PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
April 2014
295
JEFF LOVIN
I N T E R V I E W
Jeff Lovin is Senior Vice President and
Managing Principal of the Geospatial Division
of Woolpert, a national geospatial, design,
and engineering firm headquartered in
Dayton, Ohio. Mr. Lovin has spent his entire
28-year career in the geospatial profession
at Woolpert, where he has developed a
diverse technical background as well as
project management skills, senior leadership
expertise and advocacy experience.
Woolpert has been an ASPRS Sustaining Member since
1985. What do you see as being the largest advance-
ments in the industry since then?
I actually started my career around the same time in 1986,
so I have been able to witness so much change over the
last 28 years. If I had to name just a few of those changes,
it would have to be the shift to digital mapping and the
introduction of LiDAR. These two advancements changed
our profession and market dramatically.
How has your ASPRS Sustaining Membership benefited
Woolpert?
As a sustaining member of ASPRS, we are better able
to demonstrate to our staff and clients our commitment
to education, professionalism and advanced geospatial
technologies. These are all benefits that come with being a
member of ASPRS.
In 2013, Woolpert partnered with Altavian, a leading
producer of UASs, and later purchased its first UAS, the
Nova Block III. How do you see UAS technology affecting
the geospatial market in the future?
I believe the impact of UAS technology on the geospatial
market will be substantial. I would say this impact will
be just as noteworthy as LiDAR or digital mapping. I
don’t think it is out of the realm of possibility that in my
lifetime, we will see a significant amount of airborne data
collection being performed by UASs.
Where do you see the industry going in the next 5-10
years in general?
From a market perspective, over the next 5 to 10 years, I
see LiDAR continuing to dominate the market as we look
towards important programs like 3DEP and continue to
see advancements in the technology with Geiger mode
and photon counting systems becoming mainstream in the
marketplace in the coming years. From a business perspec-
tive, UASs will show explosive growth, bringing many new
players into the geospatial market. In more traditional
segments of the market, we will continue to see consoli-
dation taking place due to both a struggling economy and
the challenges firms face with keeping up with the invest-
ments needed for new technology and market shifts.
The average person doesn’t think about the technology
used to create the GPS program in their phone but with
Google Maps, GPS, and Amazon considering using UASs
to deliver packages, what other mainstream applica-
tions do you see geospatial technology making a large
impact on?
Autonomous vehicles: As the automotive industry moves
toward “driverless” automobiles, the enabling technology
behind this movement varies from manufacturer to man-
ufacturer, but involves such things as LiDAR, stereo and
infrared cameras and automated point clouds.
Is there anything I didn’t ask that you’d like readers to
know?
While Woolpert as a firm did not become a sustaining
member until 1985, many of our staff were individual
members many years before that. Woolpert actually
entered the geospatial market in 1969. My father, Cliff
Lovin (CP #R934), who recently retired, was one of a hand-
ful of individuals who started that small photogrammetry
discipline within our firm.
