About
The Alliance for Integrated Spatial Technologies is designed in response
to the growing need for coordination and collaboration of teaching and research
efforts that involve the implementation of geomatic techniques. Geomatics subsumes
the art, science, and technologies related to the management of geographically and
spatially referenced information. This rapidly expanding field includes a wide range
of activities such as the acquisition and analysis of site-specific data for innovative
architectural conceptual design, fabrication, and inspection; manufacturing and
reverse engineering; archaeological documentation and preservation; historical and
legal archiving; transportation research, design, and engineering; biomedical engineering;
and forensic science. As well, land-use and development surveys and cultural and
environmental resource management are improved through the application of geomatics
along with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing technologies.
To this point, the Alliance has focused on cultural resource and heritage management
data collection and the preparation and post-processing of those data for analytical
survey. These collection methods include a suite of cutting edge techniques collectively
known as High Definition Documentation Survey (HDDS). At the center of these data
collection and analytical methods are various types of three-dimensional scanning
procedures. The uniqueness of the Alliance’s approach is the integration of these
new progressive technologies with other conventional data collection and survey
methods. The aggregate of these multifaceted systems expands the sphere of applicability
to a broad range of academic disciplines that span the physical, social, and biological
sciences. The results are diverse commercial applications that involve research
and collaboration with the private, public, and government sectors.
The Alliance for Integrated Spatial Technologies uses a suite of techniques to capture
highly accurate spatial data at a variety of scales and perspectives. These data
can then be used to measure, quantify, analyze, visualize, model, and replicate
objects, structures, or landscapes. Applications for the acquisition and management
of these spatial data include scientific, administrative, legal and technical operations.
Our research orientation is toward the fields of heritage preservation, archaeological
documentation, architectural design and fabrication, transportation systems planning,
and cartographic production. These techniques and methods, however, are easily adapted
to numerous other lines of inquiry and are available to disciplines in the physical,
social, ands biological sciences.
The spatial technologies are used collectively in a method known as High Definition
Documentation Survey (HDDS). At the core of HDDS are various types of extremely
precise three-dimensional scanners that permit the rapid acquisition of extremely
dense spatial data. Additional technologies are also used to augment, enhance, and
enrich the data sets. The specific combination of technologies is dependent upon
the objectives and needs of the individual project.
HDDS is subsumed under the classification of geometrics, which is a modern scientific
term that describes a rapidly evolving discipline that uses an integrated approach
to include the acquisition, analysis, measurement, management, storage, and display
of spatial data. These data come from many sources, including earth orbiting satellites,
air and sea-borne sensors, as well as ground based instruments. The data are processed
and manipulated with state-of-the-art information technology using computer software
and hardware. It has applications in all disciplines that depend on spatial data,
including environmental studies, planning, engineering, navigation, geology and
geophysics, oceanography, land development and land ownership and tourism. It is
thus fundamental to all the geoscience disciplines which use spatially related data.
Additional documentation tools or survey techniques may include ground penetrating
radar, magnetometer, electroconductivity, and aerial photography.