Between the Poles

Future Technology Adoption in the US Government

A recent report by INPUT has identified five technologies that are expected to see "huge" increases in adoption by the US government over the next five years.

• Cloud computing
• Open source software
• Virtualization
• Service oriented architecture (SOA)
• Geospatial technology

According to INPUT US government spending on technology from 2009 to 2014 is expected to grow at about 3.5 % per year from 2009 to 2014, but spending on these five technologies is expected to grow much faster.

• Cloud computing - $370 million to $1.2 billion - 27 % CAGR
• Virtualization - $800 million to $1.4 billion - 12 % CAGR
• Open source software - $290 million to $430 million - 8 % CAGR
• SOA - $330 million to $660 million - 17 % CAGR
• Geospatial technology - $860 million to $1.4 billion - 8 % CAGR

Major drivers for adoption of these technologies by the US government include reducing costs, energy efficiency, more control over software code, and government transparency and accountability.

FDO Toolbox 0.9.1 Available

Jackie Ng has released FDO Toolbox 0.9.1.

Google Announces Real-Time Search

Google has announced a real-time search, that allows you after conducting a search, to see live updates from Twitter,  news and blog posts as they are published.  You will be able to click on "Latest results" to see a full page of tweets, blogs, news and other web content scrolling on Google as they are published.  Google has done this by partnering with Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca and Twitter.  You can see a live example at Google Trends.

Google Announces Goggles on Android Phones

Google has announced Goggles for Android mobile phones.  Goggles allows you to identify objects by taking a picture of something, a building or structure, a painting, a bottle of wine, or a store are some examples. Goggles will identify it and return information about it.  There's an eWeek slide deck that will give you a feel for what Goggles does.

MEST 2009: Spatial Data, Convergence, Intelligent Models, Collaboration, Open Source Geospatial, GeoWeb, and Fusion

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the MEST conferences, is the daily wrap up where one of the organizers briefly reviews and summarizes the day's presentations.  I find the exercise very worthwhile because it gives you a chance to review and digest what you've heard during the day's proceedings.  There is also a session at the end of the conference, where the entire conference is reviewed by several of the speakers and organizers. 

By way of a little background, MEST is organized by the Bahrain Society of Engineers, so I find it more akin to the infrastructure conferences I attend than a traditional GIS conference.   Although it has commercial sponsors, it is non-denominational and this is reflected in most of the presentations.  It also tends to attract government people from many of the Gulf states, Bahrain, Yemen, Oman, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia.

This year I was one of the panelists for the final wrap up, and I mentally did my own review which I presented as a personal precis of the conference.

Spatial Data

One of the themes that came up repeatedly was the importance of data, and especially of accurate, real-time data. Spatial data now includes not just traditional geospatial data sources but other sources such as architectural and engineering design, laser scanning, high resolution photogrammetry with multiple cameras, and ground penetrating radar.  Some of the newer technologies for acquiring spatial date were the subject of several talks including laser-scanning and LiDAR, high resolution photogrammetry, and earth observation satellites.  Dominic McPolin of the Central Planning Unit (CPU) in Bahrain and others emphasized the importance of reliable data in infrastructure planning.

Intelligent Models

Increasingly people want to do more than simply prepare maps.  They want to analyze and and simulate which requires more intelligent data.  For years utilities and telecommunications companies have maintained information about their outside facilities including location, properties such as maintenance records, and connectivity, because outage management, asset management and other utility applications require this information.  For example, outage management (OMS) is the primary user of connectivity because OMS typically needs to perform traces to identify controlling devices which may be the source of network traces and to identify customers affected by the failure of a device such as a transformer or pump. The increasing adoption of model-based design for structures such as buildings (building information modeling or BIM), roads and highways, electric power substations, nuclear power stations, hydroelectric plants, and renewable energy generation facilities, means that intelligent models are becoming available for many more types of infrastructure. Government permitting organizations are seeing the advantage of model-based design and are mandating (US GSA) or recommending (Singapore BCA) BIM to support building permit submissions.

Convergence

Another common theme is the convergence of architectural and engineering design, traditional GIS, and 3D technologies which enable what Dominic McPolin called a more holistic view of the built world.  World trends such as population growth, global climate change, and increasing complexity of our world are seen as major drivers motivating the broader interest in convergence.  Dominic McPolin emphasized that the complexity of modern economies requires a new fusion that will allow us to respond effectively to global climate change and other world challenges and predicted that because of its small size next year Bahrain will be a world leader in developing a new fusion of information and systems or conceptual business architecture that will provide a more holistic view of the national economy.

Collaboration

An important theme throughout the conference was the importance of collaboration between different disciplines such as engineering and business, different levels of government, different government ministries and agencies, and government and the private sector.  IT in many organizations is characterized by stovepipes, or islands of information, with limited communications between the different IT systems such as ERP, CRM, GIS, engineering design and others.  For example, a large utility or telecommunications firm may have thousands of applications, each running on one of ten or more operating systems, with its own proprietary database, which may be one of nine or more independent databases containing the same information.  This problem is exacerbated in government by multiple levels of government, national, state or provincial, and municipal.  In this respect small, centralized nations such as Singapore and Bahrain often have a significant advantage, because the problems associated with multiple levels of government are minimized.

Dr Al-Tamimi outlined a vendor-neutral architecture for the integration of different spatial systems within government including infrastructure, engineering, building permitting, mapping, and environmental, that is designed to be implemented in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.  A key feature of the architecture Dr Al-Tamimi is developing is that it includes the full range of spatial information from the very detailed, engineering precision, large scale to very small scale.  He said that integrating model-based design or BIM is a priority and planned as the next step. 

Ron Lake, who has developed and has been proselytizing the concept of the GeoWeb or worldwide, web-based  integration of spatial information for several years, made what I think is a key point that the GeoWeb needs to be treated as a web of systems, rather than a web of documents.  Ron, who is the founder of the GeoWeb conferences, has been a proponent for the integration of model-based design and BIM, which was a central theme of the last GeoWeb in Vancouver, as a key component of the GeoWeb.

New Software Business Models

Several of the presentations at the conference either focussed on open source geospatial software or described projects that used open source software.  Daniel Ames, from Idaho State University, gave what I suspect was an eye-opening presentation for many in the audience, outlining some of the advantages of open source software.  He referred several times to the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGEO) and very generously mentioned Autodesk's initial and continued support for the OSGEO.  Dan is the founder of  the MapWindow open source project, which has about 250 participants worldwide including 20 committers (developers with permission to contribute and modify code.) 

Innovation

Bahrain has announced that it intends to reduce CO2 emissions per capita by 60% by 2014. This will require the biggest infrastructure program (road, water, electricity) program the country has ever seen.  Dominic McPolin was unequivocal in identifying the key to achieving this aggressive goal as innovation and he made an impassioned plea to the private sector to provide the technology to enable this goal to be realized.

MEST 2009: Bahrain to Reduce CO2 Emissions Per Capita by 60% by 2014

In a very interesting presentation by Dominic McPolin of the Central Planning Office of Bahrain, he mentioned that Bahrain intends to reduce CO2 emissions per capita by 60% by 2014.  This exceeds the GHG objectives of many other countries.

China's State Council says China will reduce its carbon intensity 40 to 45 percent by the year 2020 as compared to 2005 levels.

President Obama has announced a provisional pledge to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.

Canada's announced goal is 20% reduction in GHG by 2020, compared to 2006 levels.

India has announced plans to reduce India’s level of “emission intensity” by 20 to 25 percent by 2020 compared with 2005 levels.

MEST 2009: Locating Underground Infrastructure in Bahrain

Today at MEST 2009, I had the opportunity to see a system for maintaining a single database containing all underground infrastructure in Bahrain.  A single repository for all underground facilities is something that is only possible in a very few places in the world such as Tokyo and other Japanese cities, Sarajevo, Calgary, and Edmonton, which are the ones I am aware of.  The system I saw is the Intelligent Decision Support System (iDSS) of the Ministry of Works and it was shown to me by Mr. Abbas Ally, Head of Central Planning Engineering in the Central Planning Office (CPO).

The Bahrain underground infrastructure system is unique for several reasons.

One Database of All Underground Infrastructure

According to Mr. Abbas the location of all underground infrastructure in Bahrain is stored in a single Oracle Spatial RDBMS.

• electricity including transmission, distribution, and street lighting,
• water including transmission and distribution,
• wastewater including storm, road, sanitary, and combined
• telecommunications

Stewardship

The source databases are maintained by the respective owners, water and electricity by the Water and Electricity Authority, telecommunications by Batelco, and wastewater by the Ministry of Works.  iDSS has several layers of security, using OS and Oracle security, that determines who can see what, and who can update what.

Frequent Updates

The intention is for each operational database to be replicated to the iDSS database, which means that the iDSS database will be as up-to-date as the source databases are, though this capability does not appear to be functional at the present time.  In the short time that I have been here I haven't been able to determine how reliable the individual source databases, electricity, water, wastewater, and telecommunications, are.

Excavation Requests

Anyone proposing to add to or make a change to undergound infrastructure is required to complete a Proposal Request, essentially a building permit.  The request is forwarded electronically to all of the participating utilities, who are required to review and respond to the request within three days.  Utilities who don't respond within three days are assumed to have approved the request.  In 2008 over 7,000 requests were processed.

Voluntary

Accordng to Mr. Abbas, participation in iDSS is voluntary, but all utilities and Batelco are participating.  Mr. Abbas explained that the primary reason that all the utility and telecommunications companies have agreed to participate is the business benefits they see resulting from participation.  Given the amount of money utilities and telcos in North America spend on locating underground facilities in response to Call-Before-You-Dig and One-Call centers requests, I expect the business benefits to the individual utilities are considerable.

MEST 2009: One Stop Shop Building Permitting with Mandatory Electronic Submissions

I am at MEST 2009 in Bahrain where I had the opportunity to speak about the New Interoperability Challenge: The Convergence of BIM, CAD, GIS, and 3D and some related topics.

I listened to a fascinating presentation by Venkatesa Kumar about the Municipal One Stop Shop for building permitting that the Information System Directorate of the Ministry Of Municipalities & Agriculture Affairs of the Kingdom of Bahrain has implemented. I have blogged previously about Singapore's world leading building permitting system, and so was very interested to find that Bahrain's permitting system not only has similar  objectives

• Improve the accuracy of submissions
• Automate the permit application review process
• Map urban development projects and applications

but also that electronic submissions are mandatory in Bahrain, as they are in Singapore.  The government offices that review building permit applications include Electricity, Water, Civil Defense, Roads and Highways, Sewerage, and others.  Singapore has been a strong supporter of building information modeling (BIM) and supports architectural and structural BIM submissions (MEP BIM is coming soon I've been told), in addition to 2D electronic drawing submissions (DWG, DWF, DGN, DXF, and PDF).  In Bahrain currently only 2D electronic drawing (DWG, DWF) submissions are supported, though I sensed real interest in BIM at MEST 2009.  According to Mr. Kumar, the electronic building permitting system in Bahrain has already managed to reduce the average time required to grant a provisional building permit from six months to one week, which represents a tremendous achievement.

FOSS4G Presentations, Videos and Posters Are Online

Presentations, videos and posters from FOSS4G 2009 are now online.  Almost all presentations, tutorials and workshop material has been collected, and two thirds of the presentations have video recordings.

Presentations, workshops, tutorials and videos are linked from the abstracts.

Videos can also be found on BlipTV.

Photos can be found on Flickr. 

Autodesk University: CAD, GIS, ERP, and Web Integration at Ergon Energy

Mark Volz of Ergon Energy gave a presentation at AU that described how Ergon Energy has integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP),  GIS, and design systems around a single point of truth and provides web-based access.  Ergon's business objectives are to increase productivity to address the challenge of an aging workforce, decrease the time required to restore outages to improve quality of services, and to prepare for the implementation of a smart grid.

Ergon Energy is a large electrical utility supplying electricity to rural Queensland, Australia. Ergon Energy maintains a network that includes 17,000 km of sub-transmission network, 120,000 km of high voltage network and over 60,000 km of low voltage network.

Like most utilities, Ergon uses a large number of applications including stores (inventory),  time sheeting, work order maintenance, report production, design calculations, civil design, networks maps, generation design, zone substation design, operating schematics, zone substation control, zone substation maintenance, outage notifications, connectivity, customer usage, customer management, billing, load management, load profiling, network operation, outage management,  network planning, demand management, environmental reporting, network model creation, distribution network design,  on demand mapping, asset visualizations, inspection corrections, asset inspection, maintenance planning, asset maintenance,  asset register, and purchasing system, to name a few.

Similarly to most utility companies, Ergon uses a number of different COTS and in-house developed systems, including a GIS (GE Smallworld), ERP (Ellipse), outage management (FdrStat), customer management (Facom), document/drawing Management (IBM Document Manager), network planning (DINIS), zone substation maintenance (SCAMS), customer connection management (CMM), asset inspection (Mapguide 6.5), and design (Autodesk, Bentley and Smallworld products).

Single Point of Truth

Early on Ergon decided to centralize their information repository around an spatial RDBMS.  To manage information flow, Ergon uses several technologies including Insync to move data between GE Smallworld and Oracle, Oracle triggers, which are used to move and transform data between systems in a timely manner, JIF which is a process to extract data from Facom into Oracle, enterprise application integration (EAI), which is used to manage data flow between systems through a systems API, and FDO which is used to integrate Autodesk applications and data.

Rule Based Design

Ergon has developed a network design tool which allows a user to do network design work using any AutoCAD based software platform (AutoCAD, AutoCAD Map 3D, and AutoCAD Civil 3D, etc) and which enforces all of Ergon’s design and data rules.  Rules include business rules, for example, network design objects must be in the GIS prior to energization.   Another business rule requires that designs must use approved compatible units.  Design rules include attribute constraints and Ergon CAD standards for layers, symbology, and scales.

CAD/GIS Integration

Previously network maps were produced in Smallworld, but this was time consuming because the extent of each map and the labelling of each map had to be manually defined.  Using AutoCAD Map 3D together with data queried from Oracle Spatial means that joins can are done within Oracle and stored as Oracle views and standard display styles are saved as layers in AutoCAD Map 3D.

By having all of the asset information available within Oracle Spatial allows Ergon Energy to produce complex maps combining data from various systems. An example is a thematic map showing all overhead copper conductors.  To do this with Oracle Spatial involves a simple SQL statement joining tables together within a view.  Once the view is created, the user then simply connects to the view within AutoCAD Map 3D, themes the layer as required, and uses the AutoCAD Map Book function to produce automatically a series of map prints.

Web-based Access

 Access to data stored in the central Oracle repository is provided by Mapguide Enterprise-based web applications.  A key advantage of a web approach is that web applications can be developed and deployed rapidly.  An example is a report showing customer power usage.  Ergon has found that Web access to data has resulted in a dramatic increase in office and field workers taking ownership of the data which has improved data quality.

You can find Mark's presentation and material at the Autodesk University web site.