Hello, and welcome to this Asia-Pacific-themed GeoSpatial Stream. I’m your host, Todd Danielson, and today’s Lead Sponsor is Trimble Geospatial Division.
Today’s Top Story is Infrastructure. I previously covered a June report from PwC and Oxford Economics, stating that global spending for capital projects and infrastructure will exceed $9 trillion dollars U.S. a year by 2025, up from $4 trillion in 2012, led by Asian countries and especially China.
In more recent news, the International Finance Corp. plans to raise as much as 150 billion rupees ($2.5 billion dollars U.S.) to help finance India’s infrastructure, following a $1 billion-dollar bond completed in April of this year. A report by the World Economic Forum ranked India’s infrastructure as 85th best among 148 nations, so this measure should help improve that score.
China plans to build more than 10,000 underground water-monitoring wells nationwide within the coming three years to detect groundwater pollution in a timely manner. According to Zhang Zuochen, vice-president of the China Geological Environmental Monitoring Institute, “the nationwide groundwater monitoring system will provide real-time information, including the groundwater level and quality, to governments and the public.”
And Chinese Premier Li Keqiang says China is willing to join the United States in upgrading U.S. transportation infrastructure. The Chinese Premier made the comments when meeting with a delegation of U.S. congressmen led by Bill Shuster, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. This 10-member delegation is also the largest delegation of congressmen to visit China in recent years.
That was today’s Top Story. I’ll be back with more news after this brief message.
In infrastructure news further south in the Pacific, the Fisherman’s Bend urban renewal project in Melbourne recently won planning approval. The scale and scope of this urban renewal is said to support 40,000 new jobs, provide homes for 80,000 residents, and span a 40-year build out.
In satellite news, on August 19th, China successfully launched Gaofen-2, a high-definition Earth-observation satellite with one-meter full-color resolution. It will be used for geographic and resource surveys, environment and climate-change monitoring, precision agriculture, disaster relief, and city planning.
In industry headlines, Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce site, is expected to team with state-owned China North Industries Group to promote the commercial uses of the Beidou navigation system. The investment has been reported at 1 billion yuan ($160 million dollars U.S.).
Google launched its Street View product in Indonesia, with imagery available of cities as well as the country’s underwater reefs. This is Google’s largest mapping project in Asia to date.
And Hong Kong-based Maestro Wireless Solutions and CSR released the A5100-A SiRFstarV GNSS positioning module that combines GPS and GLONASS receiver technology.
For today’s Final Thought, I found two interesting remote-sensing applications in Asia that I thought I’d share.
The Chinese National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation published pictures taken by drones of earthquake damage in southwest China’s Yunnan Province. A 6.5-magnitude quake hit the area on August 3rd, and the drone imagery is being used by first responders to prioritize recovery work.
And Japanese microsatellites developed by the University of Tokyo are now transmitting imagery with 40-meter ground resolution. They’re experimental and these images are a bit cloudy, but they do show how small, inexpensive satellites can help provide a better understanding of Earth’s systems.
That’s it for this broadcast. I’m Todd Danielson, and this … was your GeoSpatial Stream.