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Humboldt Field Research Institute

Posted August, 1997

Maine Mapmakers Growing with Infusion of UMaine's Academic Talent

When a damaged oil tanker began pouring its cargo into the Fore River in Portland last fall, some people in the Maine Department of Environmental Protection scrambled to their computers instead of the waterfront. They logged on to a powerful new program called the Maine Oil Spill Information System, or MOSIS, to determine where pollution was likely to spread and to make plans for cleaning it up.

The result was an efficient and thorough environmental rescue operation, due in part to MOSIS' ability to quickly pinpoint critical areas for clean-up crews.

MOSIS was designed by three UMaine Surveying Engineering (now Spatial Information Science and Engineering or SIE) graduates: David Pollock (B.S. '91 and M.E. '93), James Richards ('93), and Khaled Hassen ('94). The trio was working for Geo-graphics, Inc. of Bangor, a small company which is part of Maine's rapidly growing computerized mapping industry.

There are at least eight firms in the Bangor area which make products for this industry and its clients. Along with similar firms in central and southern Maine, they are taking advantage of, and in some cases designing, the latest computer technology to combine aerial photography, precision mapping and vast information databases the size of Mt. Katahdin.

In its most sophisticated form, such mapping is also known as a geographic information system or GIS. On a world-wide basis, these systems are playing an expanding role in economic development, transportation, emergency response and environmental protection.

Students get basic training

For more than a decade, GIS firms in Maine and the nation have benefited from skills taught in what Brent Jones ('87) of the James Sewall Co., Old Town, calls UMaine's "rigorous boot camp curriculum" in spatial information. "It gives people the kind of skills that don't go away even though things are changing fast. If you know how to build programs and design them from the bottom up, you can always adapt," says Jones.

"Sewall Company probably employs more graduates from UMaine's spatial information engineering program under one roof than any other company in the state," he adds.

Maine's GIS firms make a variety of products such as electronic maps for motorists and boaters, detailed charts of power line and gas pipeline corridors, programs to manage areas for wildlife and software to perform critical steps in GIS development. Their clients range from state and national governments and multi-national corporations to other GIS firms, local utility companies and individuals.

While maps are their most visible product, what the public doesn't see is probably more important. "The maps are almost a side effect of data management," says David Sewall, president of Sewall Co. "The real product is a system to handle the huge amounts of data our clients collect. GIS gives them a way to manage it and make sense of it."

Ironically, data on the statewide growth of this industry are hard to come by. Economic reports do not list computerized mapping as a business category. However, the number of computer and data processing firms in Maine, which includes GIS, has tripled in the last ten years. In 1994, wages paid to employees at the state's 182 companies in this category amounted to $32.4 million, up from $10 million at 63 firms in 1986.

Some of these firms, particularly Sewall Co., have their roots in traditional land surveying going back to the 19th century. Today, GIS is about as close to surveying as a hover craft is to a Model T. According to Terry Keating, president of Lucerne Consulting International of Orono and a former UMaine faculty member, the industry has been influenced by a variety of advances in technology:

• access to the satellite-based global positioning system (GPS);

• animated graphics developed for the movie industry;

• faster desktop computers capable of handling huge files.

Even government downsizing has contributed to the industry, Keating says. Agencies have had to become more efficient at handling information while still responding to needs for information, disaster relief, environmental protection and other services. "When the federal government was asked to get smaller, it was asked to contract for work elsewhere. As the government isn't doing the mapping anymore, private industry is doing it," he adds.

Mapping Puerto Rico

Maine firms are aggressively pursuing the opportunities.

Lucerne International is currently coordinating a $15 million mapping project in Puerto Rico which will turn about 10,000 aerial photos into half as many maps covering more than a million parcels of land. The Sewall Company is collaborating on that project as it manages similar efforts in North Carolina, Cape Cod and elsewhere.

In addition to its oil spill information system, Geo-graphics, Inc. has created software to identify threats to water supplies. Its Public Drinking Water System Atlas can be used in remote locations to keep track of pollution threats to wells and surface water. Another product goes by the name, Environmental THUGs, or Threats Undermining Groundwater. THUGs integrates data on well locations with land use activities, such as landfills, gas stations and roadways. A water supplier can use the system to identify all the potential pollution threats within a specified distance from the well.

BSB Electronic Charts, another Bangor firm, evolved from a partnership between the Sewall Co. and Chart Kit/Better Boating Association of Rockland, Massachusetts. Working with a network of more than 350 nautical equipment and chart retailers, BSB has become the sole producer and distributor of electronic versions of official federal navigation charts.

One of Maine's most well-known map producers, the DeLorme Company of Freeport, markets an electronic road atlas for use in cars and trucks. The atlas receives signals from GPS satellites and provides both a current location of the vehicle and a route to the driver's destination.

Other Maine firms include Blue Marble Geographics of Gardiner, producer of Microsoft Windows-based applications and software development tools. Blue Marble's software libraries are embedded in leading industry products such as Autodesk Mapguide, Smallworld GIS and MapInfo Professional.

Vision International of Bangor makes software which translates aerial photos and satellite images into digital data for use in GIS. It adjusts pictures for such factors as the curvature of the Earth and the tilt of the plane. It also recognizes patterns which can be translated into building volumes or other spatial data.

Business collaborations cut both ways

The presence of these firms in Maine is no accident. Their growth has been supported by the availability of UMaine's graduates, faculty expertise and computer resources as well as the state's advanced communications infrastructure. Vision International, for example, has worked closely with Ray Hintz, associate professor in SIE. According to Allen Grafton ('89) of the company, that relationship cuts both ways.

"Ray has been very helpful in discussing photogrammetric issues with us, and we have been open and accommodating to Ray and his photogrammetry class by providing demonstrations of our technology to his students," says Grafton.

Some employees have feet in both the university and business. Claire Kiedrowski has traveled the world over, from Colorado to China to Italy, installing Vision International's software and training people to use it. Meanwhile, she is pursuing a masters degree in the Institute for Quaternary Studies at UMaine. Her project uses aerial photography to analyze historic changes in a tidal marsh near Wells, Maine.

The recent hiring of Peggy Agouris and Tony Stefanidis, UMaine faculty with expertise in digital photogrammetry, promises closer collaboration between the company and UMaine. In addition, Vision International has donated one of its Softplotter digital photogrammetric systems to the university for the use of Steve Shaler in the Department of Forest Management. Shaler is using the system to view and analyze electron microscope images of coated paper surfaces.

David Pollock of Geo-graphics credits his UMaine education with giving him the ability to create the oil spill information system. "That foundation included everything from database design to application programming. It also gave me my initial introduction to products, which were used extensively in the creation of MOSIS and the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI) Atlas. It is safe to say that my UMaine education made the vision of MOSIS a reality," says Pollock.

Other UMaine grads who worked with Pollock at Geo-graphics include Lori A. Phillips ('91) and Gary S. Volta (B.S. '90 and M.S. '92).

UMaine graduates are playing internationally significant roles in these efforts, whether in software engineering, product design or customer service. For example, one of the most widely used GIS programs, ArcView, was designed by a team led by Jeffrey Jackson ('90) at Environmental Systems Resources Inc. (ESRI) of Redlands, California.

"The undergraduate program at UMaine is equivalent to several graduate programs elsewhere," says Terry Keating. "There are several intensive years of training in the subject that normally are available only after you're through with your undergraduate engineering degree. These students start out with GIS course work in their first year. After their senior year, they're better qualified than even some masters degree people."

"The true test is that there are more employers looking for our students than there are students available. I run across UMaine graduates all over the country. When you ask the employers how these people are doing, they're usually at the upper levels of the organization," Keating adds.

Mark Bradstreet ('85), director of business development at Blue Marble Geographics, says, “we continually hire directly, with great success, from the University of Maine and consider it our `minor league camp' for growing talented software professionals. With their solid backgrounds, bringing them to the major leagues is a natural progression.”

The key to the success of UMaine graduates is the department's focus on GIS basics. "You find many universities across the United States offering education in geographic information systems. Most of them are using GIS to do something else. We're not doing that. We are pursuing the application of spatial concepts that go into the software. Therefore we are educating the designers of these systems rather than the users," says Max Egenhofer, UMaine professor of SIE.

Poles and transformers

That approach was exactly what Bangor Hydro, needed when it was looking for a better way to manage its power distribution system. In 1992, the company described its needs to seniors in a capstone design course taught by Kate Beard, associate professor of SIE. After reviewing options, the students produced a series of recommendations which have helped to guide the company's estimated $6 million investment in information technology.

"The class made recommendations on accurate base maps, data collection, the use of GPS and system maintenance among other things, and we've been putting their ideas into practice," says Rey Johnson ('79), Bangor Hydro project manager.

Over the past few years, field crews have been collecting data on the location of the poles, transformers, switches and other facilities throughout the company's service area in central, northern and Downeast Maine. Customers are also being precisely located so that when someone calls to report a problem, dispatchers can see the caller's location on a map and give accurate directions to field crews.

The data collection system itself is the result of work by two UMaine grads, Steve Severance ('92) of Bangor Hydro and Jeffrey Cole ('90) of Blue Marble Geographics.

Customers will see the benefits, Johnson adds, in faster response time to emergencies. More efficient line maintenance is also expected to translate into fewer outages caused by falling trees and branches.

Bangor Hydro is also using the system for other purposes such as energy analysis, meter reader routing and generating work orders. For economic development purposes, Bangor Hydro will be able to quickly tell potential new businesses whether or not existing lines can handle new electrical power demands. At present, lines have to be monitored in the field for that information.

Two other UMaine graduates, Langley Willauer ('93) and Gary Duplisea ('76) are also helping to build the new system.

Virtual reality

Asking people in the GIS industry or the university to speculate about the future generates responses about new tools to manipulate information. Brent Jones points to new digital cameras being developed at Sewall Co. to speed the transfer of data from the camera lens to the computer screen. For displaying maps, students and faculty at UMaine have set their sights on the GIS wall, a wall-sized image which can be manipulated at the point of a finger. Progress with virtual reality devices also suggests that planners and engineers will be able to walk through a virtual neighborhood, forest or utility distribution system without ever leaving an office.

"An engineer should be able to design a building or bridge, create a three dimensional realistic virtual computer model, walk out into the field where the building will be constructed, and see the model superimposed on reality using virtual reality headgear," says Harlan Onsrud, former chair of the SIE department.

"You should be able to walk around the building and see how the proposed building intersects with the actual landscape. As you move closer, the virtual building gets larger. You should be able to walk into the virtual building and see the actual real view out of virtual windows. Thus the goal is to see designs superimposed on the real world before they are actually built."

Some of the research on these and other tools is being done at UMaine, through the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis, and in collaboration with Maine's growing GIS industry. Students working on such projects today are likely to be turning them into reality tomorrow.

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