INTERGEO 2023: Recap

On the first day of INTERGEO 2023, attendees flooded the exhibit hall. (All photos taken by GPS World staff).

The 29th INTERGEO conference and trade show on geospatial technology and data was held from October 10 to 12 in the German capital Berlin. This year’s event took place under the famous radio tower and in the brand new Hub27 conference center, part of the 42-acre Messe Berlin exhibit and conference center. The annual event takes place each year in a different German city.

Over the three days, 560 vendors from more than 40 nations exhibited their products, while people from across the globe attended presentations and vendor exhibits on geodesy, geoinformation and land management. Topics covered included Earth observation and environmental monitoring, maritime solutions, unmanned systems, building information modeling (BIM), GIS and artificial intelligence, metaverse and cloud applications, smart cities, digital twins, COPERNICUS and Galileo satellite services, 4D geodata, 3D cadaster, and smart mapping applications. The focus was on how these technologies and data are used to address issues of housing, mobility, sustainability, climate change and internal security, monitoring for disaster prevention and protection, and the creation of more equitable living conditions.

In conjunction with the conference, the German Cartography Congress 2023 also convened, with lectures on such topics as atlases, map collections, map design, and artificial intelligence. In her keynote address, Professor Monika Sester discussed how machine learning methods help with generalization and Professor Sebastian Meier gave a provocative lecture titled “Critical Cartography in Times of Hallucinating Machines.”

Attendees at a presentation from the exhibit hall stage.

Day 1, Tuesday, October 10

On the first day of INTERGEO 2023, keynote speakers included Jack Dangermond, founder and CEO of ESRI, professor Paul Becker, president of the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy, Scott Crozier from Trimble and professor Rudolf Staiger, president of the organiser DVW e.V. The main theme was the centrality of geospatial science and technology to sustainability because the basis of socially, ecologically and economically sustainable decisions lies in the understanding of the Earth system. This is increasingly achieve using geoinformation gathered through Earth observation and many other sensors.

GPS World conducted short interviews with Gustavo Lopez, market access manager at Septentrio and Deyn Deng, overseas sales manager at Unicore.

Some surveying supplies that have been used for centuries are still in use today.

Day 2, Wednesday, October 11

On the second day of INTERGEO 2023, the focus of the keynote presentations, like that of many of the products in the exhibit hall, was “smart cities” and building information modeling (BIM), including a panel discussion on the importance of BIM in Germany. Related themes discussed in the presentations, on the exhibit hall stages, and at vendors’ booths included connected urban twins, sensor data, real-time applications, urban twins as drivers of innovation for local governments, maritime solutions, Earth observation, and unmanned systems.

An autonomous bathymetric vessel from Teledyne Marine.

At a press conference on navigating sustainability through geospatial insights the participants were Rudolf Staiger, president of DVW, Boris Skopljak, Vice President survey & mapping strategy and product marketing at Trimble, Thomas Harring, president Geosystems at Hexagon, Gerd Buziek, Business Relations Executive at Esri Deutschland and Godela Roßner, head of Earth observation at Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR).

This UAV from CHCNAV can take off and land like a helicopter and fly like a plane.

GPS World conducted short interviews with Andrew Scott, Head of Marketing & Sales at JAVAD GNSS; Jamie Birch, product manager at OxTS; Mandy Clayton, Southeast Regional sales mganager at GeoMax (part of Hexagon); Florian Ollier, head of marketing & communications at SBG Systems; Andrei Gorb, division product manager, Mapping Solutions at CHCNAV; Rachel Wong, Survey & Engineering Product Line, product manager at CHCNAV; Marcel Visser, CEO of NavCert; Ken MacLeod, product line manager and Bruce Shields systems group director at Tallysman; and Morgane Selve, head of marketing at Yellowscan.

CHCNAV’s Apache 4 autonomous bathymetric vessel.

Visser told GPS World that his company had obtained from the German federal government sole responsibility to certify UAVs in Germany for commercial operations, including flights beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS).

Trimble’s GEDO CE 2.0 track measurement trolley.