SiteSee for Safety
AAM is devoted to the safety of our staff, our clients and all associated stakeholders. Our teams of geospatial professionals are continually immersed in hazardous environments in Australia and overseas during service to our clients. It is our aim to innovate and commercialise technology which enables our staff and clients to cost effectively progress the corporate safety goal of zero harm.
Our product, called SiteSeeTM, generates a virtual site tour through the use of 360 degree spherical imaging technology. This technology supports the pursuit of zero harm by increasing the outcomes and accuracy of desktop studies and reducing the need for site visits. This technology is applicable for a range of environments, including industrial, open freeway, counter terrorism training, national security event or response planning.
SiteSee was a finalist at the WorkCover NSW SafeWork Awards 2009. The submission showcased the benefits available to engineering projects as diverse as industrial survey, digital preservation of cultural heritage sites and road asset management. The ‘virtual tours’ available from this imagery offer ‘360 degree’ visualisations that benefit teams by reducing visits to hazardous or remote sites and provides a central tool for discussion by distributed teams.
Our clients include Alcoa, Amcor, Anglo Platinum, BlueScope Steel, Lonmin, Orica and numerous BHP Billiton sites in Australia and many Hatch engineering projects around the world. We also work with various local councils in Australia and New Zealand and various mining clients in the Illawarra and Hunter Valley regions.
AAM is very aware of zero harm target having recently recorded one million hours LTI free. Our safety focus and achievement reflects our commitment to safety and is a valuable reward for our constant endeavour to improve the safety of our own, and our clients’, daily work practices. AAM also undertake SiteSees of their own offices for new staff inductions.
SiteSee is a powerful visualisation tool developed by AAM. The 360 degree views offered by SiteSee enable users to visualise any feature as if they were actually there. It has proven a safe method of visualising hazardous sites and an efficient way of 'walking through' a remote site.
The process commences with AAM collecting a series of stationary spherical images. Numerous overlapping photographs are acquired and then stitched together using feature matching algorithms, similar to those found in aerial photogrammetric software packages. The resulting images are colour-balanced to produce finished spherical products that are seamless.
Flyer
SiteSee Flyer (PDF - 0.5MB)
Above: An unwrapped spherical SiteSee of an industrial plant
Teams viewing SiteSee can be based anywhere in the world. Various viewing platforms, including web-enabled viewers, increase the flexibility and accessibility of these visualisation datasets. SiteSee enables virtual walkthroughs of the plant by hyper-linking each spherical photograph within the SiteSee system. Powerful zoom functionality is another feature of the high resolution imagery featured in SiteSee.
Each image in SiteSee can be tied to a CAD file of the project area to provide a point-and-see capability. If a general arrangement of the site is not readily available, the virtual walk-through will be tied into the orthophotography or other imagery of the plant or target area. This convergence of technologies is another example of how AAM’s full service approach delivers integrated spatial solutions.
Below are 3 examples takenn from larger SiteSee packages. Please take a virtual tour of these 3 sites from around the world from the comfort and safety of your office. Observe these working sites and note some of the major hazards that you might encounter if you were making a site visit.
SiteSee Spherical Imaging - Brings the Plant to your Desktop
Instructions for use:
Use your left mouse button to pan around in the imagery
Hold down the SHIFT key to zoom-in
Hold down the CRTL key to zoom-out
Alternatively, use the buttons on the SiteSee images below:
Click on the Expand button (far right in the group of 8 buttons) to display the spherical image in full-screen mode.
Above: SiteSee of a Chemical Process Plant in Australia.
Hazards include: Significant gas hazards, leaking pipes, noise, trip hazards.
Reason for SiteSee: Removal and replacement of a large pipe. Engineers designing the new pipe could examine the pipe route from the SiteSee.
Above: SiteSee of a Plant Room in New Zealand.
Hazards include: Confined space, trip hazards, hot pipes, noise.
Reason for SiteSee: Plant room on top floor of clients building but under resricted access. SiteSee provides visual tool for anyone at anytime to inspect inside the room.
Above: SiteSee of a Working Furnace in South Africa.
Hazards include: Molten metal, gas, dust, heat, trip hazards, noise, low headroom.
Reasons for SiteSee: Engineers (in a different city) were designing an upgrade to the working furnace. Over 50 SiteSee sphericals were collected around the entire furnace and linked in a single package. Travel to site to make an inspection would require a full day, travelling on busy roads.
