Wield that axe for your best Paul Bunyan impersonation Re/Cappers, your lead story today profiles a century-old timber/forestry company employing tech that’s, like, 1/100th its age.
Specifically, it’s a coupling of drones and GIS, with the latter being most impactful to their bottom line, and our American housing crisis.
But if one was to tell an older story of GIS/wood/forestry interplay, one would struggle to top what IKEA did with GIS for its wood - and our land that spawns it - almost 20 years ago.
So in ‘07, the Swedish furniture figurehead is up to 6.5 million cubic meters of wood needed annually (unclear if that’s > or < their meatballs). It launched a bold project to introduce GIS into its global wood sourcing system, aiming to improve origin knowledge, traceability, and sustainability (plus, giving us consumers perspective on all that’s required for us to get that desk or coffee table, at which we yell 40 seconds into assembly).
The idea was that GIS would link sourcing data to digital maps, allowing IKEA to track wood from harvesting sites through the supply chain. The project’s initial focus was managing data about the region of origin for wood. Thing is, while “wood origin” can refer to anything from a single pine tree to an entire country, IKEA defined it at the level of administrative regions (think provinces or districts) within countries. Suppliers were required to report the origin of wood at this regional level, supporting compliance and transparency.
The project assessed the availability of forest resource data at such levels in Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria. The goal was a geodatabase that could integrate 1) map data, 2) IKEA’s wood sourcing data, and 3) available forest resource data, for visualization and analysis.
The GIS software platform selected for this work was ArcView 9.2, part of the ArcGIS suite. It boasted a powerful graphing engine, improved geodatabase management, enhanced spatial analysis tools, and support for various raster and vector data formats; perfect for such nuanced, multi-country supply chain analysis.
Combining the aforementioned three elements with spatial data for mapping country and regional boundaries, the sweeping database was built. And an ever-flammable kindling for optimization and sustainability had been set:
Origin tracing = easier
Harvesting = standardized
Global supply chain auditing = smoother
Illegal logging = curtailed
Voilà, IKEA’s Big Bang of GIS-led sustainability had occurred, such that adjacent and distant industries alike would channel it.
Today, IKEA’s wood sourcing is upstanding. Read its process, supplier mandate, and 2030 Forest Agenda, and you’ll have missed a birthday. Just remember - they didn’t get this way solely because they aspired; but because technology allowed.
More GIS timber tales, coming right up - this time of the aerial variety.
What’s Cappenin’ This Week
With an American housing crisis as a backdrop, the 1923-founded RoyOMartin timber company owns 550,000 acres of forestland. They cherish each of them, given ROM’s plywood and panels populate American houses and apartment buildings like F bombs populate a Quentin Tarantino movie.
But it wasn’t always that bountiful. Heck, ROM was once a single sawmill. But with 550k acres, come 550k reasons to call on technology, in an effort to bolster ‘American Dream’ odds for the citizens ROM so deeply values.
Not UNLIKE if the Terminator had propellers. Image credit Northern Lumber Manufacturers Association
A new Esri publication explains how ROM is reshaping operations through real-time drone, satellite, and GIS data. This gives foresters efficiency, safety, and precision amidst their brawl in the sprawl of those 550,000 Louisiana and Texas acres.
By applying data-rich forestry prescriptions tailored to specific soil types and environmental conditions, ROM maximizes tree growth and resource utilization. Drone and satellite imagery streamlines harvest surveys and monitors contractor activities, reducing the need for physical site visits and lowering operational costs. This has yielded an abundant timber supply, enabling ROM’s exploration of new markets, such as producing green methanol for renewable energy. The company also uses GIS to coordinate with suppliers and contractors, improving transparency and turning their supply chain from guessing game to control freak.
Also covered in Esri’s stupendous profile are housing shortages, sustainable land stewardship, generational entrepreneurship, “less paper internally and more sharing externally,”, economics & market challenges, pulpwood, and the specialized GIS portals ROM loves.
Spanning continents, megalithic structures endure as testimonies to our ancient heritage. Defined literally as “big stones,” they were erected using primitive tools - hold the mortar. They still puzzle researchers, and enchant adventurers.
And they’re now the focal point of smartphone photogrammetry’s latest conquest. Because in the rugged borderlands of Jordan and northern Lebanon, the MEG-A project (Megaliths of Akkar), spearheaded by the University of Geneva's Dr. Tara Steimer, is documenting ancient stones, and rewriting our comprehension of civilization's foundations.
(Drones and smartphone documentation start around 10:30 in gripping the video below)
These 5th-3rd millennia B.C. funerary complexes have been largely overlooked, their secrets locked away in nearly inaccessible terrain. Where traditional archaeology would falter in such taxing landscapes, Dr. Steimer & Co. have weaponized smartphones and the PIX4Dcatch app, capturing what once meant weeks of dangerous fieldwork in mere moments: 1,724 images, 30 minutes of fieldwork, 43 minutes of processing and a simple file export.
The results? Revelatory. The team has meticulously cataloged three distinct types of tombs, each telling its own tale of ancient engineering prowess. Rest in PIX.
Better yet, by successfully lobbying for the Menjez megaliths' inclusion in the Council of Europe's prestigious Megalithic Route, they've converted forgotten ruins into engines of cultural pride and economic opportunity.
PIX4D understandably was happy to spread the word on how it all went down, linked below.
When the flames succumbed in Los Angeles’ Altadena and Pacific Palisades, what remained was more than scorched earth; it was the raw, unfiltered memory of lives upended.
Now, the same tech that once sent millions chasing virtual Pikachu is helping Arizona State University students chase something far more tangible, on behalf of affected Angelenos: the fragments of lost homes, community spaces, and memories, alongside better insurance outcomes.
Name a better combo than Gaussian splatting and Chick-fil-A. We’ll wait. Image credit Samanta Helou Hernandez/LAist
As LAist relays in an account as vast as its city’s taco scene, the project lead is Nonny de la Peña, Director of the Narrative and Emerging Media program at Arizona State University's L.A. campus and lauded VR/AR figure. Her tech of choice for this endeavor are Polycam and Scaniverse, the latter of which is owned by Pokémon GO creator Niantic.
Gaussian splatting excels at capturing fine details, subtle lighting, and reflections; thus, it’s a masterstroke in visualizing the nuanced destruction seen after wildfires.
Peña and team’s 3D models are giving wildfire survivors a way to reclaim their stories and facilitate insurance filings. Captures include the macro and micro, the infrastructural, and the deeply personal: intersections, landmarks, homes, cars, dolls, bicycles, garden decor, and beyond.
Complementing poignant personal accounts and the ascent of Peña, the LAist piece depicts the four-camera rig, the extent of the fires’ damage, use cases in insurance claims, AI image organizing, disaster documentation, and community rebuilding.
Coco Chanel told us that “Fashion is architecture, it’s a question of proportions.” Well, in the digital ateliers of today, those proportions are being recalculated by algorithms that think in pixels rather than fabric.
Just look to Zalando - the German online retail behemoth dressing 25 European markets - reinventing its campaign visuals and photo shoots via AI and digital twins.
Perhaps most interesting is not the ‘what’, but the ‘why’; thanks to social media’s warp speed, fashion trends spread quicker than new-Pope news, so being nimble with reactivity is a goldmine.
Instead of relying on time-sucking photo shoots that cost more than a diamond-encrusted Oscars dress with a Banksy piece on it, Zalando can now test and tweak looks in a digital sandbox. Stunning, audience-relevant images that once took up to two months now roll out in just 3-4 days, while content production costs have plunged by 90%.
Zalando is also trying on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) tech to craft personalized content that hits closer to home for customers. It’s a commanding combo of speed, scale, and specificity that’s catching on fast across the industry (hint: H&M knows what’s up).
Lastly, the company is clear: AI isn’t here to replace creatives, it’s here to supercharge them, as fashion e-commerce movies faster than Prada handbags with price misprints. The Cryptonomist has the perfect fit of an overview below, including promotion campaign diversification, quotes from Zalando’s VP of Content Solutions, social dynamics, marketing ROI, and expansion into new digital markets.
England: the aftermath of 1864’s Great Sheffield Flood, from The Dale Dyke Dam Collapse. Image credit Stocksbridge Times Past
In the spring of 1864, Sheffield was an English city refashioned by industry, and thirsting for water. The Dale Dyke Dam, centerpiece of an ambitious reservoir scheme, promised to secure the city’s future. But on March 11, as a violent storm battered the hills, a crack appeared in the dam’s embankment. Resident engineer John Gunson inspected the fissure and, though uneasy, believed it manageable. He ordered valves opened to relieve pressure.
Hours later, the embankment gave way.
Nearly 700 million gallons of water thundered down the Loxley Valley, obliterating everything in its path: Over 4,000 homes flooded, with 600 outright destroyed. Thousands of people were left homeless, while 240 lives were lost. The morning revealed a landscape scoured bare, with debris and tragedy scattered for miles. Cleanup and recovery began at once, but the scars - physical and communal - would last for generations.
Why did the dam fail? Inquests and engineering inquiries followed, but consensus proved elusive. Some blamed leakage and erosion from pipes beneath the embankment; others pointed to a landslip or a natural fault line under the dam. Later research suggested an underground spring may have undermined the clay core, or that poor compaction and quality control during construction left the structure vulnerable.
The aftermath was as complex as the disaster itself. The Waterworks Company denied design flaws, but public and professional scrutiny was relentless. Parliamentary investigations and engineering societies dissected every detail from the placement of outlet pipes and the thickness of the puddle wall, to the methods of embankment construction and overflow arrangements. Ultimately, the courts criticized the dam’s design and construction, and the tragedy led to sweeping reforms in British civil engineering: stricter standards, more rigorous oversight, and a new culture of caution in large-scale infrastructure projects.
A Board of Inundation Commissioners was established to arbitrate the 7,500 claims for loss of life and property, with compensation totaling £455,000 - a sum that reflected not just the material loss, but the profound disruption to lives and livelihoods.
The Dale Dyke disaster was, at its core, a failure to see the invisible: hidden weaknesses, subtle shifts, and the synergy of water, earth, and human ambition. Today, reality capture technologies offer a way to illuminate these blind spots.
High-res LiDAR scans of the embankment could have exposed weak zones in the clay core or voids left by poor compaction. As the reservoir filled, periodic scans would have detected millimeter-level shifts in the structure, tracking the crack’s growth long before it widened to a hand’s breadth.
A digital twin of the dam could have simulated the hydraulic pressures exerted during filling, predicting stress points and identifying where cracks might form. This virtual replica would have allowed engineers to test mitigation strategies - how’s about targeted drainage or embankment reinforcement - before implementing them in the physical world. By integrating historical data such as soil logs and weather patterns, the model could have flagged risks like underground springs or freeze-thaw cycles.
Robotic inspection platforms could have allowed for remote, repeatable, and highly detailed evals of dam conduits and outlet works, eliminating the need for personnel to enter hazardous, confined spaces. These robots can float through tunnels, use 360° imagery, and gather point clouds for precise change detection, mapping cracks or deformations as they develop.
Drones could have captured daily progress with aerial imagery to verify proper compaction of each embankment layer. After the crack appeared, thermal drones could have mapped temperature variations caused by water infiltration, revealing hidden erosion paths.
Reality capture technologies offer more than just technical solutions; they represent a shift in mindset. With every scan, sensor, and BIM model, we move from trusting what we hope to be true toward knowing what is. We trade the comfort of assumptions for the clarity of evidence, honoring the lessons written in the ruins of the past.
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