Workflow Case Studies

Nov. 2007: Desktop Distributed Processing - Photogrammetric mapping companies are under continuous competitive pressure to produce more products at higher quality for less money. While one approach to addressing this problem has been to send more work to lower cost off-shore contractors, an often more appealing alternative is to improve the efficiencies of existing production processes without sacrificing quality. Most of the efficiency gains that can be realized by improving individual software applications have already occurred. Short of a breakthrough in elusive areas such as automated orthophoto seam line definition or automated feature extraction that can be used at engineering scale, some other approach is needed. GeoCue, in concert with a small group of original early adopter companies, has been developing technologies that can overlay existing software to provide a productivity enhancement layer. In this article, we explore some of the techniques and technologies that have been deployed in actual production by Woolpert, Incorporated with a particular focus on distributing production to slaved processors. Full Article

Mar. 2009: Implementing Distributed Production Mangement on PAMAP - In 2007 GeoCue Corporation engaged with URS Corporation to develop a new approach for managing large mapping programs. URS had realized that the increasing number of large, complex, multi-vendor mapping programs required a paradigm shift in how such projects were managed and tracked. Budget constraints and ever shorter delivery schedules dictated that to remain profi table, while still delivering the highest quality products, a major change in how work was allocated, tracked and managed across different organizations and physical locations was necessary. Full Article

May 2007: Distributed Production Mangement System - It is more and more common for large mapping projects to be taken on by teams of contractors rather than a single company. Usually one of the team members will provide the coordinating project management function for the overall project as well as produce part of the contract deliverables. The coordinating company becomes responsible for managing the acquisition/production activities of the other contractors as well as the similar functions within the managing company itself. Full Article

May 2008: Integrating Large Systems - Each new generation of remote sensing system typically follows the same evolutionary path from the laboratory to everyday use. For example, the first digital film scanners were actually densitometers with engineering grade servo systems driving them in a pattern across the film with fragile, purpose-built software capturing and converting the data. As the technology matures, it evolves through hardened engineering systems, specialty commercial solutions and, if the market will sustain volume, into a commodity. An inevitable parallel is a declining price in the product being produced by the system. However, how does one emulate this necessary evolution when the volume of the technology is too low to allow it to follow this course? Such was the challenge faced by Fugro EarthData as their GeoSAR system matured from a one-off experimental system developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) into a production system with commercial throughput and reliability expectations. The avenue chosen by Fugro EarthData was to envelop the unique GeoSAR processing algorithms into the GeoCue enterprise workflow management system. Full Article

May 2006: Enterprise Geospatial Production Revisited - One year ago we presented an introductory overview of our new geospatial process management framework, GeoCue, primarily through the discussion of a lidar production workfl ow (PE&RS, Vol. 71, No. 3, pp. 241). In that article we discussed the future potential of the framework for general geospatial process management. Our ultimate goal was to deploy GeoCue through a variety of vertical applications, both of our own and other’s designs. Since the time of our lidar production overview, we have added considerable new capabilities into the base product for general production. We will present some of these exciting new capabilities by walking through the new Leica Ortho Accelerator, a collaboration between GeoCue Corporation and Leica Geosystems that has yielded the new Accelerator series from Leica. The introductory section of this article is a repeat of the previous article. Full Article

Nov. 2009: Implementing Tidal Datums in GeoCue - Founded in 2003, GeoCue Corporation creates software applications and provides services dedicated to improving geomatics production workflows. These tools range from application-specific software packages to solve a specific technical problem to “envelope” processes for monitoring overall workflows using Earned Value Assessment methodologies. Full Article