GIS

Bentley Systems’ The Cohesive Companies

Bentley Systems, Incorporated has announced that its Acceleration Fund has launched The Cohesive Companies, a wholly owned subsidiary, anchored by the acquisition of Atlanta-based Cohesive Solutions. The new business venture will include the services team from Bentley’s AssetWise business and the offerings of Bentley, Cohesive, and IBM’s Maximo to support the digital transformation of infrastructure owner-operators.

The Cohesive Companies will act as a digital integrator to help infrastructure asset owners upgrade their enterprise environments to leverage digital twinsdigital representations and simulations of a physical asset, synchronizing digital context (current existing conditions), digital components (engineering content), and digital chronology (lifecycle change management). Infrastructure digital twins can empower asset operators with immersive visualization and analytics visibility to predict and optimize performance. www.bentley.com

LG BIM Library

LG Electronics is to provide a robust BIM library for building professionals to be able to quickly integrate Revit families for LG commercial displays into BIM projects. As the leading manufacturer of innovative commercial display products, LG Commercial Displays deliver premium-viewing experiences to audiences all around the world. LG has partnered with BIMsmith so that one can research, compare, and download LG Revit families and product documentation quickly and easily. www.lg.com

India will start GIS-based land buying system

India will start GIS based land buying service on a pilot basis to attract foreign companies, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal. Addressing USIBC’s India Ideas Summit through video conferencing, he said India will identify land for setting up industries through GIS-based tool. He said that the GIS system will have Google earth view where a person sitting in Iceland can locate land in India and can buy it. The minister also pushed for an ‘early harvest’ agreement with the US. www.businessworld.in

Google’s $2.1 billion Fitbit deal faces EU antitrust probe

Google’s $2.1 billion bid for fitness tracker maker Fitbit will face a fullscale EU antitrust investigation, people familiar with the matter said.

Alphabet unit Google this month offered not to use Fitbit’s health data to help it target ads in an attempt to address EU antitrust concerns. The opening of a fullscale investigation suggests that this is not sufficient. The deal, announced last November, would see Google compete with market leader Apple and Samsung in the fitness-tracking and smart-watch market, alongside others including Huawei and Xiaomi.

The European Commission, which will launch the probe following the end of its preliminary review on Aug. 4, is expected to make use of the fourmonth long investigation to explore in depth the use of data in healthcare, one of the people said. The Commission declined to comment. Google reiterated previous comments, saying the deal is about devices and not data.

“The wearables space is crowded, and we believe the combination of Google and Fitbit’s hardware efforts will increase competition in the sector, benefiting consumers and making the next generation of devices better and more affordable,” a spokeswoman said.

Google’s data pledge has drawn criticism from healthcare providers, wearables rivals and privacy advocates for not addressing their concerns that the deal would boost its dominance in the online search market and its trove of data. www.cnbc.com

Cadcorp SIS 9 service release

GIS software, Cadcorp SIS, is continuing support for Ordnance Survey (OS) data products. In its latest service release, Cadcorp SIS Desktop now connects directly to the newly released Ordnance Survey Data Hub. It has dedicated wizards for connecting to the OS Features API, the OS Maps API and the OS Vector Tile API. www.cadcorp.com

1Spatial announces the release of 1Integrate v2.7

It ensures compliance of data for use across the enterprise and provides automated data validation, cleaning, transformation and enhancement. It enables users to assess the quality of data to ensure it meets defined specifications and is fit for purpose.

This release adds support for Esri feature services, enhanced security features and the ability to define custom task labels. https://1spatial.com

AHO to undertake hydrographic survey in Beagle

Precision Hydrographic Services (PHS) has recently been contracted by the Australian Hydrographic Office (AHO) to undertake a hydrographic survey in Beagle Gulf, located in the Northern Territory of Australia, to determine the local bathymetry for navigational purposes.

The hydrographic survey is taking place between the beginning of July 2020 and the end of August 2020, with two survey vessels, the Limitless and PHS Zephyr, both displaying flags (India over Romeo – conducting survey operations) while undertaking survey.

The survey will be measuring oceanographic parameters including currents, tides and wave height in the immediate area, with oceanographic measurements recorded by utilizing surface and seabed mounted instrumentation.