The Spatial Connection

006_Steve Kasten_Final
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Kelly: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Spatial Connection, the podcast where we explore the fascinating journeys of geospatial professionals. And dive into the incredible ways location-based technologies are shaping our world. I'm your host Kelly McGee, and today's guest is Steve Kasten. Steve's interest in the geospatial industry was sparked back when he was in high school in a world geography class.

Kelly: Since then, he's learned about geodesy cartography and photogrammetry. Join me as we'll. Listen to Steve and learn about his journey and learn ~a~ little bit more about the science of photogrammetry.

Kelly: Welcome back to the podcast everybody. Today I've got Steve Kasten. Uh, Steve worked for Surdex. Me and Steve go way back a long time ago. Uh, we were just talking about that, how long it's been since we've, uh, known each other and some stories that we've shared over the years. I think Steve's gonna be able to have a, an interesting, uh, conversation with us here, because he's gonna be able to talk about how he got into the geospatial industry, not particularly the GIS even though you do work with GIS in [00:01:00] areas, it's really more of a, I see photogrammetry, more of that geospatial in general.

Kelly: Mm-hmm. And from there, you know, we're gonna talk about how you got started, what got you into that, that direction, where did you get, you know, your inspiration to, to go that way for an industry as a career. And then what we will go from there is kind of how you move through different jobs, you know, what led you from one job to the next job.

Kelly: Some of the key maybe projects, uh, skill sets that you learned along the way. And then we'll just kind of have fun with it from there. And,

Steve: alright, uh,

Kelly: afterwards maybe we'll talk a little bit about the, uh, the photogrammetry industry in general. So, with that, Steve, I'm gonna turn it over to you. How did you get started in, uh, photogrammetry?

Steve: Photogrammetry? Okay. I started out as a cartographer. I had a, uh, a high school world geography teacher show, a film strip,

Steve: and

Steve: a very high technology, an analog film strip. On, uh, map making at USGS and cartography seemed to be interesting to me. They kinda [00:02:00] showed it that old technology plane table surveying and map drawing.

Steve: So I looked for a program in, uh, cartography and SIU Edwardsville had a program, ended up getting a, a BS in earth Science and cartography from SIU Ville. So that was my undergraduate degree. I happened to have it. Uh, instructor, Dr. Thompson. Who?

Kelly: Oh, Dr. Thompson. Yes. Yeah.

Steve: Who's He said, you know, defense mapping agency at that time would hire, uh, hire cartographers from Edwardsville.

Steve: So that became my career

Steve: path. Well, that was one of the two areas where SIUE at that time when you did the geography or back then earth science program is going from. You were either gonna be a teacher or you're gonna work for Defense Mapping time, defense mapping

Steve: agency. They were hiring, they were hiring everybody.

Steve: So at Edwardsville, in the back of the cartography lab, they had this big beast of an instrument. And it was a Kelsh plotter, an old analog plotter. Nobody used it [00:03:00] for anything. Uh, but it was used for photogrammetry. So I decided I wanted to go to graduate school, get a, uh, photogrammetry degree, but I didn't wanna pay for it.

Steve: So nobody knows. Uh, Dr. Thompson told me that the government, uh, if you went to defense mapping agency after being there two years, uh, they would send you to graduate school. So that was what, that was my plan. Uh, along the way, I went to work for another professor. He had a internship with the Bureau of Land Management for the Illinois Coal Mines.

Steve: Besides program really. So I did, uh, an internship there. Anyway, we, uh, we were, we would go to, uh, uh, places where they had just started the Illinois Coal Mine subsidence, uh, insurance program. So, um, he was the, the professor I worked for was the director at that time. They would have people call in and say, Hey, my, my house is subsiding.

Steve: So we would go out and run a, uh. A level run around the building with the [00:04:00] assumption that the building was level one. Um, and, uh, determine how, how much out of level it was, which direction it was going. And we had a, we had a tilt, a digital tilt meter that we would, we would glue ceramic tiles in the, on the foundation and we would monitor the foundation.

Steve: So we would Oh wow. Do these surveys every six months or so. So I did that for two years. Which was a fun and interesting first, uh, first job. And we'd write reports on every house to determine which direction they were going.

Kelly: So the, this was after you were, had graduated? This is

Steve: while I was a junior and senior at Edwardsville.

Steve: Okay. So it was some, I thought it was just silly, you know, part-time, 12 hours a week, uh, employment. But the, the real benefit, which I was unaware of at the time became that I basically got two years of federal government experience. So when I went to defense mapping agency with the idea of going to graduate school in two years, they took my part-time work for the, uh, bureau of Land Management as two years of [00:05:00] experience.

Steve: So I immediately was able to start taking courses at Washington University. In photogrammetry, Least Square's adjustment, geome, geometric Geodyssey, they were all taught by, um, senior employees at the Defense Mapping Agency. So I was able to ge um, to meet people like Bobby Lukowski, Sandra, uh, O'Connell, who, uh, were geometric geodesists or photogrammetric.

Steve: Oh wow. That, um. Had experience, you know, in the profession. So once I was at defense mapping agency taking classes at Washington University, I applied for a program they had called long-term Full-time training. So at Wash U you were still working on it? I was still working. So again, because the government had the, they had a program where they would pay for your classes.

Steve: I was able to be a, I took 12 hours, uh, a semester at Washington University at night while I worked full time. Oh wow. And um. So getting a lot of prerequisites and just taking classes like [00:06:00] FORTRAN or, uh, calculus-based physics that I didn't ha that didn't have as a prerequisite for graduate school. And then, uh, when I went to long-term training, they sent, sent you to Purdue, which I didn't even know where Purdue was, which is shocking, uh, considering how much I like it today.

Steve: But it was somewhere out there in Indiana. I was able to, uh. Go to school full time then and, uh, had they paid TDY for, uh, housing allowance and, uh, you know, that's an awesome benefit. No, it was a great, it was a really, it was a great benefit. It was a great program. One of the things I found out is that I was on, kind of on the tail end of that, uh, in, in 98, 99, 19 98 or 99, the government kind of stopped doing that activity.

Steve: And uh, now they're seeing that, uh. There's not a lot of geodesist around anymore, and it's actually considered a, uh, NGS considers it a crisis that, uh, nobody wants to go into that profession

Steve: really.

Steve: But the government used to stimulate that through [00:07:00] these programs, and they stopped doing it in the, in the late nineties and.

Steve: Um, so now as they're trying, NGS is trying to start a new, you know, establish new data, come out with a new, uh, national datum. There's not a lot of people

Kelly: around that understand geodesy very well.

Kelly: There's probably not a lot of, it's one of those industries that a lot of people are not aware of. So, you know, I think students that find.

Kelly: Is gonna be kind of hard

Steve: Sometimes.

Steve: Sure, sure. And a lot of the programs like Purdue had had geodesy, Ohio State, you know, was a big geo, you know, geodesy program. There're, uh, fewer and fewer students, but it's fundamental to GPS

Kelly: Yes.

Steve: And everything we do. And you know, that's where when you start talking about, uh, GIS and, and Datums projections and units and, and geoids and Ellipsoid height, all the things that we do every day when we, you know, turn on a GPS receiver, it's fundamental and it's built into that.

Steve: But you have to understand it when you start processing the data.

Kelly: It's like a lot of things. There's variables, but if you don't know how to set [00:08:00] these settings to, to manage those parameters, I mean, it, it's gonna give you a different result.

Steve: You know,

Steve: as simple as, uh, I'm a a surveying technician and I have a UAV and I'm doing real time kinematic positioning with it.

Steve: What does that really mean?

Kelly: Mm-hmm.

Steve: Why does my, where does my base receiver need to be and why does it maybe need to be over a known point? Th then when I process it, what projection, what datum, what geoid, uh, and there's many different, you know, vintages of that and variations and those are all things you have to know that go way beyond a lot of times what you learn in, in the classroom.

Kelly: A lot of math in there.

Steve: Yeah. Hold on that.

Kelly: So, so how long was the program there, uh, while you were out there at Purdue?

Steve: I did two years at Washington University and then at Purdue. I was a one year program at Purdue.

Kelly: Wow. That's not a bad deal.

Steve: No, it, it was, it was awesome. It was great. And I intended to, to continue to work for the federal government.

Steve: One of the flaws that they [00:09:00] had in their system. And maybe now, you know, looking back, it may have been that they were, they were starting to wind down on their long-term training program. When I came back, I got the job that I had before I left.

Kelly: Hmm.

Steve: And there really wasn't a lot, uh. Uh, there wasn't a, a promotion or a lot of, uh, assignments that used the skill sets that I, that I had.

Kelly: Really,

Steve: Really, so in about six months, I determined that I needed to, to go do something else that would be way more stimulating. And in graduate school, I was introduced to Dr, you know, Bob Ballew, Ray Helmering, Marshall Faintich.

Kelly: Oh, really? You knew Ray from there?

Steve: Yeah. Who were the, you know, the founders of TRIFID Corporation, the system engineering group that, uh.

Steve: The, the guys that had left the defense mapping agency. So I called up Ray and, and said, I'd love to come to work for you. And he thought it was a good fit, so I went to work there and worked there for seven years.

Kelly: Wow. That, that's some history there.

Steve: Yeah. And those guys, you know, uh, also Lou, Lou [00:10:00] Decker mentioned geodesy.

Steve: Uh, Lou Decker was not, he didn't have his PhD, but he was an Ohio State geodesists. And he, he and

Steve: Bob Ballew

Steve: worked on, uh. The GPS from its origins and, uh, were very, very knowledgeable. Uh, geodesists and I, they were great. I was, they were great mentors for me in, in my professional

Steve: path.

Kelly: There's a lot of technology that we take granted for granted.

Kelly: The, the thought and the, the design process to get it to that point.

Steve: Oh, sure. It's crazy.

Steve: I mean, talking with Bob and, and, and Lou, you know, they, these, these gentlemen, um, you know, uh. We're around, you know, from World War II on, and they always joked with GPS that someday, 'cause they knew the Russians had a similar, you know, technology, but it was, you know, it was the Cold War.

Steve: And they would joke, oh, someday we're gonna sit down with the Russians and, and we'll talk about these technologies. Lo and behold, they had no idea. [00:11:00] You know, today. Right. Without, you know, GNSS receiver we're processing blown and GPS together and these two technologies are, are, are utilized in, in one place.

Steve: It's crazy. Yeah, just crazy.

Kelly: So you, you go back to NGA or no defense mapping time at that time and, uh, the, uh, so now you're looking to, for a new challenge. Right?

Steve: New challenge, a new technology was great. Going to work at TRIFID, they were basically working as a. You know, system engineering and technical assistance contractor.

Steve: So we did a lot of special projects for the defense mapping agency.

Kelly: What timeframe was this? Your life?

Steve: Uh, I, 1990.

Kelly: Okay.

Steve: Um, 'cause my oldest son was born. My wife was gonna kill me. Pregnancies were considered a pre-existing condition.

Kelly: Hmm.

Steve: So while she was pregnant, I, uh, decided to change jobs and, uh, so we, we, the, the birth of my oldest son, who's now 34 [00:12:00] Wow.

Steve: Um, was not covered by insurance. So the, um, Marshall and Ray actually, uh, covered the, the cost of the birth

Kelly: Oh, wow.

Steve: As part of my, uh, employment package. Yeah. So it was, that was pretty cool benefit. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, to get me to come to work for him.

Steve: So what were you

Steve: doing at TRIFID when you were there? Most of my assignments were, were, um, about, uh, image positioning.

Steve: Bob Ballew was a, was a character. He was probably the, the Ed Mikhail called him the, the most practical photogrammetrist he had ever met. And I, I would agree with that. Bob had a, a program, he was all about positioning of, uh, imagery, data sets, basically, uh, photogrammetric, error propagation, and. On the military side of things, that is how well can I determine a coordinate from a video system, a film-based system, a digital system, an interferometric radar, maybe a sar, and the ultimate.

Steve: Goal in that is to be [00:13:00] able to drop an ordinance and, and, and destroy a,

Kelly: in the right place,

Steve: An enemy in the right place. So Bob worked on that aggressively and I kind of became his, you know, he was my mentor. I was kind of his first lieutenant and followed him around and, uh, learned. an incredible amount about how to position, how to derive coordinates from just about any imaging system or any, any measurement system that would, was flying around, whether it was a satellite or a reconnaissance plane.

Steve: The last thing I worked on was the, uh, the predator and, uh

Kelly: Oh wow.

Steve: From the video cameras and the predator, we, we were able to derive coordinates. Then apparently the CIA put hellfire missiles on it and then they blew things up. Yeah.

Kelly: So you just had to be someone close.

Steve: Yeah.

Kelly: It's kind of crazy to think the, the technology, what it allows you to do and the math and the, the thought process to be able to support that, that's just wild.

Steve: One of the things I didn't [00:14:00] mention about, um, my, uh, time at Edwardsville, so it's interesting we're sitting here in the shadow of the University, uh, but, uh. I really didn't like mathematics. That's why, and I was so cartography at that time, was graphic based mostly, you know, line charts, Leroy lettering, pens, you know, you're drawn by hand,

Kelly: right

Steve: So I decided to go back and take some remedial math, but well, after college algebra to trigonometry, calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, I suddenly had a minor in mathematics. Wasn't intended.

Kelly: I did the same.

Steve: Yeah. But, uh, by doing that, I ended up in a position where. Uh, you know, doing photogrammetric calculations, uh, linear algebra was, was easy and became, became part of my, my career path.

Kelly: That was a class. I didn't understand it when I took it. Yes. Then I got into geography and image processing. I was like, oh, I should have paid attention to,

Steve: Oh yeah,

Kelly: That class. So now you're, you're at TRIFID. How long were you there before your, I [00:15:00] guess next?

Steve: I was in TRIFID for seven years and it, it was a very enjoyable, it was very exciting program.

Steve: They started to ha to, to, to run outta work at that time. It, it made sense to, uh, to look for another direction. So I had been working, you know, strictly with Department of Defense career path for 15 years, 16 years. And, uh, so I started looking around who else does photogrammetry? I found Surdex.

Kelly: Yeah. 'cause that's,

Kelly: that's kind of a limited industry.

Steve: It's very narrow. We had also decided we wanted to stay in St. Louis. So it definitely, you know, at that time you could go to Colorado, you could go to the east coast, you could go to the West Coast, to the big defense contractors. And, uh, I looked at some of those. But in St. Louis there was Walker Associates and Surdex, which were, you know, two relatively small family owned, um,

Kelly: Right.

Steve: You know. Aerial, traditional aerial photography company. So I contacted Rick Hoffman. We sat down and the interesting thing was he was [00:16:00] very interested in transitioning from analog film-based, uh, photogrammetric techniques to digital. And I had just worked on that transition inside of NGA.

Kelly: Oh wow. This timing was perfect.

Steve: It was a great fit. Yeah,

Kelly: So then you, so you went to Surdex at that time?

Steve: So I went to Surdex At that time I was a project manager and, uh, and did their aerial triangulations. They had a, a surveyor on staff at that time. And I was a young guy and, uh, he re he realized that he was never going to be, become a licensed surveyor because in the state of Missouri, in most states, you have to work under a licensed surveyor to get your, uh, experience.

Steve: And we didn't have one. So he left. And, uh, when he left, I inherited the, the, uh, Z 12.

Kelly: Oh, okay.

Steve: So 12 channel GPS receiver, you know, that we were using to fly airborne GPS, uh, flights. And, uh, started, uh, uh, you know, the ground surveying activity in the surveying group at at Surdex as well as [00:17:00] doing project management.

Kelly: Interesting.

Steve: Yeah.

Kelly: And so how long did you do that before? It was,

Steve: um, I did that for a,

Kelly: got an itch or whatever to move.

Steve: Yeah. I did that for a few years and, uh, bumped into, uh, a startup company called Image America. They had a, a fledgling digital camera, and, uh, they put it in a, a funky airplane called the, uh, Beachcraft Starship, which was a composite airplane, uh, with two rear engines.

Steve: I went to work for them and they, uh, they struggled a little bit as a company, so I only stayed there about a year, but they eventually sold their camera and their technology to, uh, to Google. And that, that technology became the cameras that, that are now used by Google Earth in, you know, a couple different variations.

Steve: And, uh,

Kelly: So there's some sound technology there.

Steve: It was, it was sound technology. It was, uh, initially based on an old. Uh, panoramic film-based camera. They just put a digital back plane in it. But, [00:18:00] um, the, the gentleman, Kevin Reese that's at, that was at Google working that, uh, has several patents on different cameras that they use today.

Kelly: Wow.

Steve: Uh, to fly and, and generate a lot of the Google Earth imagery that's used.

Kelly: Nothing else. It's kinda neat to be able to work on that.

Steve: It was neat to be part of that and to, and to see that, that technology start up and, uh, uh, and grow. So from there, I went to work for Sanborn, which was, uh, another. Uh, small or a national company, I guess.

Steve: They had, they had purchased Walker & Associates in St. Louis and, uh, seven other companies and they, they created a national photogrammetric company. So I worked in the office in St. Louis and, uh, eventually was the, the manager in that office.

Kelly: So you kind of got to move yourself up a little bit there.

Steve: Yeah, we, uh, we had some transition of the gentleman that was running the office moved, uh, moved on to a sales role at Sanborn.

Steve: So. I took over the office and we had about 30 people doing photogrammetric projects [00:19:00] throughout the Midwest. It was a fun, it was a fun time. A lot of transition to digital photo photogrammetry. We first started with scanners and then we, we moved into a digital camera,

Kelly: So that probably put you more in a management type role full time. I think then

Kelly: That was not so much technical.

Steve: A little bit of both. Yeah. I still still managed some of our survey guys, but it was managing the, you know, the. The, the people in production as well as, um, the, the business side of sales.

Kelly: Hmm. Now, had you done the sales part when you were at Surdex as a project manager?

Kelly: Were you, was this kind of a intro into that?

Steve: I, I had done some sales activity at, at Surdex, um, shortlist presentations, writing proposals. So, uh, there was kind of a natural extension of that.

Kelly: Okay.

Steve: To, to grow into that.

Kelly: And how long were you there?

Steve: I was at Sanborn for four years.

Steve: That was a good, good amount of time, if I remember right.

Steve: It, it was a, it was a good amount of time. Yeah. Yeah.

Kelly: And then it was time to change again.

Steve: Yeah, it was time. [00:20:00] Well, Sanborn, so because they were acquiring companies and then they had transitions of consolidated companies, so they started to consolidate. It was, it, it looked like they were gonna close the St. Louis office, which they eventually did.

Kelly: Right.

Steve: So as I saw that, uh, happening, um, I, uh. contacted Rick Hoffman at Surdex again, 'cause it was about a half a block down the street.

Kelly: Right. There were really close Spirit airport.

Steve: Yes. So, uh, I talked to Rick and we, we came to an agreement that I would come back. So, uh, I went back to Surdex and, uh, took a role as a project manager again doing uh, uh, project management work and, and surveying.

Kelly: Yeah. And you've been there since then, haven't you?

Steve: So I've been there, yeah. Since, since about 2003, so, wow. 22. 22 years.

Steve: Yeah.

Kelly: That's kind of crazy to think about that.

Steve: Yeah, that's a long time.

Kelly: You know, as we talk about your, your path here, you know, like, uh, image America there, it's, it was a year while you're there.

Kelly: A year sounds like a long time.

Steve: Yeah.[00:21:00]

Kelly: And now you look back, it was like a short amount of time.

Steve: It was very, a very short amount of time.

Kelly: And I think, you know, one of the things I think hopefully listeners can take from that is. Even those jobs that are, are short amount of time, you can get some value out of that.

Kelly: And you know, it's, if you get an opportunity to work for someplace, don't just go there. I think even if it's not the ultimate place that you're gonna work, you can still be productive and also, you know, get some value that's going to increase your value as an employee.

Steve: Oh sure. I worked for a gentleman, Pankaj Desai at Sandborn and, uh.

Steve: He's a mentor too, uh, and a friend. And, uh, Pankaj always said, don't be adverse to risk. My father told me never leave a, a federal government job. So he died when I, uh, when I left the federal government. 'cause a lot of people are comfortable in that kind of a role. And I could've stayed there and retired in my mid-fifties.

Kelly: There's a lot of secure job security there.

Steve: Huge, huge security in that. But from a, uh, uh, [00:22:00] a technically challenge and a, uh. Uh, a growth basis. I, I think I would've been very frustrated and limited in, uh. In, in staying there. So taking the risk, doing something silly like, you know, leaving Surdex and or, but some people would perceive as silly.

Steve: Going to Image America was a great opportunity. I experienced a lot of things that I would never imagined I would've experienced. I saw what happens in a startup, the risk that people are really taking. You know, when an investor comes in and says, where's my money? What did, what did I get for this? But, uh, those are all things that, that are, are beneficial, uh, you know, and are, uh, kind of, uh, help you with your growth in your professional career.

Kelly: And at that time it probably, you didn't think you were still early in your career, you felt like you were probably

Steve: Oh, yeah.

Kelly: Along the way. But now looking back on it, you know, that is one of those opportunities you need to take in that stage of your life because it really fuels where you go for, you know, high.

Steve: Oh, sure.

Steve: It's very. Yeah, it, it, they're formative and they, they're experiences that you can [00:23:00] look back so and say, you can learn how to do things. You can learn how to not do things. Uh, it just depends on how that, how those experiences go. We had a, a, a program at Surdex with the Army where I maintained my security clearance, and we phased out of it about six months ago, and I went back and looked.

Steve: So for 45 or 43 years, I had a top secret compartmental. DOD clearance from the time I started at NGA till about six months ago. It's pretty amazing. That is to have 43 years of like, you know, continuous service to the Department of Defense and different, different, all kinds of different roles. And I, I poked some of the guys like Tim Nagey.

Steve: Uh, at TRIFID, I'm like, can you believe it's been 43 years? And he, he had just retired. He goes, mine was 45. Um, but it was a big part of, it's been a big part of my career and uh, I definitely learned a lot in when I was doing just DOD activities, [00:24:00] but that security clearance is a valuable thing if you're gonna go that path of clear jobs.

Kelly: I truly believe I'm the same. And you know, it's one of the things when you're, especially for. students or those that are early in their career, a lot of people don't think about those aspects. You know, the choices you make now can really impact you later whether, whether you can get that, because even today, a lot of these jobs, especially in the geospatial industry, and when we talk about geospatial, you know, I come more from the GIS side where you're more the photogrammetry side, but they all work together and.

Kelly: You know, a lot of these jobs are tied to government programs because they are big consumers of that technology. And so there's a lot of opportunity, you know, and everybody needs to be able to, to think about that bigger picture. And it also, to me, it's one of the things when you're planning out what kind of classes do you take, you know, you were mentioning it before, it's like you had to go back and do some math.

Steve: [00:25:00] Oh yeah.

Kelly: To take you to that next level. Uh, you don't think about how math plays into geospatial, but it still does. You know, even if you're not doing the math, you need to understand what's going on there.

Steve: Well, today, I, i, I, I give our technicians grief sometimes, but you know, the GPS receivers are so user friendly.

Steve: You know, you push a button and it flashes red, and then it flashes green, and life is good. But to know why I need a certain number of satellites. And why? I need a certain, you know, why it's not appropriate to go walk next next to a chain link fence.

Kelly: Oh, yeah.

Steve: Or under power lines or next to a building are all important things to understand that are go way beyond just turning the instrument on, you know, why, why not using satellites on the horizon when I pro in post-processing is probably a good idea.

Kelly: Not just because they're told to do so.

Steve: Yeah. Not, yeah. But yeah, because there's a. But, you know, ton more atmospheric, uh, issues there. So [00:26:00] you're gonna get a solution, but it'll be noisy.

Kelly: Yeah.

Steve: But all these things that, that you have to understand just to, you know, to, to use the equipment successfully, uh, to get accurate results.

Kelly: Well, Steve, I think we kind of got you to where you're at these days. So you're doing, are you still, you're focusing a lot on the projects themselves? Do a lot of that.

Steve: So, my role, my role at Surdex, I kinda wear two hats. Uh, officially I'm the Vice President of business development. I have some specific clients that I serve.

Steve: One of the things that happened along the way, uh, professionally, I became more and more involved with, uh, the surveying side of things. So I'm a licensed land surveyor in, uh, six states.

Kelly: Oh, wow.

Steve: Um. And one in particular, a, a photogrammetric land surveyor. Uh, Florida is, uh, an area that we, we work, uh, uh, we do a lot of projects in it, Surdex slash Bowman.

Steve: So as a licensed land surveyor, I'm the surveyor of record for those [00:27:00] projects. So I do marketing and sales to those.

Kelly: Okay.

Steve: To those clients. We do about. Eight to nine, uh, ortho photo and mapping projects of entire counties every year in, in Florida.

Kelly: That's a lot. It's, it's a lot. That's a lot of ground to cover.

Steve: It's a lot of ground to cover and a lot of clouds coming off the ocean and, and, and imagery to acquire. But, um, so I do, um. Some project management had a lot of sales to those. And the, I've had the US Army Corps of Engineers as a client in the St. Louis district for 20 years.

Kelly: Wow. That's a long time.

Steve: So that's a task order contract.

Steve: And we do a lot of work for the, for the Corps of Engineers. So I do, you know, the sales and, and uh, kind of program management for the Corps of Engineers as well.

Kelly: Okay.

Steve: Um, and still help out with, uh, the final processing and signing off on any of the surveys that we do and. In the states that require that.

Kelly: Hmm.

Kelly: So, I'd like to take a little time here. You know, a lot of [00:28:00] times when we go through these, uh, interviews, we kinda just talk about people's career, but we're gonna transition it a little bit. I think this is very important because for a lot of listeners, you know, they don't know what, you know, if you're in GIS there's not a guarantee that you're gonna know what photogrammetry is.

Steve: Mm-hmm.

Kelly: Uh, I know when I started in GIS. It wasn't until, you know, I'd probably been doing it for a little bit of time, but then it was like, we got these ortho photos and I'm like, what's that? You know, what is, uh, let alone, how did they become ortho photos?

Steve: Mm-hmm.

Kelly: So if you can, maybe you can kind of help fill in some of the gap and we will talk about what is photogrammetry and maybe, you know, we don't have to get into the deep math and everything else like that, but, uh, let's kind of what makes 'em different from. a photograph.

Steve: Okay,

Kelly: I'll turn it over to you for that.

Steve: Alright, so yeah, the technical definition, photogrammetry is the art and science of, of making measurements from photos. So it's all about measure the measurement science of photography. Today, it goes beyond that to, [00:29:00] you know, geospatial technology. But I actually looked at, because I always, always make this reference, if you look at a regular surveying textbook there, they run about eight, 800 pages.

Steve: Photogrammetry is one of 19 chapters, and it's about 20 pages out of 800 that a surveyor. So a surveyor, uh, that comes out with a, an advanced ed, uh, education and surveying will only study photogrammetry. Maybe 5% of the time in his,

Kelly: Really

Steve: in his coursework. So we always say we're the stepchild of surveying, but. it's a very precise science, and what what we do is we take a, a photograph that has built-in distortions from the lens, from atmosphere, from the relief on the ground, and we remove that, those displacement and make it map like ortho photography is, is nothing more than, uh, a photo that's corrected so we can make accurate measurements and X and y.

Steve: Um, which is why they many [00:30:00] times become the base layer for any further mapping, whether you want to. So once it's corrected, I know I have known coordinates with constant scale and X and Y. So I can digitize roads, I can digitize buildings, or I could overlay parcel lines, uh, and uh, make it part of a, a GIS information system used by county assessors.

Kelly: I know one of the things I found very interesting when I first learned about photogrammetry was the ability, like you mentioned, it's not just your xy, but in your Z el, the elevation side, that you can actually get very accurate elevations from the this process.

Steve: Yeah. So one of the deep things about photogrammetry is o, over the last probably 20 years, it started to be kind of blase.

Steve: And get replaced by, you know, lidar for measuring elevations. But then, uh, the UAV craze came along, and with that, a lot of GIS technicians and surveying technicians were flying [00:31:00] UAVs and suddenly taking imagery and measuring heights again.

Kelly: Mm-hmm.

Steve: So Photogrammetry's had this big resurgence because it's.

Steve: It's very, a very high quality functional tool that from a UAV you can make very precise elevation data sets more precise than we can from an airplane, uh, with a small and expensive two to, $3,000 UAV device. But by merging the photos together, you know, matching them appropriately, and then, you know, with tools like Edge Asoft mm-hmm.

Steve: Uh, or, uh. Like the drawdown PIX 4D

Kelly: Oh pix4D, yes.

Steve: Pix4D software. You can, um, measure, uh, x, y, and Z locations at a, a density that goes beyond what you could do with a LIDAR system.

Kelly: I think one of the things you mentioned there, it's kind of interesting when you talk about, uh, mosaic and images and putting stitching images together.

Kelly: Can you kind of talk about how that. plays into creating the final product.

Steve: What Kelly's talking about is when we first [00:32:00] started talking, I was remembering Ortho Cork, which was a tool in the late nineties that, and we had to have. A photo that covered the product size. We were doing map sheet pho photography.

Steve: Uh, and then we would just rectify that individual map sheet or photo into one map sheet. Uh, as we moved into digital photogrammetry, we could, we had the ability to merge multiple photos into one map sheet, so we suddenly were able to fly in the most efficient way that we could and then cut a photo out of 1, 2, 3 tens of photos.

Steve: Uh, initially that was all done manually. Kind of like in and graphically you, you know, you tear the edges of a, of a, of a, of a photo and, and slide 'em together. Mm-hmm. So digitally you put a cut line in and pick which photo you use.

Kelly: Where it would have the least amount of impact,

Steve: the least amount of impact, the least amount of distortion.

Steve: The tendency in ortho photos is people look at linear features. So if a seam line goes between all a building, a railroad track, or a [00:33:00] road. If there's any horizontal shear, it'll be seen. So we move the cut lines around those Today. We, we use automated tools to, to do the first cut line, and then the, the technicians go in and review them and move them appropriately.

Steve: So, um, it, it's basically in, uh. In a CAD based piece of software where you can actually grab the, the nodes and move them to a different location. And the photo is, is rectified on the fly. So you can see the results right there. And if you don't like it, you move the, the seam line back. But now we, we fly, you know, the aerial photography independent of where the map sheets are and we merge multiple photos together.

Steve: 'cause there's things like smoke shadows off of the, uh, buildings or vegetation. Uh, our moving cars.

Kelly: Yeah.

Steve: Uh, that we have to try and, uh, seam out of the final mosaic. Uh, so they're the most visually appealing.

Kelly: So what type of elevation are you flying when you, you know.

Steve: So, you know, traditionally we [00:34:00] had fixed elevations because our film-based cameras had six inch focal lengths and everybody was real happy with that.

Steve: Occasionally we'd use a shorter, uh, three and a half inch focal length or so, but, uh, today it depends on what digital camera you're using.

Kelly: Oh, wow.

Steve: Some of them have a hundred millimeter focal lengths, some of 'em have a, a. 150 millimeter focal length. So, uh, we was talking about math earlier. I use, uh, you know, algebra every day and what I do, what to determine what altitude we're gonna fly.

Steve: We know the pixel size on the camera array. We know the final resolution that we're looking for, maybe half a foot resolution. So I know the focal length of the camera, and I can solve by similar triangles, how, how fly, how high I have to fly to get that resolution. And uh, so it might be 5,000 feet, it might be 10,000 feet.

Steve: We do a lot of work at the Bowman, uh, for the national, uh, the NAIP program for the USDA. And we'll fly at 25, 20 7,000 feet [00:35:00] higher altitude, lower resolution. Uh, photographer.

Kelly: So when you're flying those, do you stay at a constant altitude or, or do you follow the elevation?

Steve: Yeah, we stay at a con. We try and stay at a constant altitude.

Kelly: Okay.

Steve: Uh, as we fly those, we do do projects like in the, uh, Utah or Colorado where there's mountain ranges involved, and we'll fly at a constant altitude and then break lines Gotcha. And then fly at a higher altitude for the, the mountainous regions.

Kelly: Interesting. So I think, uh, when we talk about that 3D.

Kelly: The elevation that you're gathering that takes you beyond just creating an ortho photos, something, there's other products that you can create from this. So you can, you know, I know from the time when I worked Surdex and stuff, you guys can actually calculate volumes. There's a lot of information that you can gather that through these techniques.

Steve: Yeah. Uh, civil engineering activities, uh, for volume calculations, uh, contouring. For drainage analysis, [00:36:00] uh, FEMA, we do a lot of work where we collect elevation data from LIDAR sensors for entire counties or entire states, and FEMA uses that for flood modeling and uh, flood analysis. So the, the ability to measure not only the position of something, but its, its height is, is, is key to the, the use of.

Steve: You know, it goes beyond photogrammetry. I'll call it, you know, geomatic or geospatial technology today. 'cause we're combining lidar systems with imagery systems to do, to do that process.

Kelly: Hmm. That's kind of crazy. It to think, you know, from probably the early days of photogrammetry, if you will, to where we're at today, you know how much it's changed and what you can, uh, interact with as far as different systems, the, I guess.

Kelly: What are some of the big changes that you've seen over the time that photograph you as far as maybe the, the scales that you're able to capture? The, the resolutions

Steve: We were talking [00:37:00] about, uh, computer programming codes earlier, uh, offline. And, uh, when I started programming, we were using punch cards. So the first GIS system I used at SIU Edwardsville, we won't describe what a punch card is.

Steve: It is GRASS and

Kelly: Oh, really?

Steve: And it was, we, it was all the, we, it was. 80 column punch cards. When I started at Def Defense, defense Mapping Agency, we were editing DTM data with punch cards.

Kelly: Wow.

Steve: You would, you would get a card deck. You would build the card deck, you would submit your run, and the next morning you would get your plot back.

Kelly: Yes.

Steve: Talk about a slow process. Getting a digitizing table was a huge deal to added contours, um, that that was a big improvement. So. The ability today to, you know, to do everything digitally is it's an amazing, you know, uh, revolution in, in the technology of, of what we do. Uh, to give you an idea from a project standpoint, I remember we did a project in Cuyahoga [00:38:00] County, so it's Cleveland, um, let me think.

Steve: Probably 1997. One foot, there was two foot contours and ortho photos of the whole county. They gave us 18 months to produce the product. And that was probably six or seven technicians on analytical plotters, digitizing elevation for two foot contours and making map sheets. So an 18 month production cycle and for for two foot counter contours, countywide.

Steve: And that was a million, a little over a million dollar project.

Kelly: Wow. In 18 months?

Steve: In 18 months. So we had a huge backlog for production. Today we'll fly a county with lidar for maybe $150,000.

Kelly: Wow.

Steve: Produce a product in 45 to to 50 days.

Kelly: That's a pretty quick turnaround.

Steve: Um, and very quick. So, uh, and like many things in today, it's kind of a soundbite world.

Steve: Our, our, our customers expectations have gone up with density of data, [00:39:00] quality of data, resolution of data, and, uh, their production schedules have gone down. I think the big change from the, the. The industry side is, it used to be we would have analytical plotters that would cost a hundred to $150,000 and, and employees would work on them.

Steve: Um, 24 hours a day sometimes. When I started at the Defense Mapping Agency, we worked two weeks of days, two weeks of evenings, and two weeks of midnights. Wow. And we, that was the rotation because the analytical plotters always had to have somebody on them because they were so expensive.

Kelly: Maximize that,

Steve: Maximize the return on that investment.

Steve: And, and the equipment. Today, we don't have that expensive of equipment in the office, but it's up in the airplane.

Kelly: Hmm.

Steve: We have a million dollar lidar. Uh, and a $600,000 digital camera in a million dollar airplane, you know, so a couple million dollars flying around and a lot of that data is produced right off of the, the [00:40:00] sensor system.

Steve: We post-process the GPS orbit and we clean up the, the LIDAR data. So, um, that, that cost of operation has been moved to the, to the aircraft,

Kelly: And I would assume the ability to store the information that you're collecting has changed. Drastically over the years.

Steve: Huge. Yeah. I saw Floppiness the other day. A three and a half inch floppiness.

Kelly: What?

Steve: Yeah. Um, I remember when there was the turbo button That, and then the, the super floppiness. Yes. You know, a meg or two meg. Yeah. Storage continues to, to improve the capacity of storage. Continues to improve cloud-based computing. Uh, a lot of things are stored on the cloud. We have a huge, um. Just terabytes and terabytes of data online at the office of, of ortho photo and lidar data that's constantly being backed up.

Steve: Every, you know, it's Murphy's Law. As soon as you get, as soon as you ex expand your storage, it's full. It just, it, you know, it, it [00:41:00] seeks, it's like water, it seeks its own level, whatever you've got.

Kelly: So I think the, uh, probably the next question for that is. You know, what is it that you see as far as changing going forward?

Kelly: Do you see any like changes coming? Is AI coming into play for the photogrammetry side?

Steve: I mean, AI continues to, you know, to mature. One of the first projects I worked on when I got outta graduate school at the Defense MA agency was autonomous feature extraction. And that was look, you know, looking at automatically extracting features.

Steve: And, uh, determination at that. You know, we were doing segmentation, finding edges of buildings, building primitives, and then, you know, assigning, uh, attribution and it was so, so successful. But, um, you know, that was 1998. Hmm. Um, and, uh, you know, the, the issue with automatic feature detection has always been the false positives.

Steve: You can, you get a lot of data, but how much is really valid

Kelly: And how do you identify and pick that out?

Steve: Yeah. And how [00:42:00] do you determine that? And, uh, you know, NGAs determination or DMAs determination at that time is, uh, construction is different in Europe and the Southeast Asia and the US, so it was basically regionally based, you know, uh, because, uh, a lot of the, the, the techniques used, uh, 90 degree angles to define architecture.

Steve: Well, that doesn't work in Europe and it definitely doesn't work in Southeast Asia or Africa. I see the same kind of, you know, you know, situation with AI. there's a lot of learning. To do specific tasks that's gonna go on for feature extraction. You know, for, and some things are be easy, but also for editing of data.

Steve: You know, I mentioned that a lot of the cost in operation today for elevation extraction are up in the airplane, but then there's also a part of extracting that information and, you know, the, the, the, the back office part of how do you clean. For some users, the most important thing is the bare earth terrain.

Steve: So how do I get rid of. [00:43:00] Cars, people, cows, houses, trees. And that's where we spend a lot of time today. There you got, you have to believe there's gonna be an AI technique to use to, to start you because a lot of that is repetitive. Mm-hmm. Trees are, trees are trees at least in, you know, deciduous trees where it's conifers and uh, so there's some algorithms that will, will start to expedite that.

Steve: But then for other users, the tops of buildings are important. Okay. Uh, cell towers are, are for, are cellular communications as well as solar panels or the direction of the elevation of the top of a, of a building. And, uh, finding ways to, to automate the extraction of that information, I think is gonna be valuable down the road.

Kelly: Yeah, I definitely could see that. That was another aspect of photogrammetry that I thought was interesting was that you're not just capturing just as you see it, but the way that you can. Uh, infer and extract out, like you were talking about, bare earth versus tree cover, you know? Mm-hmm. You can [00:44:00] pick out what you need to, to have as your data set.

Kelly: It's very, uh, varied as far as the data that you can pull out of that, and I think AI is gonna do, like, you're, you're talking about, it's gonna help the repetitive task. Those ones again say, Hey, I can see these patterns. It seems like that's a mm-hmm. A great task for it. I see that, you know, just in the last year or so, the change we've seen in ai, it, it is tackling so many more, uh, projects, more tasks and types of tasks that it's doing.

Kelly: So I definitely could see that being, I don't know if you guys are exploring AI in your side yet.

Steve: Well, I mean. We're, we're starting to look at, you know, what applications it, uh, it will benefit. So it's, for us, it's still in the infancy of, of where it will be, you know, valuable.

Kelly: Mm-hmm.

Steve: Uh, we've got some mature algorithms for doing, you know, generic cleaning of lidar that work fairly well.

Steve: But, you know, as more we can minimize, you [00:45:00] know, the human interaction, the, the more efficient we can be in producing products. Um, you know,

Kelly: And more probably consistent as well,

Steve: Consistently, and also more, you know, more efficiently. As I mentioned, our customers continue know their schedules go keep getting shorter and shorter.

Steve: So the faster you can produce the data, the quicker they can implement it and make their decisions. And um, so, uh, one of the things we've seen from a project, project standpoint is customers are willing to spend a little bit more money on a project to get it quickly, and then they'll just refresh it at a, at a sooner date.

Steve: Um, 'cause they're, they're making decisions and then they're gonna, uh, want new imagery and new situations.

Kelly: I think that's a good point because you mentioned before how long it would take to get a project done before. Mm-hmm. And that the ability to turn that around quick is we see events that happen quickly.

Steve: Sure.

Kelly: So you might fly your city or county or whatever today. And then we have, like, we just recently had tornadoes go to, and that all [00:46:00] change know, so you need to be able to have those quick turnarounds and when you, you go capture that data, you've gotta be able to get that out there quickly. To be able to make good decisions from that.

Steve: Yeah. Some of the,

Steve: I I, some of the fun projects we've been involved with are, are, I mean, fun's probably not the best term, but interesting. They're exciting, exciting, are interesting, are, are associated with nat natural disasters, especially working with the Army Corps of Engineers. Uh, a lot of it's flooding related along the rivers.

Steve: And a few years ago. Uh, the Corps came to US and Missouri River and Mississippi River were in flood stage and they said, well, we'd like for you to, to fly, take, make ortho photos and then get 'em to us in 15 days. 'cause, and I said, why 15 days?

Kelly: Wow.

Steve: And they said, well, that's when, you know, the people in the past have been able to get us the data.

Steve: Well we had developed, uh, uh, an online capability for the USDA where we can post data in five days.

Kelly: Wow.

Steve: And using, you know, automated techniques to do triangulation and, and ortho rectification. So we flew the, we [00:47:00] flew, uh, a large area of the Missouri River and turned it around in two and a half days for the Corps of Engineers online.

Steve: You know, folks that are looking, uh, at flood damage could, could exploit the data. And, uh, they were very thankful for that.

Kelly: I can imagine.

Steve: So, uh, we've done three or four more projects for them like that. And, uh. So very, you know, a lot of times they're looking at the crest, but then as after the crest, they wanna see the damage.

Steve: So the ability to, to fly something in a day or two post the data online in a day or two, uh, is, uh, is very helpful during, uh, storm events. And, uh, uh, Surdex has always been very good about helping the community. We flew St. Louis. Uh, last weekend, uh, we flew the, the main part of the, the tornado coverage in downtown St. Louis and put that online within 24 hours, uh, for first responders to use, or even the local community, uh, to, to do disaster recovery. Uh, so we've got an online, uh, [00:48:00] uh, um, ortho photo, uh, base out there.

Kelly: I think, um, that brings an interesting point, is. The value of maps, you know, whether they're a paper map that we have mm-hmm.

Kelly: Or digital maps, you know, on the web. Mappings still very, uh, valuable. It's a useful tool for decision makers and to be able to update those maps. You know, we look back and times passed how long it took to update a map compared to what we can do today. It's amazing. And I think that one of the fastest ways we, we get a lot of that when people think about these maps.

Kelly: It's not always GIS. They think about that ortho photo. They think about something they could look, they might use GIS to access it and do their measurements, but it's the data itself, which is gonna come from some photogrammetric source.

Steve: Sure.

Kelly: And that's, you know, I that know, I don't know what your outlook as far as the future of the industry, but you know, [00:49:00] we were talking about earlier is how many.

Kelly: Uh, jobs can still be available. You know, we need to get more people trained in these, uh, industries, uh, these different career paths because we're gonna be a little bit short coming up soon.

Steve: Well, yeah, and you know, I'd mentioned geodesy, so they've, yeah, NGS has determined that, uh, the lack of geodesists is really a national problem.

Steve: And, uh, they've got a, a group of, uh, scientists, academic and and industry folks looking at how can we get. people trained so that we can continue to have, you know, the science of geodesy, uh, maturing. Uh, and you know, it's fundamental to any positioning system that we have. Operating. G

Kelly: Yes,

Steve: GPS we mentioned UASs a little bit.

Steve: One of the, when UASs came out, they talked about democratizing the photogrammetry industry. And that is really what, what has happened. And that democratization is. [00:50:00] Just about anyone that's a GIS professional. Most GIS curriculums now have a UAV track or a UAV course to me, it's a surveyors tool, so it's in the truck of every surveyor.

Steve: A lot of times those individuals need to understand, um, why I fly at a certain altitude, why fly a certain direction, how many control points do I need? Where should the control points be? How do I post, post-process the data? What data and projection coordinate system do I pick and, uh, how much overlap do I need in the photos?

Steve: Because different softwares require different, uh, overlap just to, uh, make their utilities work.

Kelly: And I think you identified it greatly. It's a tool. Yeah. And you can have a tool, but if you don't put the settings correctly, you're not gonna get the best result. So you need to understand that tool. You need to understand how to plan that out and utilize that tool [00:51:00] to, to its best capabilities.

Steve: Yeah. And it's, it your, so for a, for a young professional in GIS or in surveying or any geospatial technology, the more you can learn about those, uh, foundational disciplines like, um, map projections or uh, geodesy. or mathematics photogrammetry, the more, uh, marketable your skillset will be to to to other firms, to, to the, you know, your successful career.

Kelly: Yeah, I, I totally agree with you that, because I think that, uh, our industry as a whole, even GIS, a lot of it we see it, the positions, the tasks. I don't know the best way to put it, but. They get automated so people think, well, we're not gonna have that job anymore. You know, AI comes out, people are like, well, we're not gonna have that job.

Kelly: AI's gonna do it. There's still a lot of jobs that are gonna be using these tools. AI is a tool that's gonna help us get that. But the job still exists.

Steve: Mm-hmm.

Kelly: And there's still that [00:52:00] need out there. And I think we also will be getting to a point where there's different ways to apply that. You know, when I started to do GIS, it was just how we're gonna mark make parcel maps.

Kelly: Mm-hmm. I've done so much more than that and it's, it's. Amazing. Kind of crazy a little bit. The the level or the, the breadth of industries that we can work in and support. And I think photogrammetry is the same way because you're creating that data that is so valuable to a variety of industry, emergency, you know, assessors, we can probably go on to a number of different mm-hmm.

Kelly: Uh, organizations and agencies that, that utilize the data that you guys produce. And we've talked a little bit about, you know. What could we tell, you know, what could you tell new students and or people thinking about it, what to focus on? What would be your advice? Maybe to, you know, if you, is there something that stands out?

Kelly: And I guess I'm gonna tie it in at the same time, because I'll let you put 'em together. The way you want [00:53:00] is maybe you have a project that, is there a project that you, you look back, it's like, that was a very interesting project within my career, uh, that I used photogrammetry or, you know, a specific technique in there.

Steve: Mm-hmm. I think from a, you know, from an academic, uh, you know, educational background, um, I never liked mathematics, but I learned to like mathematics and it was very

Kelly: Necessarily evil.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah. It was very beneficial to me. Uh, I would, you know, strongly recommend that, uh, you, you know, take as much mathematics as you can because it's fundamental to just about any discipline.

Steve: It'll serve you well in your profession. From, from a project standpoint, uh, I've had a client for years that's Associate Electric Cooperative. Uh, Terry Nelson is their GIS manager, and I've worked for her for years. Uh, she's a wonderful lady and she's allowed us to do just all kinds of different and technologies and, and test them to, we compute volumes for her.

Steve: It's, it's [00:54:00] a relatively, I call it photogrammetry 101. This is simplistic. project. But along the way we started doing that with film-based aerial photography. Then we did digital aerial photography to derive the elevations. Then we flown it with. A gateway, UAV Phantom four UAV an an nafi UAV. We did terrestrial laser scanning.

Steve: We did stop and go mobile laser scanning. So all these technologies she allowed us to use on our projects to test them to see how well they would succeed. We were always able to compare them. Today we do it with a lidar and a digital camera in one aircraft, in one pass. And a lot of it's automated

Kelly: Hmm.

Steve: But, uh, so for that one client, and we've, we've been doing that for probably 15 to, to 16 years.

Kelly: Wow.

Steve: But, um, to test these technologies, test them against, with the proven technology and then mature how we are gonna do, do the products. We did a project for her where we. They wanted to know the amount of ash that was in the bottom of [00:55:00] their ash, uh, leach ponds.

Steve: So we put a UAV boat with a sonar on it.

Kelly: Hmm.

Steve: A dual free frequency sonar that would actually measure the, the depth of the sediment and did a DTM of that one. And we flew the DTM outside the ponds with. With a, a Phantom four. So that project combined all kinds of technologies, all kinds of surveying techniques, and, uh, continues to be a great, uh, a place to, uh, to kinda stretch our, our skillset.

Kelly: That's awesome.

Steve: Yeah.

Kelly: Well, Steve, I think we'll probably wrap it up here. I think we've given the, uh, audience a lot to listen to and some good information. Uh, we'll put you, uh, some contact information for you in the show notes.

Steve: Okay.

Kelly: Uh, so if you want to let people know how you can get ahold of you, and we will share that out there.

Kelly: Uh, that'll be available for 'em. And with that, I greatly appreciate your time and educating us a little bit on this and, uh, we'll talk again in the future.

Steve: Alright, well, I appreciate the opportunity. It's always fun to, to go over, uh, a career and I think it's been, it's been, uh, fun and exciting and, [00:56:00] uh, it challenge.

Kelly: Cool. Alright. Thank you.

Steve: Thank you very much.

Kelly: Thanks for joining us on Spatial Connection. If you enjoyed today's episode, please don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast on your favorite platform. You can also follow us on social media and our website. Do you know someone with a fascinating geospatial story?

Kelly: If so, send us a message. We'd love to hear about them. Until next time, stay curious, stay connected, and keep exploring the world through the lens of geospatial technology.