Category Archives: Surveying

Jack Dangermond Part 5: Looking to the future

At the Esri User Conference, xyHt European editor Nicholas Duggan sat down for a one-on-one interview with Jack Dangermond, Esri founder and CEO. In Duggan’s five-part online series, running each day this week, Dangermond discusses everything from Esri’s beginning to the future of GIS. Here in Part 5 the two discuss what might be coming...

A Google app for Android phones collects raw GNSS data. Photo courtesy of Maren Euwer.

Apps: GnssLogger & Google’s Play in GNSS

GnssLogger? Many surveyors are familiar with the U.S. National Geodetic Survey’s Online Positioning User Service (OPUS), a cloud-based processing service that allows them to upload a Receiver-Independent Exchange (RINEX) file and receive results in minutes. Soon, they may be able to achieve centimeter accuracy by accessing raw GNSS measurements on their Android phone. Google announced...

Yes, We Scan! KickTheMap is a Swiss Kick in the App for 3D

With a clever mobile app and a can-do attitude, Swiss surveyors have created a 3D model of a river valley in the Alps to improve risk prediction of landslides. The 7 p.m. storm forecast was not only accurate, it was ominous. Torrential rains pounded the ski town of Val Ferret on the final day of...

Jack Dangermond, Part 4: Field Maps and Stuff

At the Esri User Conference, xyHt European editor Nicholas Duggan sat down for a one-on-one interview with Jack Dangermond, Esri founder and CEO. In Duggan’s five-part online series, running each day this week, Dangermond discusses everything from Esri’s beginning to the future of GIS. Here in Part 4 the two discuss Quantum Navigation and Field...

Herman Strydom and associate Guillaume van der Walt take a break and look out over the southern Atlantic Ocean with the RIEGL VZ-2000i on the remote Namibia coast. The remains are a part of Pomona, once a thriving diamond mining town in the African Sperrgebiet.

Geospatial Adventure: Ghost Towns and Diamond Mine Memories

Diamond mine memories: A century or so ago, miners in the small settlement of Pomona pulled 50,000 carats of diamonds a month from the vast, arid nothingness of land called the Sperrgebiet—10,000 square miles of coastal desert in southwestern Namibia in Africa.  The sandy ground has long since given up the last of its precious...