Between the Poles

Ottawa's water and sewer rates to increase 74% over next decade

I have blogged several times about combined sewer overflows (CSOs), sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs), the cost of correcting these problems, and the variety of financial instruments that cities are using to finance these projects. By law in the Province of Ontario, city water and sewer systems are required to pay for themselves, which means that water users fund the water system and the water and sewer budget is separate from the city budget.

A part of Ottawa's wastewater system is a combined storm and sanitary system and it is planned to build holding tanks like those under construction in Chicago to store overflows in times of wet weather.   Ottawa’s water rates are set to rise a combined 74 per cent over the next 10 years. The city needs to double its spending on maintaining and expanding the water and wastewater system, whose assets are estimated at $18 billion.  The plan proposes spending $376.5 million this year on upgrades and maintenance, and $8.8 million on projects to expand the system for new growth in the city.

Over the next decade the average household water and sewer bill will rise from $636 a year now to $1,045. The rate increases and borrowing of additional $460 million will raise $2.1 billion for maintaining the system.  But this is short of the estimated $2.7 billion that is required, leaving a $600-million gap.

The projected costs assume that water use remains constant and that the city continues to charge users by the volume of water they consume using the current rate structure.  Many cities have adopted increasing block rates which means that the rate per unit volume of water goes up the more water you use and is intended to encourage reduced water usage.  There are also proposals to decouple revenue and water usage.

Carbon Disclosure Project Cities webinar

A free webinar is scheduled for Feb 1 11 am EST, where you can hear the CDP Cities team and responding organizations highlight the strategies that some of the companies and cities which respond to CDP use to construct their responses and build support internally and externally. There will also be an opportunity for participating cities to ask questions and trade ideas on reporting in 2012.  On hand will be

• Ben Thompson, Sustainable Business Program Manager, Sustainability Living Lab, Autodesk
• Jonathan Dickinson, Senior Policy Advisor, New York City

This webinar will take place via Webex on Wednesday 1st February at the following times:

0800 Los Angeles / 1100 New York / 1300 Buenos Aires / 1600 London

If you are interested in attending this free webinar, please register here.

New license for crowdsourced geospatial data adopted by OpenStreetMap

Crowdsourced geospatial landbase data is competitive in many parts of the world with government or commercial geospatial data.  The best known crowdsourced data source is OpenStreetMap.  To date OpenStreetMap data has been licenced under Creative Commons (CC-BY-SA 2.0) licensing. But there are some aspects of the CC license that are limiting when used with geospatial data. The two issues with CC licensing I am aware of are distinguishing between collective and derivative work for geospatial data.  More often than not, when you're working with geospatial data you are using more than one dataset which represents a collective work.  A second motivation is that in some jurisdictions geospatial data is not copyrightable. 

For a couple of years a new license, called the Open Database License (ODbL) and specfically tailored for geospatial data, has been under development.  OpenStreetMap is moving to the new license on April 1st, 2012. The ODbL license is comprised of an Open Database License (ODbL), a Database Contents License (DbCL) covering the database itself and its contents, and a set of upgraded Contributor Terms covering submissions to the database.  Because the ODbL license is replacing CC-BY-SA, everyone who has contributed data to OpenStreetMap will have to explicitly agree to the terms of the new license, which allows OpenStreetMap to distribute his/her data after April 1.  Data submitted by folks who don't agree to the new license will be removed from the database after that date.

Ensuring electrical devices are "smart grid-ready"

I blogged recently about the progress in smart grid standards over the past year including the NIST Smart Grid Framework and the SGIP Catalog of Standards.

NIST SGIP has just announced the process by which test laboratories and certifying organizations are accredited for evaluation of smart grid products.  To enable a competitive market for smart devices, the NIST SGIP and others are working to define standards for interoperability for electrical devices from power generator to household appliances.  To make sure that these devices really are interoperable will require testing, not something that the SGIP is mandated to do.  This will require accredited testing labs and certification bodies. The IPRM v2.0 process that SGIP has outlined defines the process for accreditation.

Autodesk founded 30 years ago

Autodesk was founded January 30, 1982.  Later it would bring Computer Aided Design (CAD) down from mainframe systems to the IBM PC and DOS with a new product named AutoCAD.

Japan's aging population - 40% will be of retirement age by 2060

I have blogged previously about the aging workforce challenge facing the US, Western Europe(especially Germany), South Korea, Australia, Canada, and Japan.  Government projections of population decline in Japan are unparalleled anywhere else in the world, because of a low birthrate, long life expectancy and low immigration.

The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has projected that by 2060, about 40% of the population of Japan will be of retirement age.  In addition by 2060 Japan's population is projected to be 87 million people, down from 128 million currently.  Life expectancy is projected to continue to rise to 84.19 for men and 90.93 for women in 2060.

OGC Open GeoSMS Standard approved

The OGC Open GeoSMS Standard is an extended Short Message Service (SMS) encoding and interface for exchanging location content between devices or applications. The OGC has just announced that the OGC membership has voted to adopt Open GeoSMS as an OGC standard.  The OGC Open GeoSMS Standard is available publicly.

FOSS4G North America 2012 to be held April 10-12 in Washington DC

Following last year’s well-attended international FOSS4G conference in Denver Colorado, the North American community of free and open source geospatial software developers, users, and advocates are planning a regular annual event in North America. The first FOSS4G-NA conference is scheduled to take place April 10–12, 2012 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. FOSS4G-NA will bring together many public and private-sector stakeholders at the forefront of some of the world’s most innovative free and open source software to discuss and work on building tools to help solve some of the world’s most pressing problems.  The organizers have confirmed Michael Byrne, the Federal Communications Commission’s Geospatial Information Officer and the force behind the National Broadband Map, as a keynote speaker.

Important dates:

    1/23/2012 Call for Papers
    1/23/2012 Pre-Registration Opens
    2/9/2012  Early Bird Registration Closes
    2/10/2012 Regular Registration Opens
    3/1/2012 Papers Submission Deadline
    3/15/2012 Confirmation of Accepted Papers
    4/2/2012 Close of Online Registration

Obama says infrastructure needs investment

President Obama in his State of the Union speech specifically called out infrastructure as requiring significant investment.  He said that "our infrastructure used to be the best", and mentioned countries such as Russia, China, South Korea, and several European countries that are ahead of the US in some sector of infrastructure.  He also referred to the American Society of Civil Engineers' Intrastructure Scorecard that assigned a grade of "D" to American infrastructure.

He said that the Administration is proposiing to redouble the rebuilding efforts that were initiated over the past two years and identified attracting private funding as important for this effort.  He specifically mentioned two initiatives.

High speed rail

Within 25 years the goal is to enable 80% of Americans to have access to high speed rail.  He mentioned routes in California and the Midwest that are already underway.

High speed wireless

Within 5 years the goal is to make it possible for businesses to provide 98% of Americans with access to the next generation of high speed wireless coverage.

Department of Interior to require full disclosure of hydraulic fracturing fluids on federal lands

The impact of hydraulic fracturing on water quality in the US is getting a lot of attention, most recently from the EPA nationally and specifically in Wyoming.

Last year the Wilderness Society surveyed the fracturing fluids requirements in state statutes to see whether they require public disclosure of hydraulic fracturing chemicals. As part of the survey they called the oil and gas commissions in each state to confirm their findings. 

The Wilderness Society found that of the 33 states where drilling occurs, only Wyoming requires full public disclosure of the chemicals in hydraulic fracturing fluids.  Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee required some disclosure of chemicals, but not to the public or in sufficient detail.

In his recent State of the Union speech, President Obama confirmed that the Department of Interior will require full disclosure of hydraulic fracturing fluids for any use of hydraulic fracturing on public lands.  The Department of the Interior has already announced that it is drawing up safety regulations for drilling on federal lands.  To date all hydraulic fracturing has been on private lands, but when the guidelines are in place federal lands will be opened to drilling.