Skip to content
Kevin Mercy, founder of GEOSLN, in a dark suit

Founder

Meet our founder

Whether you are interested in the Hazard API or GEOSLN consulting offerings, I look forward to helping with your business needs.

About Kevin

Founder bio

In addition to launching GEOSLN and building the GEOSLN Hazard API, founder Kevin Mercy has most recently supported Sea Island Software Inc. with the management of the geospatial ingest pipelines behind HURREVAC, the United States National Hurricane Program’s decision-support tool for government emergency managers. As a critical system with live users, Kevin often worked on call 24/7 to fix live production issues. Additionally, to maintain system security, he led several complex cloud migration projects and modernized legacy code into faster and more stable codebases using modern technologies and data types.

Before working with Sea Island Software Inc., Kevin Mercy worked at The Aerospace Corporation, where he was exposed to a wide array of dense imagery processing systems. At The Aerospace Corporation he helped speed up several large hyperspectral processing libraries, and helped make internal imagery more valuable by giving it an interface where it could be indexed, queried and discovered across the company instead of sitting on hard drives.

Kevin Mercy received an M.S. in Geographic Information Science and Technology and a B.A. in Archaeology with minors in Computer Science and Geospatial Intelligence from the University of Southern California. Through his time at USC, he worked with researchers in the USC Archaeology Lab and the Spatial Sciences Institute, and contributed to work that was later featured by National Geographic.

Timeline

From field data collection to software engineer

The common denominator: huge, messy geospatial datasets that organizations needed clearer answers from.

  1. Today

    1. GEOSLN

      Consulting for small and mid-size companies, and GEOSLN's own Hazard API: the same skills, offered to teams that need them.

      • Client

        Clairvoyint AI

        Helping Clairvoyint turn its vision of evidence-grounded analytical agents into scalable cloud infrastructure and production web applications.

        clairvoyint.ai
    2. 2023–today

      HURREVAC data pipelines, Sea Island Software

      Production engineer on the data pipelines behind HURREVAC, the National Hurricane Program's decision-support tool used by thousands of government emergency managers during live storms: AWS migration, seven years of imagery moved to Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs, GeoParquet pipelines on Airflow, and on-call support during storms.

    Kevin Mercy, founder of GEOSLN, smiling in a white shirt
  2. 2022–2023

    Mapping team, Sail Internet

    Added error catching and data cleaning for corporate CRM data, and integrated custom geospatial API routes, including viewshed coverage and total homes passed, served into a live internal app for network planning and development.

  3. 2019–2022

    Satellite imagery at The Aerospace Corporation

    Built a full-stack imagery browser on Django, PostGIS and GeoServer, containerized a testbed into a Kubernetes CI/CD environment, sped up hyperspectral processing 2–3×, and co-authored the R3 CubeSat's first-18-months results.

    SmallSat 2020 paper
  4. 2019

    GEOINT Symposium speaker & Golden Ticket

    Presented LiDAR voxelization work in the GEOINT 2019 Innovation Corner as one of 30 USGIF Golden Ticket honorees, and received the $10,000 RGi Scholarship. Completed an M.S. in Geographic Information Science and Technology at USC.

    USGIF announcement
    Kevin Mercy presenting a LiDAR voxelization workflow to an audience at the USGIF GEOINT 2019 Symposium
  5. 2019

    Voxelized 3D data, published in Drones

    Co-authored a lightweight web system for temporal stacks of UAS point clouds: 78% smaller data, still queryable back to every original point.

    Read the paper
    Web-based 3D viewer showing a voxelized UAS scan of a building and trees over imagery, with a list of collection dates to step through
  6. 2017

    Society for American Archaeology, Vancouver

    Co-presented “Hilltops and Boundaries: The LiDAR Survey of El Zotz and Tikal” at the 82nd SAA Annual Meeting.

    tDAR record
    Kevin Mercy at the 2017 Society for American Archaeology annual meeting in Vancouver, where he co-presented the El Zotz and Tikal LiDAR survey
  7. 2017

    LiDAR ground reconnaissance in Guatemala

    Co-led the El Zotz Archaeological Project's reconnaissance team with Dr. Thomas Garrison, confirming LiDAR-detected Maya settlement on the ground, part of the survey later covered by National Geographic.

    2017 season report
    Kevin Mercy in the Guatemalan jungle during LiDAR ground reconnaissance
  8. 2016

    First fieldwork: Catalina Island

    Undergraduate research modeling where Catalina's springs hold water, using watershed delineation, stream networks, and vegetation indices, then checking the answers on foot.

    Elevation map of the White's Landing watershed on Catalina Island with stream network

Research snapshots

Field investigations and conferences

Kevin Mercy (far right) in the Guatemalan jungle with National Geographic Explorer Albert Lin (center) near the La Cuernavilla palace
Guatemala, 2017: in the forest with National Geographic Explorer Albert Lin (center), a co-author on the El Zotz project's 2017 LiDAR report, with Kevin Mercy (far right).
LiDAR bare-earth hillshade revealing the mounds and plazas of an ancient Maya palace complex hidden beneath forest canopy
What the LiDAR saw: a palace complex resolved from under the canopy, before we confirmed it on foot.
Kevin Mercy collecting GNSS survey points above a bay on Catalina Island
Collecting GNSS control points for a UAS erosion survey on Catalina Island.
Full audience at Kevin Mercy's talk in the GEOINT 2019 Innovation Corner
Presenting at the GEOINT 2019 Innovation Corner as a USGIF Golden Ticket honoree.

Full publications

Publications, talks & recognition

Peer-reviewed and conference work from the field and the lab.

Publications & talks