446
June 2015
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
ASPRS
NEWS
IGTF 2015
IGTF 2015
B
ig Data, Thousands of Satellites at the ASPRS Annual Meeting in
Tampa
In a Ted-like talk, Stuart Blundell of Exelis and Keven
Lausten of DigitalGlobe jointly explained how Geospatial
Big Data is changing the market space for everyone in the
geospatial industry. They explained how it will create
new businesses and disrupt existing businesses, and how
the questions we ask will change from what to where. In
response to these changes, they announced their new
partnership between Exelis and DigitalGlobe. xyHt filmed
the keynote presentation and expects to make the video
available on its website.
On the second day, in back-to-back keynotes, Tim Stryker
from the White House and Jon Christopherson from USGS
explained how the US and other countries are responding
to the challenge of observing the earth faster, more broadly,
and more cost effectively. Stryker spoke about the US
National civil earth observation plan that is driven by the
information we want to collect, rather than the legacy of
platforms and systems that already exist. Christopherson
then spoke about the large number of emerging space-based
imaging platforms that are now, or soon to be, in orbit.
Jaws dropped when Christopherson revealed that they num-
ber in the thousands, reinforcing Blundell’s and Lausten’s
point from the day before that the market space is currently
undergoing seismic shifts.
Next year, IGTF 2016 will be in Fort Worth, Texas from
April 11 through April 15 – not in competition with AUVSI
or the Esri Southeast Users Group meeting, or finals week!
ASPRS hopes to continue its partnership with cooperating
organizations that joined us for special sessions this year,
including exploration and environmental specialists from
the oil and gas industry (Geological Remote Sensing Group
– NA), cartographers (CaGIS), geodetic surveyors from
AAGS, transportation mappers from TRB, and pattern rec-
ognition/machine vision specialists from IAPR and ISPRS,
members of the Air Force Auxiliary (Civil Air Patrol), and
the Joint Agency Commercial Imagery Evaluation (JACIE)
working group.
The highlight of the program was a desert reception that
honored, among other awards, the birth of the new ASPRS
UAD Division and the 65th year of sustaining membership
by Michael Baker International – the longest-running sus-
taining member. While eating cake and enjoying live music,
attendees looked through scrap-book pictures of the 1950
annual meeting – amazing to see the large stereo plotters of
the time, which are now only found in museums!
