Emerging Geospatial Technology (EGT) Seminar Series

IMAGIN aims to be an organization that brings information to their members on what is going on in the Michigan and wider GIS community. As part of this goal IMAGIN is bringing together a series of seminars on the new and exciting things that are happening in the GIS and imaging community in terms of data sources, data processing methods, software and concepts. The overall objective of the seminar series is to bring information to IMAGIN members and members of Michigan’s Universities of technologies and approaches that could improve their work environment, either through being able to do things that could not be done before, do the work faster or do the work cheaper than is currently being done. Since IMAGIN is a professional networking and development group, it is valuable to make members aware of what is going on in the wider marketplace and academic environment even if these items are not of immediate use for day to day operations. This seminar series will provide an educational outlet for members at no cost and generate excitement in the Michigan GIS and wider mapping community.

EGT Seminar at UM Flint focused on LiDAR Technology.

IMAGIN will coordinate these seminars at different locations around the State and the goal is to have these hosted by a local University. The sessions will be open to students, local government and agency staff, and anyone who is interested in the subject matter. The sessions will also be transmitted across the web using web conferencing systems that will be available to IMAGIN members on a first come first served basis requiring pre-registration with IMAGIN.

The format for the seminars will be a two hour seminar presented as a PowerPoint or demo followed by 1 hour for questions and answers. The sessions will generally follow the format below.

• Overview of technology – theory?
• How it works – in practice?
• What are the pros and cons?
• What are its applications?
• What are the costs parameters?
• How do I find out more information about the technology?
• Questions and answers

The Emerging Technologies Sub-Committee is currently reviewing topics for these seminars and will have a list of seminars scheduled by the end of January.

The first seminar took place February 6 at the campus of UM Flint. We are aiming to have a seminar every two months throughout the year.

Since there are a large number of emerging technologies that may be of interest to members the committee is open to ideas from the IMAGIN community.

Some of the emerging technologies that are being considered are

• Imagery: Thermal, LiDAR, Hyperspectral, Oblique, Radar, IRS Sensors, New Commercial Satellites: Quickbird 2 and GeoEye 1, Review of the current digital cameras on the market.
• Delivery systems: Google Earth, Virtual Earth, Arc Server, Leica – Titan
• Mobile GIS: Connecting through the internet to an enterprise database, Spatially enabled field data recorders
• Analysis methods: Spatial statistics, Network analyses, Geocoding, CAMA Models
• Data: NHD, USGS Orthophotos, SRTM, Land Cover and Land Use:
• Software: ERDAS, Definiens, VLS, QCoherent, ENVI, Hyperspectral, ER Mapper

If you have specific interest in some of the subjects please email your interst to abrenner@sanborn.com.

Looking forward to having you attend either in person or over the web.

Andrew Brenner
Chair Emerging Technologies Sub-Committee