This week, I’ve been attending the INTERGEO 2010 conference in Cologne, Germany. It’s a gathering of ~16,500 people interested in geodesy, geoinformation, and land management. It’s the largest event of its kind in the world.
Earlier today (August 31), I conducted a webinar titled “Solar Activity, SBAS and 24+3 GPS Constellation Updates.” Considering we only announced the webinar three weeks ago, we had a fantastic registration numbers, with more than 570 registered. I also had a lot of questions before and during the webinar. As customary, I’d like to address some of those as well as present the poll results here.
You might have heard reports this week about a solar storm this week. This is part of the new solar cycle (Solar Cycle 24) that I’ve written about several times. I want to periodically touch on this subject as the solar activity is going to increase over the next few years, and if the solar activity (geomagnetic storms, not sunspots) is severe enough, it will have an effect on GPS accuracy and tracking. Here’s the scoop on this week’s solar activity.
I believe that if you attend the ESRI SEGS and UC conferences just one time, your vision of surveying, engineering, construction, and GIS will change forever. I know it sounds like an advertisement from ESRI, but I think my pitch is even better than theirs. Seriously though, there are so many people presenting so many different ideas, and they are all related to the kind of geographic data you work with on a regular basis.
I received some interesting e-mails and saw some web comments regarding my newsletter column a couple of weeks ago titled “What’s Going to Happen When High-Accuracy GPS is Cheap?” The comments ranged from “I don’t believe it’s going to happen” to “We’d better adapt to the changes in technology.”
The GPS satellite launched into orbit last week wasn’t just any other GPS satellite. It was the first of a new generation of GPS satellites that are going to change the way surveying, engineering and construction data is collected and processed in the future. Its new features are going to profoundly transform surveying, engineering and construction. I’m not exaggerating.
Normally, my column following a webinar is dedicated to Q&A follow-up from the webinar. However, immediately following the April 22 webinar, I traveled to Phoenix, Arizona, to attend the ACSM/GITA conference, which I wrote about earlier this month.
The annual ACSM (American Congress on Surveying and Mapping) isn’t what it used to be. Attendance was way down and the number of exhibitors is way down. The technical content, however, was still pretty good. In fact, I’ve included links to several videos I recorded at the ACSM/GITA conference.
Follow Us