Between the Poles

GITA PNW: Reflections on GITA's role in rapid technology change in the utility industry

In 1982 a not-for-profit organization AM/FM International was chartered to provide the growing AM/FM industry with an educational forum to exchange ideas and keep up with changing technologies including the change from paper to digital mapping, called Automated Mapping/Facilities Management at the time.  In 1998, AM/FM International changed its name to the Geospatial Information & Technology Association (GITA). Since then GITA's mission has been to provide education and information exchange on the use and benefits of geospatial information and technology for the world's infrastructure, particularly in utility organizations including electric power, water and waste water and gas. 

In this time of rapid technology change in the utility industry, driven again by the renewed penetration of digital technologies into all aspects of utility operations, the need for an organization like GITA to monitor new technologies and provide education and an open forum for the exchange of ideas is greater than ever. 

But with current limited travel budgets at many utilities, regional conferences are attracting more participants than national events.  GITA has about 15 chapters in North America, and one of the most active is the Pacific Northwest Chapter (GITA PNW), which just held its annual conference.  I have been attending this event for at least five years.  This year's event was again very worthwhile and included a number of presentations on new IT technologies and their application to the utility sector, several of which I have blogged about.

Green construction and the convergence of model-based design and geospatial

Modern web portals for utilities - asynchronously updatable mashups and standards-based

A cloud-based hosted solution for small utilities

Reflections on GITA's role in technology change in the utility industry by the President of GITA PNW

The event was opened by the President of GITA PNW, Zan Strausz.  He reflected on the origins of GITA and why he thinks that the needs that drove the formation of AM/FM International and GITA are just as important today as they were in the 1980's and 1990's.  I found his talk every perceptive and relevant to anyone contemplating the massive technology changes that the utility industry is just beginning to embark on, and I have included some of his remarks here.

Before we launch into our program I want to take this opportunity to reflect on the venerable tradition you as conference attendees are a part of. I'm speaking of the long history of GITA providing a forum for education, promotion and innovation in the geospatial world. Its roots in the utility industry reflect the early adoption of geospatial technology going back 50 years. With the development of what was then known as Automated Mapping/Facilities Management, or AM/FM, utilities were pioneers in applying geospatial concepts to analysis and asset management, way before the term Geographic Information System became the ubiquitous concept it is today. It was around this technology that GITA, originally called AM/FM International, was organized. Over the years the focus of the organization has expanded beyond just the utility industry to include a more broad base of infrastructure users and service providers involved in the application of geospatial technology. But the core purpose of the organization remains to provide a forum for the dissemination and sharing of geospatial technology concepts as they relate to increasing the efficiency and value of the services our  organizations provide.  

I would like to provide one example of an issue that I have observed in my own industry which I believe can be mitigated by benefits of the forum provided by GITA. I refer to what I would term "technology inertia" by which I mean the cumulative effect of bureaucratic momentum and ingrained habits that prevent the adoption of new and particularly emerging technology. This is not necessarily a  bad thing; a responsible organization needs to wisely and considerately adapt to new technology, as  steward of their investors' or customers' interests. However, it becomes a problem when it delays the  application of technology that can definitely improve the efficiency of the organization. It is ironic that  this problem would appear in the utility industry, which has a history of innovation in the application of geospatial technology ... I'm certainly sympathetic with the conservative ethos of not changing with every shift in the winds of technology, and if something works, why change? But, often, this can retard innovation which would benefit  everyone.

Forums such as GITA provides can be an antidote to this ossified conservatism by giving us insights into emerging and successfully applied geospatial technology, provided by our peers and  industry experts; insights that we need to advance our enterprises into the future.  That future holds some immediate challenges to the utility industry in particular. The many  technologies embodied in the concept of the Smart Grid are going to need to be implemented in the  very near future if we are to meet the huge challenges of providing power, water and other basic  infrastructure in a world whose exploding demand is rapidly running up against the realities and  imperatives imposed by the finite nature of the resources of our increasingly small world. Geospatial  technology will certainly play a key role in the management of the huge amounts of data processing  and analysis that will need to be applied to provide any hope that we can we can solve the  infrastructure challenges that absolutely must be met before we can leave future generations the legacy  of a clean, prosperous and healthy world.

First Canadian infrastructure report card released

I have blogged on several occasions about the ASCE's widely recognized Report Card for American Infrastructure which has highlighted the poor state of American infrastructure by not only assigning a grade but also attempting to estimate the total investment that is required to bring U.S. infrastructure up to an acceptable standard.  The ASCE Report Card for 2009 includes Aviation (D), Bridges (C), Dams (D), Drinking Water (D-), Energy (D+), Hazardous Waste (D), Inland Waterways (D-), Levees (D-),  Public Parks and Recreation (C-), Rail (C-), Roads (D-), Schools (D), Solid Waste (C+), Transit (D),  and Wastewater (D-), for an overall GPA of D and an estimated five year investment requirement of $2.2 trillion.

Other countries have also attempted to do similar report cards for some of their infrastructure, including Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.  At least one city, Hamilton, Ontario has generated an infrastructure report card for its municipal infrastructure.

In 2007 the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) conducted a survey of municipal infrastructure and estimated that the municipal infrastructure deficit in Canada in 2007 was C$123 billion.  The FCM broke this down by key infrastructure categories,

• water and waste water systems - $31 billion
• transportation - $21.7 billion
• transit - $22.8 billion
• waste management - $7.7 billion
• community, recreational, cultural and social infrastructure - $40.2 billion

The first Canadian Infrastructure Report Card was released this month by the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering (CSCE), the Canadian Public Works Association (CPWA), the Canadian Construction Association (CCA) and the FCM.

The Report Card assesses the state of Canada's municipal drinking water, wastewater, storm water and road systems at a national level based on survey results from 123 municipalities representing about two thirds of Canadians.

The Report Card estimates the total value of Canada's municipal water, wastewater, storm water and road systems across the country at $538 billion. Of this

• $50.7 billion is assessed as being in poor or very poor condition.
• $121.1 billion is assessed as being in fair condition.

This is considerably higher for the comparable categories than the FCM estimated in 2007.

Municipal roads (Fair)

More than half the roads surveyed fall below a rating of “good”: 32% are in “fair” condition, and 20.6% are in “poor” to “very poor” condition, for a total of 52.6%. ( A grade of “Fair” means the infrastructure “shows general signs of deterioration and requires attention, with some elements exhibiting significant deficiencies.” ) The estimated replacement cost of the roads in fair to very poor condition is $91.1 billion, nationally.

Wastewater (Good)

40% of wastewater plants, pumping stations and storage tanks in “fair” to “very poor” condition, and 30.1% of pipes are assessed to be in “fair” to “very poor” condition. The replacement cost for the wastewater infrastructure in “fair” to “very poor” condition is $39 billion.  In addition the Federal government has just introduced Canada's first regulations covering wastewater treatment which will require an additional significant level of investment which the FCM has estimated could cost municipalities over $30 billion.

Drinking-water (Good)

15.4% of the systems were ranked “fair” to “very poor” for the condition of their pipes.  14.4% of plants, reservoirs and pumping stations were ranked “fair” to “very poor”.  The replacement cost for the drinking-water infrastructure in “fair” to “very poor” condition is $25.9 billion.

Stormwater (Very good)

12.5% of stormwater installations surveyed fall below “good” condition.   23.4% of stormwater pipes are assessed to be "fair" or "poor". The replacement cost for stormwater infrastructure in “fair” to “very poor” condition is $15.8 billion.

GITA PNW: A cloud-based hosted solution for small utilities

At the 12th annual Geospatial Information and Technology (GITA) Pacific Northwest Conference at Salishan on the Oregon Coast, John Mitchell of Terraspatial Technologies gave a fascinating presentation on a hosted or SaaS (software as a service) solution for small utilities.

I blogged previously about Burlington Hydro, a relatively small utility in southern Ontario that is integrating into an intelligent network many aspects of what is typically included in smart grid including intelligent netwrok devices, self healing networks, smart meters, distributed generation, electric vehicles (EV) , factory ride-through systems (enables factories to continue functioning through outages), battery-based electric storage, bidirectional communications network linking the intelligent devices to the control center, and dramatically increased volumes of real-time data.

Most utilities, large and small, are experiencing or very soon will experience a similar change in the customer services, responsivness, and level of reliability their electric power networks are expected to provide. 

An important difference between large utilities and small utiltiies, many of which are municipally-owned or rural coops, is that large utilities have the IT staff and experience to deal with intelligent electric power networks whereas small utilities often don't. 

Hosted solution

What struck me as as so unique about what Terraspatial is offering and so valuable to small utilities is that it is a hosted solution, in other words, all the utility needs to install at their site is a browser, everything else is running in the cloud.  The most important benefit of a hosted solution like this is that it reduces the level of IT capacity that the utility needs to maintain in house.

One of the utility associations that Terraspatial has been working with is the Central Services Association (CSA), an association of 116 smaller utilities, in central Mississippi.  Jointly Terraspatial and CSA have developed the requirements for a hosted solution called PlantWorx for electric power utilities.  Based on thes requirements, Terraspatial has designed and built, and CSA has been testing a solution called PlantWorx.

The design goals of the solution that CSA and Terraspatial have developed are very relevant to small utilities. 

• It is hosted, which means that the utility does not need to own or manage servers or software. 
• It is secure because it relies on the security of Rackspace a major cloud hosting provider that can provide a level of security, including protection from internal tampering, role-based access by users, protection from external  threats, the latest encryption, redundancy and back-ups, ISO certified data centers, and mirrored servers for persistent backup, in other words a much higher level of security than the average utility network is capable of.
• Because it it running in the cloud, it is accessible from anywhere and from any device, in the office and in the field.
• It is an integrated work order management sytem solution supports staking through to accounting and reporting.  It interfaces to customer information systems, accounting and billing systems, and materials management systems,
• It provides a dashboard allowing the utility to monitor key performance indicators of the utility's business.

GITA ANZ: Standards for underground utility data

As I have blogged about previously, one of the most difficult things to do in many parts of the world if to find reliable data about underground assets, utility networks such as water and waste water, power, gas, oil, and steam telecommunications including copper, fibre, and coax.  When I was in Penang, Malayia I encountered an interesting approach for mapping and maintaining a database of underground facilities that is unlike anything I have seen elsewhere.  It's called Sutra D'Bank (PENANG STATE GOVERNMENT SUBTERRANEAN DATA BANK) and is maintained by a joint venture company EQUARATER (PENANG) SDN BHD (EPSB) formed by Equarater Sdn Bhd and the Penang Development Corporation.

At the GITA ANZ conference in Melbourne, Bruce Potter of Cardno gave an overview of the progress toward defining an Australian standard for classifying the reliability underground utility data.  Their research has identified several international standards in other countries around the world including the UK, US, Canada, Malaysia, and Japan.

The Australian standard is intended to build on the ASCE 38-02 standard including the A, B, C, and D Quality Levels, but extend it to include

• 3D spatial accuracy as part of Quality Level A
• Metadata about the nature of the facility, its condition and status.

ASCE 38-02 - Standard Guideline for the Collection and Depiction of Existing Subsurface Utility Data

Published in 2002, this standard is intended to standardize the classification of the quality of location information about existing subsurface utility networks included on engineering drawings.  The standard defines four quality levels:

• D – Information derived from existing records or oral recollections.
• C – Information obtained by surveying and plotting visible above-ground utility features and by using professional judgment in correlating this information to Quality Level D.
• B – Information obtained through the application of appropriate surface geophysical methods to determine the existence and approximate horizontal position of subsurface utilities.
• A – Precise horizontal and vertical location of utilities obtained by the actual exposure and subsequent measurement of subsurface utilities, usually at a specific point.

Classifying the quality of data about underground utility networks reduces risk and allows engineers to make decisions about remedial measures to gather accurate location data for underground facilities.  When underground facilities are unexpectedly encountered during construction, there is the potential for catastrophic results.

This stantard has been endorsed by both AASHTO (A Guide for Accommodating Utilities Within Highway Right-of-Way) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).

New national wastewater regulations announced in Canada

Every year about 150 billion litres of untreated sewage are dumped into Canadian surface waters.  In 2010 I blogged about then Environment Minister JIm Prentice releasing a draft of proposed municipal wastewater systems effluent regulations, which are designed to set standards for the discharge from all 4,000 wastewater facilities in Canada. This was part of implementing the Canada-wide Strategy for the Management of Municipal Wastewater that was endorsed by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) in 2009.

The Environment Minister and Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities have announced that the Wastewater Systems Effluent Regulations are now in force. The Regulations are established under the Fisheries Act and include mandatory minimum effluent quality standards that can be achieved through secondary wastewater treatment.  The Wastewater System Effluent Regulations are Canada's first national standards for sewage treatment.  The regulations are intended to prevent untreated and under-treated sewage from being dumped into surface waters. The Government of Canada, which said it worked with provinces, territories and municipalities, to finalize these regulations, expects that about 75 percent of existing wastewater systems already meet the minimum secondary wastewater treatment standards in the Regulations. Communities and municipalities that meet the standards will not need to make upgrades to their systems. The other 25 percent, about 850 individual communities or treatment areas, will have to upgrade to at least secondary wastewater treatment. 

Environment Canada has classified towns and cities into three categories of risk when it comes to their wastewater systems.   High, medium and low categories would be given until 2020, 2030 and 2040, respectively, to comply with the regulations. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has estimated that the regulations could cost municipalities over $30 billion and has urged a national funding plan involving all levels of government to pay for the wastewater upgrades.

Owners and operators of the systems will also need to consistently monitor and submit reports on their effluent releases.  According to Environment Canada, the new effluent standards align Canada with both the United States and the European Union.

Using BIM for infrastructure to improve urban aerial and underground facility records

One of the major hazards of all construction activity is inadvertently hitting underground infrastructure.  To give some idea of how frequent this occurs, in the US in 2010 there were 112,917 incidents where underground utility facilities were hit during excavation.

I've blogged recently about what Heathrow has done to design business processes to optimize data quality.  For example, contractors at Heathrow are contractually obligated to progressively deliver as-builts over the lifetime of construction projects. 

One of the major challenges facing municipal governments and utilities is one of data management, optimizing information flows for engineering data. I have blogged about this challenge on multiple occasions (here, here, here and here).

A recent article outlines what the City of Las Vegas has done to address this challenge.  The city decided to develop a 3D model of above- and below-ground infrastructure in Las Vegas’s core downtown area.   They wanted a living 3D model of the city's existing infrastructure, not an archive, that they could rely on to be an accurate and up-to-date source of information for planning, designing, and maintenance.

The city turned to VTN Consulting for help building the 3D model because VTN has been a longtime proponent of developing 3D city models based on an approach called building information modeling (BIM) for infrastructure.  The city model that VTN designed for Las Vegas blends engineering design drawings, geographic information system (GIS) data from a variety of sources and file formats, and aerial photogrammetry.  As the team brought GIS and design data provided by the city together with aerial photos to build the framework for the model. The aerial photographs provide a wealth of information about conditions and buildings above ground, and serve as a point of reference for underground infrastructure. They are now bringing in underground utility information.  Some of this information is quite old and may often not reflect existing conditions.  They’re using American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)  standards to rank the quality of subsurface utility data on a scale of A to D, with ‘A’ being survey accurate to ‘D’ denoting data from unverified records or oral recollections.

They have focused on optimizing their business processes for updating data about their existing facilities and adding new facilities so that over time data quality will improve.  In particular they have ensured that there is tight integration between the engineering design environment and the city model.  Engineers can easily not only integrate city model data into their designs at the beginning of projects, but also add their designs to the city model at the completion of projects.  One of the major benefits of integrating the city model into the design process is that it enables them to avoid interferences, often called clashes, with existing underground infrastructure during the design phase.

The BIM for infrastructure approach not only makes it easier to spot and address interferences in designs before construction begins, it also helps to improve communication with nontechnical stakeholders including the public.  3D visualizations are more intuitive especially for nontechnical people, whereas 2D drawings and maps require explanation.  A 3D model can help win support for a project. A photorealistic rendering of a project is much more effective in conveying the benefits of a project, for example, in not creating an eyesore or even making the city more visually appealing.  For a city like Las Vegas that lives from tourism this is a top priority for any project.

Indoor location tracking and mapping are developing rapidly

One of the new generation of geospatial-related conferences that I have attended for two years now is Location Intelligence for Enterprise USA.  It is not a traditional GIS conference but includes talks about vertical business challenges in the commercial space that have benefited from geospatial data and technology.  This year it was hosted by Natasha Léger, Editor, LBx Journal and included speakers from Fedex (managing infrastructure), IBM Business Analytics (business intelligence), Walgreens (retail), Microsoft Azure (cloud computing), Jones Lang Lasalle (Healthcare), Thomson Reuters (predictive analytics), Piteny Bowes (business rules in the cloud), Nate Hole of Loeb and Loeb (privacy), and I talked about gaming and data visualization.

Indoor mapping and tracking

One of the panel discussions focussed on indoor location and mappping.  It was moderated by George Percivall, Chief Architect and Executive Director of the OGC Interoperability Program, and included Kipp Jones, Chief Architect ,Skyhook, Ankit Agarwal , CEO, Micello Inc, Corey Mandell, Chief Technology Officer, Point inside   and Chris Galo, Regional Director of Sales, Aeroscout.

To kick it off George Percivall gave an overview of where things stand wit respec to indoor location.  He mentrioned that the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has initiated an IndoorGML Indoor Location Standards Working Group.  The objective of the working group to provide a common schema framework for interoperability between indoor navigation applications as well as to integrate indoor space and outdoor space in a seamless way.  Indoor mapping is already supported by Google and Bing.  Micello is in the business of creating indoor maps of major venues around the world.  Most of the activity seems to be focussed on consumers and locations such as malls, airports and department stores.  A typical indoor application would help you find particular products in a mall or department store.

Challenges

The major problem that distinguishes indoor from outdoor location and mapping is that there is no indoor equivalent of GPS.  When you are outside of buildings on most of the Earth's surface you can use GPS  to determine where you, other people and things are.  As soon as you walk into a building, GPS no longer works and it is difficult to automatically track people and objects.  For example, to be able to track a firefighter in a building  that has not been prepared in advance remains a challenge.

There have been a number of attempts to solve this problem.  Aeroscout, recently acquired by Stanley Black & Decker, uses Wifi signals from transmitters with known locations to triangulate locations to with an accuracy of 10-15 feet.  Other technologies involve tracking cell phone location by triangulation, RFID, accelerometers, or tracking by low frequency radio frequency waves that are not as affected by walls as high frequency waves.  Recently magnetic anomaly-based indoor positioning using smart phones has been developed by IndoorAtlas. 

Another challenge is 3D location in tall buildings, translating an elevation in meters or feet to a particular floor and vice versa.

The industry is also facing a serious lack of standards right now like, for example, the CityGML standard for everything outside of buildings.  So the OGC's IndoorGML working group initiative is opportune.  In the Netherlands there is a working group associated with Geonovum and the Dutch 3D cadastre that is attempting to align the CityGML ADE GeoBIM standard and the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) BIM standard maintained by BuildingSmart.  IFC is intended to enable the exchange of BIM data between applications developed by different software vendors in a vendor-neutral way.  The objective of the work group is to define a standard, semantically meaningful mapping between IFC and GeoBIM. 

The business benefit of indoor location is significant because it increases the value of your assets - when you can locate equipment and facilities easily, you will use them more.  In the case of hospitals it can be a matter of life and death to find the "crash cart" in seconds rather than minutes.

Colorado wildfires: technology is changing how utilities respond to disasters

June 2011 to May 2012 was the warmest 12-month consecutive period in the continental U.S. in recorded history.  This extreme heat has created conditions conducive to wild fires.  In one day NOAA reported thirteen new large fires.  Nationally, 52 large fires have burned more than 900,000 acres.  Residents near several large fires across the country remain evacuated. 

A fire that has attracted national attention is the Waldo Canyon Fire near Colorado Springs where 347 homes have been destroyed and more than 20,000 homes and 160 business have been under threat.  Another fire, the High Park fire west of Fort Collins has destroyed 257 homes.

Waldo Canyon Fire gas restoration

To give you some idea about what is involved from a utility perspective this is a summary of Colorado Springs Utilities (CSU) gas restoration efforts as of July 3 at 11 am.  CSU is responsible for electric power, water and gas services in the Colorado Springs area.  CSU reported that about 3000 CSU customers are back in their homes and businesses in the evacuation areas of Peregrine and Oak Valley Ranch.  CSU has restored gas service to a little over a half of these homes and will continue working through July 4 to restores the rest.  Crews from Xcel Energy have arrived and are helping.  In the particularly hard hit area of Mountain Shadows which remains evacuated, engineers have determined that 1200 homes are habitable, but that the fire has ravaged the gas system.  In this area the restoration process will take much longer than in other areas. 12 miles of distribution line are going to have to be restored and 350 service lines to homes that were destroyed or damaged need to be capped. Federal regulations require these caps be tested for 24 hours to ensure that they are safe.  During this process the hard hit areas of Mountain Shadows areas must remain evacuated for safety reasons.

I must add that we at Autodesk recognize the tremendous commitmment and effort that utility folks, both in the field and in the control center, make in dealing with these emergencies.

Technology is changing disaster management

Technology is changing how utilities respond to disasters like the fires in Colorado.  One area that has changed dramatically is how the utility communicates with the public during and after a disaster.  The other area is new sources of geospatial data that can provide much more timely information, what some refer to as near real-time data, during both the disaster and the restoration period.

Data quality

One of the problems that utilities face is data quality, especially relating to the location of underground facilities.  The infamous gas explosion in Belgium in 2004 immediately comes to mind because poor data meant that the construction crew did not know that there was a gas pipeline where they were excavating.  In many disasters such as the fires in Colorado, it is crucial that you know exactly where underground infrastructure is. Colorado Springs Utilities has been making a major effort to implement standards-driven processes, built-in analysis, and materials management to improve workflows which helps field crews during disasters by contributing to improved data reliability. 

Social media

One of the areas which has dramatically impacted how utilities respond to disasters is communication with the public.  Not only does CSU have a web site with up to date information about the fires, areas affected, and restoration efforts, but CSU is also on Facebook.  For example, this was posted just Tuesday evening.

"As of this evening, we've restored service to 2,400 homes. Crews will hit the road again July 4. Thank you for your patience and support. We are proud to serve and call this community home. - Patrice"

As another example, Southern California Edison (@socaledison) uses Twitter to report extreme weather alerts, outages, and restoration progress.

Near real-time data

Queensland floods

Extensive flooding occurred in many areas of Queensland during late December 2010 and early January 2011, exacerbated by Cyclone Tasha, a category 1 tropical storm, with three quarters of the state, or 1 000 000 km² declared a disaster zone.  In some areas flooding was so severe that mandatory evacuation was imposed on several towns.  At GITA ANZ last year, Mark Volz of Ergon Energy gave a fascinating presentation on how Ergon monitored flooding and managed electric power during the disaster.

Ergon had to identify facilities where the power needed to be turned off and also had to keep the police informed of the status of electric power facilities across the state.  Mark used a digital elevation model (DEM) of Queensland from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) global digital elevation model.  Satellite radar images, produced by the COSMO-SkyMed satellite constellation, of the flooded regions of Queensland which has been supplied to the Australian authorities by e-GEOS were used by the University of New South Wales in Sydney, with the support of the Land & Property Management Authority and of the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information, to compile temporal maps showing how the extent of flooding changed with time.  The maps were sent to the Australian authorities within six hours of the images being received.  Using the DEM data and the satellite imagery Mark was able to identify Ergon facilities that had been inundated.

Alabama tornadoes

 April 27th 2011 thirty tornadoes hit Alabama Power's operating area completely destroying two substations, flattening transmission pylons, breaking 7500 poles, and leaving 400,000 customers without power.

Prior to the tornadoes Alabama Power had deployed about 1.4 million smart meters in its operating territory.  By looking for smart meters that had been read the day before and comparing them with the meters that could not be read after the tornadoes, Alabama Power was able to put together a detailed picture of where power has been lost, without making telephone calls.  The application could also tell emergency response officials whether the power was on or off in specific buildings - critical information that first responders require before entering a damaged building.  In addition, Alabama Power could track power restoration as customers started coming back on-line.

Real-time network monitoring

One of the most important challenges for modern grid control is being able to monitor a large number of intelligent devices in real-time.  Burlington Hydro has implemented a real-time monitoring system that integrates their SCADA system, 65 000 smart meters reporting power use every 15 minutes, the supporting automated meter infrastructure (AMI), power line sensors, customer information system (CIS), their ERP system, engineering analysis, and other systems.  It utilizes bidirectional communications to both receive information from and control smart devices. The system has to handle very large data volumes.  For example, some devices are reporting 60 times per second.  A web browser, either on the desktop or on a mobile device, is all that's required to access tools for asset maintenance, cable locate, asset management, operations, financials and drill downs, automating network pinning and work protection tagging, SCADA, schematic views, automated CAIDI, SAIDI and SAIFI reporting, an outage management system (OMS), mobile workforce automation, automated as-built management, real-time asset monitoring and analytics, and an executive dashboard.  For example, this allows live monitoring of all transformers on the grid.  The transformer status monitoring dashboard not only shows a map with transformer loading in real-time in the form of a heat map, but also reports historical loading and can even estimate, based on the history of oveloading on a particuler transformer, how much the lifetime of the transformer had been shortened as a result of the overloading.  It also allows the operator to reconfigure the grid in real time to reduce the load on overlloaded transformers and redistribute it to others with available capacity.

Post-disaster imagery

Post-disaster high resolution imagery helps governments quickly and cost-effectively assess and manage damage assessment and rescue efforts following a disaster.  For example, Pictometry will image up to 200 square miles of affected areas of Federally declared disasters caused by hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes to customers at no charge, often within a few days.  Pictometry even provides change analysis software to help quantify the impact of a disaster for several months following a disaster.

Crowd-sourcing

One of the novel developments that is changing how information is collected and disseminated is crowd-sourced data, data that is uploaded directly from the field.  It the case of the Queensland floods a web site was developed by Mark Volz's team at Ergon Energy.  The web site became the single source for all information relating to asset damage. The source of this information was what Mark called "internal crowd-sourcing", asset damage reports from operations staff in the field uploaded daily to the site.

Autodesk releases Infrastructure Modeler 360 for the cloud

Autodesk has released a new service as part of Autodesk 360, called Autodesk BIM 360.  One of the new tools in BIM 360 is a Conceptual Design and Feasibility Evaluation service, which enables users of Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler to publish, store, and manage large models in the cloud. Users can invite other team members to access, download, and edit shared models.  If you ever used Project Galileo Online, this may look familiar.  Users can invite other team members to access, download, and edit shared models.

Introductory videos are available.

This part of Autodesk BIM 360 is a cloud-based collaboration service available to subscription customers.

Sewage pollution right to know in New York

In 2009 I blogged about a New York Times article that said that in the past three years more than 9,400 of the US’s 25,000 sewage systems had violated the Clean Water act by dumping untreated or partly treated human waste, chemicals and other hazardous materials into rivers and lakes and elsewhere.  This was based on  data from state environmental agencies and the EPA.  According to the analysis more than a third of all U.S. sewer systems including San Diego, Houston, Phoenix, San Antonio, Philadelphia, San Jose and San Francisco have violated environmental laws since 2006.  The EPA estimated in August 2004 that the volume of combined sewer overflows (CSOs) discharged nationwide is 850 billion gallons per year. Sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) result in the release of as much as 10 billion gallons of raw sewage yearly.  The EPA estimates that there are at least 23,000 - 75,000 SSOs per year.   According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 2008 there were about 14,780 wastewater treatment facilities and 19,739 sewer systems in the U.S.  and aging pipes and inadequate capacity (SSOs and CSOs) result in the  discharge of an estimated 900 billion gallons of untreated sewage into surface waters each year.

The New York Times article goes on to say that In New York City the sewer system overflows just about every other time it rains. According to the New York Riverkeeper, more than 27 billion gallons of raw sewage and polluted stormwater discharge from 460 combined sewer overflows (CSOs) into New York Harbor each year. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) have recently announced a $3.8 billion modified consent decree that over 18 years will reduce combined sewer overflows.

According to the ASCE, the problem is that most jurisdictions are spending between 1 and 1.5 percent on infrastructure, which is down from 5 to 6 percent spent in the 1960s and '70s.  In September 2002, an EPA Gap Analysis concluded that if there is no increase in investment, there will be a $6-billion gap between current annual capital expenditures for wastewater treatment ($13 billion annually) and projected spending needs.  The EPA CY2004 clean water needs survey estimated an investment of $202.5 billion over 20 years.  In the CY2008 needs survey the investment has risen to an estimated $344.8 billion, primarily as the  result of age, deferred maintenance, and population growth.  

In Ottawa where I live in 2006 a sewage leak resulted in the equivalent of 350 Olympic pools of untreated sewage being discharged into the Ottawa River.  This leakage only became public knowledge some time after it occurred.  The public also became more generally aware that Ottawa's combined sewer system routinely discharges untreated sewage into the Rideau Canal and Ottawa River.  There is now a City of Ottawa web site that reports CSOs.  The City of Ottawa also has a plan to mitigate the impact of combined sewer overflows into the Ottawa River including real time monitoring and control, building storage capacity to hold overflows until there is capacity to treat the sewage, and continuing sewer separation projects.  With the current funding framework, it is expected that the planned separation work will be completed in approximately 25 years. 

Many U.S. cities including Cleveland, Akron, Chicago, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, and others have agreed to very expensive consent decrees for violation of the Clean Water Act.

Unlike some other states such as Maryland, New York statutes currently do not require public notification when raw or partially treated sewage is discharged into waterways.  A bill is before the New York state legislature to amend the environmental conservation law to establish the sewage pollution right to know act. The bill would ensure that the public would be notified of raw sewage overflows (CSOs and SSOs).  The objective is to protect public health.

Public notification of sewage overflows would be required to include the volume and treated state of the sewage spill, the date and time of the sewage spill, the expected duration of the sewage spill, the location and whether it is contained, all chemicals and agents applied to absorb the sewage spill, the material safety data sheet, any health/safety/welfare/environmental concerns related to exposure, information to residents as to safety precautions, method of containment, website addresses and any other information deemed relevant by the department of environmental conservation or the New York state department of health.

In addition the department of environmental conservation will be required to produce an annual report on violations in the prior calendar year.  The report is to include total number of violations or exceedances and the details of each including actions taken to mitigate impacts and avoid further violations.

As Theodore Roosevelt said, "civilized people should be able dispose of sewage in a better way than putting it into the drinking water".  The point of the sewage pollution right to know initiative is that the first step in addressing the problem is increasing public awareness that putting sewage in the drinking water is exactly what we are currently doing.