Category Archives: Spatial IT/GIS
Why 3D Fuels Modeling Is Now a Geospatial Problem
As wildfire planning demands better inputs, the challenge is shifting from data collection alone to how vegetation and surface fuels are measured, classified, and turned into model-ready 3D information. Wildfire is forcing a shift in geospatial thinking. High-resolution capture is no longer the finish line. The harder question is whether vegetation and surface-fuels data can...
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...
Cleaner Signals, Better Sites
How Antenna-Level Interference Mitigation Improves Machine Control Productivity. Construction job sites have always been challenging environments for positioning. Steel structures, heavy machinery, changing terrain, and partial sky visibility are part of the daily reality. What has changed dramatically over the past decade is the radio-frequency (RF) environment in which modern construction now operates. Today’s job...
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)...
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...
Vexcel: How a Camera Company Turned Itself into a Global Data Engine
From film scanners to hybrid camera-LiDAR systems and a 43-country data program, Vexcel’s CEO Alexander Wiechert described the journey leading to the current product line in a conversation with xyHt at INTERGEO in Frankfurt. By Richard Thomas, Executive Editor Walking past the Vexcel booth at INTERGEO 2025, you see Merlin, Osprey 4.2, Condor and Dragon 4.2 front...