Every day at Geo Week News, we publish the most important press releases from the industry to keep those within the industry up-to-date with all of the news they need to know. Of course, we know it can be difficult to keep up with everything coming in, so we’re going to look back at the week that was in the news every Friday to recap the biggest happenings of the last five days. Today, we have some companies providing key information to help fight and recover from the LA wildfires, new integrations, and things to watch for at Geo Week 2025.
Geospatial Leaders Provide Assistance in Southern California
Los Angeles, California and its surrounding communities have been ravaged in recent weeks by devastating wildfires, popping up and spreading throughout the area. As these communities deal with active fires and recover from the damage created by fires that have passed, we know that geospatial data and tools can be crucial to these efforts. This week, we’ve seen a couple of leading companies in the sector step up to help.
On Thursday, for example, NV5 announced that lidar-derived data of the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire burn areas are now freely available to the public courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey. The half-meter DEM and DSM were collected on January 21 and 22, and they say it can be used “to analyze the devastating fires’ impact and provide insights for damage assessment, which is critical for recovery and rebuilding efforts, as well as for better understanding potential hazards due to debris from the fire.”
A couple of days prior to that announcement, Topcon Positioning Systems made an announcement of their own, noting that they are providing emergency Topnet Live subscriptions for access to the company’s GNSS correction services network to support recovery efforts in the area. As they note, the technology provides precise positioning data for critical infrastructure assessment and other workflows. This kind of precise mapping is crucial for many involved in this recovery effort, and Topcon notes that the emergency subscriptions will be available for 90 days.
New Products and Capabilities
Across the United States, we are seeing massive demand around the construction and maintenance of new and existing infrastructure of all kinds, and recently a couple of companies have announced new capabilities or products aimed at these markets. DroneDeploy, for example, announced that they had been approved for nationwide Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) for critical infrastructure. They note that 84 percent of their top 50 projects are focused on critical infrastructure and data centers, and this approval will help streamline that work.
Speaking of data centers, Facility Grid made its own announcement around projects involving these increasingly important structures. The company announced “major enhancements” to its Operational Readiness Platform, which includes an accelerated turnover package, timeline monitor and schedule sync, comprehensive audit trail, Procore integration, and asset closeout signoff. With AI taking the entire tech industry by storm, massive amounts of data storage are going to be necessary, so be on the lookout for more product enhancements and releases specifically geared toward these types of construction, planning, and maintenance projects.
New Integrations
One of the most important trends in the AEC and geospatial industries is the integration of products, streamlining usage across different niches to make a full workflow much simpler for end users. This week, we saw a couple of these integrations. On Thursday, the AEC industry saw a new integration between Buildots and Revizto. The former provides AI-powered performance tracking and analysis, while the latter manages project collaboration and communication. Now, these two systems can be connected to help improve efficiency across projects.
Meanwhile, we also saw an integration between hardware and software specifically for the sewer inspection sector. This week, Flyability and WinCan announced a new partnership that includes a custom integration between the two products. Flyability provides drones made for confined space inspections, and WinCan Web is software to streamline sewer inspection, which makes this pairing ideal for those working in this sector.
Other News
This week also saw a couple of companies announce their plans for Geo Week 2025. Teledyne Geospatial, for example, notes that they will be displaying their newest solutions for land survey, coastal mapping, and electric inspection.
Additionally, SOMAG AG Jena announced that they will be bringing their GSM 5000 – a gyro stabilization mount – to North and South American markets for the first time with a presentation on Monday, February 10.
- Shifting gears, Leica Geosystems announced this week that they had a new partnership with the Southern California Institute of Architecture to help train the next generation of architects.
