October 4

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Editor's Introduction

This week, I report on Autodesk's decision to release the source code for CS-Map to the open source community, First American's purchase of Proxix Solutions, and Minecode's release of a stand-alone program to post-process LiDAR data. Plus, 21 press releases.

— Matteo Luccio

Autodesk Donates Coordinate System Software to Open Source

Last Thursday, at the annual Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) conference in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, Autodesk announced that it will donate to the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) the source code for CS-Map, which consists of a coordinate system library and a set of projections.

CS-Map was developed by Mentor Software, which Autodesk recently acquired. Its founder and principal, Norm Olsen, who created and supported the technology, will join Autodesk as a senior software engineer. This donation, the company said, will enable all open source geospatial projects to support the projections and transformations necessary to support more than 3,000 coordinate systems worldwide. According to Autodesk, "this donation will help to accelerate innovation for the larger geospatial community through faster development cycles and lower costs."

This is Autodesk's third donation to the open source community, after MapGuide Open Source, a web mapping program, and FDO, a geospatial data access software package. The company announced in February 2006 that it would put those programs into open source. "Before this donation, any enhancements to the software were my sole responsibility," said Olsen. "Now, this technology can be supported by me and many more developers who can now make their own contribution."

The technology is presently embedded in Autodesk's own software products, including AutoCAD Map 3D and Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise, and, according to Autodesk, it is used by hundreds of thousands of organizations worldwide. Autodesk software engineers are now preparing the source code for donation by ensuring that it is properly documented and organized as an open source project. The company expects to donate the software as an open source project to OSGeo by the end of 2007.

I discussed this announcement with Andrew Mackles, Autodesk's Director of Geospatial Product Management. He told me that the first two donations have been a success for Autodesk and that the company decided to put the coordinate system into open source for the same reasons that guided its previous donations: "Similar to FDO, where we have literally hundreds of different data formats to keep up with, we have even more coordinate systems out there. It makes a lot of sense to us to put it out in the community, because if customers need things they don't have to rely on us to provide the coding, they can go out to the community. The real winners here are our customers, because they get access to technology a lot sooner than they would if they were relying solely on us to provide the technology."

In addition to a library of nearly all the coordinate system projections commonly used, Mackles explains, CS-Map includes a builder that allows users to build their own, compatible coordinate systems. "It has been very commonly used in the industry," he says. "We used it and Mentor had many customers, especially in the oil and gas industry, so this is an opening up of a technology that is pretty widely used today."

According to Mackles, this technology is extremely precise. "Many of our customers are in oil and gas," he says, "so, for them, millimeters count and they are digging on a z axis also. Now the ability to build extremely accurate coordinate systems will be out there, in the community's hands."

Autodesk decided to relase CS-Map now, Mackles explains, because all Autodesk products already use the Mentor coordinate system except for MapGuide Open Source. The company wanted to have a single coordinate system across all of its products. "That means," he says, "that an Autodesk customer can develop in open source, buy MapGuide Enterprise, use Map, use TopoBase, and all of the coordinate systems are talking the same language. For us it makes sense, because we wanted to incorporate Mentor into all the different products. Plus, by putting it out there, it enables the community to solve coordinate system issues, rather than having to go to a vendor."

Mackles declined to tell me what product Autodesk might donate to open source next, but told me that these decisions are based on customer demand. "With things like data providers and coordinate systems," he says, "our ability to satisfy customers' needs means having to have compatibility with so many different kinds of formats and databases. Where we see customer demand for interoperability and compatibility, that's a very interesting place for us to think about open source. We've had 34,000 downloads of MapGuide open source and more than 9,000 downloads of FDO. If customers need a provider written, there are many people who can do that. The same dynamic plays on coordinate systems."

First American Buys Proxix Solutions

In February, First American Corporation, one of the largest providers of business information, acquired CoreLogic Systems, a provider of mortgage risk assessment and fraud prevention solutions. In

April, it began selling location data to external partners. This week, First American acquired Proxix Solutions, a geospatial company that combines location intelligence with enterprise solutions to produce geospatial solutions, and will merge it into its new First American Spatial Solutions (FASS) division, based in Austin, Texas. FASS will use property location information and analytics to develop solutions for insurance, financial services, the public sector and other markets. It is led by Scott Little, Executive Vice President, and Paul Wray, President, First American-Proxix Solutions.

First American, a Fortune 500 company with more than $8.5 billion in annual sales that services the lender, mortgage, and insurance industries, is one of the largest title insurance providers in the United States, as well as one of the largest providers of property and credit information. It claims that its products "touch more than 90 percent of all property transactions that occur in the United States every year." The company has offices in every state and a capillary data acquisition system.

Proxix Solutions, Inc. was founded in February 2003 by a team of location technology experts led by Wray. It developed the PxPoint Geocoder, a parcel-level geocoder, as well as various databases and risk models. Most recently, Proxix developed CATUM, which combines parcel-level geocoding technology with hazard risk and premium tax databases to help insurance companies analyze their risk.

In recent years, First American's property information business has grown rapidly. "That is where we are really starting to find a sweet spot for a lot of our data products and in creating analytical solutions," David Rogers, First American's Director of Marketing, told me. "Proxix really fits that sweet spot." The Spatial Solutions group, he added, will provide solutions to many of First American's traditional industries, as well as servicing the company's other divisions and pursuing new industries, "particularly where Proxix has already established itself — in the insurance industry as well as in all the industries that utilize some of the geocoding services that Proxix has."

Proxix has been "a group of software and data developers that have specialized in accurate, specific geocoding," says Wray. "We are about 45 people. We were the first company to release a geocoder, PxPoint, that would geocode down to an individual parcel, not just a parcel point." The product has been shipping for almost two years in the United States and will begin shipping later this year in Europe. "We typically sell to property and casualty insurance companies, which are probably a little bit more than 50 percent of our business." When they are about to underwrite a policy, he explains, these companies want to understand the overall risk associated with a given address — whether it is related to a Katrina-type event, brush fire out in the Western states, floods, or other hazards.

According to Little, First American wants to develop further its ability "to deliver to users data that they could use in their solutions," while also starting to develop internally solutions for specific markets. This acquisition, he explains, "is our first step from purely data to offering solutions and we expect for that to continue to expand over time."

"The biggest problem in the industry today," says Wray, "is that people deliver a whole bunch of tools — whether it be software or data — and require companies to integrate them into their systems. We have a system called CATUM, which is both browser-based and an XML SOAP delivery system. So, with minimal development, in less than a couple of hours, someone can embed our application into their system and start consuming data in real time by giving us an address. We can tell you how far it is from the coast line, in what rating territory it is, what its premium tax is, where the closest fire station is, whether it is in a brush fire area or a hurricane storm area, how far is it from an earthquake fault, whether is it near any levies and dams or in a floodplain. We can also tell you whether or not there are any risks inside any portion of that parcel — because we have the parcel boundaries embedded in all of our software."

First American has the ability to bring in large portfolios, Little points out. "We currently track more than 80 million properties. So, we are able to take this data and store a lot of information on our side, combine that with different analytical tools that we have, and provide information to our clients that they can use in their day-to-day business. It is a combination of having the location data, the real estate data, the risk data, and then forming solutions in software that the clients can use to make their business decisions. We hope to continue to add different pieces to the overall First American spatial solutions group to continue to expand that."

"We are delivering this today," Wray emphasizes. "We are providing Web services for numerous, very large property and casualty companies, delivering the information down to their individual agents in real time. We also provide data and/or software that they install behind their firewalls."

"We have an unlimited amount of data that can be used in conjunction with Paul's products to develop solutions on a case-by-case basis," Little adds. "We can go into different clients, understand what their needs are, then go back to the First American family, determine where we are capturing different sets of data, and incorporate that into the solutions going forward. Additionally, First American brings to the table its overall financial strength, its multiple data centers, and its ability to have relations at the community level. That enables Proxix to continue to grow their solutions and their products and let First American's infrastructure help on collecting some of the core data that they need."

The new division is going to collect data, develop complete solutions, and deliver consulting services. "Obviously, we have multiple data sets to sell," says Little. "We have the ability to go into different markets with different solutions."

"First American sells a lot of data," Wray points out. "Clients buy data in bulk to put behind their firewall. Typically, when we license our software and data, we go do that implementation in the client's office. Those types of engagements are only a few days to a few weeks of work. Unlike the last five to ten years, where people just bought data and the problem was for the company to implement that and bring all the other software to consume it, we will provide that in a total, integrated solution. This is a big step forward for First American, as a corporation: it starts really taking a lot of the data sources that is has and starts to create these analytical solutions and move out into new industries."

Are we seeing the start of a trend, I asked Little, in which large companies will consolidate their geospatial data, software, and expertise into a single geospatial division? "I think that you are right on point," Little told me. "First American realized in what direction the technology was going and that, in many cases, they are sitting on a hundred years of data. The way to get out in front of the curve is to start spatially enabling this data and offering solutions. That's the key to setting up the division and to have a consolidated focus on different ways to do that in different markets and to do that internally. I think that Paul's group is going to be a big part of that."

Minecode Releases Stand-Alone LiDAR Software

Last week, Minecode Corporation, a provider of software and product development solutions, released LiDAR-M version 3.2, a stand-alone LiDAR data processing software developed on Microsoft .NET technology. LiDAR software is used for displaying, viewing, editing, and processing LiDAR files. According to the company, LiDAR-M is extensively used in markets such as energy, engineering, utility, surveying, and municipal governments.

LiDAR, which stands for "Light Detection and Ranging," is an optical remote sensing technology that measures properties of scattered pulses of laser light to determine the range and other properties of distant targets. LiDAR-M is used to analyze this data and then process it into industry-standard file formats, such as LAS, BIN, and DXF.

LiDAR-M allows users to observe cloud points in different cross-sectional views, classify data points automatically and manually, "zoom" and "pan" images, and input/output data files in multiple formats. It also supports the mapping functionalities of CAD software.

Minecode is a privately held company with offices in India and the United States. Its clients include small and medium-sized businesses, Fortune 500 companies, and government agencies.

I discussed the new version of LiDAR-M with Sridhar Seshadri, VP for Business Development IT / GIS, and Siddhartha Samal, Director of Minecode Operations in India. Seshadri has more than 14 years of IT experience in utilities, oil and gas, transportation, engineering, surveying, and other domain areas and expertise in integrating IT with GIS. He has worked for Autodesk, Inc. and Bentley Systems, Inc. through channel partners and for other IT companies. At Minecode Corporation, Seshadri promotes IT services on various IT platforms. He holds a Bachelors degree in Technology in Civil Engineering, a Masters degree in Environmental Engineering, and is currently pursuing his MBA in Business Information Technology.

Minecode, Seshadri explains, offers GIS conversion services, software development, and product development services for various industries, including utilities, oil & gas, and transportation, as well as IT services for the health care industry and many Web-based applications. It uses .NET, C#, C, and Visual Basic, mostly on a Microsoft platform. The company also has a photogrammetry LiDAR center, where it processes projects for clients, and a 3D city modeling division. "We do a lot of city modeling work for clients in the United States," he says.

The company provides services and develops software based on the lessons it learns internally, in processing data for its clients. "In that process," says Seshadri, "we developed two of our core products: LiDAR-M, our first release, and PMX, a project management application. One of the reasons we released version 3.2 of LiDAR-M is because our clients were looking for a stand-alone version that would not be dependent on third-party software, such as AutoCAD or Microstation. Clients would also like to generate a vector file — that's a key thing that we brought into the market. It not only generates the LAS and BIN files, but also the vector file in a DXF format."

Photogrammetry project costs, Seshadri explains, increase in direct proportion with accuracy requirements — for example, going from five-feet contour intervals to two-feet contour intervals. Therefore, the more the software is able to automate the processing, the more it reduces costly, labor-intensive manual processing. LiDAR-M, Seshadri points out, includes cloud point removal options that allow users to filter out points due to rainy, cloudy, or foggy weather, so that a survey can be done at any time, without seasonal restrictions. He adds that Minecode has developed an algorithm that allows LiDAR-M, unlike other LiDAR software, to handle an unlimited number of points.

LiDAR-M also supports automatic data classification. "We can classify all the points that are available from the data," says Samal. "You can do building classification, vegetation classification, etc. You can distinguish between low, medium, and high vegetation. Because it is built on Microsoft .NET, it is easy to customize it and add features to it."

Currently, LiDAR-M still requires post-processing of the data. However, the company is working on a real-time version. Also, while the current version allows users to define different cross-section angles, they are limited to static views. Seshadri says that the company is developing a dynamic view, which will allow users to rotate models using their mouse.

Is there an inherent tension for the company between processing data and developing data processing software? In other words, is the company competing with yourself? "Not really," says Seshadri. "We have created another line of business."

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