Spring NEARC 2021

1:00pm - 1:30pm: Jumpstart your GIS with Public LiDAR
LiDAR datasets are becoming easier to find these days, and organizations have the opportunity to build a strong foundation in GIS with this rich source of information. We’ll review the efforts of one electric utility using LiDAR to locate their poles, and migrate away from paper maps. Then we’ll look at another utility evaluating how LiDAR could transform their tree trimming program. Publicly available datasets have allowed these organizations to open the door to new GIS strategies that have felt unattainable until now.
Andrew Flynn, Vermont Electric Power Company (VELCO)

1:30pm - 2:00pm: Change Detection using Point Cloud Data
The rapid increase in the availability of high-resolution lidar and other point cloud datasets has given rise to the use of this data for detecting change in the environment over time. This trend can be attributed in large part to the recent proliferation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which are rapidly changing the GIS landscape and are opening the broad field of remote data collection and processing to a wide audience. Continual improvements in airborne technology and the miniaturization of the requisite sensors has cultivated a nimble new branch of the industry that provides cost-effective data collection services virtually on demand. This ability to employ temporal analysis of the geospatial landscape has applications in forestry, agriculture, mining, urban planning, civil engineering, and many other fields. In this presentation, we will use Global Mapper to explore two scenarios in which change has occurred at different scales, and subsequently, we will consider two different procedures for identifying this change. In the first scenario, we will look at change at a micro level by comparing two point clouds and highlighting individual points that show a 3D shift over a specified distance threshold. In the second scenario, we will look at a wider area in which the difference between two generated surfaces is calculated and modeled. Temporal consideration has emerged as an extremely important branch of geospatial analysis and this presentation will effectively demonstrate the accessibility of this technology.
David McKittrick, Blue Marble Geographics

2:00pm - 2:30pm: The Mainstreaming of High Accuracy Data Collection
Compatibility of the Field Maps and Collector apps with external GNSS sensors provides a vastly improved user experience for collecting high-accuracy data. With data collection directly to ArcGIS Online or Portal, gone are the days of clunky data export routines. We’ll provide insights into the process of successfully setting up feature services for data collection and for developing processes to get those Z values right.
Olkin, Michael, Springfield Water and Sewer Commission