Every day at a mine site owned by Vancouver’s Goldcorp Inc., a safety supervisor has to tour the worksite and check items off a long list of requirements. It's a three-hour process, and it doesn't end when the supervisor exits the mine. "Imagine that he brings back a big sheet of paper with the action items. Now he's sitting down at a computer and manually entering it into SAP," says Aravindan Kalaimannnan, a Goldcorp solutions architect. "They really want to break away from that kind of approach. Mobility is high on the priority lists." Kalaimannan, who’s in charge of making Goldcorp’s SAP software work conveniently for his colleagues in the mines, is helping do that. He wants to see the day when paper-based operations are only a memory. Read More

Intermap reported total revenue of $5.1 million for the first quarter of 2013, a 21% increase from $4.2 million recorded in the same period of 2012. Net loss for the first quarter of 2013 was $2.0 million, or ($0.03) per share, compared to a net loss of $5.1 million, or ($0.06) per share, for the first quarter of 2012. First quarter adjusted EBITDA, a non IFRS financial measure, was a loss of $0.1 million, a significant improvement from an adjusted EBITDA loss of $2.9 million for the same period in 2012. Adjusted EBITDA excludes restructuring costs, share-based compensation, gain or loss on the disposal of equipment, and gain or loss on foreign currency translation. "We showed a significant improvement in our year-over-year first quarter results, even though historically this quarter is a low revenue quarter for Intermap," said Todd Oseth , President & CEO of Intermap. "Our restructuring efforts over the past two years have resulted in significantly lower operating costs, creating a lower threshold for Intermap to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA." Read More

LiDAR Services International Inc., (LSI), a Calgary based airborne LiDAR mapping company, announced they will be mobilizing a fixed wing aircraft equipped with an advanced laser mapping system into Saskatchewan for an 835 km² flood mapping project north of Saskatoon around the Rural Municipality of Corman Park The aircraft is scheduled to arrive on site towards the end of May.  LiDAR, an acronym for Light Detection and Ranging, is scanning laser technology which accurately measures topography or surface elevations to an accuracy of less than 15 cm.  The collected data will include LiDAR point clouds classified to determine Ground, Low Vegetation and High Vegetation, a Bare Earth Model, Greyscale hillshades of Bare Earth and Full Feature surfaces at 1 m pixel resolution, and Orthorectified mosaicked color digital imagery with 0.20 m pixel size. Once processed and integrated, the LiDAR data will become part of a detailed concept plan for North Corman drainage. Read More

Northrop Grumman Corp. has received a contract worth up to nearly $556 million from the U.S. Air Force to modernize the fleet of unmanned Global Hawk aircraft, the Department of Defense announced. The contract, which runs through May 14, 2015, includes management of the program, engineering work and analysis, according to the defense announcement. The Global Hawk is a large unmanned ariel vehicle, or UAV, primarily used by the military for security and surveillance. Each aircraft costs about $35 million. Read More

A medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) design received its certification from the Turkish authorities at the International Defence Industry Fair (IDEF) in Istanbul. The name means Phoenix in English.At the show, the company said it expects to finalise a contract for 10 of the aircraft with Egypt and should sign in June. are with Egypt. Also, Egypt will produce parts " TAI general manager Muharrem Dortkasli said . "Anka has got a lot of  interest from the Middle East. We believe more orders will come soon," he said. According to flightglobal, TAI is also working on the development of a turboprop-engined version of the Anka, with a payload capacity increased by 50%, and the capability to be armed with Cirit air-to-surface rockets produced by Roketsan. Read More

Synergis Technologies, Inc. today announced that it has earned the new Autodesk Civil Infrastructure Specialization designation for value added resellers from Autodesk, Inc., a world leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software. As an Autodesk Specialized Partner, Synergis has shown that they have made significant investment in their people, they have a solid business plan specific to their specialization area, they have customer references, and that they can provide offer a high level of expertise and support to customers in the civil industry.The new Autodesk Partner Specializations enable value added resellers to highlight and brand their expertise in delivering services in key industry areas. By completing the required curriculum and training, as well as meeting required levels of service and standards set by Autodesk, Synergis demonstrates through their strong customer service and support in sales what it means to be a trusted adviser to Autodesk customers throughout the world. Read More

QlikView Technologies has acquired NComVA, a Swedish company specialising in advanced visualisation technology. A QlikTech partner since 2011, NComVA’s interactive visualisation solutions already leverage the associative data discovery of QlikView, QlikTech’s user-driven business intelligence platform. This acquisition expands QlikTech’s expertise and capabilities in advanced visualisation and analysis to pair with its associative approach to delivering a deeper understanding of data, especially when multiple data sources are analysed together. Read More

After a year and a half controlling unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the Saskatoon RCMP, Cpl. Doug Green experienced something new on Thursday. He used a UAV to save a life. Green’s remote-controlled helicopter was key in the rescue of a 25-year-old man who rolled his vehicle, injuring his head and leaving him wandering an empty field, underdressed and disoriented. Read More

A student team from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has made a strong presence in the 2013 Taiwan Innovative Unmanned Aircraft Vehicle (UAV) Design Competition by taking home the Second Runner-up (Navigated Flight Category). It is also the very first time that a university team from Hong Kong was honoured in this regional competition since its launch seven years ago. Organized by National Cheung Kung University (NCKU), the UAV competition has drawn the participation of 93 teams from universities in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Chinese mainland this year. Read More

In 2013/14, the data visualisation team will focus on visualising national data and continue to improve our expertise in visualising both qualitative and quantitative information to improve understanding and usage of data and other forms of information, and setting it within appropriate contexts. This year we produce documents on how visualisations are created in order to further the use of data visualisation in the sector. We will also meet regularly with key national organisations to discuss the use of data visualisation and support their efforts to visualise their own data. Read More

Unmanned aerial systems and remote sensing company Winehawk Labs announced today they will release a new model of their successful UAV platform in May of 2013 to coincide with company re-branding. The change in company name, from WineHawk Labs to Precision Hawk, reflects a change in focus from specifically viticulture to broader agriculture where there is a great need for precise data collection and cost-effective platforms for farmers and surveyors. “We didn’t start out to build birds,” said Ernest Earon, CEO Precision Hawk. “There are a lot of companies that can build an aircraft and do it fairly well, but as we started to build this internal intelligence and do more research on reducing the training and effort required to collect information, it became obvious that agriculture was not very well served from a data perspective. Precision Hawk is providing a solution to the area of precision agriculture where there is a clearly defined need.” Read More

11 Russian cities were chosen to host FIFA world Cup 2018. Their starting positions 6 years before the championship are very different. It seems that the Megacity of Moscow may host almost any large event at any time. From the other hand the city has been suffering for years from infrastructural shortcomings and incorrigible traffic problems. Sochi and Kazan are cities most prepared for FIFA world Cup due to other coming sport events: winter Olympics in Sochi (2014) and World student games in Kazan (2013). All sport facilities and infrastructural projects will be completed 4-5 years before World Cup 2018 starts. So these cities probably will face the problem of maintenance surplus sport objects. Other 8 cities including one of the largest European city St. Petersburg face the challenge they haven’t ever faced before in their 20-years post-soviet history. Read More

In 2004, Brendon Cook and Patrick Rousseau started Blackline GPS, a Calgary provider of vehicle tracking and employee safety products.Their original idea was to design and manufacture a series of consumer-based global positioning system (GPS) devices for cars, motorcycles and boats that included a tracking service. The pair initially found success by selling through retailers such as MoTec and BestBuy, but they soon discovered consumers were fickle, keeping their monthly tracking service contracts active for just five or six months. Read More

During the second fiscal quarter of 2013, the Company completed its first multi-component 3D survey in Canada. The Canadian crew, operating as Dawson Seismic Services, was in operation for approximately 25 days during the Canadian winter season in early calendar 2013. While the Canadian 2012-2013 winter season was not as robust as anticipated, Dawson Seismic Services was able to successfully complete its first project, secure necessary industry safety audits and perform at a high level of efficiency in its entry into the market. Financial results for the Canadian operation had a slight negative effect on the Company's overall second quarter and six month fiscal 2013 results. Dawson Seismic Services anticipates operating one or two crews in Canada in the winter season of 2013-2014. In early April, Jason Nelson, General Manager, was named President of Dawson Seismic Services, replacing Doug Schmidt who fulfilled his one year commitment. Read More

After three days of delay due to bad weather conditions, Vietnam’s first remote sensing satellite, VNRED Sat-1, was launched by Arianespace from the Guiana Space Center, French Guiana this morning, May 7. The earth observation satellite was launched by a Vega lightweight rocket at 9:06 am. It is expected that 1 hour, 57 minutes and 24 seconds after taking off, the satellite will activate its propulsion engine to make its way to sun synchronous orbit (SSO) at an altitude of nearly 670 km. Read More