Between the Poles

Chile: Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Data

I have been in Chile most of last week in Santiago, where I gave a presentation at the International Cartographic Conference (ICC 2009).  This is my first time in Chile, and I am extremely impressed by the natural environment, the Andes on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other, and secondly by the quality of the infrastructure, especially the electric power network, I have seen here in Santiago.

I have had the opportunity to visit several government and commercial sites.  One in particular I found particularly interesting. I met Ivan Alonso Lienlaf Nova of SNIT (Sistema Nacional de Coordination de Informacion Territorial), which is a federal government organization that was created in 2006 to coordinate geospatial data among eleven ministries of the federal government.  From a technical perspective they have created a data catalog for all government geospatial data.  The national catalog currently contains metadata and references for 10 000 geospatial products in diverse areas such as agriculture, biology, administrative boundaries, roads, educational institutions, and cadastre.  SNIT is reaching out to other non-government sectors as well, including private companies and universities.

Open Standards

SNIT supports open standards including OGC and ISO standards, and in particular the ISO 19115 and 19139 standards for metadata. 

Open Source

GeoNodo is SNIT's web-based application portal, that is designed to allow developers to build web-based applications for accessing the SNIT metadata catalog and indirectly government geospatial data.  GeoNodo is based on open source geospatial tools,  MapServer, PostGIS, and Apache. The Regional Government of the Region del Los Rios has developed a web site using GeoNodo.

Open Data

Chile's freedom of Information bill was passed in 2008, after a decade long campaign by Proacceso, Chile’s right-to-know movement.  Ivan Alonso was optimistic that the bill will result in free and open access to government geospatial data, perhaps in a similar way to the November, 2008 decree published in Brazil that established the principle that federal government geospatial data should be made available without cost to Brazilian citizens.

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.

Last Call Working Draft for W3C Geolocation API

The Geolocation API specification defines an API for scripted access to geographical location information. The document just published by the Geolocation Working Group is a Last Call Working Draft, which means that the Working Group has determined that this document has satisfied technical requirements and is ready to advance through the W3C Technical Recommendation process to become a W3C Recommendation. Comments can be sent to public-geolocation@w3.org. 

The requirements for the Geolocation API are to

1. provide location data in terms of a pair of latitude and longitude coordinates.
2. provide information about the accuracy of the retrieved location data.
3. support "one-shot" position updates.
4. allow an application to register to receive updates when the position of the hosting device changes.
5. allow an application to cheaply query the last known position.
6. provide a way for the application to receive updates about errors that may have occurred while obtaining a location fix.
7. allow an application to specify a desired accuracy level of the location information.
8. be agnostic to the underlying sources of location information.

Vancouver City Council Passes Motion Endorsing Open Data and Open Standards

The City of Vancouver has passed a motion endorsing open data, open standards, and leveling the playing field for open source software procurement.  I had blogged about this earlier.

City of Vancouver Proposal to Endorse Open Data and Open Standards

A motion is to be submitted to city council that would endorse the principles of open data and open standards and place open source on an equal footing with proprietary software with respect to procurement.  Mayor Robertson has said that an “open city” philosophy would help create new opportunities in the information technology sector.

The motion proposes that the City of Vancouver will endorse

• "Open and Accessible Data - the City of Vancouver will freely share with citizens, businesses and other jurisdictions the greatest amount of data possible while respecting privacy and security concerns;
• "Open Standards - the City of Vancouver will move as quickly as possible to adopt prevailing open standards for data, documents, maps, and other formats of media;
• "Open Source Software - the City of Vancouver, when replacing existing software or considering new applications, will place open source software on an equal footing with commercial systems during procurement cycles"

The City of Vancouver is among the most innovative of the world's cities with respect to the application of IT to improve service to the public.  The VanMap site continues to make new data and applications available to the citizens of Vancouver, and I recently blogged about what Vancouver has done and continues to do in the area of 3d urban modelling. Vancouver intends to be the world's greenest city by 2020.

The UK government implemented a similar procurement policy placing open source on a level playing field with proprietary software earlier this year and the US Department of Defense, probably the world's single largest buyer of software, did the same last year.  There are signs that a similar policy may be being seriously considered by the federal government in Canada.

OGC WMTS Request for comments extended to April 5

I just checked the OGC web site and the Request for Comments for the proposed WMTS (Web Map Tiling Standard) has been extended by a week.  There is quite a lively debate about the RESTful implementation.

OGC WMS Certification

Autodesk has just announced the certification by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) of Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise 2007 for its WMS 1.1.1 implementation.

"This product complies with the OpenGIS® Web Map Service, Revision 1.1.1, (WMS 1.1.1). OGC, OpenGIS®, and CERTIFIED OGC COMPLIANT are trademarks or registered trademarks of Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. in the United States and in other countries."

Who benefits ?

Everybody interested in creating open and interoperable systems. Traditionally, GIS has been isolated by its own proprietary data-formats.  The last few years have seen a tremendous momentum in the area of standardization and the OGC has spearheaded this initiative in the geospatial arena.

What is WMS 1.1.1?

WMS stands for Web Map Service. It’s a standardized way of publishing geospatial information over the web.  Details of the OGC WMS specification can be found at http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wms

WMS Web Sites

Here's a few WMS sites if you want to try this out,

GlobeXplorer
Demis
Dotted Eyes