Precision in partnerships: A winning formula of collaboration in an evolving market

In today’s rapidly evolving markets, strong partnerships are key to effective collaboration. Especially in industries marked by continuous technological advancements, cooperative efforts between diverse stakeholders can yield transformative results by fostering innovation and enhancing everyone’s adaptability.

Start reading

John Welter

President, Geospatial Content Solutions, at Hexagon’s Geosystems division

Hexagon’s Geospatial Content Solutions (GCS) group integrates a 100-year Leica Geosystems tradition of building airborne sensors with decades of mapping expertise. The Hexagon Content Program is among the most impactful results from this combination of experiences. Today, GCS continues to innovate with partnerships designed to benefit the entire Content Ecosystem: local and global customers, mapping service providers and the geospatial community as a whole. In this interview, John Welter, GCS President at Hexagon’s Geosystems division, discusses how technological innovation and business evolution are merging at Hexagon to meet the demands of a changing world.

The speed of technological innovation and displacement is rapid, and the geospatial data sector is no stranger to this. How has GCS adjusted to constant industry shifts over the decades?

There are really two dimensions to our innovation efforts — technology and business. On the technology side of GCS are the hardware and software used to collect and process the data. In terms of hardware, we have evolved from film cameras to digital sensors, and more recently, we have introduced what we call hybrid offerings. These hybrid sensors capture aerial imagery and LiDAR data simultaneously — basically a combination of our two major instrument lines. On the software side, evolution has been accelerated by the cloud, which allows us to process data sets of ever-increasing size. Projects that used to take a year or two are now being turned around in 30 days.

At Hexagon, we have not only witnessed significant technological evolution but also spearheaded innovative changes on the business side. We found ourselves in a unique position, working with big tech companies that needed geospatial data for all the United States or Europe. However, they preferred to deal with a single organisation that could consolidate and deliver a consistent product with reliable specifications rather than dozens of different regional aerial mapping companies.

We saw a demand for a global data stream, and that’s how the Hexagon Content Program got started. Our strong customer base knew how to use our hardware and software technology but perhaps didn’t have the global business reach. So, we decided to change the paradigm to handle big projects with the Hexagon Content Program.

Today, we’re happy to say that 60% to 70% of the data we acquire every year comes from our own airborne sensor customers — the regional aerial mapping firms. We do fly some areas ourselves with the acquisition of Northwest Geomatics, KASI Aviation and COWI, but the majority is flown by our sensor customers. And then in the processing workflow, we make all the data products consistent and bring them to market.

So, for Hexagon, the most significant innovation in recent years has been integrating our technology with the expertise of our customers to form partnerships that efficiently serve end users all over the world.

Can you elaborate more on how GCS formed partnerships to effectively navigate these changes in technologies, the business climate and customer relationships?

At GCS, we modernise business models around mapping with the goal of making the entire Content Ecosystem more sustainable. This means creating a path forward for those mapping experts and airborne sensor customers with decades of history as part of the industry.

Our focus on partnerships is geared towards helping them find what comes next from a business model perspective so that they are sustainable. That is super important for us because it keeps the industry healthy to serve the growing demands and keeps important job opportunities open for the young people coming in.

From a business perspective, sustainability retains experts in the field and helps fulfil those new demands for the data. If all the surveyors disappeared, or all photogrammetrists disappeared, what would happen to our world then? How do we manage what we can no longer measure? We believe we can’t grow unless our customers thrive as well. There are not a lot of new companies starting up in the aerial mapping sector. This means we must help the customers we have now continue to grow their businesses. So, it is really about working together in a collaborative fashion.

Can you share some examples of successful partnerships within the Content Ecosystem?

There are two recent examples of how we created partnerships that benefited everyone involved. The first was with GeoSpace International, an excellent South African customer who has been a long-time user of the Leica DMC, a large format photogrammetric digital mapping camera line. In fact, they currently operate the latest model — the DMC III. GeoSpace had the opportunity to take on a huge project creating elevation data for the entire nation of South Africa. While they had the collection capability, they didn’t have the processing capacity. They approached us and asked if we could help.

"For Hexagon, the most significant innovation in recent years has been integrating our technology with the expertise of our customers to form partnerships that efficiently serve end users all over the world.”

At the time, the Hexagon Content Program was fully operational in North America and Western Europe. We were delivering close to two million square miles [approximately 5.18 million square kilometres] of aerial data per year. In addition to cloud processing, Hexagon had set up processing centres in Calgary, Atlanta and Poland. And we had the personnel in place to operate everything. Additionally, we had developed product specifications and workflows to deliver data of consistent quality over large areas. We worked with GeoSpace and adapted our processing workflow and capacity to perform the work. So, this is what it’s all about — finding new ways to help our customers move forward.

The second example doesn’t involve an existing customer but demonstrates our flexibility to partner with a leader in a different sector for mutual benefit. Cyclomedia, based in the Netherlands, was one of the original mobile mapping companies using vehicles equipped with cameras and LiDAR to capture 360-degree street view data sets. A few years ago, they began getting requests from their clients for more complete scenes — basically digital twins of the entire environment.

This would require an integration of overhead aerial data combined with the Cyclomedia mobile mapping data to generate a 3D digital twin of an urban environment. We worked with them on several projects, which eventually led to the Supermesh product, a superrealistic dataset merging the best of the terrestrial data with the aerial data. It’s a seamless view that can be used in many 3D applications. We see a lot of growth in this sector, and you can expect more announcements from Hexagon and Cyclomedia in the coming months.

The Cyclomedia partnership shows how two companies merged their expertise to enter a new market that neither one could have captured alone. The bottom line is that Hexagon is a creative and flexible company, and if you have an idea for a partnership that will solve end user problems, we want to hear about it. By combining our competencies, we can move the entire geospatial industry forward.

Shifting our focus from the private sector, let’s delve into the trends you’re observing in the public sector. Can you share some insights?

In the public sector, the National Aerial Photography Program (NAPP) from years ago has evolved from acquiring data every five years to the current National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP) with collections every two years. As a result, the stakeholders have become more diverse. In some cases, we see dozens of different customers pooling their funds. The challenge is they often have different requirements, specifications and expectations for the data. We often help them to understand the importance of standardisation and to explore their needs further in terms of geospatial information and how to achieve it.

The ever-increasing spatial resolution is another big change that has occurred with NAIP and other public sector programmes. It’s gone from two metres to one metre, to 60 centimetres, and now 30 centimetres is becoming common. Increased resolution means more data to process and deliver, which has its own challenges for us.

"Gen Z and millennials have grown up with the expectation of immediacy, where everything is available with the click of a button on their mobile phone. For them, the idea of waiting years for a map update is a foreign concept. In many ways, this is good for the geospatial industry.

However, larger data sets create challenges for the customers as well. So, cloud solutions have become more prevalent. We have had to continually evolve our data collection and delivery chain to accommodate these higher-resolution products — a lot of effort goes into the delivery systems, such as the work being done with Hexagon Digital Reality (HxDR).

What’s interesting is that sometimes demand drives technological evolution while other times technology drives demand. For example, artificial intelligence (AI) and our ability to capture and process data on a more frequent cycle have impacted some industries and applications. In the private sector, there are companies flying urban areas all the time, capturing imagery and using AI to track changes, such as damage from storms. There are now multiple companies relying on regular imagery updates to target the insurance coverage of roof repair services to homes hit by hail and other storms. Technology enabled such an application, but now that demand is driving technology to keep up, we also see instances of entirely new application spaces opening up.

Considering the geospatial industry’s ongoing evolution, what is your perspective on the impact of the changing workforce?

This is the tough one. We certainly have a skill gap in the industry. It used to be that photogrammetry and surveying were well-known tracks at most technical universities, but now we see photogrammetry disappearing in North America. The major schools have focused more on civil engineering, GIS or geography. So, there’s certainly a skill gap where new people coming into the industry have slightly different educational backgrounds than in the past.

In addition, we need to be better prepared for the expectations of Gen Z and Millennials. They have grown up with the expectation of immediacy, where everything is available with the click of a button on their mobile phone. For them, the idea of waiting years for a map update is a foreign concept. In many ways, this is good for the geospatial industry. As they enter the industry and work their way up through management, they will naturally want to accelerate the technological evolutions and innovations we discussed earlier. But this is where the skill gap could trip us up. As an industry, we must figure out how to bridge the gap between expectations and capabilities to keep technology moving forward. It’s going to take compromise.

The geospatial industry must learn to work better with academia and vice versa. This is where impactful change will happen for that skills gap to close. The first thing we all have to understand is that young people today want adventure in their lives. When I was a young man working at Northwest Geomatics, I saw the world from the back of an airplane operating a camera. Adventure like that isn’t available in most jobs today. Universities need to highlight this exciting aspect of geospatial careers.

We all have to connect the dots for young people that a career in surveying and mapping will be an adventurous one that is also rewarding in so many ways — protecting endangered species, saving the rainforest, and safeguarding the environment. Industry should work together with academia to create internships that highlight the many opportunities the geospatial profession provides.