In a world that is packed full of things, places, and events it can be hard to make time to give back to your community. For the last two years, Blue Marble has given employees the opportunity to donate their time to Good Shepherd food bank a few times a year during the work day, making it easier to give back to the local community in a meaningful way.
Blue Marble’s Operations Manager Danielle Caron volunteers her time as a den leader for a local Boys Scout group.
However, Blue Marble has some employees who make the time to volunteer outside of work, and this month’s newsletter has a new feature: Volunteer Spotlight. This month we are highlighting the achievements of Danielle Caron.
Danielle Caron has been part of the Blue Marble team for the last 11 years and is the Operations Manager for the company. If you are visiting the BMG headquarters, you are likely to see her touching base with employees and making sure everything is running smoothly. Outside of work, Danielle has been a Den Leader with a local chapter of the Boy Scouts of America for the last four years. This was not a role she originally saw herself taking on, but when her son was not interested in playing sports the Boy Scouts offered an excellent alternative for him and for her.
Danielle transitioned into the role of Den Leader shortly after her son joined. Over the last four years, she has worked with her Scouts to learn basic household repair, create a grocery budget, as well as going camping and learning to build a fire.
In Scouting, boys and girls start with their best right now selves and grow into their very best future selves. It’s fun, hands-on learning and achievement that puts kids in the middle of the action and prepares them for today – and for life – Boy Scouts of America.
Being a den leader offers Danielle new challenges year after year. “I didn’t volunteer because it was easy. I wanted to really help and it was challenging to dive into a well known long-time established organization like this with 14 ten-year- old boys. Oh, of course the opportunity to enrich children’s lives and see my son grow blah blah blah.” She says with a laugh.
Danielle Caron stands to the left with her Boys Scout group.
If you are interested in supporting the Boy Scouts look out for the famous Popcorn fundraiser that is held every year. Or you can donate through the link below:
https://donations.scouting.org/#/national/
Danielle is quick to point out that with official approval, “The best donation is your time. Cub scouts are always looking for people to teach new skills, lead adventures, be a den leader, charter a troop at your office or support a scout directly. Get involved with the kids. At any level every chance you get. They are our future employees, family members, leaders and inventors. It can be a lot of fun.”
Product News, User Stories, Events, and a Chance to Win a Copy of Global Mapper Every Month
Can you believe it’s 2019 already? This year promises to be an exciting one for Blue Marble with ambitious plans already in place for the next generation of both Global Mapper and Geographic Calculator. The new year also sees us take a fresh approach to our annual conference. Blue Marble GeoTalks, scheduled for March 21, will be a daylong online gathering of geospatial enthusiasts who share a common interest in Blue Marble’s spatial technology. See below for more details and registration information.
Also in this month’s newsletter we explore the simple process for creating a 3D mesh from a point cloud in Global Mapper, we introduce mapcodes, we invite you to join us for a live webinar on the latest features and functions of Geographic Calculator, and as always, we gauge your geographic prowess in the Where in the World Geo-Challenge.
One of the inherent limitations of hosting a user conference at a specific location is the logistical and financial burden placed on both hosts and attendees. The solution? Move it online. Scheduled for March 21, Blue Marble GeoTalks will provide a forum for the worldwide Blue Marble community to gather for an exchange of ideas, to hear from a variety of industry experts, and to learn about what’s new and what’s upcoming from Blue Marble.
While most of us are accustomed to conveying location based on a street number, street name, city, etc., in many parts of the world this information is simply not available. This inevitably causes problems for government officials, emergency responders, and many others. To address this disparity, a system of alphanumeric mapcodes was developed in 2001 creating a simple and universally accepted spatial reference system for the entire world. Global Mapper’s search function supports the entry of a mapcode to locate a specific point or to generate the corresponding coordinates. If you want to try it for yourself, select Find Address from Global Mapper’s Search menu and enter the following: “ME XBY.JS”. Add some online imagery and you should see the Blue Marble headquarters in Hallowell, Maine.
One of the highlights of the version 20 release of Global Mapper is a new tool for generating a 3D mesh or model from a selection of LiDAR or other point cloud points. The resulting layer contains a complex vector feature comprised of an array of abutting triangles that, when displayed in Global Mapper’s 3D Viewer, take the form of a realistic three-dimensional representation of the object. As is typical with Global Mapper, the process of creating a 3D mesh is remarkably straightforward.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, the What’s New in Geographic Calculator 2019 webinar, which had been scheduled for January 10, has been moved to January 17. Those who registered should have received an email with the updated information and we hope you can still make it to this live presentation. The good news is that there is still time to sign up. Join us as we explore the latest updates to the software’s data processing tools and to the underlying geodetic datasource.
Over the last two years, hundreds of colleges and universities throughout North America have taken advantage of Blue Marble’s free academic licensing program and have been able to introduce more and more students to the broad field of geospatial technology. To recognize and reward some of the creative work being done in labs and classrooms, Blue Marble is offering a $500 scholarship to a student who has used Global Mapper in their field of study. The deadline for submission has just been extended to the end of January, which means there is still time to share the details of your project.
Someone, who has obviously been participating in the Geo-Challenge for some time, recently inquired if we were beginning to run out of countries or capitals. Fear not, we have a long way to go, and if the need arises, we can ultimately recycle what we’ve used before. So it pays to follow along.
January’s winner and recipient of a copy of Global Mapper is Nirmalya Maitra from Riddhi Management Services in Kolkata, India. To see how well you fared, click here and to take a shot at January’s challenge click the link below.
After our recent announcement about the tentative locations for Global Mapper training classes in 2019, we were inundated with inquiries. Registration is now open for the classes in Orlando in March, Denver in April, and Ottawa in June. Space is limited so be sure to reserve a slot at your preferred venue as soon as possible.
For those with a more immediate need for training, there is still space in the three-day class to be conducted at Blue Marble’s headquarters in Maine from January 29 – 31.
Last week, we, at Blue Marble, held our annual “Winter Holiday” week — seven days of festivities and team-building fun. It’s one of the few times each year that our remote employees join us at the office and we have the chance to show them a good time.
During the week, we enjoyed dinner and a post-work game of trivia at our favorite local pub, where we came in second place … not too shabby. We had a fierce winter-wonderland-themed decorating contest. 22 of us entered, but only 1 was crowned the winner – Jess, with her gingerbread-themed desk that offered cookies, beer, and hot chocolate.
Blue Marble President Patrick sits in his Nick-Offerman-Holiday-themed office.
We also took some time for some team building within departments. The Development team watched a movie, Tech Support and QA went bowling, and Sales and Marketing went out to breakfast.
The Company Holiday Party
At the end of the week, the whole company came together for our annual Holiday Party, where we looked back on 2018 in this video:
We had fun sharing a meal together, participating in a team gingerbread-building contest, playing spoons (the card game), and opening gifts in our Yankee swap, during which the infamous nose-hair trimmer was re-gifted once again.
From our work family to yours, have a safe and happy Holiday!
Did you catch Global Mapper on television over the summer? In an episode of the Travel Channel show, “Expedition Unknown,” the production crew visited Guatemala in search of Mayan Ruins. A team from LiDARUSA, longtime Global Mapper users, were also involved in the project, collecting LiDAR data for the Mirador Basin Project. Using a combination of drones and helicopters, the data was collected and processed, revealing an uncharted Mayan causeway. As you will see in the footage below, Global Mapper was used to classify bare earth and to view the model that was generated.
No need to worry about this brief cameo going to our heads, the “As Seen On TV” people won’t let us use their logo.
Geodesy is the branch of mathematics and science focused on accurately measuring and understanding the size and shape of the earth, its orientation in space, and its gravity field. It’s the underpinning of all mapping but can be the most difficult to understand.
Are you an engineer? Did you study linear algebra in college? Perhaps you have an advanced mathematics degree? If so, you might not find this blog helpful. If you’re like many folks in the GIS industry today who did not take a heavy math load in college and are not working as a surveyor or engineer, then this blog hopefully will help you to understand one of the fundamental principles of mapping. Geodesy is that area in GIS that is a bit of a dirty secret in that many people try to avoid it or don’t understand it. Technically it’s the branch of mathematics and science focused on accurately measuring and understanding the size and shape of the earth, its orientation in space, and its gravity field. It is a $100,000 word that even sounds intimidating, but break it down and it will hopefully make sense. It’s the underpinning of all mapping but it can be the most difficult to understand and the most intimidating to the unindoctrinated. I am here to help with my top ten list of geodetic fundamentals, explained in an easy to understand and hopefully easy to remember approach. So let’s dive in to the deep end, shall we?
Number 1: It’s Coordinate “Reference” System not Coordinate System
This is an important point, no pun intended, to remember. The Coordinate Reference System (CRS) is a reference model that packages up everything we need to communicate locations, sizes, and shapes. It is a toolkit that gives us a language to accurately enumerate positions on the earth. Some of the tools in the CRS toolbox are Ellipsoid, Datum, Map Projection, Units, and Origin. A CRS is defined by these concepts, which allows us to talk geodesy. Just remember that we are using a math model to reference the earth. Blue Marble has a tag line: Mind the Gap Between World and Map. That is what we are talking about. Unfortunately there is not a good acronym for these terms. EDPUO does not have a good ring to it. I’ve tried switching them around, nothing works. But you usually need them all to make a CRS.
Number 2: Transform not Convert
When I first started working at Blue Marble, we used to use the phrase “coordinate conversion”. Over the years, we have moved away from that phrase simply because it implies a process that is exact and easily reversible when that is not always the case. When we change coordinate reference systems we are actually transforming the data. We are moving all of the points to a new system and, if we were to reverse that process, we are actually transforming the data again and on some small level those points will not be exactly where they were before. The concept here is that there is much more going on behind the scenes.
“Projected” is one of the three main types of coordinate reference systems. You can think of a projected system as taking the round globe and projecting it on to a flat plane.
Number 3: Three types of Coordinate Reference Systems
There are three main types of CRS that we work with ̶ the Geographic, the Projected, and the Geocentric. Geographic coordinate systems can be thought of as a globe, a whole-earth model. The units are angular like degrees as opposed to feet and are focused on rotation around an axis. This type of system gets us close to the shape of the planet without a lot of distortion. But it is not practical for talking about directions, distances and relative locations. That is why we have the projected systems. Think of the projected systems as taking the round globe and projecting it on to a flat plane. These behave like planar Cartesian systems that allow us to map x and y on a grid in linear units like feet, meters or miles. The third type of system is called geocentric or earth centered/earth fixed (ECEF). This is a model that is based on an origin that is at the center of the planet (the geocenter) as opposed to the surface. Many of these are gravity-based and they were used for GPS satellite technology.
A datum transformation would be used when you need to change the reference surface your data is in. It’s a mathematical way of moving X, Y, and Z together to arrive at that other reference surface.
Number 4: The Types of Datum Transformations
Datum Transformations are probably the most difficult concepts for people to understand. Actually, it’s the concept of a datum itself that trips people up. I like to think of the datum as a tie-down point. It is the point that ties a specific location on the globe to your mapping surface. So, if the datum is where we begin a mapping process, envision moving from that point in one direction. We will call that X. Then we turn to a perpendicular direction that we will call Y. If we introduce a change in height, that is Z. So now we take all three position changes (change in X, change in Y, change in Z) and we move them together to arrive at a different reference surface. In order to mathematically move X, Y, and Z together, we use a datum transformation. A simple, linear, three-parameter transformation tries to leave our point in one place and swap out the surface they are on by lining up a new model under it. The simplicity of the shift has tradeoffs in terms of accuracy. If we add more complexity we add more parameters like rotations and scale and we can move into seven, ten, and even 14 parameter shifts. This process is very complex, mathematically speaking, and not easily summed up in a brief blog. But the point (once again, no pun intended) is that we have to transform our data in a precise and accurate manner and this process starts with the datum from which we are transforming.
Geoids are typically models approximating where sea level is supposed to be to create an even more accurate reference for height measurement.
Number 5: Geoids – Getting Vertical
So many concepts, so little time. OK, so the term geoid literally means Earth model. In today’s geodetic world (seriously, not a pun) we consider geoids in conjunction with vertical datums. Vertical datums add a new dimension to horizontal datums. Think of a horizontal datum as mainly dealing with the x and y, based on an ellipsoid. With a vertical datum we introduce a z value for height. With a vertical datum we introduce ‘up’ and ‘down’. The vertical datums allow us to map mountains, valleys, changes in the terrain, by giving us a good zero height from which we start measuring. Mean Sea Level comes into play when we talk about geoids as well. Geoids are typically models approximating where sea level is supposed to be to create an even more accurate reference for height measurement. They of course have a whole bag of assumptions and challenges to bring to the table as the ocean is an ever moving target. It’s important to remember that when talking about sea level, there are multiple models of it and they aren’t all the same!
Number 6: Not just Where but When is your data?
By this stage, I’ve either confused you even more than you were at the start, or perhapsbe you are beginning to understand some of these concepts a little more so that you have a deeper appreciation of where your data is. Well, I’m sorry but for modern mapping it is no longer just about where, but it is also about when. When is your data? Coordinate reference systems can now also carry a value of when the system was measured; a time stamp if you will. Also known as an epoch. Think of the areas of the earth’s surface that are relatively active (moving) due to tectonic activity. The island of Japan is a great example. After a major earth quake in Japan, the entire island can actually move or change its location. There are now time-dependent transformations available, such as HTDP, to address this challenge. Another way to think of this concept is our friend WGS84 ̶ World Geodetic System 1984. The first iteration of this GPS-measured system was way back in 1984. For our millennial friends, that is ancient history. For today’s mapping, if we are concerned with modern measurement, the original WGS 84 is not going to get it done. It’s been realized (revised) six times over the years; we now use WGS84 (G1762), which was realized 1762 weeks (33 years!) after the original and is now several meters away from positions on surface-based models from that time.
Number 7: Process Assumptions – aka Garbage in Garbage out!
So now you have some of the basic concepts in your list checked off. Now you should be able to look at your mapping data, review these issues and know that, if they are all accounted for, you are all set. Your data is accurate. It is where it is supposed to be and you can move on to more cartographic pursuits such as contour generation and buffering. No, sorry it is not that easy. We cannot assume that the process used to create the data we are working with was executed properly. A common problem in modern mapping is we load in secondary data to our map. Many GIS tools will automatically place that data over the base data. If it appears to line up, we assume it is correct. When we bring in our data, if that data was corrupted by a poor transformation process or mis-labeled geodetically when it comes through that process it will still be bad. We may never know. That is why we always have to be on alert for geodetically corrupted data or processes where assumptions are made.
Number 8: The challenge of that last Meter
Today’s GIS and Survey work often encompasses data in the centimeter level of precision or resolution. Data products like high-resolution LiDAR data with multiple points collected per square meter are common place. Working at high-precision levels requires a great deal of care and persistence. The work is far from complete when the data is collected. There are assumptions to question, data manipulations to understand, and limitations to acknowledge. All of the concepts in our top ten come into play.
Number 9: Metadata, metadata, metadata
One way to help battle garbage in/garbage out is the often overlooked, admittedly boring process of metadata. Metadata is data about the data. It is a key to understanding the CRS involved in our map. Information like coordinate reference system, projections, sources, and assumptions are all important forms of metadata. Mapping folks have been talking about metadata for as long as I can remember. Yet it is still often overlooked. We took delivery of a large, high-resolution, and extremely expensive-to-collect LiDAR data set not too long ago and when we attempted to transform the data we realized there was absolutely no coordinate metadata information. Because it was terrestrial LiDAR and intended to be quite accurate, it used a local CRS, but there was no metadata in the files. An easy fix would have been a text file in the folder directory but that was nowhere to be found either. And this data was collected by a licensed land surveyor. Unacceptable! We all have to do better than that.
Number 10: Education on the Science/ Training on the Software
Let’s remember, whether it’s geography, surveying, geology, physics, ecology, or any number of other disciplines, collectively we are talking about science. One cannot simply become an expert on all facets of applied GIS. One can learn the tools involved but the science of mapping itself is the responsibility of the GIS professional and that science is founded on positioning. Additionally, there are any number of software tools that can be used to create maps. All of those software titles address our top ten list and the question of whether or not they do a good job is up to the GIS professional. We said earlier, garbage in means garbage out. We must all work to stay current on the various tools we use for mapping, and thus by extension geodesy, so that we can understand how those tools address our top ten issues. If we are diligent, we can provide accurate mapping. If we are not, the follies and foils of inaccurate data rest on our shoulders.
Patrick Cunningham
Patrick Cunningham is the President of Blue Marble Geographics. He has two decades of experience in software development, marketing, sales, consulting, and project management. Under his leadership, Blue Marble has become the world leader in coordinate conversion software (the Geographic Calculator) and low cost GIS software with the 2011 acquisition of Global Mapper. Cunningham is Chair of the Maine GIS Users Group, a state appointed member of the Maine Geolibrary Board, a member of the NEURISA board, a GISP and holds a masters in sociology from the University of New Hampshire.
