The temperature outside San Diego’s convention center last week perfectly matched the mood of ESRI User Conference attendees inside: comfortable. With turnout reportedly down 30 percent due to the global economic recession, the event was short on fireworks but long on focus. Instead of major announcements and elaborate product launches, speakers and exhibitors honed in on solution-based themes, such as personalizing the user experience and creating actionable data. Ideas worth celebrating, these trends require varying levels of technology transfer, a concept that is near and dear to our GeoSAR hearts.

Why do we promote technology transfer? It’s not just a catch-phrase, it’s a service we provide to help customers maximize their data. IFSAR mapping and analysis is still very cutting edge and as such is met with some resistance. The data looks and acts differently than traditional image-based and LiDAR mapping. When processed to resemble a traditional map product, however, clients are well pleased—astounded even—with the result. Training customers to analyze the data and create finished GeoSAR products themselves adds value to the overall geospatial investment. Rather than relying on a third-party contractor for these services, the technology transfer empowers customers to utilize GeoSAR data in ways that would otherwise be prohibitive. In this way, data that originally was intended to support topographic mapping could be used later to support a wide range of other applications, such as national defense, hydrology studies, or carbon mapping.

And here’s something else to celebrate…while we noted there were no elaborate product launches unveiled at ESRI, Fugro EarthData’s rather quiet debut of a new panoramic mapping capability is likely to generate a lot of buzz down the line. With simultaneous capture of high resolution vertical and oblique imagery, this system promises GeoSAR users an efficient alternative to satellite collections for multi-sourced spatial data frameworks. Stay tuned for more information.