESRI press release announcing Ag-Analytics which is part of their Emerging Partner Startup Program.   Ag-Analytics offers a platform with tools that make utilizing farm data easier than ever. Built around the Software-as-a-Solution (SaaS) framework, Ag-Analytics offers farmers the ability to better manage and visualize their production records to make informed decisions when it comes to understanding risk.  As farm equipment manufacturers become larger and prominent players in the Digital/Precision Agriculture development, it is no surprise that the Ag-Analytics program is integrated with the John Deere Operations Center.  Faculty from the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University are involved with the Ag-Analytics program.  We also saw in 2018, DropCopter, an agricultural technology startup funded through the GeniusNY drone incubator in Syracuse, which managed to pollinate apple orchards in Lafayette, New York using their hexacopter drone. The recent decline of bee populations has raised pollination prices significantly, creating a market for alternative technologies such as Dropcopter.   Evolving in other areas, we would anticipate seeing government program areas such New York State Agriculture and Markets and/or the  New York office of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) begin to build some level of digital/precision agriculture capacity as well.

On a related note at the federal level is the passage of the Precision Agriculture Connectivity Act of 2018.  With the focus of the bill  to “identify and measure current gaps in the availability of broadband Internet access service on agricultural land”, the bill assigns responsibility to the USDA and FCC to “develop policy recommendations to promote the rapid, expanded deployment of fixed and mobile broadband Internet access service on unserved agricultural land, with a goal of achieving reliable capabilities on 95% of agricultural land in the United States by 2025”.  Kudos to the National Society of Professional Surveyors (NSPS) working to successfully amend language in the original bill to ensure that members of the task force assembled to make recommendations include “representatives with relevant expertise in broadband network data collection, geospatial analysis, and coverage mapping”.

No doubt, exciting developments for the agriculture industry across the Empire State and great opportunities for the geospatial community to contribute and be part of.

10 Questions: Jonathan Cobb

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I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Jonathan Cobb for nearly two decades.  As part-owner of Waypoint Technology Group based in Albany, Jonathan and his company product line and services are well recognized to the New York State geospatial community.  Waypoint is also a long-time supporter of many statewide geospatial events and programs.  I had the chance to catch up with Jonathan at 2017 GeoCon in Lake Placid to discuss some of Waypoint’s current business efforts and new trends in GPS-related technology.

eSpatiallyNewYork: How did you get started with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) technology and the story behind Waypoint Technology Group?

Cobb: As with so many career trajectories, mine was circuitous and unplanned.  After growing up in western New York and graduating from the University of Rochester with a dual degree in Mechanical Engineering and Geology, I relocated to the Albany area to begin my professional career as a junior engineer/geologist.  It was in this capacity where I was first introduced to GIS technology.  It was 1990 and I was assigned to work on two projects that involved the siting of new sanitary landfills.  GIS was the underlying technology that was used to determine the relative favorability of candidate sites.  While not a GIS practitioner, I worked closely with my firm’s in-house GIS technicians to develop the relevant graphical overlays and to compute various quantitative values that were used to support the siting process. Simultaneously, I was consuming all of the written material I could find that related to the growing application of GIS technology, and became intrigued with what was at the time the poorly understood commercial potential of the global positioning system (“GPS”).  Shortly thereafter, and with the help of my business partner Greg Hunt, Waypoint Technology Group  (“Waypoint”) was born.

eSpatiallyNewYork: You’ve been a Trimble distributor for many years.  These relationships are still strong moving forward?

Cobb: Within one-year of forming Waypoint we were approached by Trimble to represent their interests in the northeastern United States – but most especially New York – as a distributor of their mapping, GIS, and land surveying solutions.  That was nineteen years ago and yes, we’re still going strong.  Our current portfolio of Trimble solutions now includes robotic total stations for land surveying and 3D scanners, which have become very accessible – from both an economic and functionality perspective – in recent years.  In addition to Trimble, we also represent Laser Technology, Inc. (“LTI”) is a leading manufacturer of professional measurement solutions, based primarily on laser technology.  LTI’s products fulfill an important niche for our customers, both in stand-alone form as well as in conjunction with Trimble solutions.

eSpatiallyNewYork: Smartphone technology has significantly changed field data collection.  How has this changed your business model?  Who is using what?

Cobb:  We refer to the deployment of smart phones (as well as tablets) for the purpose of geospatial field data collection as a manifestation of the Bring-Your-Own-Device (“BYOD”) revolution.  This development is something of a double-edged sword in that the ease of smartphone-driven app-based data collection effectively brings that power to anyone with a device and a data plan (i.e. virtually the entire population); at the same time, questionable claims of positional accuracy coupled with the absence (often) of authoritative  metadata persist.  This has resulted in manufacturers such as Trimble developing compact, lightweight, high-performance GPS receivers for the express purpose of pairing wirelessly with smartphones in order to bring professional-grade positional accuracy to the masses.  With respect to the impacts on our business model, I’d say the key differences are two-fold.  One – professional grade solutions are no longer the sole province of larger organizations or those with substantial technology budgets and/or in-house IT resources; and two, the use of smart phones and apps has spawned an entirely new breed of services (e.g. data collection apps, differential correction data streams) that are built upon pay-as-you-go or subscription-based revenue models.  

eSpatiallyNewYork:  What’s the composition of your client base in 2017?  (i.e., Surveying/engineering, general data collection, academic, recreational)?

Cobb:  Waypoint is fortunate to have cultivated a diverse customer base over our nearly two-decade existence.  While the distribution varies on an annual basis, our active customers are comprised of an approximately even split between the private and public sectors.  Within the private sector, consultants (e.g. engineers, land surveyors, ecologists) make up the largest segment, while in the public sector, local and state government agencies dominate, followed by the federal government.  Academic institutions make up less than 10% of our customer base in any given year, but are significant in that the instructional and research arms expose students – future potential clients – to our portfolio of solutions.

eSpatiallyNewYork:  What percentage of our business are repeat customers?  How might current market place factors be affecting your client base?

Cobb:  We add new customers on a weekly basis, but the vast majority of our customers are of the long-term/repeat variety.  This is partly due to the nature of the technological solutions that we sell; that is, once a customer has made an initial investment in hardware and software — and very often, training – switching to a different platform can be cost-prohibitive.  In addition, many customers elect to protect their investment through annual hardware warranties, software maintenance, and technical support service contracts.

Going forward, the migration toward “bring your own device” solutions and software-as-a-service solutions promises to tilt our business model into one that is more heavily reliant upon recurring revenue.  For example, in addition to subscription-based software applications which are now ubiquitous, we are seeing a transition to short-term pay-as-you-go, differential correction data streams to improve the positional accuracy of the location services technology that is onboard consumer devices, such as cell phones and tablets.  This innovation opens the door to high-accuracy position determination for a potentially large segment of end-users that would have otherwise been unreachable due purely to cost.        

eSpatiallyNewYork:  Waypoint has worked internationally.  Tell us or highlight some of these clients and their projects.

Cobb:  In addition to supplying the United Nations with solutions that have been deployed in challenging political regions, including Lebanon, Eritrea, and Senegal, we have provided on the ground training and consulting services at the American University of Kosovo (“AUK”), in the young nation’s capital of Pristina.  AUK is affiliated with Rochester Institute of Technology (“RIT”), and it was through our long history as an RIT vendor that we were invited to participate on that project, which also included training services for engineers in Kosovo’s nascent national electric power transmission authority.  We have also supported RIT’s other international efforts through the donation of hardware and software to support humanitarian missions in Haiti and Rwanda.

eSpatiallyNewYork:  What’s the coolest or most unusual client application you’ve worked on using GPS technology in New York State?

Cobb: Great question.   With such a diverse clientele this is a difficult one to answer, but if pressed, I think I’d have to settle on one of the many unique applications of 3D scanning technology that has been led by a member of Waypoint’s staff.  The project focused on the precise recording of the existing conditions of the roof of the New York State Capitol in Albany.  This was in support of an architectural restoration project and is an excellent example of the utility of 3D scanning.  Another one was performing a similar function in an abandoned elevator shaft.  But for me, the most interesting application was deploying the scanner to capture a three-dimensional representation of a remote and difficult to access bat cave in support of research related to the devastating and widely-publicized white-nose syndrome.

eSpatiallyNewYork: What do you see as the next big “GPS” technology advancement?

Cobb:  Hmmmmm…….the “next” big advancement has arguably been commercially viable for several years.  That is, the transition from GPS-only solutions to GNSS-based solutions.  Specifically, this refers to GPS as strictly the American satellite constellation, whereas GNSS (global navigation satellite system) is intended to incorporate ALL constellations, including American, Russian, European, and Chinese.  The growth of GNSS-based solutions, which translates to the ability to acquire and continuously track many more satellites, has allowed for accurate positioning in previously challenging conditions (e.g. urban canyons, dense forests).  The transition from GPS to GNSS has been so profound, that even the lexicon has evolved:  we now routinely use “GNSS” in place of “GPS”. Beyond that, component miniaturization, extended battery life, and of course, the rapid proliferation of drone technology will continue to significantly impact the geospatial data capture landscape for years to come and GPS/GNSS will continue to be an important part of that evolution.

eSpatiallyNewYork:  If you had your way, what’s the one GPS “investment” you’d like the NYS geospatial government and business community to make?

Cobb:  Education and training.   Acquiring hardware and software is simple; trivial even.  I’d like to see a greater proportion of technology resources devoted to understanding the capabilities – and importantly, the limitations — of geospatial technology, rather than that aspect being treated as an afterthought.  The vast majority of questions that we field from end-users relate either to software operations or positional accuracy concerns.  For many organizations, a modest investment in comprehensive training would not only result in measurably superior positional accuracy, but it would also improve productivity.    

eSpatiallyNewYork:  Career Reboot:  What would you be doing if it wasn’t Waypoint?  Mason? Hockey player?  Teacher?  Sous Chef?

Cobb:  If I wasn’t working full-time at Waypoint, I would probably occupy time melding my dual interests in geospatial technology and world travel.  I’ve had the good fortune in recent years to blend these passions for both business and recreational purposes, and I have every intention of continuing.  Ironically though, I’ve found that the most memorable experiences occur when you leave the technology behind, ignore the map and the Yelp reviews, and just let the road lead you.