Between the Poles

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: 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 Utility Symposium

On Monday here in Las Vegas at Autodesk University the Utility Symposium attracted an overflow crowd of utility folks.  It was an opportunity to exchange information and to hear presentations from a number of utilities across North America including water and electric power utilities.

Electrical Distribution Design

Tim Boucher and Paul Joseph gave an overview of business drivers at Southern California Edison (SCE) and some of the projects underway for meeting their business objectives.  SCE plans to invest on the order of $30 billion in renewable energy and smart grid related infrastructure, including new transmission lines, over the next decade. 

One of the SCE's primary business drivers is efficiency, because they have to do more with what they have. Tim and Paul described the Graphical Design Tool (GDT) project at SCE.  GDT is designed to provide designers with tools to help them do their job better.  It is a rule-based design application that provides electrical design functions such as voltage drop and flicker calculations; mechanical design functions such guying, pulling tension, sag analysis, and wind loading; as well as bill of materials and job estimates, in an AutoCAD-based desktop application. GDT not only provides tools that experienced designers find useful, but helps newly hired, younger, less experienced designers to get up to speed sooner.  Tim described the process for deploying GDT across SCE's territory to about 600 designers and supervisors.  Paul demonstrated some very cool GDT add-ons for multiplanar cable pulling tension, house corner loading, pole modeling, and Google Earth integration.

Tim outlined some of their next business priorities, which are all on my top 12 utility priorities list, including

• single landbase (they currently have five)
• single point of truth for all spatial data
• reducing their as-built backlog from a year to days
• enabling field staff in the field to be able to see the same spatial information in the field that the people in the office can see.

Sub-station Rehabilitation

Arnold Fry of Duke Energy talked about substation design and redesign.  At Duke Energy they have developed the Substation Design Solution (SFS) which automates the design of electrical control systems, uses model-based design for the structural design, manages a library of reusable components, automates the creation of the BOM, and helps the different disciplines to collaborate in developing the final design through 3D visualization, which enables the engineers to see how the different components fit together.

Duke Energy estimates that SDS will reduce design time by at least 50% for both greenfield and brownfield projects.  The Duke Energy SDS will be coming on line just at the time when the company is accelerating its smart grid deployment and will enable it to pursue an ambitious substation retrofit program.

Wastewater Treatment Plant Expansion

Asa Reese of Parsons talked about the Advanced Wastewater Treatment Expansion Project at DeKalb County, Georgia.  DeKalb decided to double their water treatment capacity using innovative membrane bio-reactor (MBR) technology.  This is a large, nearly one billion dollar project involving over 50 people and 10 disciplines.  Parsons, the firm DeKalb selected to design the water treatment expansion, decided early on to take a model-based design approach to enable collaboration between the different design teams and to use 3D visualization tools to ensure that the stakeholders, technical and non-technical, were able to participate in critical design decisions. Asa described how model-based design enabled Parsons to change the design process from a traditional linear approach, which Asa suggested is analogous to a relay race or tag team approach, to a parallel process based on collaboration between the teams.  Asa emphasized that changing the design process has been critical in keeping the design project within budget and on schedule.

Utility Events at Autodesk University

Autodesk University happens next week in Las Vegas.  Here's some of the utility related events.

Monday, November 30

12:00 pm - 01:00 pm Utility Symposium Lunch  - [South Pacific C - Mandalay Bay]

01:00 pm - 06:00 pm Utility Symposium Sessions  - [Islander C - Mandalay Bay] - RSVP

06:00 pm - 07:00 pm Utility Symposium Reception - [South Pacific C, Mandalay Bay]

07:00 pm - 09:00 pm    AEC Mixer - [South Pacific E -  Mandalay Bay]

Tuesday, December 1

08:00 am - 09:30 am

GS104-1: From CAD to Autodesk® Topobase™: Migration to Enterprise GIS  [Louis Ball 90-Minute Class].

UT104-1: Bringing Mobile Field Updates into AutoCAD® Map 3D Effortlessly [Glenn Vlass 90-Minute Class].

03:00 pm - 04:30 pm   

UT118-1: GIS for the Utility or Municipality With AutoCAD® Map 3D [Rick Chappell 90-Minute Class]

AutoCAD Map 3D & Autodesk MGE Interest Group - [Must RSVP to receive location information]

05:00 pm - 06:30 pm UT122-2L: Hands-On Design Using Autodesk® Utility Design [Dan Leighton 90-Minute Class]

Wednesday, December 2

08:00 am - 09:30 am UT204-1: Using AutoCAD® Inventor® to Electrify the Grid [Andy Warren 90-Minute Class]

10:00 am - 11:30 am AEC Keynote  [Location: Concourse Level in the Events Center Arena]

01:00 pm - 02:30 pm    AEC Government Keynote   [Location: Level 3 South Seas C ]

03:00 pm - 04:30 pm UT218-1: Managing Utility Network Connectivity with Autodesk® Topobase™ [Doug Laslo 90-Minute Class]

05:00 pm - 06:30 pm UT222-1: Autodesk® Utility Design at APS - Phase 2: What the Heck Did We Do in 2009? [Brett Hauf, Arizona Public Service  90-Minute Class]

06:30pm - 08:30pm Government Networking Reception  - [Location: Rum Jungle at the Mandalay Bay Hotel] RSVP

Thursday, December 3

07:30 am - 09:00 am E&C Water & Power Breakfast - Join us for a discussion about how to grow your water and power business with Autodesk solutions. [RSVP to receive location information.]

08:00 am - 09:30 am UT304-1: Integrate Autodesk® Topobase™ With Other Systems and Get More Value Out of Your Data [Giulio Pagan 90-Minute Class]

10:00 am - 11:30 am UT308-1: Water and Wastewater Network Management Using Autodesk® Topobase™, AutoCAD® Map 3D, and MapGuide® Enterprise [Pat Byrne 90-Minute Class]

01:00 pm - 02:30 pm UT314-1: Manage Electric Utility Assets and Designs with Autodesk® Topobase™ and AutoCAD® Map 3D: A Case Study [Peter Krotky, ASI – 90-Minute Panel]

Video Recordings of FOSS4G Presentations

The FOSSLC folks have released video recordings of most of the presentations at FOSS4G 2009 in Sydney.

Paul Ramsey's Keynote

The FDO Toolbox

GeoREST

GITA Ontario Fall Forum 2009: Smart Grid, Asset Data Quality, Data Volume, and Mobile

At this year's GITA Ontario Chapter Fall Forum there were a number of fascinating presentations on topics such as smart grid, mobile work force, managing electric distribution systems with enterprise GIS, and asset management in utilities and local government. 

The day started off with a Industry Trends Analysis Forum, similar in intent to the ITAG session at the annual GITA Conference in the US.  I found this one run by the Ontario GITA Chapter to be particularly effective.  People were grouped by tables, each table with 3-6 people, and 30 minutes was allotted for round table discussions with the goal of each table coming up with a consensus on paper of they saw as the most important 2 or 3 applications and technologies.  A few facilitators circulated to help if tables needed help or suggestions.  After the 30 minutes was up, a few tables were selected to report orally and then the paper notes were collected from each table to be used to prepare a summary report.  I found the exercise very effective, because there was 100% active participation.

Some very interesting information that I collected at the talks I attended.

Smart grid

A smart meter read rate of 99.8% is the provincial goal in Ontario, which means that 99.8 % of meters need to be readable over the network at any given time.

Municipal utilities are not only deploying smart meters, but also demand response devices, which can shut down appliances to reduce load at peak.

A WiMAX communications network is being built by electric utilities across the province of Ontario to support deployment of the provincial smart grid.

Time of use billing for electric power is being implemented in Toronto, a city with a population of about 4 million, right now.

Reportedly smart device manufacturers cannot supply smart devices fast enough to meet demand.

Standards

Smart grid is going to make industry standards much more critical. In several talks the standards Multispeak and CIM were mentioned as critical for of sharing data among different applications.

Microsoft's vertical Smart Energy Reference Architecture (SERA) for smart grid devices with a common plug-in standard is starting to get some attention.

Mobile

Even small local governments are implementing mobile solutions.  Applications described include enabling editting in the field.

Data Quality

Improving the quality of asset databases is a high priority for most local governments in Ontario because of PSAB3150.  Unlike GASB 34 in the US, PSAB 3150 appears to have real teeth.  It not only requires local governments to dramatically improve the reliability and completeness of their asset databases by Jan 1, 2010, but also to implement systems for maintaining their asset data at a high level of data quality.

One utility has implemented a novel way to improve the quality of their network facilities database.  $10 will be paid for any verified correction submitted by a field worker who uses their geospatial field viewer.  They guarantee that 100% of these corrections will be on the monthly DVD within three months.  They are actually finding that 90% of corrections are being included on the DVD within a month.  They are also noticing that the frequency of "line hits", instances where mains are being hit during excavations is decreasing.

Data Volume

Typical smart meters are designed for 24 reads per day.

With smart grid the volume of data is expected to grow astronomically.  Chatham-Kent Energy, with tens of thousands of customers, is expecting data growth of 4 terabytes per year.

Reportedly PG&E with millions of customers is planning on 4 petabytes data growth per year.

Reportedly one local government in the US is dealing with a million data reads per second.

Autodesk University Bloggers Social 2009

The date and time for the second annual Autodesk University Bloggers Social is Monday November 30th, 2009 from 6:30PM to 8PM at the Mandalay Bay "Border Grill".  To be considered for an invite, please complete the form linked below.   There will be a flock of bloggers and Autodesk employees attending as well as some speakers in a casual social networking environment to place names to faces.

Autodesk University 2009 Blogger Social Signup Form

Autodesk University Virtual

If you're stuck home in bed with the flu Dec 1-3 or your travel budget has been cut and you can't make it to Las Vegas, there is a way you can still keep up with AU classes and sessions via Autodesk University Virtual.  50+ classes and sessions will be streamed live.

You can find out more about AU Virtual here and see what is available on AU Virtual compared to being there live.

GeoWeb 2009 in Vancouver July 27-31 Focus on Urban Environments

GeoWeb 2009 is taking place July 27-31, 2009 in downtown Vancouver, BC Canada at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue and will focus on Urban Environments.  This year it includes an academic track on 3D Cityscapes.

Keynote and invited speakers include

• Michael T. Jones is Google’s Chief Technology Advocate and former CTO of Keyhole Corporation, the company that developed the technology used in Google Earth.
• Ken Greenberg is an architect and urban designer who has played a leading role in the rejuvenation of downtowns, waterfronts, neighborhoods, and campus master planning.

Some selected labs include

• GeoWeb 101 – An Overview of GeoWeb - the What, Why & Where of GeoWeb - Ron Lake, Carl Reed, & Michael Gerlek
• Digital Cities Modeling Workshop - Neal Niemiec, Autodesk
• Google Earth 5.0 KML Extensions -  Michael Ashbridge, Google
• 3D Geospatial: Project Implementation Methods and Best Practices - Tim Case, Parsons Brinkerhoff

Selected technical sessions include

• The gap between SDIs and the GeoWeb - Clemens Portele, Interactive Instruments
• Simple Relational Model for Temporally Diverse City Models - Paul Cote, Harvard University
• Address Management: The Secret Ingredient for Geospatial Success - Boris Gutkin, DMTI Spatial Inc.
• In My Backyard (IMBY): Renewable Energy for Everyone - Christopher Helm, NREL
• How good is your information architecture? - Carsten Roensdorf, Ordnance Survey
• Advances in Virtual City Data Management - Xavier Lopez, Oracle Corporation
• Building a new location-aware infrastructure for calendaring and scheduling - Peter Batty, Spatial Networking
• Integrating GIS, CAD, Raster, 3D and BIM Data - Dale Lutz, Safe Software Inc.
• Building a Virtual World: 3D Buildings in Google Earth - Mike Springer, Google
• Digital Cities Experts Panel - Doug Eberhard, Autodesk
• Open Access to Geospatial Data Using Open RESTful Web Services - Haris Kurtagic, SL-King
• Providing a Higher Level of Service through Web Architecture: City of Nanaimo and the MapGuide REST Extension - Jason Birch, City of Nanaimo
• Using Spatial ETL for Web Services-Based Data Sharing - Don Murray, Safe Software Inc.