While power walking in the late afternoon sunshine, I heard about a cool new company that a colleague launched a few weeks ago at DEMO. (She was wearing her DEMO hat while walking, taking a break while her daughter was at ballet class.)

Her company is EarthMine, and it aspires to capture photo-realistic urban environments in 3D and store the resulting geo-spatial data as an “urban inventory” that will enable bazillions of applications to emerge. How about that for a mouthful?

EarthMine is a platform play in the geo-spatial arena, a critical building block for future location-based services in major cities. Initially it will lead to invaluable and highly functional applications for municipal governments, utilities, and infrastructure providers.

For example, just imagine how much more efficient cities could be if the public works guys actually had a 3D map of all the below-ground pipes, conduits, gas lines, sewers, etc. — linked to the intersections and places of interest nearby, with highly detailed GPS coordinates. Think what it might mean for companies trying to install cell towers or fixed wireless transmitters on top of tall buildings.

Here’s how the founders describe their original vision:

[While in grad school,] we had an idea that if we could integrate panoramic photographs with geo-spatial data we could capture and deliver photo-realistic 3D environments that would accurately document our world.

Assuming EarthMine gets the capital they need to scale the business, within a year or so major cities in the US will have been photographed and mapped in 3D with detailed geo-spatial attributes. Given the magnitude of the undertaking — “creating an urban inventory” — this will probably follow the path of all significant technology innovations. It will start with B2B and government opportunities where pay-offs are huge, rationalizing the large investment, before making its way into the consumer arena.

The founders dream that this technology will someday be used to power all sorts of applications that make consumers’ lives easier and more pleasurable:

We have been trying hard to make it an experience that people can relate to. Standing on the street with a map in hand — it should be that easy.

It will be interesting to see the applications and markets that are created by technologies like this.