You're listening to episode 763 of A VerySpatial Podcast.. June 22nd, 2025,
run
Unknown.
Hello and A VerySpatial Podcast.. I'm Jesse.
I'm Sue.
I'm Barb,
and this is Frank.
And this week we're gonna be talking to Zach Jaffe of Map I.T.. But
first of course, we have some news.
First up there were a couple of executive orders that came outta the United
States white House that are focused on small unmanned aerial systems and just
unmanned aerial systems in general.
One of them is focused on security of the airspace and making sure that drones are
incorporated into that a little bit more.
Don't really go into details.
'cause there's lots of them.
But perhaps the more important one was one that was already on the table but
is now getting fast track significantly is dates have been assigned for the
progression of beyond visual line of sight operations in the United States.
And that of course is one that's, that, depending on how this goes, could, create
a much broader set of aerial issues.
And it's one, you know, the FAA, I think has been pushing back so that
they didn't have to deal with it right away because the technologies aren't
exactly there yet to, to be able to deal with finding and seeing drones.
There's things that are there, but it's not tied into the, air system yet.
And it's worth noting that beyond line of sight, it, it exists now,
you know, you can do it, you just have to get an exception for it,
which means you can file paperwork and people know and things like that.
And the companies went, that's way too much bureaucracy, too much of
a ha hassle, can we, you know, just do this without having to get an
exception to do beyond line of sight.
And now the FA a's gonna have to do that, which like Jesse
said, that's gonna require.
Technology's embedded within the drone and also also within aerial platforms of
all sorts, including planes to say, Hey, everybody knows where everybody's at.
So that one I think is the one that's a little bit more day-to-day impact
compared to the other executive order.
We'll see how either of them goes.
And if you're interested in either, there's a link of course in the show note,
and of course you can find the executive orders themselves and probably the fa
a's responses to how they're gonna make these things happen somewhere online.
And, and just like Jesse said to start with, they do address
the security question of DJI within the executive order.
So look at that stuff 'cause it's a lot more what's the word I'm looking for?
Detailed, finicky.
Convoluted,
lots of those words.
Yeah.
And Map I.T., of course responded with, but we are not a Chinese Yes.
Front.
So well, I don't know.
We'll see how it goes.
And of course we always talk about Map I.T., but most of these also generally
reference Chinese built UAVs in general.
So keep that in mind as well, even though most of these things talk specifically
about if it ever becomes true legislation.
It won't just be TJI.
Is there
any non-Chinese made, I'm gonna say prosumer for lack of a
better term, drone out there?
I can't.
There's a couple in
the us and of course, now that I'm thinking about it, I can't
think of any of the names, but yeah, there are, there are some.
And there's the amusing one that is basically DJI hardware that's being made.
Quote unquote buy us company manufactured in Vietnam.
I think just so it gets around the, the Chinese thing, but it's still, I mean,
the hardware is identical to A DJI, Mavic, whichever one it was three I think.
So yeah.
Next up the news Google has released a bunch of new updates for Google Maps,
which is, you know we've covered this so much Google updates to maps that
understand this happens frequently, but this is kind of a cool update.
It's around helping you travel more sustainably.
Right now it's in Europe, almost, I think exclusively it's in Europe.
But.
It's got a lot of neat features in there to help you figure out how to drive or
how to bike better or how to, you know, what, what things that you can do to
save on gas petrol in the European term.
What you can do to help reduce your emissions when you can be doing
things into so when you're traveling the low emission zones, you can do
things to, you know, help with that.
And of course, congestion, which is a huge problem in every city, everywhere
helped how, how to travel your plans.
Travel, how to plan your travel so that you help reduce congestion and the
associated environmental costs thereof.
This is another Google update that for some reason in my mind,
I thought they already had.
And it's a really good one if you're planning a trip and planning to do a, a
cycle route through any of the cities.
So you can avoid heavy car traffic or know when you're gonna
come up on some steep hills.
You know, Barb, I have to say I'm with you on that one.
'cause I, when I saw it originally I thought, yeah, I thought you
could get some of the stuff up.
I must have gotten it somewhere else or
actually could get some of the stuff.
But
now they've integrated, is that what it is?
Yeah.
So, but good.
It hopefully rolls out.
Everywhere.
I think the big thing that brought it all together is that they're
using AI now to help you with that planning and the routing and
all that sort of stuff like that.
Taking these things into consideration within the ai, which is simultaneously
really cool and frightening at the same time because anyway,
and finally in the news, a new launch this past week for the Sony PlayStation, right?
We don't often talk about gaming consoles but this launch is for an
interactive platform free, free to download if you have Sony PlayStation
five it's called Climate Station.
So it's an interactive you know, kind of a immersive visualization of climate
data and, one of the features is sort of looking at a year into climate.
So it utilizes a lot of remote sensing and all kinds of stuff, but it's just
again, cool to see these types of resources come out to highlight issues
and, you know, in, in our area that we're familiar with, but for a broader audience.
So I've actually tried it out.
It's made with a common tool unity that we've talked about
on this, on the podcast before.
And supposedly, although I've not tried this yet, you can also
use it on the PlayStation VR too.
So a limited audience limited by the hardware and technology.
But really great to see this tool come out and get added to the,
the ways that we can visualize climate and share that knowledge.
With others.
It's one of those things where.
It, it will probably come to Oculus and desktop and those type of things
as well, because it, it is a two does have a traditional 2D screen based
as well as the potential for vr.
But it's weird because it's, it uses levels.
So you have to progress through a series of content before
you can begin to explore.
Content.
I think they set it up kind of like a tutorial in kind of
way, which you can do well.
But again, that's a very levels based approach to it.
It's, it's, so, it's just kind of interesting to have a levels based
approach to scientific communication.
It, it feels like maybe teachers made this first, you have to pass this
class before you can take that class.
Yeah.
I mean, one of the cool things about it is the, the visualizations are really nice.
But you know, I can imagine, like when I teach a class on this and using Unity,
I ask the students come up with a topic.
This is, this is something that topic-wise, I could see even my classes
go, Hey, let's make something that helps spread, you know, information
about what's going on with climate.
So.
They, the makers of it do hope that we know will be a learning tool.
So again, right now, a limited release to a, just the PlayStation
store and PlayStation five.
But I think that it's something that more broadly with being created
with something like Unity, there, there is the cross platform ability.
So but yeah, the the partnership that created, it included the Department
of Meteorology at the University of Reading in the uk, Berkeley Earth, and
the playing for the Planet Alliance.
So I don't know.
I thought it was really cool.
Again, available for free and tried it out.
So as long
as you have a PlayStation, you say, yeah.
Available for the cost of one PlayStation.
Yeah.
So that's interesting.
First because although I've made quite a bit of, of quite a bit of applications
with Unity I've never seen actually their, their interface for, or how
they do stuff for the PlayStation.
So.
But hey, I get, you have to have developer licenses, all that kinda stuff.
So I didn't have access to those things.
So anyway,
a scientist, I believe at Carnegie Mellon University, that's where the.
Article originated from, has created a interactive map and it is a science
communication tool to encourage scientists to do a science homecoming.
That is to go to their local papers, their hometown papers, wherever
they're from and to educate the people there on a local level, a
local scale about what it is they do.
And they're calling the interactive.
Project, the Science Homecoming.
And I thought it was a really interesting idea because it basically brings the
idea of science communication and talking local, but gives you a tool
now that you can use to make it a little bit more efficient to reach
out to these small local papers.
This is something that we got emails as a a g members two, three months
ago to kind of push this as well.
So it's been making, its its rounds.
For a few months now, and it, you know.
Is a response to all of the cuts that have been happening in all the federal
cuts in the United States especially.
But, you know, just general trends that we have going on now that there's
a lot more misinformation about not just details, but also about what we
do as academics or professionals or whatever you wanna define yourself as.
You know, those mis misunderstandings are, are growing.
So it's kind of a way of.
Trying to get our voices out there ourselves as opposed to waiting
for somebody to come and, and ask to do an article about us.
I think,
and what's interesting about it is some of the examples talk about how a lot
of scientists and researchers, their work comes from what they experienced
growing up in their hometowns.
So it makes sense to, to bring what you've done.
Back to the place that influenced you in the research that you're doing.
So we're happy to be joined today by Zach Jaffe, who is the founder and CEO
of Map I.T.. Thanks for joining us today.
Thank you for having me.
It was nice to meet you at the North Carolina GIS conference.
Unfortunately, we didn't have time to sit down then, but today I just wanted to.
Kind of go through those same type of questions and starting with, tell
us a little bit about Map I.T. and where you're located and what you do.
Yeah, absolutely.
So Map I.T.. We are based in Charleston, South Carolina but we work all over
the country and they've actually had a couple projects overseas as well.
So we are really a geospatial consulting firm focused on infrastructure mapping.
We also are a licensed, licensed land surveyor.
So we do that side of the geospatial world as well, you know, and that's
just the more traditional, Hey, I'm building a pro, you know, building
a fence, where's my property line?
Or we're adding an addition to the house.
You know, we need a tree tobo survey.
So that's one side of the business.
And the other side you know, the more kind of.
Newer age Geospatial Consulting is the infrastructure mapping.
Well, we're where we will do everything from going out and collecting data
through, you know, reality capture, lidar, laser scanning we do CAD drawings
or 3D BIM modeling and really take that all the way through to GIS deliverables.
A lot of our focus has been on interior mapping or indoor
mapping, a relatively new.
New term in the GIS world.
And really the focus on that has been in the K through 12 school district
space, higher education campuses.
And we're out, we're working on a couple museum projects as well.
So that's really been our focus.
I. And you know, we've seen a lot of success in it the past two years and
we are really continuing to see it grow or the, those types of services needed
really.
And you kind of touch on three different areas in just
that, that quick introduction.
One being the traditional 2D list, make a map of something or a CAD drawing of
something moving into the 3D with some of the creation of models to support.
That 2D but also then getting into the reality capture where
you're then moving into point clouds and exactly all that means.
So a lot of different things to, to touch on there.
So whenever you are looking at a project, I think to completely go off.
The topics that I, I had discussed with you before how do you begin
to think about, okay, this is our more traditional 2D points.
Get a GPS, get a, a total station out there, versus we
need to get out there with a.
Laser scanning system.
So what kind of guides you with that?
Absolutely.
Obviously, you know, it's very project dependent but you know,
most times it comes down to, is it interior or exterior mapping?
Or a combination of both.
So for example, you know, if we're doing, focusing on indoor mapping for a K through
12 school district where they're creating maps for, you know, interactive maps for
safety and security, critical glimpse in the mapping emergency response, right.
Not gonna really use you know, traditional land surveying
techniques in that scenario, right?
Because it's all, or mainly indoor mapping, you're gonna use lidar laser
scannings to create those point clouds.
We do go around the exterior of the school as well to, you know, map the entire site.
Traditionally using lidar, land surveying lidar technology as well, because we're
already there doing that type of work.
Every now and then we do come across products where, hey, we really need
to make sure, you know, we, we tag that valve and sometimes they'll
let smaller information to be harder to extract from point clouds.
While it is usually visible, we do like to kind of double
verify those kind, those kind of.
Feature.
So we will go back out with, you know, GPS or traditional land surveying
equipment to, to locate those.
You know, another, another example of a project I'm working on right
now is a cemetery mapping project where we're actually going out and
collecting, you know, the, the, the locations of headstones as well
as documenting, you know, what the site looks like by taking a picture.
And one of the quite, well, I was toying with the idea of do we wanna
use our lidar skiing technology that captures 360 panoramic imagery, or
do we wanna go the traditional route?
You know, GPSing every headstone and taking a picture all through,
you know, various ESRI applications.
We actually decided to go the traditional route just because we thought the lidar
probably is a little bit of overkill for a more basic 2D map deliverable.
And in terms of the time efficient we, efficiency, we felt like it was the same.
So that was one kind of project we're like, well, which, which
one do we want to go here?
And it's always, you know, you start with that to get it
done and, and have it there.
And if the client wants you to come back and scan the headstones to get
the inscriptions and things that, as you know, whenever you're looking at
headstones they wear down over time.
And LIDAR does a great job of helping to kind of pull out those details
that are lost a lot of times visually.
So, yeah, I mean it's having those different deliverables as options later
on is always a great option as well.
And kind of talking about then going back from the point clouds to a more
traditional product because the point cloud and the 3D models that you can
create from that, the reality capture.
Is great for looking at in a game engine or those type of environments, but
not all clients have that capability or desire to be able to move around.
They want a more traditional product.
So you can talk.
Can you talk a little bit about that process of going back from
this very dense, high resolution, high content point cloud to a more
generalized 3D model or 2D model?
Absolutely.
So I mean, what it all comes down to, right, is what, what the end user,
what our client wants to visualize.
Oftentimes, point clouds are, can be overkill in terms of
what you're capturing, right?
'cause the way LIDAR scans works, it captures everything.
The ics, whether or not that's something that's going to be
included in your file dataset, right?
So we're creating just standard floor clans.
It's gonna capture the detail of everything in that room.
Furniture lighting.
Whatever your, I can see the scanner is going to pick up and that's
going to be in the point cloud.
Now oftentimes we will simplify that by just extracting only what's required
for that project and then delivering it to them, like you said, in either A 2D
CAD or 3D bit oftentimes through GIS.
I will say that with that, with a lot of these, you know, software
integrations and partnerships specifically between Autodesk and Esri.
As well as all the cloud-based solutions, it's becoming a lot easier
to deliver these, you know, higher and heavier dataset deliverables to
clients through those cloud systems.
So, you know, prior to a lot of these workflows delivering
a BIM multiple client.
That wasn't an architect or an engineer was unheard of or
you know, even a point cloud.
But now with those integrations through, you know, easy to use web browsers,
I can send you a link of an extremely detailed BIM model or point cloud that
just gives you more access to more information that you already paid for.
So while at the end of the day, yes, all you need is those 2D plans, you
can now access that higher resolution imagery point cloud or BIM model
through, you know, hosted web browsers.
So it is slowly starting to change and I think that that's helping a
lot of organizations that kind of maybe not better understand the
process and workflow, but get more out of the project, get a higher ROI.
Or even you know, be able to expand the solution to other
departments within an organization.
Yeah.
Having that generalized content you know, it's, it's a good place for
the client to start because they know this is what they need, this is what
they want, but then having access to those additional data through Fusions
360 or a web scene viewer and RTS online, just like you're saying, just.
Makes it a little bit deeper for them, gives them that extra information.
If they need more things pulled out that they can see in it, they,
they know to come back to you and talk about those type of things.
Exactly.
So I wonder if we're looking at this wealth of technologies, you've
been in the field since before the.
Closer integration between the a EC on the Autodesk side and the GIS on the,
and various tools on the Esri side.
Can you talk a little bit about your feelings about this, this thing
that happened, what was about three, four years ago now, where Autodesk
and Esri said, you know what, we're going to not just let people do
loose coupling between our products.
We are going to intentionally go through.
And, and work together to make these workflows a little bit more seamless.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think, I think it's great.
Clearly there was a need for it in the industry and they saw that opportunity.
I think it was like at this point, maybe like six years ago, that they
announced their official partnership.
Now, that had always been a little bit of interoperability between the
two, but not really to the extent of course, that we're seeing now.
Clearly there was the need for it.
They saw the opportunity.
Yeah.
So that really, I mean, I think it's, it's allowing, like I mentioned also
earlier, it's allowing a lot more people to benefit from these solutions
and softwares that previously only architects and engineers used bim.
Right.
Used really BIM and Rev and those suite of tools in the JS world.
You know, never really touched that.
Or not even the JS world, right?
A facility manager who's busy and MA maintaining.
A school or a facility never would have used a 3D model in an app on their phone.
But now they can quickly say, okay, where is that asset in that pump
room that it needs to locate and fix?
And what are those what, what are the attribute informations about that pump?
What's the make?
What's the model?
You know, the ID number right now, they have that access through that integration.
So it's really expanding the use.
Of these data sets.
And I also think that before my time in land surveying or GIS right,
GIS and land surveying and CAD all kind of started at the same place.
Then over the years they really separated and diverse to where like, you know,
the joke Land surveyors joke about GI S's, GIS stands for Get It survey.
I don't think that's very fun, you know?
But now we're starting to see the worlds are kind of coming back together, right?
Right.
We're saying, hold on.
Lance surveys can use G-I-S-G-I-S can use Lance surveying data.
And I think the integrations of AutoCAD and Esri are kind of really amplifying
that, that these worlds do work together.
They're not, GIS is not totally separate from these CAD s in
that you can actually benefit.
By using them both together in both Lance Survey bearers and JS
professionals are benefiting from it.
And now that that world's kind of getting mixed for the better.
Yeah, I think there's, there's two technologies that did this weird I'm, I'm
not sure how recent to really point it to, but beginning to bring them back together.
On the one hand you have the use of GPS or GNSS in general that.
Was a, a heavy thing for GIS users to take advantage of.
But there was just this point where one day you're watching
surveyors with total stations.
The next day it's.
Everybody's out there with a GPS unit.
And I think that begins to, to change some of that mentality.
And on the other hand, it's going back to the, the reality capture the
movement into digital twins, which of course is also what precipitated the,
the connection, you know, that stronger connection between Autodesk and Esri.
Just that the idea of BIM in general just really began to, to bring these together.
And so in my mind, these are two things that kind of.
Began to bring them together at, at different stages.
But it just, like you're saying, it, it brought this idea of where we started
together, moved apart and now are kind of reflexively kind of coming back together.
Mm-hmm.
Began.
Yeah.
No, I mean, I completely agree.
I think we're right.
Digital twin was a pretty big driving factor.
'cause everyone wants to, everyone wants a digital twin now.
Yeah.
And if only we could get the, the as-builts as they were actually built.
But that's a whole other conversation.
That's whole nother story.
I'm working on a project right now where they keep saying, you know,
as-builts, yeah, we could, because you know, it's more design and
whatever happened after that is.
You know?
Yep.
The last thing you see is there's a problem we're trying to solve now.
Yeah.
You see the architects CAD drawing or bim and you're like, okay, well
how does that connect to reality?
But that's a, yeah.
Like you're saying.
So then let's, let's jump into those digital twins and how you're
utilizing this, especially like you were saying for these smart campuses
that you've been working with.
Yeah.
So.
The common misconception, right?
Digital twin is like a 3D model, when that's a component of the digital
twin, really digital twin, you know, is the real world, the real world
conditions in the digital environment.
So that is the visualizations of what, the visualization of
something and the attribute information of what something is.
So if I'm looking at a pipe, I can see the pipe, I know what
system it's involved with.
I know when it install, I know the make.
As well as, you know, or even we're talking about a pump, being able
to pull that sensors associated with that pump, you know, to
understand, you know, the flow.
Being able to pull that into a data set or a dashboard or some type of
data visualization platform, right?
So that's really what the digital twin is.
So a lot of, you know, what we're doing for campus isn't necessarily like a
3D digital twin because that might not be necessary for what they're doing.
So it's a 2D digital twin where we have, you know, floor plans for
buildings and we have 2D representations of utilities around campus.
Even, you know, some parking sidewalks, things of that nature.
Right?
That all that information is tied in to, you know, a system of record,
whether it's an asset management system or work order management system
or even third party integrations.
You know, for example, we're working on a project now where we're mapping
out parking lots at a museum.
So each parking lot has a, you know, has a feature.
So we can get a count of parking spaces, square footage of parking spaces.
And it's actually tied to a camera that knows when someone's
parked there, when they're not.
So now we have, you know.
To use this example again, you know, parking a parking digital twin for
this museum, for example, where ultimately they're gonna know what
parking spots are available, what are that's gonna be symbolized in red.
They could see, you know, is that an accessible parking spot, electric vehicle
parking, or just a standard parking spot.
So those are, you know, that's just a simple example of a 2D digital twin.
Well, on, you know, on the flip side, we work with a lot of water and
wastewater treatment facilities, right?
Where.
If you've ever been to a treatment facility or seen pictures of
it or seen plans of it, right?
There's piping layered on top of each other going every which way, and it
is nearly impossible to decipher the meaning of that data in 2D, right?
You really need a 3D digital twin for that kind of information where you can zoom
in, can around, and really see how that piping system works or how it connects.
And then again, you know, being able to tie that information to
real time information, you know, through IOT sensors or other, like I
mentioned, third party systems, like work order or, or asset management.
Yeah.
And I think a lot of people don't think about one, of course, like
you're saying, the sensors and the, the real time reflexive, or reflective,
I guess is a better word nature of, of digital twins, but also just the
sheer amount of networking data.
That also goes into this because understanding what's going on
at one sensor, you then need to understand the routing upstream and
downstream for say, the, the water treatment of, you know, what's going
on with that pipe above and below.
And how do other sensors reflect what this one sensor may be saying is an error.
So yeah, it's just this combination of network and sensors that I
don't think, like you're saying a lot of people think about.
We think about the.
Representation of the world, whether in 2D or 3D, but not that real-time nature
that a true digital twin should be.
Right.
And then on top of that, it's like the predictive analytics in some situations
too, that kind of just builds on that.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, talking about kind of the real-time sensors
and predictive analytics.
I mean, another example is a water wastewater treatment plant.
We're evaluating a project right now.
We've done some scanning, BI modeling for that where they
want to use an Autodesk product.
Autodesk Tandem.
As their digital twin platform.
I mean, tandem's an automotive product cloud-based really is
a digital twin platform, right?
It, it, it integrates with a lot of third party systems, real-time sensors.
They want that to be their kind, centralized data repository of all
treatment plant asset information.
But they don't love the way that these models can be distributed through the
Autodesk platforms to the organization.
So they're looking at an integration with Esri and GIS
to distribute that information.
As an alternate.
So that's just a great example of, you know, using an Autodesk product for full
digital, digital twin, looking at, you know, integrating IOT sensors, predictive
analytics, everything in Autodesk while distributing the model through Esri and
GIS to their field technicians who know the ENE GIS world, not the Autodesk world.
So that's kind of a good example of, you know, you know, your digital twin
question and going back to your questions about, you know, these, these Autodesk
and Esri and other software integrations.
Now, another thing that you work on heavily and kind of touching back
to some of the, the smart campus facilities is indoor mapping.
And your organization is a partner in Esri, partner with
Arc GIS, indoors as well.
Can you talk a little bit about how this all of these things kind of feed
into how you're working with indoors?
Yeah.
So ArcGIS indoors is like, is a specific product of the Esri ecosystem.
It's really like a, an extension of ArcGIS Pro, you know, desktop
applications and ArcGIS online.
So ArcGIS indoors.
Is just a really good way to kind of use GIS as a centralized data
repository for, you know, your indoor, but really campus information.
I always say it should be called RGS campus because oftentimes we're not
just mapping indoors, we're mapping entire sites from entire campuses.
So it's a really good way to.
Give tools to facility managers, safety and security teams space
planners, even students or visitors.
Right?
Give them access to specific floor plan information that they need, right?
So it's you know, in like the, the asset management world or facility
manage facility management world, it's find it, fix it, right?
Where is it?
And, and what is it so I can fix it?
Right?
But really it's, it's just tools that allow you to find
things quickly and efficiently.
Whether it is a new student on a campus that needs to navigate to a
classroom, or it's a first responder who needs to respond to an event
and know where is, where is that, you know, event taking place?
What's the nearest entrance exit?
What asset safety and what safety and security assets are there, right?
So ArcGIS Indoors is just a really great product that Esri has put out to support.
A lot of those use cases.
And just kind of to broaden out a, a little bit more we've used the
term facility management and it's, it's one that is very important
especially for the facility managers, but it's one that I think in the
nineties whenever I was starting, there was a lot more conversations
about facilities management and GIS.
And it, it kind of went away in the early two thousands, but I feel that with the,
the movement towards BIM and those type of things, that it's, it's really come
back, but it just hasn't had that same conversation point that it once had.
So can you talk a little bit more about just this idea of facilities management
in general that you've been working with?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think facility management hasn't, has not been a spatial.
Spatial application in a, for a long time.
Right.
So it's, it's, you know, people have great facility management
softwares, EAM, softwares, and it's just a record in the spreadsheet,
more or less, you know, obviously through, you know, an application.
And you know, you might have a field that has that location you know, locational
information, but it's not on a map, right?
Maps are very easy to understand, 300 looking at hundreds of rows in a table.
Or even just one row on a table, you don't quite understand as much.
So, you know, we're we're building that connectivity of
understanding and allowing.
Facility managers and maintenance crews to under really understand contextually,
you know, what it is they're working with and just an easier way to find and fix it.
Yeah.
I think in the, in the nineties, like I was saying, whenever there was a
lot of conversation about it, it was the CAD line work and you know, the
little bit of attribution that you can do with the different layers in cad.
Mm-hmm.
And this whole other document, like you're saying, an Excel sheet or
database that you then had to go to once you figured out which line.
You'd go then look up that line number in the, the data table.
And there was just this disconnect and a lot of it, I think you know, we'd
lost a lot of the spatial information as people ignored the CAD eventually
and focused more on the, the table.
But yeah, it's, it's great seeing that coming back together
over the last decade or so.
And seeing a lot more of work.
Yeah.
Now it's like, Hey, I got a, you know, on my phone.
I get an alert.
I got, I got a work order in that room.
I can view the room, view the work order, see what assets are in that
room, click on that point, and then my work order system will show me what
that asset information was that what that record is in that table, right?
All in that one, one location.
Yeah.
And we're slowly, I mean, we're seeing that on our campus where we have
slowly seen more of the electricians, more of the, folks that are working
with network and, and water being there with their phones, with our, our
campus facilities and, and utility map.
So they can say, whenever they get a call, go find this line.
They can say, okay, well this is where this line is, like you're saying,
and yet it's not just internal facility.
Yeah, I mean, you know, managers and teams, right?
It's, it's working with outside contractors who come to a campus
and say, I don't know this, you know, I don't know this campus.
And being able to give, distribute this information through, you know,
mobile apps and web apps as well.
And on top of that, we have our, our facilities is also involved
with the 8 1 1 calls for a certain distance from our campus.
So, yeah, they, yeah, they love that.
So, yeah it, it, it, like I said, it is good to see more.
Movement back into the facilities management within the, the GIS
space as we're moving forward.
Well, I was just saying, you know, going back to your original question
of talking about RC js indoors and how this plays a part, I think it,
you know, it's a really cool kind of workflow to achieve, you know, indoor
mapping or smart campus mapping because it doesn't gal all these technologies.
And oftentimes, you know, we get questions when we're doing implementations or
start an implementation conversation.
How do we get there?
You know, oftentimes it's, we have scans.
PDFs, you know, that we're hand drawn of the facility when it was
built a hundred years ago, right?
We can take that, we can digitize it, we can bring it to the workflow.
You can go out there and, you know, perform reality capture with
lateral laser scanning and create the content from point clouds.
It be 2D, 3D.
So there are a lot of, you know, routes to go to achieve, you know,
kind of these smart campus initiatives.
Indoor mapping.
So it really ties down everything we're talking about together because
it does involve reality capture, cap, bim, GIS, asset management
systems, full digital twin.
And it's good that we have organizations such as yours
that are willing to take it on.
Appreciate it.
No, I mean, it's, it's fun and pouring work.
I mean, we enjoy doing it.
Now we've, we focus on a few of the things that you guys do.
Is there anything else you kind of wanna highlight about what MapIT
or, sorry, Map I.T. works on?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, so one of the, one of the newer things we started to do in-house now is
you know, started to build a lot more custom tools and we saw a need for that.
While there are a lot of great Esri tools out there and CAD tools already we were
finding, you know, on some of our large scale deployments, you know, working with.
Hundreds of schools at a time.
You know, finding little things that weren't quite there that need
to be, you know, need to be tweaked to be perfected for our clients.
So we started to do a lot more custom GS developer work which has been great.
And we've been doing them both in CAD as well as gi IS.
So that capability has really allowed us to kind of enhance.
Full digital twin workflow and a Jason Door workflow that
we providing to our clients.
We've got a lot of good positive feedback.
So that's been something we've thoroughly enjoyed doing as late.
What is the best way for people to find out more about Map?
Map I.T..
Yeah.
Ab absolutely.
And so funny you said Map I.T.. Map I.T.. That was kind of
the, kind of the play on words.
When we came up with a name a while back, we had a Map I.T.,
'cause it's, you know, it's.
It's, I it's got that it word in it's fresh, but you could also
say we Map I.T.. So, you know, it did funny you, you, you said that.
But people would definitely reach out to us through our website.
My contact information's on there.
You know, I, I love talking about this stuff, so I'm connecting
on LinkedIn through email.
You know, we, we, we are pretty active on LinkedIn.
So, so we post frequently about kinda what we're doing, what we've been working on.
So by any, by any of those means you know, we'd be happy to connect.
Okay.
Well thanks for your time today.
Awesome.
Thanks for having me
onto the events corner.
As always, go out, visit events, find out new information, but of course,
more importantly, talk to people in the hallways at lunch, wherever.
The state of the Map 2025 is taking place October 3rd through the
fifth in the Philippines in Manila.
Spatial Data Science Conference, SDSC 2025 is taking place October
14th through 15th in New York City.
Of course, if you'd like us to add your event to the podcast, send us an
email to podcast to very spatial.com.
If you'd like to reach us individually, I can be reached at sue@veryspatial.com.
I can be reached at barb@veryspatial.com.
You can reach me atFrank@veryspatial.com and I'm available, but kind to spatial.
And of course, you can find all of our contact information over
at very spatial.com/contact.
As always,
we're the folks from very spatial.
Thanks for listening.
We'll see you in a couple weeks.
Run far from a broken home.
Smile through the.
Great unknown, like nothing's wrong.
Drinking water from the garden home,
acting like we're six years old with the lights on.
I.
To feeling like
I.