^B00:00:12 >> Paulette Hasier: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming to GIS Day 2019. I am the Chief of the Geography and Map Division. My name is Dr. Paulette Hasier. It is my privilege to be up here and talk to you a little bit about the tradition of GIS Day here at the Library of Congress. And then, of course, to introduce our keynotes and the person who's going to come right after me, which is a lot more important than me. So, the Library of Congress and the Geography and Map Division has been celebrating GIS Day for over 10 years. Past programs included things like geographic education, the mapping of the polls, and careers in GIS. This is a celebration of the people and the technology who have created a revolution in mapping in the last 30 years. The Geography and Map Division has embraced the use of GIS and the collection of geospatial data through its geospatial hosting environment, and through partnerships with the Office of the Chief Information Officer, the Congressional Research Service, and our partnership with ASRI. G&M continues to provide the best geographic information to our patrons and to Congress. More recently, we have started to look closely at the problems associated with the collection of large amount of geospatial data and its preservation. This year, we're exploring newer mapping technologies in our program and discuss the applications of 3D mapping and imaging in cultural heritage preservation. This is a subject that's very near and dear to Library of Congress. And after the recent fire in NotreDame de Paris, it is a timely and important topic. I would like to thank you all for coming today, and it is my great privilege and pleasure to introduce the 14th Librarian of Congress, Dr. Carla Hayden, winner of last year's American Association of Geographers Atlas Award. To say a few words, and to introduce Senator John Boozman, and we will also have Representative Bruce Westerman, both from Arkansas today. Thank you. ^M00:02:23 [ Applause ] ^M00:02:29 >> Carla Hayden: Well, welcome to GIS Day 2019. And I told Paulette the last part was the most important thing about me today receiving that honor on behalf of the Library of Congress. And as she said, the Library of Congress has been celebrating this day for more than a decade. And it is very fitting that just months after the tragic fire at NotreDame and other losses of the world's cultural institutions through disaster, the conflicts, that we come together today in the world's largest library to talk about how technology can be used to help preserve a cultural heritage, and to move forward all together. The Library of Congress, as you probably know, has been at the forefront of conservation and preservation. And GIS gives us just another tool, an important tool, to help this nation and other nations save and preserve their cultural heritage. It gives me great pleasure to introduce a supporter of the Library of Congress and also a cochair of the Congressional French Caucus, which fosters economic and cultural interactions between France and the United States, Senator John Boozman of Arkansas, and will be joined by Congressman Westerman of Arkansas. We'll talk about the tragedy of NotreDame and how government policy, disaster preparedness, and new technologies are necessary together to help us preserve the nations, the worlds, the great buildings, the artifacts, and the cultural treasures. So, please join me in welcoming Senator Boozman. ^M00:04:26 [ Applause ] ^M00:04:32 >> Sen. John Boozman: Come on over here. Well, thank you all, and thank you for the opportunity to come over and talk about this great technology that's changed so much, changed our lives in so many different ways. I'm interested in the, as our librarian, who I so much appreciate. Where'd you go? Okay, we appreciate her so much. I'll tell you, she's done a tremendous job. And, you know, there's some controversy in the sense that do we need a, you know, an academic, and certainly she is an academic by any stretch of the imagination. But she also had tremendous experience in running big libraries. And nobody's done a better job than she has. And we do appreciate all of your efforts. In so many different ways, we've been really involved in the Veterans History Project, the Library of Congress has done a tremendous job in that way. And, again, the list just goes on and on, and certainly things like this, being able to talk about these things that are so, so very important. She also, her mom is from Pine Bluff, Arkansas. So, I have to be extra special nice to her. She's still got relatives down there that I'm trying to get to vote for me. So, but anyway, it's great. I happened to be at the cathedral. Well, I was there on Easter Sunday three or four years ago. I was with Senator Shelby and Senator Leahy. And in traveling with them, they were able to make it such that we could sit up close during an Easter service. And it was just tremendous. You know, you can imagine being in that place on Easter, and all of the, all that went into that. And then being there just a few months, really just a few weeks after the fire and seeing the destruction, the devastation. The good news is is that not too long ago, a guy named Andrew Tallon, I believe it was his name, did the geospatial imagery, such that they've got great, you know, literally, and Bruce with tell us how accurate that is, but it's down to like a half a centimeter, something like that, with theso, we've got the ability. Now the world is coming together, and has come together to provide the funding as they go back and do the significant task of rebuilding. So, it is, I think it illustrates, you know, what's going on in that realm. We could go through all kinds of things about the different areas that it is being so useful. And then two, the role of the federal government. And so Bruce, a colleague of mine in Arkansas, actually was the architect. He, and I believe Senator Hatch in the Senate. >> Rep. Bruce Westerman: And Senator Warner. >> Sen. John Boozman: Yeah, yeah. Anyway, you know, made, you know, came up with legislation so that the government could work with public private sector in the sense of, you know, all of our different levels of government so that we could work together and make sure that these things are moving in the right direction. Bruce serves the 4th Congressional District in Arkansas. He's a unique guy. ^M00:08:01 He and I played football at Arkansas. He was a good football player. I was kind of there. But he, he went on to become, while he was playing football, got an engineering agree and went on to Yale and became, what's your degree, forest management? >> Rep. Bruce Westerman: Forestry. >> Sen. John Boozman: Forestry, yeah. So, it's interesting. I'm on the, I'm very active in the ag community, and I go to all these plants, and I go to all these different plants that have to do with timber and this and that. And as I go through, it turns out that he, in his prior work, designed most of those plants. So, he's a guy that truly is a Renaissance man in the sense of having his finger in lots of different things. But I really do applaud him for, you know, jumping in feetfirst with this. We've got so much technology right now, it's difficult to get ahead of it in the sense of, you know, how we can be supportive as a government. And certainly the government can be supported and should be supported. But it's a catchup game. And guys like Bruce are out there on the forefront making it such that we can put some things in place so we can do a better job. Bruce? ^M00:09:20 [ Applause ] ^M00:09:25 >> Rep. Bruce Westerman: Thank, thank you, Senator Boozman. It's a real honor to be here today with the senior senator from my state, just a marvelous guy that does so much for not just the State of Arkansas, but for our country. And if you don't know John Boozman, you need to get to know him because he's the real deal, and he makes things happen. He walks tall and carries a big stick. He doesn't talk a lot, but he gets things done. And it's such an honor to have him as the senior senator from my state. It's an honor to be here in this building, such a magnificent building. I tell people, it is the finest piece of architecture in the City of Washington, D.C. Senator Boozman and I were here last night for a congressional dialogue dinner, which are my favorite events that we get to attend here. It was on the Declaration of Independence. And it's great to be able to come together in such a remarkable place and learn more about the history of this great country. Now, today, you would, if you told somebody you were in D.C. for a GIS conference, they would say, what is that, geospatial impeachment systems? That seems to be the only thing that's being talked about. I came from an interview over in the Cannon Rotunda. And there, I don't think you could squeeze another TV camera in over there. So, there's anow, there are other things going on in the world country to the popular belief. And I'm glad to be with you, talking about things that are, that are significant and meaningful to our country. Senator Boozman mentioned the geospatial data act. And I was honored to get to work on that. That really, I was just kind of the mechanism there. We have a guy named Shelby Johnson from Arkansas. Is Shelby here by any chance today? He comes to a lot of these meetings. But he's the GIS director for the state. And he came to me with the, with the idea, and it was just great to work with him, and the industry, to get this, this act in place to try to get common platforms across the federal government. Senator mentioned that I did engineering and forestry work. And both of these rely heavily on GIS data. Even more so today, I know 10 years ago, we were looking at technology to take into existing factories, and, you know, set up a standard, and be able to produce a threedimensional model of what's in the existing factory without ever having to measure anything. ^M00:12:00 And I've spent my fair share of time crawling around in dirty manufacturing facilities with a tape measure and a surveying instrument. So, that's, that's marvelous technology that part of understand the cathedral actually had mapping like that done on it and were able to reproduce what was there, at least in a 3D model. We're continuing to work on GIS policy. Representative Khan from Wisconsin and I introduced the FLAIR Act. This is to use one of the tools would be geospatial data to help list the assets that the federal government owns. We don't, we really don't know how much land we have, how many buildings we have. And you can't really get an accounting of that if you would like to get it. So, for us to be able to do a better job of managing our federal assets, we first need to be able to understand exactly what our federal assets are. I know there's an issue in my hometown of Hot Springs, Arkansas with an old hospital that was called the Army Navy Hospital that the federal government deeded it to the state back in the 1960s. The state no longer needs it. And we're trying to figure out who gets it back. Is it the federal government? Is it the Department of Defense? Is it the park service? And it depends on what they and who you ask, who actually gets that asset. Or is it the GSA? But I'm telling you, what you do is critical. People don't realize that every day of their life is affected by geospatial data now. And just from the map on your phone on lots and lots of other things that we do, geospatial data plays a very important part in it. It may not be quite as prevalent topic on the Hill today, but it is important, and it's an honor to be here with you and with Senator Boozman. And I want to, want to welcome you, and wish you good tidings and a great day. >> Sen. John Boozman: Yeah, we'll be glad to, we'll be glad to, be glad to answer any questions. I'm so grateful for the map. I got elected to Congress in 2001. And back then, you know, that really didn't exist, or to any degree at all. So, I'm coming from, I had never been to Washington until I got elected. And so I'm coming up here, and my wife is up here, and it's not like in Arkansas, you know, you miss your, you miss your turn off in Arkansas, you go a couple blocks, and then you turn around and come back. You miss your turn off here, and you're in big trouble. >> Rep. Bruce Westerman: You'll go to New York. >> Sen. John Boozman: Exactly. And so, you know, my wife would cry, you know, I'd get, it was, it was wild. So, in fact, my daughter came up, and she actually went to school here for a semester. She thought it would be great to finish out her junior year. She went to T.C. Williams of Remember the Titans school over in Old Town, Alexandria, in that area. And so they were here. And then they, they left me. And I said, look, my daughter is learning to drive, and I said, when she's in the car, make sure she's driving. You know, I want her to get, you know, where she can drive with us, because I knew she would be. So, she was driving all the time, did a great job. Well, they left me, and then I was having to come into town. And I'd get so frustrated. Literally, many times, I would take and have to park my car, and then get a cab to take me, because I was late, because I was totally lost. Then I was afraid that I would lose my car, that I wouldn't remember where it was at. So, any easy questions you have, or really any comments, we're here to learn. Anything you think that we need to be doing, you know, and can be helpful as a government, we'd love to hear some comments or constructive criticism. Yes, ma'am? ^M00:16:07 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:16:39 No, I agree totally. And, you know, that's just, for those of you that are in business and things, you know, really in any situation, that's just a given. You know? You kind of know what you got. I was the, on the subcommittee on appropriations that had to do with the OPM breach. It was the same deal, you know? They didn't know how many servers they had. They didn't know, you know, what kind of equipment they had. It was scattered all over the place. So, that really is the first start. And that's the importance of people like Bruce working so hard. You want to comment on what you're trying to do with that? >> Rep. Bruce Westerman: Well, I would just say I wholeheartedly agree. And, you know, you can look at that socially, like if we want to get something done, we have to talk and communicate with each other. But when we look at it from an electronic standpoint, if you will, it's like we've got a lot of different agencies speaking different languages. And the purpose of the Geospatial Data Act was to at least get everybody speaking the same language and on the same platform, which is obviously key in communication. But we could be so much more efficient and so much more effective if we would just use the tools that we've got out there now. The Department of Defense and Homeland Security, they're still going to be speaking a different language when all is said and done. We had to carve that out of the Geospatial Data Act, which I certainly understand why. But when you're talking about interior or ag, there's no reason we shouldn't be on the same platform as being able to share data and work together on that. >> Sen. John Boozman: Yeah, a good example of that is the, is the, in the Veterans Administration DLD, we've talked about for years and years, you know, they're able to communicate, pushing medical records and things as people get out, we're going to get $16 billion over the next 10 years, you know, trying to get that accomplished. To put that in perspective, an aircraft carrier costs about $13 billion, so that's a lot of money. But, and it's not only that, it's so that they can communicate with hospitals and things. And that really is the importance of trying to get a system that, you know, does marry into each other. But you're right. One of the, one of the problems that we have with government, I think probably at all levels of government, it's just kind of the nature of the beast is breaking down these silos, you know, where you're communicating, and could be so much more efficient. Yes, sir? ^M00:19:12 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:19:16 And I think there's one for everything else. >> Re. Bruce Westerman: GIS, and what was the question? >> Sen. John Boozman: GIS caucus. >> Rep. Bruce Westerman: I'm sure if there is, Senator and I are both members of it. >> Sen. John Boozman: I don't, I don't, are you aware of one? >> Rep. Bruce Westerman: I think there are, there's a caucus that may include more than geospatials. [ Inaudible ] >> Sen. John Boozman: Yeah, yeah, yeah, very good. Good. No, that, you know, and again, these aren't glamorous things. But these are, you know, these are the underpinning of things. You know, they're so, so very important. So, I think you make a good point that, you know, we need to look in and make sure that they have the profile. And the other thing too is that, you know, for the average congressman and the average senator, they've got lots on their plate and this and that. And sometimes these things are not that easy to understand. And yet as you pointed out, you know, a person that's been around government for a long time, experienced a lot of different situations, they can understand that, you know, that we need to, we need these platforms to be able to communicate. >> Rep. Bruce Westerman: And it's extremely important. I believe in putting together a good policy, especially the senator's, the work he does in agriculture. I'm on the Natural Resources Committee in the House, and being the only forester in the House, I work on a lot of national resources policy. There's a report came out of Switzerland that said that if we were to plant a trillion trees across the globe, we could reduce 10 years of global carbon emissions, planting a trillion trees. So, you know, when I start looking at policy, and what can we do to get more trees in the country, the first thing you want to know is how many trees are here today. And, you know, forestry is one of the places where GIS data was probably first used. And we, if you're curious, we've got the forest service estimates there's 300 billion trees in the United States. So, if we were going to plant a trillion trees here, it would take, it would be three times more than we've currently got. But it's data like that. The more refined you get it, not only, you know, the number of trees, but where are these trees located. Where's land that we could put more trees on? Where's maybe wetlands that have, that could be converted back to forest? Where are marginal farmlands? Those things are very important for policy decisions. So, it just is another illustration of how what you do and what happens in the geospatial world affects things like policy that we're working on. >> Sen. John Boozman: Yeah, in regard to the cathedral, the work that they're doing there, one of the major problems has been, you know, is it safe, you know, in different areas. And so the structure is damaged mightily. And then they were working on it when it was damaged in the, all of the, all of the things, all of the, all the structures in place, you know, so that they could climb up, all that just melted, you know, was a big mess. But the thing that's helped them that way is drone technology, you know, being able to use drones and this technology. And then, again, going in places through that technology where you couldn't go in and measure with anything because it wasn't safe for a person to go in there. And so there really is, it's just, I think that the ability in the art world, and every aspect of our life, it really is unlimited, as we see this developing at such a tremendous rate. Anybody else got any questions or comments? Yes, ma'am? ^M00:23:15 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:23:26 Yeah, I think it's going really well. Our librarian mentioned that I'm a cochair of the French caucus myself. And Senator Khan's in the Senate. And I think that collaboration has been very good. As always, you know, you get into situations where you've got to decide, you know, exactly, you know, first of all, it's important to raise the dollars. And I think that's going to be okay, you know, there's so many countries that are willing to kick in, the countries, again, we all realize how important the structure is. And yet, you know, there's a little bit of discussion right now is exactly how you build it back. And do you do it, you know, exactly the same? Do you change things a little bit? And so I think, I think that's going to be the biggest hurdle to overcome. They're working really hard on that. And it will be overcome. And so what they'd like to do, the President of France would like to get it done in five years. Some people say that's a little ambitious. And yet I think it really does speak to the commitment and how important, you know, this structure is. And so hopefully it won't go on the, you know, back on the backburner in the sense of us forgetting about it. But I don't think so. Like I said, I think it's moving in the right direction. Anybody else? Well, thank you so much for letting us come and be with you. Again, if anything does come up, if you've got any questions or anything we can do to help, be sure to get let us know. We're easy to find. And we'll help in any way that we can. ^M00:25:13 [ Applause ] ^M00:25:19 Thank you all. >> Rep. Bruce Westerman: Thanks. ^M00:25:23 ^M00:25:44 >> Tim St. Onge: Good morning, everyone. Thank you all for coming. And a special thanks to Senator Boozman, Congressman Westerman, Dr. Hayden, and Dr. Hasier for their opening remarks this morning. My name is Tim St. Onge, and I'm a cartographer in the Geography and Map Division here at the Library of Congress. And I'll be working to try to keep our, the rest of our program today on track. So, our overall plan for the morning session is two presentations that should take us to about 11:30 or so, at which point we will be breaking for lunch. And then after lunch, our afternoon session will begin at approximately 1:00 p.m. And then at 2:30, we will have a question and answer session for the full group of speakers. So, if you have questions along the way for different presenters, we'd love for you to bring those up at that session so that we can have a broader discussion about GIS in cultural heritage preservation. At the end of the day, we will have an open house in the Geography and Map Division. That will be going on from about 3:30 to 4:30. Geography and Map Division, if you are visiting us, is in the Madison Building across the street on the basement level, and that will give you an opportunity to peruse some of our cardiographic treasures. So, the exact schedule on the timings is slightly subject to change. We want to give our presenters plenty of time to, you know, to discuss their involvement in GIS and 3D mapping and lots of other topics. So, if those timings change, I will let you know, but that's the general plan for the day. I also want to note that in case you have your staff, or you have other access to [inaudible], we are livestreaming this event on YouTube, on the Library of Congress's YouTube channel, so if you'd like to watch some of that, some of this event remotely, that's an option for you as well. So, without further ado, I will be introducing our first speaker of the morning. John Hessler is a specialist in computational geography in GIS here at the Library of Congress, a colleague of mine in the Geography and Map Division, and the founder and principal investigator at the Topology Lab for Virtual Geographic Environments at Johns Hopkins University. He will be presenting Video Ergo Co, NotreDame, Computer Vision, and the Future of GIS in Cultural Heritage Preservation. So, please welcome John Hessler. ^M00:28:22 [ Applause ] ^M00:28:27 >> John Hessler: Well, thanks, everyone, for coming. Appreciate the attendance. We had our little policy talk, and now it's kind of time to get down into the data. Before I begin, the Senator mentioned Andrew Tallon, and I need to actually speak about him for just a second. Andrew is responsible for laser imaging many of the cathedrals in France. He passed away last year. And the data that I'm going to present was his private data for quite some time. A company called Hexagon Geosciences released that data to the public in April of this year after the fire. This is a huge amount of data. It is the most detailed laser imaging we have of NotreDame. And for that matter, for almost any cathedral. And you'll see some of that processed here. So, so, that ^M00:29:24 ^M00:29:26 There we go. As Tim said, this is data that is coming from two different places. Not only from my work here at the library, but a lot of the data processing that you're going to see is done at the topology lab. It's done in the True Cloud system. Just a little shoutout to the people who kind of work on this a little bit. And so some of the stuff that you're going to see is a cross between the hexagon data release and Andrew's work, which has also been made public in several ways. But most of that data remains kind of unprocessed and sort of out of public eye. ^M00:30:05 And you'll see why in just a bit. So, before I begin with that, when we're talking about GIS and we're talking about the integration of GIS and 3D modeling and cultural heritage modeling, we're really talking about a synthesis that's taken place in these fields in just the last few years. It's not been that long ago that we weren't able to take this very detailed 3D data and actually put it on something of an accuracy that's going to allow us to rebuild the cathedral or look at the various aspects of the damage that actually occurred during a natural disaster or a fire. In the 19th century, 3D modeling was something that was all the rage. What you're seeing here is Hadrian's Column, actually in Rome. But then a 3D model of it that is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. This is something that throughout the 19th century was something extremely important. Hadrian's Column, in this case, the one that is actually in Rome, is nearly unreadable, where the one that is actually in the Victorian Albert Museum is fairly pristine. And we'll talk about that sort of idea of the digital preservation, or the preservation of a monument through laser imaging. Violette Leduc, you've probably heard his name several times as the NotreDame fire happened. He was one of the restorers of the cathedral, the one who put the wooden spire that dramatically collapsed in the building that actually wasn't part of the original plan for the cathedral. The cathedral, of course, is this massive palimpsest. But Violette Leduc also did 3D modeling. He made models of various capitals and things like that using Plaster of Paris. This is actually the cathedral in Amien where he actually used plaster casts from another cathedral to reconstruct the capitals. So, we don't really know where these particular images came from. They shouldn't be from Amien. But, but Violette Leduc used his stash of 3D models to restore the capitals in the cathedral. And this is one of the, one of the restorations that he did. One of the questions that we'll have when we get into some of the NotreDame data will be, you know, what is a restoration here? What is, what are we actually restoring to? The laser imaging that has been done on NotreDame is really a palimpsest of things from centuries of work. ^M00:32:37 And so where do we go? How far back do we go? And what, what is it that we restore? So, one of the things that I'm going to talk a little bit about to sort of set the stage for the rest of the talks here is kind of about cultural preservation and digital cultural preservation at it's kind of practiced. One of the most interesting theorists in this area right now is Rem Koolhaas, the great architect that some people may have heard of. He wrote a book, a series of lectures in Columbia University called Preservation is Overtaking Us, which is an amazing reflection on what preservation actually is when we're talking about things like buildings. The idea that preservation is overtaking us came to him when he designed a building, and upon the ribbon cutting, it was immediately classified as a historical monument. And so there was no time between the actual commissioning of the building and it becoming a historical monument. We're beginning to see that kind of creep now as we begin to preserve buildings that are closer and closer to our time. And he had this idea that this, this might, at some point, become somewhat problematic. And we'll talk a little bit about that in just a bit. Now, one of the things that building preservation does is it creates relevance without creating a new form. And this is one of the things that architects have talked about from some time when they're talking about restoration. You're basically making a building relevant by preserving it by digital scanning it or by doing some kind of preservation work on it. But you're not making it into a new form externally. I mean, as an object. You're just restoring it to what it was. One of the things we'll talk about in just a minute is what does that actually mean. We're actually taking these buildings out of what their social context was and giving them a new social context. And so that's kind of an important thing when we're considering NotreDame and the restorations of buildings like that. What do we, what are we storing to, and who for? So, when we talk about digital restoration, we're basically digitizing a building. In this case, we're looking at Palmyra as it was and Palmyra as it is, a photograph of it. We know that was actually destroyed in the sort of, sort of cultural heritage genocide that's taken place over the last couple of years. And when we digitize an object like this, and then we reproduce it, we take it out of its previous social context. In other words, we kind of alter the meaning of it. And Palmyra was, of course, a Roman site. It was digitized using photographs from the web. And then when it was reproduced in its various forms, it wound up obviously in the Trafalgar Square as a column. And we rematerialized this thing. We see that it has now a different social context. It's not the same building as it was before. It has a totally different meaning. To a certain extent, NotreDame is in that same place right now. It has been destroyed by a fire. And it's all of a sudden taken on a social meaning and a representation that it didn't have before. So, a couple of questions before we go onto the NotreDame data. And yes, that is a photograph of the destruction of Palmyra. So, how do objects actually gain their capacity that we think they're so valuable that we cannot imagine a future generation without it? This is an important question. We here think about NotreDame, and we can't imagine future generations visiting Paris without the cathedral sitting on that island and people walking through it. But whose history are we restoring? And what does that mean? Other people may not think the same way. The sites in the Middle East have a question of social context. Whose history are we restoring to? Who makes the decisions of what is an important building and what is not an important building? These are questions that are resource questions. When we're talking about the scanning of NotreDame, as we'll see in just a bit, we are talking about laser imaging that generated billions and billions of point cloud of billions of points. A lot of processing time. And so what is important to save? And who makes those decisions are really important questions. Now, when we actually digitally scan or we laser scan an object and we combine it with the GIS, really what we want to do is we want to make something that is an accurate model. We want to be able to geometrically query these models. In other words, these are not just things that we print out on a laser printer and they're nice little toys. We actually want to be able to analyze the digital copy. Most of the digitization that you see, most of the things that you, that you see in 3D, do not have that level of accuracy that we can actually query geometrically, the actual model. So, when we, when we scan NotreDame, when we scan something of this complicated nature, we actually want to be able to figure out what the distances are between certain points, which means we have to have a level of accuracy that is much, much different than some of the typical 3D modeling that one would see on a museum website, or that the Library of Congress is doing, or that various other museums are doing. So, when we talk about scanning NotreDame, I'm going to talk about Andrew's data, and then the processing of that data just a bit. So, this is NotreDame before the fire. ^M00:38:27 This is actually a model of it. And these are some of the laser scanning points that laser scanners will actually put on the cathedral. Now, what we're seeing here is the actual point clouds. Now, when we scan an object with a laser, the first thing we do is we develop a point cloud. And so the point clouds in NotreDame are extremely complicated. So, we can look at the exterior, we can look at the interior. And what these are is these are the points of reference that the laser scanners are actually going to pick up that we are going to understand what those positions are geometrically, and at very high accuracy. The denser the point cloud, in other words, the denser the number of points that you see here, the better our scan is going to be. Now, at NotreDame, the densities to scan this and to process them are huge. We are talking about points in the billions. So, when we're talking about processing time, in other words, looking for measurements, looking for distances. One of the things that's been discovered about this particular project, using high resolution laser imaging and putting it on a very high resolution GIS, is we've now discovered some of the construction methods of this cathedral. It doesn't line up properly on one of the walls. It seems like there was a break in the construction. And then it started again. Some of the building had settled. But they still went on the same way. So, we have a lot of different measurements that we've taken from the laser imagery. This is what the point cloud looks like of those, of those statues on the facade very close. And so when we actually build the model, we use these point clouds in order to actually construct the surface. And we'll be working, we'll be looking at that in just a minute. So, when we actually scan a building, we have this point cloud, and this is the actual imagery that we have to work with. This is the things we need to process in order to reconstruct the building as a model. This building here, this is the Monastery of St. Simeon in Syria. This building no longer exists. It was destroyed by two Russian missiles last year. Bullet it was scanned before that. And hence, what we have of that building, the only thing that exists of that building currently is a pile of rubble and this point cloud. So, one has to think about whether the building actually exists. This is not really preservation. One wouldn't use this tool as a method of preservation. One actually has to preserve the building. One doesn't use laser scanning as a substitute for preservation. But in cases like this, we know a lot about the building, and we will continue to know a lot about the building even though the building no longer exists. So, the first step in constructing a model of NotreDame is, of course, to smooth out those point clouds, use various algorithms. The SIFT algorithm is one of the ones that is typically used. We're not going to talk too much about that. It's Scale Invariant Feature Transform. It's a very famous algorithm that allows us to process these billions of points very quickly. This is the actual model. Okay? So, this is not the real NotreDame. This is not a photograph of NotreDame. This is the NotreDame constructed from the actual point cloud. One gets an idea of how the facade looks. So, this is, like I said, this is not a photograph, this isso, if NotreDame were to be destroyed tomorrow, this is what we would have left, a fairly accurate representation of what the cathedral actually looked like, processed from those billions of points in the point clouds. Now, one of the things we, of course, can do with these point clouds, now, this is the reconstruction of the interior of the cathedral with the point clouds. We can take very accurate measurements. And this is the thing that will be the key to the reconstruction. The fact that we have laser, very high accuracy laser imaging of the cathedral beforehand means we can actually look very closely at what the measurements are, have the walls buckled, has heat distorted the cathedral itself. We can actually begin to compare this now. There's laser scanning actually being done on the cathedral in the last couple of months. And looking at some of the really critical point differences. And really the critical structural places that shifts may have happened that may be very important to its structural stability in the future. Reconstructing these, obviously you use many, many scans from different places. And then you put all of those together using a highaccuracy GIS and rebuild the building. This is just reconstructing the laser imaging from the point clouds and making the exterior of the building. This is, in fact, the complete 3D model of the actual one side of NotreDame based on laser scans. One of the things about laser scanning is you can cut the building in half, you can, you can cut through it, you can do crosssections. You can't really do that with the real building. You could, but, you know, you might not want to. But we can get very, very accurate views internally of all of the areas that we were able to scan. This is just another view of that, that same image. Measurements. When we're looking at the building, okay, so, on the righthand side there, you see an image of NotreDame as it is right now with the ceiling collapsed into the main, the main area. And then a cut view of the actual laser scan. And then a measurement of the laser scan showing the equilateral triangle that is, of course, part of the structure of every cathedral that has a dome like NotreDame's. We are able to actually look at this stuff very, very accurately. And I'll show you how accurately in just a minute if you have enough processing power to process those, those point clouds. The cathedrals, of course, have concentric circles. Each of the concentric circles line up with the various columns. Again, this is something we can know in extreme accuracy, out to 10 or 15 decimal places of what it was, and now what it is based on laser imaging. And so one can get a real sense of whether anything has moved, whether things have expanded, whether columns have melted, and all of this is based on, you know, georectifying the footprint of the cathedral, and then placing the laser imaging on it, and then measuring the laser images. Outside of the cathedral, every one of Andrew Tallon's scans, if processed properly, is accurate within five millimeters. That's pretty extreme. And so what we're talking about is a model of the cathedral that is accurate to five millimeters in every place; in the windows, in the doors, in where the columns are, in what the structure is. So, looking at this now and comparing it to laser imaging that's taking place now is really the most important part of coming to terms with what actually happened to the cathedral. Again, this is just a digital model, purely, totally reconstructed. There's no photographic information there. It's simply laser imaging. One of the things that has been damaged is some of the actual stonework. And so based on the laser imaging, those things that are down below are not photographs, those are actually laser images taken from the point clouds. That is a damaged piece up above that we can rebuild and reconstruct based on the, based on the laser imaging. So, really what we're looking at here is the stone masons can go in and begin to reconstruct some of the stones that have been, have been broken based on the laser imaging of some of the more important capitals and the sculptures along the sides. We're not going to go into algorithms, but I have to say, the SIFT algorithm is one of the important ones. ^M00:46:59 It allows us to look and match up those points with the real thing. It allows us to clean up our scans. It's an extremely important algorithm. You can look it up. We also use something called bundle adjustment. Bundle adjustment really allows us to reconstruct the 3D structure geometrically and get a much more accurate view. These kind of two algorithms in conjunction are used in most 3D modeling, but they're extremely helpful when one is doing something of this scale, simply because you really do need to speed up the processing when you have billions and billions of points. And so that's it. And thank you for listening. ^M00:47:43 [ Applause ] ^M00:47:50 >> Tim St. Onge: So, our next two speakers come from the National Park Service. Catherine Lavoie is the Chief of the Historic American Building Survey, the oldest federal, oldest federal historic preservation program, and a unit of heritage documentation programs, National Park Service Division focused on documenting historic sites in the built environment. Catherine has more than 30 years of experience with HABS, and has served as a historian and project manager for dozens of HABS' recording efforts. Deidre McCarthy is the Chief of the Cultural Resources GIS Facility of the National Park Service, which applies GIS to culture resource management and planning. Deidre has a background in historic preservation, and has 20 years of experience with CRGIS. They will be presenting documenting cultural resources through GIS in the National Park Service. So, please welcome Catherine Lavoie and Deidre McCarthy. ^M00:48:45 [ Applause ] ^M00:48:50 >> Catherine Lavoie: Thank you very much, and thanks for inviting us here today. So, I'm going to start off talking a little bit more about the documentation side, how we do what we do, and why we do it, providing valuable content, and some locational information, and I'll turn it over to my colleague, Deidre. She'swe were actually part of the same division for a while, so I have to credit the Park Service GIS for really getting us onboard and making us understand the importance of actually locating these sites really well. So, with that, let's see. ^M00:49:23 ^M00:49:26 Okay, so, Historic American Building Survey, as was pointed out, is the, was the very first federal historic preservation program. It was established in 1933, '34, through an unusual private public partnership that stands both the legislative and executive branches of government to include the National Park Service, the Library of Congress, and the American Institute of Architects. The mission of the program is to capture America's architectural legacy through the production of highquality measured drawings, historical reports, and large format photographs. Toward that end, under the terms of the Tripartite agreement, the National Park Service administers the program and undertakes documentation projects with a staff of architects, historians, photographer and collections manager. The AIA provides advice and support through the lens of private sector practice, making the recommendations for the investigation of new technologies, and supporting our program initiatives. The Library of Congress, of course, houses the collection under stateoftheart conditions, and makes it available to the general public online and copyrightfree. The site receives approximately 50,000 visitors a month. And while historians and preservation specialists have always been the backbone of our constituency, the fastest growing user group now is actually K through 12 students and educators. So, HABS was created in response to a perceived need within all three of the partnering organizations to preserve for future generations what was then considered to be our nation's vanishing architectural heritage as reflected in some of the examples you can see of the early 1930s documentation. Endangered was always a priority. But that is an idea that I think is just as relevant today as it was in the 1930s, if not more so, recognizing that not every historic building could realistically preserved, the program's founders wanted to ensure that quote they not pass into unrecorded oblivion unquote, but to provide a lasting record. It was likewise acknowledged that to be done properly, and with a national perspective, as was stated in the original proposal, a comprehensive and continuous national survey is the logical concern of the federal government. HABS also marked the first time that historic resources were recorded comprehensively at a national scale, and to uniform standards. So, as conceived, the program was intended to represent a complete resume of the builders' art, as it was then said. That means composing highstyle architect design buildings, as well as the vernacular and the utilitarian, to include everything from the ubiquitous log settler's cabin to the urban skyscraper. Also represented by the collection was a wide array of regionally and ethnically derived buildings, such as Native American Pueblos, Spanish Missions, Southern Creole Plantations, to name but a few, as you can see here. So, in its history, HABS has recorded the humble buildings that evoke the everyday lives of past generations, as well as some of the nation's most endearing iconic monuments, such as the Lincoln Memorial and Independence Hall. The documentation provides tangible evidence of important persons, places, and events in our history, sparking pride in our nation and in our communities, while at times calling upon us to examine our cultural values in order to forage a better path for the future. So, also recorded are sites associated with social movements, such as labor history and civil rights, an effort to tell all American stories as demonstrated here by these examples of churches in Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama, that are now touchstones for the Civil Rights Movement that we're currently working on a project to record with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Historic architecture tells us a lot about the society that created it. And, in fact, it has been used to shape society's values, or to showcase our aesthetic and engineering prowess, creating buildings and sites that can inspire change and innovation. Just a few examples from the HABS collection. Since its conception, the HABS program has expanded its recording and storytelling capacity to encompass other resource types, including industrial and engineering sites, as well as landscapes. The interested private sector constituency responsible for HABS and through the AIA was matched in 1969 by the creation of its companion program, the Historic American Engineering Record. When that, at that time, five engineering societies, the National Park Service, and the Library of Congress, signed a similar Tripartite agreement, and here then has recorded sites such as textile mills, gold mines, electrical power plants, dams, and even rocket test dams. ^M00:55:22 ^M00:55:25 We also have a very vital Maritime Heritage Program, and we've just finished a study on the Echinak [phonetic] covered bridge. So, although working within the same basic guidelines as HABS, HAER focuses more on the interpretive drawing that along with the historical reports and the photographs often make very complicated engineering processes understandable to the layperson. I think it's one of the great values of the HAER drawings. Likewise, the Historic American Landscape Survey was created in 2000 in partnership with the American Society of Landscape Architects. So, these sites too range in scope from national parklands to small formal gardens, including sites, such as the sacred Hawaiian heiaus that are shown here on the left. And each World War I, American cemeteries abroad, an example of which is shown here on the right. That's Flanders Field in Belgium, France. Now recognize collectively as the heritage documentation programs the mission of HABS [inaudible] today is multifaceted. First and foremost, of course, is the generation of documentation for the Library of Congress collection to record the nation's historic resources for the general public. In addition, the programs engage in agreements with other federal agencies and private sector organizations to create documentation that serves as baseline information for maintenance, rehabilitation, and interpretation of historic resources. So, some of the more recent examples of those kinds of projects are the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island Immigration Station, the Nation National Malls Tidal Basin, and landmark or pathbreaking automobiles for the Historic Vehicle Association. Although some of these projects are done in the interest of rehabilitation, other sites are recorded because they are threatened by forces such as redevelopment, urban renewal, or more recently, climate change. I mean, that was certainly the case with the tidal basin for those of you who are probably familiar and walked around there, we were witnessing more frequently occurring storm surges that overflow the banks and have caused a lot of damage there. So, looking, the Park Service is looking to try to restore that. And we're helping with that process through the documentation. ^M00:58:05 ^M00:58:07 While we still use the traditional hand measuring, and, in fact, we instruct students in the art of hand measuring through our 60 plus year summer student program, we routinely explored new technologies. And this is done in an effort to sort of keep up to date with the, with the discipline, and to determine best practices further use within the context of the Secretary of the Interior Standards and Guidelines for architectural and engineering documentation that guide our methodology. So, that methodology combines hand measuring with laser scanning, photogrammetry, turtle station, and GIS technology to accurately record historic sites. So, this sort of will give you an idea of the process which generally typically begins with laser scans, which you have a little introduction to. But basically for those of you who are not familiar, an oscillating beam of light is basically balanced oversimplification, but balanced off of building services, creating millions of 3D points that form a cloud, essentially modeling it and capturing its exact size and shape. These points are merged into a single 3D representation using software, which can, in turn, be migrated into computeraided drafting program to produce a twodimensional line drawing, so you can see the continuum here. Data from photographs can also be merged with a point cloud to create more realistic images. Because the Secretary of the Interior Standards demand clarity and longterm viable, the final product for us is the measured drawing printed on vellum rather than the laser scan alone, which is often seems to be the case in some private sector practice. We believe that only the drawing can guarantee a lasting record, while at the same time being of use to our primary audience, which is the general public. As already noted, drawings can serve as valuable interpretive tools that can also be used by building professionals should repair and reconstruction become necessary. In addition, the laser scans cannot register areas that are out of its site line or otherwise blocked from view, nor can it accurately record highly detailed elements. We tend to use a longrange laser scanner. They do have smaller handheld ones. But usually we feel that these details must be captured through other means. So, we've found in our work that architectural or sculptural details, for example, are best either hand measured to capture profiles or through photogrammetry. ^M01:01:07 [ Inaudible ] ^M01:01:09 Okay, which is, photogrammetry is used to create more defined 3D meshed models that are, in turn, translated into drawings, and you can sort of see the process using the camera to create models and then trace those for the line drawings. The models can also be used to reproduce such elements in the case of deterioration or loss. Part of the implementation of new technologies for us too is GIS, which we now use routinely, thanks to my colleague and her staff. GIS can be particularly useful in recording large scale features, such as landscapes spread over great distances as a means of mapping its boundaries. And, in fact, before we went into the field of laser scanning, I don't know if, Deidre, if you recall the cranberry bog where we had to map this very large area, and we actually used GPS locators walking the boundaries, and mapping the various points of interest that would be featured in our drawing sets. And, of course, and then sometimes, as with these abandoned historic ranches in the floor of the Grand Canyon that we documented a few years ago, we needed very much an isolated area where the data is essential in locating them particularly as they continued to deteriorate. GIS data collected in tandem with the total station of surveying instrument, serves to establish a control network with real world coordinates. I think that process was described in part in the earlier speaker. But here, a network registers laser scan and photogrammetric data sets taken from various points around the site into a single coordinate space and serves as an accurate check on the data. GIS software organizes this data, enables an overlay of multiple data sets for better analysis of the site. And then should we need to go back, future surveys can easily integrate into this system so that we can rerecord at a later point to allow for the monitoring of building conditions for conservation purposes, sort of comparing the old data with the new to check for deterioration. The information can also locate the building or site in the event that it is, it is lost. Again, underscoring the program's original mission to address engaged sites, and, in fact, we estimate that close to half, if not more, of the site's recorded by HABS by the 1930s are no longer accident. And then towards that end, we recently acquired a highpowered GPS RTK, or realtime kinetkinematic, thank you, antennae to improve our locational data. So, in this unit is capable of accuracy within a centimeter. So, we are very excited about that. And then as a byproduct of all these new technologies that we'll be using, the laser scan and the photogrammetric information, we are now able to produce highly compelling digital animation, such as flythroughs and virtual tours. Although they're not part of the formal Library of Congress record, they're very useful for educational interpretive purposes. So, users can now visit those sections of Ellis Island that are not open to the public. They can walk the Totem Pole Trail in Sitka Alaska, or visit the AisneMarne WWI Cemetery and Monument in France World War I Cemetery and Monument in France, or learn about the documentation of NASA's space shuttle Discovery virtually through the comfort of their home via our webpage. So, I'm not going to live with these, but I would encourage you to go to our webpage, and you can see the documentation. Digital representations can also be used to demonstrate how things work, sort of aligning with HAER's process drawings that often make complicated processes more understandable. For example, we recently recorded Arlington Memorial Bridge here in Washington, D.C. So, if you can remember when the bridge, which was built as a bascule or drawbridge was actually operational. So, part of the rehabilitation that is currently underway, the two moveable leafs within the body of the bridge are now being removed. So, let's see, however, you can, you can virtually tour the interior workings, and even see how the bridge used to function via our websites. And this is just an example of some of the models we're able to create. ^M01:06:24 ^M01:06:28 So, it tells you how the bridge parts fit together, how it works. And then up she goes for the last time. Okay, well, due to the high quality of the collection, the drawing's history and photographs and the fact that they are copyrightfree, and offered to the general public, the collection really has been a staple source of information for scholarly publications, brochures, exhibits, and the like for decades now. The measured drawings, historical reports, and photographs all work together, along with the newly generated digital models and animations provide rich content for all types of public outreach, including compelling GIS base story maps. So, just as a little teaser, if I can do this right. I've seen the cursor. Oh, here we go. ^M01:07:31 ^M01:07:45 Anyway, I'm not going to steal Deidre's thunder, but I just want to just sort of give you a quick look. Oops. Okay. ^M01:07:59 [ Inaudible ] ^M01:08:01 Sorry about that. Okay, now, I think I hit the wrong thing. So, should I X out? ^M01:08:14 ^M01:08:19 Okay, lost myanyway, you know what, I think I should leave this to the professional. Let me get Deidre up here, and she can talk more about the story maps. Thank you very much. ^M01:08:35 [ Applause ] ^M01:08:39 >> Deidre McCarthy: As Catherine said, we used to be in the same division, and we very much want to be in the same division still. And this just shows that we do continue to do things together, to do projects together, and this is one of the projects that we did together. And, again, you can get to this off of the Heritage Documentation Program's website. And it's just an example of the kinds of things that we can do once we pull all these technologies together, the advent of the story map as a thing has been, I would say, really important in terms of interpretation in general and how the Park Service will probably move forward in trying to explain a lot of these things. Oops. I went the wrong way. All right, but let's talk about me. ^M01:09:35 [ Laughter ] ^M01:09:37 So, as was said before, my name is Deidre McCarthy. I am the Chief of the Cultural Resource GIS Facility. We are a companion program to HABS here and house, like I say, we used to be part of the same division. We'd very much like to be back to where we were. But our job is to really apply GIS and GPS technologies to cultural resources across, across the spectrum. So, we work inside the Park Service, but we also work outside the Park Service. So, we are able to partner with State Historic Preservation Offices, or Tribal Historic Preservation Offices, or local governments, things like that, in order to do exactly what the senator was mentioning this morning, try to take these inventories of our cultural resources and these inventories of our things and automate them through GIS and through GPS. It's almost as if we were right in sync there. So, again, what we are trying to do is really build on the sort of more traditional documentation that HABS/HAER and HALS are doing essentially in terms of taking those pictures, those drawings, those histories, bringing them all together and making it a little bit more dynamic. And you can see right down there at the bottom is that cranberry bog. They came to us and said, oh, we have this 3,000 acre cranberry bog. Can't you just document that? Sure. So, we do a lot of things, a lot of projects like that. But we also do some of the kinds of mitigation work you might see in New Orleans. If you recognize New Orleans, you might see New Orleans in there because we do things like mitigation work after bigger disasters. I don't know, anybody remember Katrina? So, one of the things that I think we want to focus on are these story maps and what they can do for us. Some of these things that we have talked about earlier today, clearly the burning at NotreDame really brought it into the focus of the everyday person. Who can be lost when we have these icons like this potentially disappearing because of these kinds of disasters? So, we are able to do things like quickly put together these kinds of story maps that allow us to say, this is why we document these resources, in case of such a thing that might happen. I can actually, you know, do a little bit more with the technology. If I, if I had a scroll bar, I'd be super happy. But I can link out from these various different tools, if I, if I don't advertise for everyone under the Sun. But we can link out on these various different tools to talk about the very documentation that we do have say, I don't know, Heritage Documentation Programs, what does HABS/HAER/HALS do, and what, what have they focused on. So, yes, they've used these technologies, but some of these examples of buildings that have been threatened or are threatened or things like that, we can go back through their collections and look at things like, I don't know, the White House. Were we aware that the White House has been documented by HABS/HAER/HALS, but it's also been completely gutted a couple times? So, it's nice to have the documentation to be able to say, this is what was there, this is how it's changed over time, I can link out to where these drawings are held at the Library of Congress, I can go back through, here's Beauvoir, Jefferson Davis's house, this got, let's just call it a little bit injured in Katrina. So, to have these things, I don't know, anybody remember the Washington Monument before the earthquake? Again, these things have been documented by HABS/HAER/HALS. To have that documentation is critical. To be able to display it in ways like this is critical. To be able to show people, this is where it is, this is what it is. Anybody remember, I don't know, some fires that we had last year in California? Well, this bridge that was documented by HABS/HAER/HALS ended up looking like this. That's not helpful. Right? All we have left is this documentation. We are lucky that this documentation exists. They are actually going to use the HABSHAERHALS documentation to rebuild this feature. So, to be able to take this documentation and do something with it is incredibly important. So, we have these kinds of story maps, again, you can get to off the Heritage Documentation Program's webpage or our webpage. But we also have, I don't know, there's lots of disasters. Right? Not just fires. But we've had some hurricanes recently. Right? So, it's nice to be able to show the full collection of what HABS/HAER/HALS has documented, where right now our office is engaged in creating one big spatial data set that shows everything that HABS/HAER/HALS has documented, to have a location for everything that they have documented. If this was working, that would be even more fantastic. ^M01:15:17 ^M01:15:22 Let's just, let's just try something else. ^M01:15:27 ^M01:15:33 This is why we don't like live demos. Right? So, in any case, this story map shows the full collection of what HABS/HAER/HALS has documented. If the map were to display, it shows everything that was documented by HABS/HAER/HALS in the Virgin Islands, in Puerto Rico, in Florida. It shows the path of the hurricane. It shows what was there before and what was there after. So, we have a few examples. I don't want to do that. And it has a few examples of things that we might be familiar with. So, I can at least jump around and I can see these are features before and after. I can see what has happened to this resource. I can pull up the full documentation. I can see how badly it got flooded. I can see how badly it got destroyed. I can, I can pull all of these pieces together to tell the full story of what has happened here. I need to have that documentation as the underlying point of all of this. However, if I don't have that, then I am, I'm at a loss to be able to show what was there. One of the most important things that I think Catherine mentioned, as she was discussing things, was how many things are not extant anymore in the HABS/HAER/HALS collection. And I think, I call it the obituary list. One of the most important things that we can do in the creation of our inventory, our geographic inventory of everything that HABS/HAER/HALS has documented is that list of what is no longer there. To be able to say, X percentage no longer exists. The only place it exists is here at the Library of Congress in this documentation. You know, that's an incredibly powerful statement to be able to make. And I want to, I want to be able to pull that together. But just to get back to some of the things that were mentioned previously, the senator mentioned, and the representative mentioned, as part of the Geospatial Data Act and things like that, that codified what is the Federal Geographic Data Committee. Don't fall asleep yet, all right? The Federal Geographic Data Committee creates the standards that help us build the geography, that help us build these data sets. And it's very important. So, that Geospatial Data Act codified that. It codified the fact that there are several, let's just say really big data sets that we in the United States need to keep track of, one of which is cultural resources. So, they actually have designated the National Park Service as the theme lead for the cultural resource theme for everything across the United States. I'm your theme lead. Super exciting. But we do have things involved in that theme, not just the HABS/HAER/HALS documentation, but things like the National Register of Historic Places. That is used by every federal agency; by the states, by the tribes. Anytime there's any kind of undertaking by a federal agency that might impact something that's listed on the National Register or eligible for the National Register, there has to be mitigation for it. So, I want to know, where is the stuff that's listed on the National Register. We can go to our website and you can find a nice web map so that you can find where those things are. We also use other kinds of laser technology. I know, it's so cool. It's lasers. Right? So, yeah, we don't do the handheld stuff, but we do use LIDAR, which is very similar. Right? This is being able to take that laser image, being able to pull up information about what is still on the ground. These are historic fortifications overlaid with historic maps outside Petersburg. We're able to rebuild these landscapes that have been lost or are sort of lost, completely overgrown and nobody can really see. And we certainly don't wantwe love visitors, right, in the Park Service, but we don't want them necessarily wandering all over the stuff. Right? Like, you know, Earthworks and things like that. So, being able to interpret them and to show them this way is incredibly important. To be able to rebuild these landscapes that we didn't even necessarily know were still there. Being able to overlay the historic maps using the GIS technology on top of this LIDAR is incredibly important. And we can learn from disasters. ^M01:20:16 I know we keep thinking, well, disasters are all bad. They're not always all bad. We can learn fromif we think through, right, we can learn from these disasters. While they are devastating, while we all sat looking at CNN going, ah, as we were watching NotreDame burn, right, we can learn from that. Now we know we need to go out there and document these resources before they're gone. Now that really just imprinted on each of us how important it is to make sure we capture all this information. But we do have other examples of things like that where we can use something as horrible as Hurricane Katrina or Maria or Irma or things like that, and we can say, okay, now we need to be able to apply these technologies, now we need to understand how these technologies can help us recover from these and help us prepare for these kinds of things. It's not that we're never going to see another hurricane. We better be prepared so that we can document these before they, before they disappear. So, we spent a lot of time with FEMA postKatrina. And we did develop a digital way to document all of the resources that were affected by the hurricane so that they could assess, has this been damaged, is this something that's going to require mitigation, what kind of mitigation can we do. In fact, we used the collection of the locations of other resources as mitigation for the very first time. It was incredibly important. It was very helpful to FEMA. It's very helpful to the city, to the state that's receiving this information in preparation, again, just in case, I don't know, do you think New Orleans will ever get hit by another hurricane? No, that will never happen, right? So, again, we did create a methodology for this that uses GPS, that uses GIS, that has all kinds of cool stuff involved with it. And we think, wow, Hurricane Katrina was what, like 15 years ago? That's totally outdated. Well, think that through. You know, yeah, at the time of Hurricane Katrina, I didn't have an iPhone. I didn't have Google Earth. I didn't have those tools that I could use to help me out in the field. But I also didn't have, I don't know, phone lines. I didn't have connectivity. I needed a way to be able to survey those resources outside of the infrastructure that got destroyed in the hurricane itself. So, there's lots of things that we can learn from all of these disasters. How can we take that and do something so that we can prepare ourselves in the future? It's just something that I think we need to think about as a society, and I think we need to be prepared as we move forward. I think that's it for us. ^M01:23:11 [ Applause ]