Category Archives: Cartography
Between the Scanner and the Deliverable: How Mach9 is Building the Missing Layer in Geospatial Production
A Carnegie Mellon-trained roboticist who learned surveying in a coal mine and mapped uranium deposits inside decommissioning pipes is now building what he calls a new category of software — one that sits at the intersection of CAD, GIS, and the physical world. Alex Baikovitz did not set out to build CAD software. He set...
Brave New Coordinates: What NSRS Modernization Means for Survey and GIS Practice
NAD 83, NAVD 88 and “SPCS ’83” are finally giving way to a modern, GNSS- and gravity-based National Spatial Reference System. The technical pieces are arriving now. For surveyors and GIS professionals, the hard work will be managing the transition while keeping projects on track. For more than a decade, NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey (NGS)...
xyHt Magazine January/February 2026
Read the Jan/Feb xyHt digital edition. Table of Contents Brave New Coordinates: Working in the Modernized NSRS – Practical guidance for using NATRF2022, NAPGD2022 and SPC2022 to keep everyday projects aligned with the new U.S. reference frames. Fresno State: Building the Next Generation – How Fresno State’s geomatics program is training students on GNSS,...
Technology That Tracks
A singular railway system provides a linear path from construction to maintenance on the Tren Maya. Mexico’s Tren Maya (Maya Train) has been lauded as “the most important public work in the world” by former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Designed to boost economic and social development in the country’s southeast––a decades-long underdeveloped region––the 1,500-kilometer...
Measuring Change at Scale: FARO’s Mass-Data Vision for Digital Reality
At INTERGEO 2025 in Frankfurt, FARO®, a business of AMETEK®, Inc. wasn’t just celebrating a milestone, it was making a case for how 20 years of terrestrial laser scanning experience feeds directly into the next wave of GIS: mass data, AI-ready point clouds and digital twins that help societies manage infrastructure at scale. “All of...
Penguin Conservationists Use Maps and Satellite Images to Win Landmark Court Case
Penguins split their lives between land and sea, adapting with tenacity to the growing threats they face in both worlds. When those threats become too great, the people working to protect penguins are equally tenacious. Such was the case following a deeply disturbing act of environmental destruction along Argentina’s central coast. A local rancher bulldozed...