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Of digital cameras, thermal cameras & LiDAR |
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 Simon Musäus, Technical Director, COWI India, in an exclusive interview with Geospatial Today, talks about 3D-city modelling, thermal mapping and how deregulation of flight permits will drive Indian market
HOW HAS THE TRANSITION FROM KAMPSAX TO COWI BEEN?
Kampsax was one of the first companies performing mapping in India and has been a pioneer in analytic and later digital photogrammetry. We established the first Photogrammetric Training School in India (today Mapping Training Center). It is renowned for providing top-quality education for all levels.
When the Danish Engineering Consultant COWI acquired Kampsax, in 2001, the two companies shared common core values – integrity, quality, independence and professionalism. Kampsax seamlessly integrated into the COWI Group and in 2009 Kampsax India Private Limited changed its name to COWI India Private Limited. Today, COWI India Private Limited has more than 350 photogrammetry, GIS and engineering professionals. It is a core-member of COWI's International Specialist Leader networks for mapping and engineering services. Despite the challenging global economic environment we have achieved a growth of over 10 per cent in 2009 and expect to surpass this figure in 2010.
HOW DO YOU SEE THE INDIAN MARKET UNFOLD IN 2010?
The economic slowdown in the last two years has affected the Indian Market less than other regions.
We believe that the deregulation of flight permits is governing the development of the Indian market. The market will move rapidly as deregulation advances due to the fact that many companies in India have already developed photogrammetry and mapping competency through outsourcing.
COWI India is the principal provider of photogrammetric services within the COWI Group. We work in combination with other COWI offices and also direct for selected clients in Europe and US.
It is a well-known fact that fast and accurate mapping from photogrammetry is a prerequisite for urban development. COWI can provide clients with the full mapping process – from first data capture, through processing, to GIS applications. COWI’s air fleet is equipped with digital cameras, LiDAR, thermalscanners and oblique camera-systems.
Our international team provides vast flexibility and this enables us to participate in infrastructure development, urban planning and climate regulation for the whole region. COWI is already engaged in mapping and engineering projects in India from its offices in Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Chennai. Our broad customer base gives us confidence in our business concepts.
DEMAND FOR 3D VISUALISATION IS GROWING. WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THIS MARKET?
The 3D-city modelling concepts have developed over the last 20 years from simple triangle (TIN) based visualizations on desktop systems to extremely fast loading rendered visualisations as in Google Earth™ or Bing Maps™ and further to real 3D GIS Object-Models.
The ambitious development projects we see in India are demanding more than 3D visualisation. We are now adding GIS-intelligence to our models. These models are directly created in compliance with OGCconform City-GML and are easy to load into ESRI's 3D Personal Geodatabases, Oracle Spatial and other Database formats. The connection to existing RDBMS (such as cadastre, fiscal and planning DB) is therefore just a couple of clicks away. Models which have been created for pure visualisation purposes do not offer this facility.
Our concept is to work together with our clients to elaborate a dependable and future-oriented model that is scalable and modular.
Responsiveness is a key client criterion. For fast expanding cities such as New Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai, traditional production methods do not hold much water, as they render (outdated) results after years and usually provide monolithic concepts with labour-intensive interfaces. Intelligent and textured 3D City models in just a few months without any field work using a lean production concept. This opens the way for a humanoriented development in a natural planning environment with three dimensions.
CLIMATE CHANGE BEING A SERIOUS CONCERN, HOW CAN GEOSPATIAL TECHNOLOGY HELP IN TACKLING THIS PROBLEM AND SPECIFICALLY HOW CAN THERMAL MAPPING HELP?
More than 80 per cent of gases responsible for the greenhouse effect are created by activities in our everyday life such as cooking, heating or cooling.
In Europe, strict regulations have been implemented in the last two years regarding climate change. We now see thermal mapping used to identify areas of extreme heat loss during winter time. The opposite is possible during summer, distinguishing areas with cold loss while running airconditioning. In addition to these main areas, we also see an increasing demand for other climate-relevant applications such as pipeline monitoring and snow field surveys.
COWI (KAMPSAX) DID WORK IN POWER SECTOR IN JHARKHAND AND ORISSA. DO YOU FORESEE MORE WORK WITH THE LAUNCH OF R-APDRP PROGRAMME BY THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA?
In the mentioned projects we were part of a consortium and our input was the generation of the base maps having relevant geospatial and attribute information of networks and customers.
We have invested a lot of energy in streamlining of processes and application development. We therefore see interesting opportunities for COWI in the R-APDRP programme.
WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES TO CADASTRAL MAPPING IN INDIAN CONTEXT?
Cadastre and land management are core competences of the COWI Group. We have participated in some of the world's biggest cadastre projects. These projects integrated consultancy services, LIS development and management, field and photogrammetric survey, legal services, digitization and data-conversion of millions of land-records.
We see India's cadastre as a challenge. We believe that COWI's competencies, accumulated over decades of experience in different legal and political systems, can help us play a leading role.
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