Weekly GEOINT Community News

Parsons to Provide COVID-19 Testing Solutions, Airbus Wins ESA Contract for Three More European Service Modules for NASA’s Orion Spacecraft, Esri Releases ArcGIS Velocity for Analysis of Real-Time IoT Data, and More

NASA-Orion-Spacecraft-CopyrightNASA-Radislav-Sinyak

Parsons to Provide COVID-19 Testing Solutions

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) awarded Parsons a multi-award COVID-19 testing indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract with a shared ceiling value of $2 billion. Testing will support DHS employees and includes two functional categories: managed testing services; and molecular diagnostic test kits and testing services. Parsons will provide flexible, innovative testing solutions designed to keep DHS employees safe and reduce the risk of exposure to COVID-19. The offerings will be point-of-care or laboratory-based solutions that support current and future operational concepts for screening capabilities. In May 2020, Parsons independently invented DetectWise, an integrated, touchless suite of health monitoring solutions. The system could be included in the company’s offering for the DHS IDIQ, especially given the need to coordinate the collection of samples from identified subjects. The touchless kiosks and biometric screeners allow for non-contact temperature screening of people seeking to access an area and are digitally linked with an individual’s COVID-19 test history. DetectWise products are currently operating in the aviation, industrial, government facilities, healthcare, and senior living facility markets, in addition to Parsons’ facilities.

Airbus Wins ESA Contract for Three More European Service Modules for NASA’s Orion Spacecraft

The European Space Agency (ESA) has signed a further contract with Airbus for the construction of three more European Service Modules (ESM) for Orion, the American-crewed spacecraft for the Artemis program. With these additional Service Modules, ESA ensures continuity in NASA’s Artemis program beyond the three modules which are already under contract with Airbus. The European Service Module will be used to fly astronauts to the Moon. As the powerhouse of the new Orion spacecraft for NASA’s Artemis missions, it will provide critical functions such as the propulsion system to get the astronauts to the Moon and the consumables the astronauts need to stay alive. During the development and construction of the ESM, Airbus has drawn on its experience as prime contractor for ESA’s Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), which provided the crew on board the International Space Station with regular deliveries of test equipment, spare parts, food, air, water, and fuel.

Esri Releases ArcGIS Velocity for Analysis of Real-Time IoT Data

Esri released ArcGIS Velocity, previously known as ArcGIS Analytics for IoT. Velocity is a new cloud-native capability for ingestion, processing, visualization, and analysis of real-time and high-volume geospatial data on the fly. It complements existing systems with geographic information system (GIS) technology by spatially enabling Internet of Things (IoT) data from current providers and simplifying real-time data analysis. Velocity enables users to capture information from sensors, moving objects, or anything that changes over time, and then automatically flag patterns, trends, and anomalies. This will allow deployed personnel to access time-critical information the moment they need it. ArcGIS Velocity is also now available in two additional license levels—Standard and Advanced. These new licenses offer different storage and compute capabilities and will make Velocity more accessible for customers across industries such as commercial, natural resources, utilities, transportation, national government, water and wastewater, and public safety.

Continental Mapping Acquires GISinc

Continental Mapping completed the acquisition of Geographic Information Services, Inc. (GISinc) creating one of the largest, pure play geospatial services and solutions companies in North America, with offices in five states and more than 350 employees distributed across 30 states. Continental Mapping’s acquisition of GISinc provides clients with broad, complementary geospatial capabilities ranging from geospatial data collection, curation, and management to the design and implementation of best-in-class enterprise systems. This acquisition significantly strengthens the firm’s capabilities across national security, mobility, critical infrastructure, environmental management, and facilities management sectors.

OGC Public Comment Request

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) seeks public comment on version 1.1 of the OGC Coverage Implementation Schema (CIS) – ReferenceableGridCoverage Extension. Comments are due by March 3, 2021. The CIS ReferenceableGridCoverage Extension extends CIS (a supporting standard of the Web Coverage Service Standard) to provide a set of referenceable grid elements to enable an accurate determination of pixel locations in observed imagery. A referenceable grid enables the location of all points in a simple grid to be determined in a Coordinate Reference System (CRS), by providing a means to specify additional geometrical information such as a sensor model. A sensor model may describe, for example, the collection of light rays by an Earth Observation (EO) imagery sensor consisting of a rectangular array of light sensing pixels.

Peer Intel

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) announced the final results of Soundscapes, a $100,000 prize competition seeking algorithms that geolocate the source of video and audio recordings on Earth. Solvers were asked to submit and test their code solutions, view their quantitative score and participate in a leaderboard on the Topcoder platform indicating solver rank based on the training data. Main winners included 1st Prize: Vladislav Leketush, 2nd Prize: Selim Seferbekov, 3rd Prize: Victor Durnov, 4th Prize: Yauhen Babakhin, and 5th Prize: Raphael Kiminya. The secondary winners included 1st Prize: Vladislav Leketush, 2nd Prize: Victor Durnov, and 3rd Prize: Selim Seferbekov.

Dewberry appointed Al Karlin, Ph.D., CMS-L, GISP, to the Urban Flooding Open Knowledge Network (UF-OKN) advisory panel for the 2021-2022 term. Karlin is a senior geospatial information systems (GIS) professional in Dewberry’s Tampa, Florida, office.

Featured Image: NASA Orion spacecraft with the first European Service Module (ESM-1) integrated at NASA. | Photo Credit: Airbus

Posted in: Monday News Kickoffs   Tagged in: GIS, IoT, Mergers & Acquisitions, NASA, NGA

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