Between the Poles

GITA Ontario: Mobile Solutions for Road Asset Management

I was at GITA Ontario Fall Forum yesterday near Toronto, which is an event I look forward to every year. This year was no exception, there was some exceptionally good content especially in the electric power utility area.

Every year I have a chance to catch up with some folks that are developing and deploying geospatial applications in Ontario, a province with about 10 million people.  This time I spend some time chatting with Scott MacPhee, Web Applications Engineer at Hunter GIS, which develops web-based geospatial applications for the municipal, utility, telco and resource management sectors using Autodesk MapGuide 6.5, MapGuide Open Source,  and MapGuide Enterprise.  They have developed several applications for local governments including tax parcel assessment, municipal permit tracking, development tracking, water and sewer asset management, gas infrastructure management, electrical infrastructure management, and environmental and natural resource management. One of the applications they have developed is a Road Asset Management System (RAMS), a comprehensive, web-based road asset management systems that allows municipal road departments to manage inventories and inspections, maintain an asset database including roads, bridges, culverts, signs, and lights,and help with prioritization and budgeting.  RAMS integrates with the parcel tax assessment database, automatically computes ratings, needs and resurfacing/rehabilitation costs, and allows you query the roads database for spatial analysis of road conditions.  RAMS has been in use for some time by local governments in Ontario.

I have blogged about the poor quality of network facility data in utilities and telecom, how critical up to date reliable network facility data is becoming, and how essential it is to use technology to empower field staff  to be full participants in improving the quality of asset data. What Hunter GIS has done is develop a simple online web-based application that can be used by field staff to report to report the condition of road facilities. Scott showed me a mobile extension to RAMS that provides field access to RAMS databases via a Blackberry or other wireless handheld device.  This means that field staff can view and select assets graphically, list all the assets on a street, view inspection reports on road assets, create a new inspection report, for example, report a pot hole, and attach a photograph all from a Blackberry.  Impressive. I fully expect that in the future they are going to find rapidly increasing use of handheld devices for these types of applications and proportionately less use of desktops.  Hunter GIS also have mobile solutions for municipal permit tracking and service request tracking.

FOSS4G: Google's Raul Vera Predicts Paradigm Shift - Mobile Geospatially Enabled Applications without Maps

Sydney is the the home of the Google technical team that were originally Where 2 Technologies who developed Google Maps and now are the folks developing Google Wave.  Raul Vera, who is a member of the Google Sydney team, gave a presentation in which he predicted a paradigm shift in spatial applications.

First of all he said that 70-80% of all Google searches have a geographic component.  In 2011 he expects that there will be more usage of Google Maps on mobile phones than on desktop/laptop computers.  As a result the future will be web applications (web apps), that are loaded on demand and run in a browser.  This means that you could be using a new or updated web app within hours of it being developed.  This defines a new level in agile development.

The future also means mobile geospatial applications without maps.  His example is Google Skymap that runs on the Android OS and provides a map of the sky for your location.  If you're into astronomy you will know that you need your location to provide a map showing the constellations and stars visible to you,  but otherwise you may be unaware that location has been used by the application.  The key to applications like this this is a location API, which can be either the W3C's open location api or an underlying location api developed by Google or another vendor.  The location api returns your location, but different vendors compute this is different ways.  In my experience you need to know how each vendor's location api works, because in the case of Google, for example, it returns the location of your server, which is not necessarily where you are. 

New Geospatial Blog auf Deutsch

Grüezi wohl und O'zapft is!

Exakt zum Münchener Oktoberfest 2009 und zur INTERGEO gehen wir mit unserem Blog 'THE GEOSPATIAL NAVIGATOR' an den Start. OK, zugegeben, die INTERGEO war das eigentliche zeitliche Ziel für unsere ersten Posts, in denen wir nun regelmäßig zu Neuheiten, Tipps und Tricks rund um die Autodesk Infrastruktur Lösungen navigieren. Und das natürlich in deutscher Sprache, eventuell mit etwas Schweizer Akzent!

Also O'zapft is und los geht's!

Matthias Liechti & Marcus Briglmeir

Web-based Utility Mapping - Integration of Precision CAD and Pictometry Imagery

I was fortunate to be invited to present a keynote at the 18th Annual GIS/SIG Spatial/Digital Mapping Conference in Rochester, NY yesterday.  This was one of the most interesting regional conference I have attended recently.  Attendance was close to 200 and included academics, government, utility and commercial attendees.  There were a number of very interesting talks, but one in particular presented by Rocco Venezia, president of Geotilities, and Scott Hill, SVP of Pictometry, a well known imagery company based in Rochester, caught my attention, because what they described was a hosted web-based application for integrating precision imagery and utility CAD drawings.

Geotilities is a survey company that does a lot of work for local utilties and municipal government.  They have two survey crews equiped with real-time GPS and provide boundary surveying, topographic surveying, construction surveying, control surveying, GPS consultation, and subdivision design and layout services.  They use AutoCAD-based software for mapping.

One of the the key differentiators that Geotilities brings to the table is centimeter accuracy in their surveying and mapping, including storm sewers, waterlines, sanitary sewers, signage, gas lines, telephone lines, cable lines, and fiber optic lines.

Pictometry collects data using high resolution aerial photogrammetry augmented with LIDAR data for digital terrain modeling.

What Rocco and Scott demonstrated is a MapGuide-based application that uses a browser as a client and that integrates precision vector CAD utility network data with precision imagery from Pictometry over the web. There are several very impressive features of this system.  First of all it's hosted, the imagery by Pictometry and the vector CAD data by Geotilties, so that smaller municipalities don't have be concerned with developing their own IT infrastructure.  It's accurate to the centimeter, which is not often found, or to be honest, extremely rare among US utilities.  And utility mapping data can be published directly from the AutoCAD-based desktop to the web.  

A most impressive aspect of this system from a user persepctive is its performance.  As I said it's a web application and the performance for both imagery and vector that I saw was outstanding.  Apparently Pictometry made a major contribution to the exceptional performance by optimizing tiling of their imagery.

2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act Includes Geospatial Funding for Eight States

According to FederalComputerWeek toward the end of February the The US House of Representatives passed a $410 billion 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act, H.R.1105. The bill would fund

• $151.8 billion for labor, health and education
• $20.5 billion for agriculture, rural development and the Food and Drug Administration
• $57.7 billion for commerce, justice and science
• $33.3 billion for energy and water
• $22.7 billion for financial services and general government
• $27.6 billion for interior and the environment
• $4.40 billion for the legislative branch
• $36.6 billion for state and foreign relations
• $55 billion for transportation and housing and urban development

These allocations represent an increase from fiscal 2008 spending levels.  According to Adena Schutzberg, the bill includes allocations specifically targetted on geospatial.  She mentions $1,248,000 for Arkansas where the funds are aimed at promoting geospatial technologies into under-served rural areas.

Perspective from the Czech Republic: Geospatial Intelligence Is Replacing Traditional GIS

Last week I had the opportunity to present a keynote at the Sitewell VIP Conference on Land and Infrastructure Management.  Sitewell are the developers of the Czech Ministry of Agriculture's LPIS System that is used to qualify land use and distribute agricultural subsidies to Czech agricultural producers.

Mojmir Macek, General Manager of Sitewell, gave a provocative presentation on the evolution of geospatial technology. 

Islands of Information

From Mojmir's perspective the major problem that we are facing is islands of information or stovepipes, where the flow of information always involves making copies, which means redundant data.  Redundant data has to be maintained which means redundant processes.  

Data Quality

One of the most serious problems facing organizations using geospatial data is data quality.  The problem is exacerbated by a number of factors including the continuing proliferation of paper, increasing data volume, and inefficient business processes. 

"Traditional GIS" is Dead

Mojmir is convinced that this spells the end for "traditional GIS", which creates yet another information stovepipe.  It is expensive to integrate with other enterprise applications, requires training staff on another user interface, and exacerbates the problem of redundant data.  Mojmir emphasized his point by lighting a candle and holding a mock wake for "traditional GIS."

Long Live geospatially intelligent Information Systems (giIS)

What Mojmir sees happening is that location is becoming ubiquitous, not as stovepipe "traditional GIS" applications, but integrated with existing applications such as search engines, relational database management systems (RDBMS), and CAD/BIM, in other words, what Mojmir calls geospatially intelligent information systems giIS (or what some people prefer to call location intelligent information systems).

Directions Magazine Podcast on the FDO API: Asset Intelligence and Visualization – The Convergence of CAD and GIS

Directions Magazine has just released a Podcast on the FDO API which includes commentary from David Kingsbury, Pete Southwood, and myself on how FDO, which is open source and available on the FDO OSGEO Web site, helps local governments, utilities, and telecommunications firms to enable a single point of truth, eliminate as-built backlogs, reduce paper flow, and streamline the flow of engineering design information.

CAD/GIS Integration en francais

For francophones Gwenael Bachelot has just published an interesting article on CAD/GIS integration CAO et SIG : l'avantage de n'avoir qu'une version de la réalité du terrain in the French edition of Directions Magazine.  If you enjoy this, Gwenael also has his own blog Geospatial made in France , that you would enjoy as well.

Intermap Seminar on Geospatial Data in Engineering

Intermap Technologies will host a free webinar on Geospatial Data in Engineering Thurs and Fri of this week.

When engineers and architects design buildings and infrastructure, they can no longer do this in isolation.  They need to take into account location.  Sustainability initiatives such as LEED certification is one of the major drivers for this, but in different countries other drivers often government legislation are the primary motivators. For example, in the UK right to light is an important driver, in Germany noise abatement, and in many jurisdictions 3D zoning regulations such as view protection are important drivers.  Intermap Technologies is a primary provider of high precision DSMs and DTMs captured via aerial overflights and radar.  In this webinar we will discuss the implications of technology advances in software together with high precision geospatial data is enabling the modeling of urban environments.

North American Webinar
Date: Thursday, May 8
Time: 8:00 a.m. PDT; 9:00 a.m. MDT; 10:00 a.m. CDT; 11:00 a.m. EDT

European Webinar
Date: Friday, May 9
Time: 14:00 CEST

Moderator - Kevin Thomas
Primary speaker - John Weeber / Larry Starling
Subject matter experts - Geoff Zeiss, Neal Niemiec

To sign up go to Terrainscapes .

GIS Development: Interview with Lisa Campbell

In GIS Development April 2008  there is an interview with Lisa Campbell, who is responsible for Geospatial Solutions at Autodesk.  It is worthwhile taking a close look at this interview because Lisa gives her perspective on some of the important things that Autodesk is doing in the geospatial/infrastructure management domain. 

• Geospatial is no longer an isolated domain, it is showing up everywhere including in design and 3D visualization.
• CAD and GIS are tightly coupled. The workflow at utilities, telecommunications companies, and local governments means that CAD users need geospatial capabilities.
• Autodesk has integrated CAD and GIS so that CAD users can do the geospatial things they need to do with their CAD desktop, including managing data with a spatially-enabled database management system.
• Autodesk is the first public geospatial software company to bring an open source product to market.
• Autodesk's strategy for interoperability is based on FDO, which means that you only need one copy of your data no matter what format it is in.

These are important perceptions, that are having important implications for CAD users in the utility, telecommunications, and local government sectors.