GIS Clone Our Reality: 5 Years at the Forefront of Science

UralGIS LLC, a SUSU’s small innovative enterprise celebrates its 5th anniversary, and over the course of these years the scientists have been performing online monitoring of territories by using WEB cartographies and GIS technologies. Over this period the company has fulfilled and keeps developing a number of strategically important projects for governmental authorities and enterprises of Russia,as well as of Cuba, Abkhazia, India, and other countries around the world.

UralGIS LLC small innovative enterprise was created at South Ural State University in 2013. Its unique technologies allow to perform aerial photographic survey to obtain photorealistic 3D models and high-accuracy terrain relief of mining facilities. UralGIS scientists develop and implement ultramodern geoinformation systems, which allow to predict natural calamities, optimize work in the agriculture and many other sectors of industry.

Director of Geoinformation Systems Research and Education Center and Head of UralGIS small innovative enterprise Valentina Maksimova is confident that the future belongs to geoinformation technologies:

“The instruments which are widely used around the world today and cover various sectors of the world economy, such as supercomputer and cloud technologies, Big Data, Data Mining, and geoinformation systems – these are the know-how, which allow to clone, simulate, add on our reality in the context of society globalization. In other words, we may say that GIS can clone reality.”

GIS are widely used in many fields: agriculture, mining, military topography, medicine, Ministry of the Russian Federation for Civil Defense, Emergency Management and Natural Disasters Response for predicting the spread of fires. These systems are also used for solving global tasks, for instance, prevention of natural calamities, solving the problems of the world’s oceans, and of global warming.

“More and more often GIS become in demand in geo-marketing, the marketing specialists using them reveal the best locations for retail spots with consideration to the passengers flow, density of population, age, and sex of potential byers, and even competitors,” notes Valentina Maksimova.

Among big projects fulfilled by the scientists over the five years of work we should specifically mention a unique interactive geoportal of the Chelyabinsk Region created from scratch by the order of the Government. The portal allows its users to mark the places of dumping sites and potholes, post their complaints and suggestions. At present the UralGIS employees jointly with the University of Guantanamo are developing a similar Russian-Cuban project, while allows to online trace certain climatic events on the island and predict their progression. Colleagues from India showed great interest in GIS developments of SUSU, and would like to create yield maps based on satellite photos.

“Following the order by the Leningrad Region, we did photo survey of the federal highway using unmanned aerial vehicles, we assessed its condition for the optimization of development of a belt-way around Saint Petersburg and the neighbouring terrtories. In Abkhazia, using satellite photos and aerial photography we fulfilled a project on searching for prohibited capital construction facilities located near water protection area. Jointly with our colleagues from V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University we fulfilled a GIS Mobility project and shared experience with our partners.”

At present the SUSU’s small innovative enterprise is working in three fields: development and implementation of geoinformation systems for agriculture, mining facilities, and interactive digital cartography for water bodies.

“Taking into consideration the economical sanctions, the agricultural sector must become a priority for our country. We are interested in providing the population with quality food products and be independent of external supplies. It’s no secret that in some mining and metallurgical areas of the Chelyabinsk Region plants grow, which are identical to alpine meadows, and cheese produced there is just as good as Swiss cheese. We have are strivings and room for development of agriculture, and here broad implementation of digital technologies and GIS will be of help.”

South Ural State University trains unique specialists in the field of GIS technologies who undertake internship directly at UralGIS small innovative enterprise, and in the future will be able to become in-demand specialists for any field of economics in our country or abroad. 

Oksana Kuvakina, photo by: Viktoria Matveichuk, Oleg Igoshin
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