Chapter Hosts Conference on Geospatial Solutions for Defense

The conference "From Image Exploitation to Situational Awareness: Geospatial Solutions for Defence," organized by the chapter and Hexagon, was held in November at the Casa dell'Aviatore in Rome. Lt. Gen. Antonio Tangorra, ITAF (Ret.), chapter president, introduced Vincent Rifici, regional vice president of sales, Hexagon, who discussed the Five Dimensions of Location Intelligence, highlighting that today most of the threats are unknown. Therefore, it is important to have technologies that deal efficiently with each type of data.

Afterward, Filippo Troiani, account manager of the Safety, Infrastructure & Geospatial (SI&G) Division, illustrated Hexagon's offerings, from sensors for the acquisition of geospatial data to localization and Location Intelligence and Situational Awareness software technologies. For the latter, he showed the main applications of Hexagon technologies for defense: image analysis and spatial modeling, geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) exploitation, motion video exploitation and live track display, real-time GEOINT analysis and geospatial data management. During the presentation, Luca Macerola, Hexagon Geosystems, illustrated the use of the Leica BLK2GO, a mobile mapping sensor with light detection and ranging (LIDAR) data and images.

Tom Crauwels, product manager, SI&G, Hexagon, then showed several live demos, including a drone data exploitation application and the analysis of 3D data previously captured with the Leica sensor.

Maria Angelucci from e-Geos presented the capabilities of two of the five vertical services provided by e-Geos: brAInt (defense and intelligence) and SEonSE (maritime surveillance). In particular, the focus was on the first of these two solutions, whose 4DVA [4-Dimensions Visual Analyzer] component was based on Hexagon's LuciadFusion and LuciadRIA technologies. In the second part of the presentation, the capabilities of the second solution mentioned above were also shown.

After the coffee break, Giovanni Fumia from Sky Eye Systems illustrated the integration of Hexagon's Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) technologies in the ground control station of the Rapier X-25 medium-long range APR system, highlighting the integration of the unmanned aerial vehicle platform with various sensors, SES GCS, Planetek Italia's dedicated workstation and Hexagon's software suite for advanced geospatial data processing.

The day continued with a presentation by Angelo Gazzoni, country manager, Italy, SI&G, on Public Safety and Smart Cities, with particular reference to HxGN Connect (situational awareness) and HxGN OnCall Dispatch (incident management) technologies, with applications related to the management of large events, emergency management, control rooms, protection of critical infrastructures.

The session was concluded by Angelo Celano of Hexagon Geosystems, who presented the Reality Capture hardware technologies of Leica Geosystems, another division of Hexagon. Various applications of the technologies were examined: from aerial inspections with airborne sensors to ground inspections with Laser and LIDAR sensors to mobile inspections with Pegasus sensors and the new generation BLK series. The conclusive part demonstrated the capabilities of Hexagon's Luciad platform to integrate these sensors and provide very advanced analysis and visualization capabilities.

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