20 Posts Our Readers Loved in 2020

To celebrate the upcoming new year (and new decade!), Eos Positioning Systems will be counting down some of our top posts from 2020. Follow our Twitter handle (@EosGNSS) for daily updates until the New Year! Or if you prefer browsing all at once, keep scrolling! 

The August 2020 release of Eos Tools Pro (v.1.89) made two ArcGIS apps solutions immediately available for use with ArcGIS Field Maps! These solutions include: 

• Eos Locate™ for ArcGIS apps (including Collector and Field Maps) – Map buried assets with cm accuracy using Arrow GNSS and ArcGIS Field Maps
• Eos RTK Laser Mapping™ for ArcGIS apps – Map assets without having to physically occupy (stand atop) them. This solution is great for assets located in dangerous or hard-to-reach locations (e.g., a manhole in the middle of a busy intersection), as well as assets located in GNSS-impaired environments (e.g., a gas meter attached to a building side) 

Now, with the full version of ArcGIS Field Maps released and ready for users worldwide, the possibilities for mobile will only grow.

Read the original release: https://eos-gnss.com/arcgis-field-maps-beta

With the new Eos Tools Pro update, released this November, a user can run any two mobile applications concurrently on a single device! For example, a fieldworker could record a high-accuracy GNSS location in ArcGIS Collector and switch to an open ArcGIS Survey123 form to complete their workflow.

One of the highlights of Eos’s year was getting to debut new monthly customer spotlights! Customer spotlights allow these GIS power-users to tell us more about their work, their personal stories, and the passion that drives them toward innovations. Eos wouldn’t be where it is without incredible users like these. Explore some of our favorite 2020 Eos customer spotlights with these links!

The City of Santa Barbara was able to double its rate of meter-location collections by modernizing their field gear! Using Arrow Gold GNSS alongside Esri’s ArcGIS Collector, they optimized their water system to fight droughts.

In June 2020, Eos Tools Pro became fully available on Windows devices! The app was released loaded with new, powerful features and a colorful user interface. For developers, integrating high-accuracy Arrow receivers became faster and easier than ever! 

On the Florida coastline, the Utilities Commission of New Smyrna Beach needed a real-time, easy-to-use, high-accuracy data collection system to replace paper redlining. When transferred to GIS, the original as-built records didn’t accurately reflect locations of assets in the real world. To improve both accuracy and speed, they upgraded to Eos Arrow Gold GNSS receivers and Esri’s ArcGIS Collector! Next, they took it up a notch and far improved their asset locations with real-time submeter mapping during routine fieldwork.

In September, Eos released the long awaited integration of Eos Locate™ for ArcGIS with Subsite Electronics® products! This exciting expansion allows users to map underground assets with RTK precision using ArcGIS and Subsite products.

“We are extremely excited to expand this popular underground-mapping solution to Subsite Electronics customers,” Eos Chief Technology Officer Jean-Yves Lauture said. “Utilities have been asking us to add compatibility, and we are pleased to announce that this integration is now available today, for no extra cost, to our existing customers.”

Veritas Farm Management is on a mission to change the way the agriculture industry interprets and uses data. The agriculture company uses Arrow GNSS receivers and ArcGIS Pro to help its clients use the least amount of fertilizer needed to yield the maximum harvest! This story marked Eos’s first-ever precision agriculture case study.

In the natural gas industry, regulation compliance is absolutely essential. By using ArcGIS Collector, the ArcGIS Utility Network and Eos Arrow GNSS, AltaGas Utilities was able to meet regulations and reduce inspection times by 50%! This seamless field-to-office solution was a major success for all involved.

Eos was honored to receive multiple awards this year! In October, Eos received a 2020 Esri IMGIS Award for Solution Alignment. We‘re proud to provide our joint customers with seamless high-accuracy locations in Esri mobile apps. Additionally, in September we were honored to be chosen as the 2020 “Most Disruptive Technology” winner by TECTERRA! We constantly strive to innovate for our users, so this award is truly an honor. Our team will display both awards with pride in our Montréal office!

With social distancing practices in place, the GNSS and GIS community had to get creative to stay connected this year. Webinars and online sessions became the new norm for 2020. Eos was thrilled and proud to see so many of our amazing customers step up to provide digital presentations of their work. From live data-collection demos to in-depth stories about finding what works, these webinars provided invaluable insights into mobile GIS workflows to people across the world. Click the links below to explore a few of our favorite virtual presentations from 2020!

• Capturing Hard-to-reach Assets with Decimeter Accuracy (DDSI)
• Supporting Daily Workflows with GIS & GPS (Oldham County Water District)
• Arrow 100 for Australian Heritage Management
• Optimize Field Activities with City of Santa Barbara 
• Arrow Gold and ArcGIS QuickCapture for Efficient, Centimeter-Level GPS Data Collection and Management on a Vineyard
• Best Practices for Evaluating Field GIS Technology

Here at Eos, we want to equip you with all the tools for success. That’s why this summer, we released a video tutorial series on one of our most popular solutions — Eos Locate for ArcGIS! This five-part series marked the beginning of many upcoming video resources for our customers. If you need to map existing, buried utility assets for use within Esri ArcGIS, and accuracy is of importance to you, this is everything you need to get started collecting location data. 

Winter storms pile as much as 40 feet of snow onto Lassen Volcanic National Park’s Route 89, an unmarked alpine road. To plow it, field crews need precise maps—and a little bit of faith. This incredible winter story explored how the National Park Service used Arrow Gold RTK and ArcGIS Collector to map the roads buried beneath the snow.

When a new data-collection app gets released, the Eos technical team is always eager to get their hands on it to learn all the details! That’s why when Esri released ArcGIS Field Maps in October, Eos quickly released a list of our favorite resources to share with our users. This article includes a timeline of announcements, app links, helpful migration guides from Esri, information on your Arrow GNSS compatibility and more!

Additionally, we at Eos are so excited for the endless possibilities that Field Maps offers our joint customers with Esri. We look forward to sharing future case studies with this new technology! If you haven’t already done so, subscribe to our monthly newsletter for more partner and product updates, announcements, and resources in 2021.

As COVID-19 struck Florida, the daily workload of many city employees waned. The City of Sarasota quickly took action. The city’s IT team proposed a creative way to keep employees busy, and as a result launched a field mapping project. They trained idle workers in GIS data collection and took ArcGIS Collector to the streets, capturing vital data while social distancing! This story was shared widely as an example of the creative ways GIS users are innovating in 2020.

Want the latest industry news for location and mapping professionals? The Eos newsletter is full of how-to articles, videos, firmware updates, event listings, and more. It’s delivered once monthly at the end of each month to your inbox. Sign up below.