Between the Poles

Technology: Working While Windows Boots

As I blogged about last February, I often carry a second computer, an ASUS EEE PC 701 , so I can work while I wait for my Windows laptop to boot up.  Some enterprising folks at Splashtop have taken this concept one step further and embedded a compact version of Linux with applications in the BIOS, so that within 30 seconds of pushing the power button on your computer you can be browsing the web, making a call using Skype or viewing photos or videos.  Right now this is available on ASUS EEE Box, some ASUS notebooks and Voodoo Envy machines, but it's such a good idea that I expect other manufacturers will include Splashtop as well.  You can also argue that it's green, because when you know you are only 30 seconds away from doing something useful, it reduces the need to keep your computer powered up.

Intergeo: Open Source Geospatial and Digital Cities

Next week several of us will be at Intergeo in Bremen, Germany for Intergeo, one of the largest geospatial events anywhere. I'll be spending most of time in the Open Source Park.  Doug Eberhard will be at Intergeo talking about Digital Cities.

AGI GeoCommunity '08: NUAG and Shared Access to Utility and Telecom Networks

One of the most difficult things to do in many parts of the world if to find a single database which shows where all underground assets, utility networks such as water and waste water, power, gas, oil, and steam telecommunications including copper, fibre, and coax are located.  I am aware of a few cities where this is possible.  Tokyo has had a mainframe-based ROADIC system for many years. Calgary, Alberta has had the JUMP (Join Utility Mapping Project) also for many years.  In Parana State in Brazil there is a joint consortium for sharing facilities and landbase data among all the utilities operating in that state, with the exception of telecommunications.  Edmonton, Alberta also has a shared facilities mapping database.  Sarajevo, in Bosnia, has recorded the location of all utility and telecommunications infrastructure operating in the city on paper maps for over 40 years.  A few years ago Sarajevo started converting these maps to digital format.  But in most places in the world, you have to go to seven or more different utility, local government, and telecommunications organizations to find where all underground facilities are located.  For folks that excavate, which includes utilities, local government, and telecommunications firms, identifying the location of underground facilities is a major problem with potentially fatal consequences and is the reason for the existence of Call-before-you-dig or Dial-before-you-dig call centres that you find in most US states, all Canadian provinces, in Scotland, but strangely not in England.  The ROI for the individual utilities and telecommunications firms for sharing facilities location data is large.  For example, a utility company with which I am familiar used to have 20 vehicles dedicated to locating underground cables.  After the implementation of a shared underground facility database in the city in which they operate, they only required two which saved over half of million dollars annually.   

Given this background one of the talks that I really wanted to hear at AGI this year was about National Underground Assets Group (NUAG) presented by Mark Hobell of the Ordnance Survey because the UK is leading the way worldwide in creating and sharing digital underground utilities location information. 

TMA

One of the most important steps forward is the recent implementation of the Traffic Management Act (TMA), which requires everyone, utilities, telecommunications firms, and local government, with underground assets to exchange digital information to facilitate better street works cooperation, in other words, to avoid the problem where the water company digs up the road one week, and the power company the same stretch of road 2 weeks later. 

NUAG

One of the problems is that the TMA does not require that asset data to be recorded based on common standards.  The objective of NUAG is to address this problem, to ensure a "consistent and compatible approach" to recording, storing and sharing asset,  both underground and associated above ground, information.  NUAG is comprised of  a group of stakeholders, utilities, local government, and Mark assured the audience, telecommunications companies, to support the Department for Transport (DfT) in sharing data consistently among everyone involved with underground and above ground assets.  Mark's presentation was an update on progress to date.

CERN Large Hadron Collider: Does the Higgs Boson Exist ?

There's a good video introduction to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.  But if you want something a little more populer, there is a rap introduction.

AGI GeoCommunity '08: Importance of 3D Visualization in Disaster Simulation and Response

I've just spent the last two days at the annual AGI conference in Stratford-upon-Avon.  The last time I attended AGI was 2004 in London.  The conference chair this year is Steven Feldman, who has made this conference one of the most interesting I have been to in the last year.  I often miss many excellent presentations at the conferences I attend because I spend a lot of time chatting with folks about business opportunities.  However, at this conference, I was fortunate enough to hear most of the keynotes as well as an overview of the National Underground Assets Group (NUAG) presented by Mark Hobell of the Ordnance Survey.

People agreed that the most memorable phrase of the conference was from Sean Phelan, the founder of Multimap, who opined that this may be the last generation who knows what it's like to be lost.

Summer 2007 Floods

But the presentation that I found had the most impact was given by Charlie Pattinson, Head of Resources and Information Management, at the Environment Agency.  In Summer 2007 the UK experienced torrential rains that overwhelmed the storm sewer systems in many localities and led to widespread flooding.  The statistics indicate how serious the flooding was: 48,461 homes and 6,896 businesses affected, GBP2.5B in losses, and 13 fatalities.  The most interesting personal reminiscence of the conference was Charlie's story about being caught in a coach 9 hours during the worst of the flooding, and only admitting at 4am to the other travellers in the coach the organization he worked for. 

He showed a memorable picture of a power sub station that was somehow kept operational during the 2007 flood even though inundated by flood waters.

The Environment Agency has assessed the susceptibility of critical infrastructure in the UK to flooding, literally thousands of essential facilities are at risk.

The point that Charlie made that probably had the most significant impact on the audience was his estimation of flood risk for the future. the best case scenario is bad, the worst case scenario is really bad.

Importance of Visualization

One of the important points that Charlie made that really resonated for me is that the visualization of information about flood risk must be effective and targetted.  To reinforce this point he used a 3D model of a city to show a time series simulation of the progress of a flood.

Importance of Visualization in Support of Combat Operations

Another speaker, Stuart Haynes, Director of the Defence Geographic Centre, made same point about the important of visualization, but in his case in support of military operations in Afghanistan, where it assisted in a difficult combat situation in Helmand Province.  Mr. Haynes showed a series of images including a 3D visualization of the combat location showing topography, buildings and other built structures, and trees.

Municipal Water, Wastewater Networks Available on the Web

A municipality in New Zealand called North Shore City has made its water, waste water and storm water network infrastructure available on the web.  Not only is the location of the underground infrastructure accessible, but users can query each facility to determine properties like type of pipe, diameter, and when it was installed.  Remarkably and what may be the beginning of a trend toward greater openess of utility networks, this service appears to be open, so that residents, utilities, telcos and other interested parties operating in the area are able to access this information.

LiveCD to Help You Get Started with MapGuide Open Source

Autodesk and Camptocamp have created this LiveCD to ease your first steps with MapGuide Open Source. When you boot your computer with this CD you get a working MapGuide Open Source server, complete with the MapGuide Maestro authoring tool, code samples, and demo datasets.

Dancing Geographically

Who said geography can't be fun ?  Watch Where the Hell is Matt ? on YouTube.

MapGuide Open Source 2.0.2 Available

The MapGuide Open Source project team has announced that MapGuide Open Source 2.0.2 is available. MGOS 2.0.2 supports Firefox 3, bug fixes, rendering fixes and updated FDO DLLs. For the complete list please see the MGOS 2.0.2 Release Notes . The feedback I have heard from folks using MGOS 2.0.2 is that this is a milestone release.  I have heard terms like "rock solid" used about it.  Also Zac Spitzer strongly recommends using Google's new Chrome browser with MGOS.

Proposal for Simplifying FDO Schema and Class Names

Last week I was in Australia and had a chance to touch base with Zac Spitzer , who is the Solution Architect with Ennoble Consultancy and who was responsible for implementing the architectural design pattern that I blogged about a few weeks ago.

Zac is a MapGuide/FDO developer, and one of the things we talked about is his six point proposal to simplify schema and class naming in FDO.  In essence what Zac is proposing is to move FDO in the direction of making it more provider independent.  It would make it easier to use FDO, and would also make it easier to migrate applications from one provider to another, for example, from Oracle to MySQL, or from SHP to Oracle.

According to Zac, currently FDO reports

    OSGEO.SHP reports Default:shpfilename
    OSGEO.Gdal reports default:default
    KingOracle reports KingOra:ZAC~BUILDINGOUTLINES~SHPGEOM
    OSGEO.OGR reports OGRSchema:BUILDING
    MySql reports Fdoreports:aquifer_property

With Zac's proposal FDO would report

    OSGEO.SHP reports filename
    OSGEO.Gdal reports filename
    KingOracle reports schema:tablename or if connected as "schema" then just tablename
    OSGEO.OGR reports filename
    MySql reports schema:tablename or if connected as "schema" then just tablename
    SDF still reports what ever you like as a schema name

Thoughts ?