Blom
Encyclopedia
Blom is a Norwegian
geographical information
and offshore technology
company. The company has offices in ten countries in Europe
and offers a wide selection of geographical services, including maintaining a database. The company has its headquarters in Oslo
, Norway and is listed on Oslo Stock Exchange
. Blom has subsidiaries in Norway
, Sweden
, Denmark
, Finland
, Germany
, United Kingdom
, Italy
, Spain
, Portugal
, Romania
, Czech Republic
, Bulgaria
and Moldova
.
Ole H. Blom. By 1988 the company was listed on Oslo Stock Exchange. In the early 1990s Blom expanded into Saudi Arabia
and Indonesia
. In addition the company acquired Asplan Viak in Norway and expanded into the other Scandinavia
n countries, including acquiring the credit information company Creditinform
in 1997. Creditinform was sold in 2000. In the 2000s Blom went into Europe though multiple acquisitions, and left non-European markets. The company acquired ScanRope in 2006.
. The primary business areas are aerial photography
], laser-scanning
(LiDAR), map
ping and modelling, database
s and database applications
. The primary customers are development bank
s, engineering
consultancies, government agencies
, insurance companies, municipalities
, property information, real estate
and utility organisations
.
Blom uses large format cameras
mounted in twin-engined fixed-winged
aircraft
assisted by Global Positioning System
(GPS) with Inertial Measurement Unit
s (IMU) to perform aerial photography. The company also used survey cameras, laser-scanners (LiDAR) and Hyperspectral scanner
s. The company has 32 fixed-winged aircraft, four helicopter
s and one Learjet.
Laser scanning is used to create a three-dimensional
image of the terrain, resulting in Digital Terrain Models (DTM). The scanning is done from fixed-wing aircraft or helicopters. The laser scanning can be used to create 3D city models, cadastral mapping
, digital orthophoto image
s, digital surface model
s (DSM), digital terrain models, GIS Mapping
and vector mapping
.
Blom maintains a large database containing information within areal photography, digital surface models, digital terrain models, digital orthophoto images
. The database is available on subscription or though an online store.
, Norway and offers services within hydrographic survey
ing; navigation
and positioning
; data processing and quality control
; project
consulting
; and position control system (BlomPMS) for Tankers
and Air Gap Survey offshore. The company provides all sort of surveying services for dimensional control and subsea metrology (SICAMS) Parker ScanRope offers offshore mooring
s and subsea cables.
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
geographical information
Information
Information in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...
and offshore technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
company. The company has offices in ten countries in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and offers a wide selection of geographical services, including maintaining a database. The company has its headquarters in Oslo
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
, Norway and is listed on Oslo Stock Exchange
Oslo Stock Exchange
The Oslo Stock Exchange serves as the main market for trading in the shares of Norwegian companies. It opens at 9:00am and closes 5:30pm local time...
. Blom has subsidiaries in Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
, Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
and Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
.
History
Blom ASA was founded in 1954 by hydrographerHydrography
Hydrography is the measurement of the depths, the tides and currents of a body of water and establishment of the sea, river or lake bed topography and morphology. Normally and historically for the purpose of charting a body of water for the safe navigation of shipping...
Ole H. Blom. By 1988 the company was listed on Oslo Stock Exchange. In the early 1990s Blom expanded into Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
and Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
. In addition the company acquired Asplan Viak in Norway and expanded into the other Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
n countries, including acquiring the credit information company Creditinform
Creditinform
Creditinform AS is a Norwegian credit rating agency, and subsidiary of Experian.-History:The company was started in Brønnøysund, as a commercial venture related to the establishment of the Brønnøysund Register Centre. In 1997 the company was bought by Blom, who sold it to Experian in 2000. this is...
in 1997. Creditinform was sold in 2000. In the 2000s Blom went into Europe though multiple acquisitions, and left non-European markets. The company acquired ScanRope in 2006.
Geographical information
The geographical information division has 700 employees spread throughout ten offices in EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. The primary business areas are aerial photography
Aerial photography
Aerial photography is the taking of photographs of the ground from an elevated position. The term usually refers to images in which the camera is not supported by a ground-based structure. Cameras may be hand held or mounted, and photographs may be taken by a photographer, triggered remotely or...
], laser-scanning
Laser scanning
In modern engineering, the term `laser scanning' is used to described two related, but separate meanings. The first, more general, meaning is the controlled deflection of laser beams, visible or invisible...
(LiDAR), map
Map
A map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes....
ping and modelling, database
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
s and database applications
Application software
Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...
. The primary customers are development bank
Development bank
The phrase development bank may refer to:* Community development banks fund low-income areas in the United States* Multilateral Development Bank provide financing for international development...
s, engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
consultancies, government agencies
Government agency
A government or state agency is a permanent or semi-permanent organization in the machinery of government that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions, such as an intelligence agency. There is a notable variety of agency types...
, insurance companies, municipalities
Municipality
A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...
, property information, real estate
Real estate
In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...
and utility organisations
Utility
In economics, utility is a measure of customer satisfaction, referring to the total satisfaction received by a consumer from consuming a good or service....
.
Blom uses large format cameras
Large format
Large format refers to any imaging format of 4×5 inches or larger. Large format is larger than "medium format", the 6×6 cm or 6×9 cm size of Hasselblad, Rollei, Kowa, Pentax etc cameras , and much larger than the 24×36 mm frame of 35 mm format.The main advantage...
mounted in twin-engined fixed-winged
Fixed-wing aircraft
A fixed-wing aircraft is an aircraft capable of flight using wings that generate lift due to the vehicle's forward airspeed. Fixed-wing aircraft are distinct from rotary-wing aircraft in which wings rotate about a fixed mast and ornithopters in which lift is generated by flapping wings.A powered...
aircraft
Aircraft
An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air, or, in general, the atmosphere of a planet. An aircraft counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines.Although...
assisted by Global Positioning System
Global Positioning System
The Global Positioning System is a space-based global navigation satellite system that provides location and time information in all weather, anywhere on or near the Earth, where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites...
(GPS) with Inertial Measurement Unit
Inertial measurement unit
An inertial measurement unit, or IMU, is an electronic device that measures and reports on a craft's velocity, orientation, and gravitational forces, using a combination of accelerometers and gyroscopes. IMUs are typically used to maneuver aircraft, including UAVs, among many others, and...
s (IMU) to perform aerial photography. The company also used survey cameras, laser-scanners (LiDAR) and Hyperspectral scanner
Hyperspectral imaging
Hyperspectral imaging collects and processes information from across the electromagnetic spectrum. Much as the human eye sees visible light in three bands , spectral imaging divides the spectrum into many more bands...
s. The company has 32 fixed-winged aircraft, four helicopter
Helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by one or more engine-driven rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forwards, backwards, and laterally...
s and one Learjet.
Laser scanning is used to create a three-dimensional
Three-dimensional space
Three-dimensional space is a geometric 3-parameters model of the physical universe in which we live. These three dimensions are commonly called length, width, and depth , although any three directions can be chosen, provided that they do not lie in the same plane.In physics and mathematics, a...
image of the terrain, resulting in Digital Terrain Models (DTM). The scanning is done from fixed-wing aircraft or helicopters. The laser scanning can be used to create 3D city models, cadastral mapping
Cadastre
A cadastre , using a cadastral survey or cadastral map, is a comprehensive register of the metes-and-bounds real property of a country...
, digital orthophoto image
Orthophoto
An orthophoto, orthophotograph or orthoimage is an aerial photograph geometrically corrected such that the scale is uniform: the photo has the same lack of distortion as a map...
s, digital surface model
Digital elevation model
A digital elevation model is a digital model or 3-D representation of a terrain's surface — commonly for a planet , moon, or asteroid — created from terrain elevation data....
s (DSM), digital terrain models, GIS Mapping
Geographic Information System
A geographic information system, geographical information science, or geospatial information studies is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographically referenced data...
and vector mapping
Vector space
A vector space is a mathematical structure formed by a collection of vectors: objects that may be added together and multiplied by numbers, called scalars in this context. Scalars are often taken to be real numbers, but one may also consider vector spaces with scalar multiplication by complex...
.
Blom maintains a large database containing information within areal photography, digital surface models, digital terrain models, digital orthophoto images
Orthophoto
An orthophoto, orthophotograph or orthoimage is an aerial photograph geometrically corrected such that the scale is uniform: the photo has the same lack of distortion as a map...
. The database is available on subscription or though an online store.
Offshore technology
Blom ASA demerged in 2007 into Blom ASA and Scan Subsea ASA. Blom Maritime changed name to Scan Maritime. Later Parker Hannifin Group bought Scan Subsea and then Scan Maritime changed name to Parker Maritime. Parker Maritime is located in StavangerStavanger
Stavanger is a city and municipality in the county of Rogaland, Norway.Stavanger municipality has a population of 126,469. There are 197,852 people living in the Stavanger conurbation, making Stavanger the fourth largest city, but the third largest urban area, in Norway...
, Norway and offers services within hydrographic survey
Hydrographic survey
Hydrographic survey is the science of measurement and description of features which affect maritime navigation, marine construction, dredging, offshore oil exploration/drilling and related disciplines. Strong emphasis is placed on soundings, shorelines, tides, currents, sea floor and submerged...
ing; navigation
Navigation
Navigation is the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another. It is also the term of art used for the specialized knowledge used by navigators to perform navigation tasks...
and positioning
Navigation
Navigation is the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another. It is also the term of art used for the specialized knowledge used by navigators to perform navigation tasks...
; data processing and quality control
Quality control
Quality control, or QC for short, is a process by which entities review the quality of all factors involved in production. This approach places an emphasis on three aspects:...
; project
Project
A project in business and science is typically defined as a collaborative enterprise, frequently involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim. Projects can be further defined as temporary rather than permanent social systems that are constituted by teams...
consulting
Consultant
A consultant is a professional who provides professional or expert advice in a particular area such as management, accountancy, the environment, entertainment, technology, law , human resources, marketing, emergency management, food production, medicine, finance, life management, economics, public...
; and position control system (BlomPMS) for Tankers
Tanker (ship)
A tanker is a ship designed to transport liquids in bulk. Major types of tankship include the oil tanker, the chemical tanker, and the liquefied natural gas carrier.-Background:...
and Air Gap Survey offshore. The company provides all sort of surveying services for dimensional control and subsea metrology (SICAMS) Parker ScanRope offers offshore mooring
Mooring
Mooring may refer to:* Mooring , any device used to hold secure an object by means of cables, anchors, or lines* Mooring mast, a structure designed to hold airships and blimps securely in the open when they are not in flight....
s and subsea cables.