Between the Poles

Navigating with real-time traffic data - Google and Waze

According to a New York Times report  "Google Is Close to Acquiring Waze, a Rival in Maps", Google wants to improve the capability of Google Maps to use real-time traffic data to optimize routing.  At Google’s annual developers conference last month, Google announced a new version of Maps that includes more real-time traffic information.  But it appears that in addition Google may be trying to acquire Waze.

Waze is a social media service that uses voluntary GPS tracking of its users and their live reports about accidents and other road hazards to dynamically adjust routing. According to the article Waze has about 47 million users globally. mostly outside of the U.S.  It is particularly widely used in Israel.

OpenStreetMap database contains 34 million km of roads and 78 million buildings

OpenStreetMap (OSM) was started in 2004 largely motivated by the expensive and restrictive licensing of the government spatial data available in the UK at the time.  Since then OSM has defined crowdsourcing in the geospatial domain. 

August 9^th 2004 was the day that the first user registered the domain and started the project.  I blogged about March 16th, 2009 when the 100 000^th user registered on OpenStreetMap.  On January 6, 2013, OpenStreetMap crossed the one million users mark.  The number is currently about 1.1 million registered users.  (OSM are careful to point out a majority of users are casual or inactive, with a small minority contributing the majority of additions and corrections to the map.)  When the number of users hit 750,000 the number of active mappers was about 24,000.  More than 1,000 new mappers contribute every day.  New edits appear on the map in about a minute.  In 2007 this took a week.

Initially OSM used a Creative Commons license, but OSM now has its own data license which it moved to on April 1st, 2012.

According to the just released 2013 OpenStreetMap Data Report, OSM's  database now contains 33,968,739 km (21,107,196 miles) worth of road data.  It also contains 78 million building footprints.  That's about 3.2 billion GPS points.

A new in-browser map editor was just released on OpenStreetMap.org. The new editor is designed to improve the first-time editing experience while providing a fast and intuitive interface for everyone mapping on OpenStreetMap.

Convergence of geospatial and building information modeling (BIM) accelerates

About a decade ago Dave Sonnen, Global Analyst for Spatial Information at IDC, projected that the locationaware market for geospatial services would exceed the traditional GIS market in 2005/2006. The release of Google Earth in June 2005 transformed the geospatial services ecosystem. Today, location-aware technologies have blown past the traditional GIS space in terms of number of users and number of deployed apps.

In sectors such as construction, transportation, utilities and municipal infrastructure, geospatial services are playing an increasingly important role even though it is often not obvious. At a recent Distributech conference, the largest electric power distribution conference in North America, of the 400-plus presentations, only a handful mentioned GIS or geospatial in their title or abstract. But of the 18 companies that we interacted with, only two said they were not using geospatial technology in the organisation. Even those that said they weren't using GIS, were in all probability using Google Maps for market analysis, recruitment or other applications.

To put this in context, the annual global construction spend is estimated to be $7 trillion, about 10% of world GDP. Of this, transportation construction accounts for $1 trillion, utilities $2 trillion, and buildings $2.5 trillion. It has been estimated that between 2013 and 2030, $57 trillion in infrastructure investment will be required simply to keep up with projected global GDP growth. Th is includes investment required for transport (road, rail, ports, airports), power, water, and telecommunications. This is nearly 60% more than the $36 trillion spent globally on infrastructure over the past 18 years.

Over half of the world's 7-billion population lives in cities and this is expected to increase as we move toward 9 billion by 2050. In the future, it is projected that there will be many more and larger mega cities like Tokyo, Mumbai, Mexico City, and Moscow. Cities around the world are beginning to realise that the power that lights up their homes and offi ces comes from the convergence of modern information technology, including BIM, geospatial/ GIS, intelligent (connected) network models for electric power, telecommunications, water and wastewater, transportation, and other infrastructure, real-time data management systems, and 3D visualisation.

Buildings use about 40% of global energy, 25% of global water, 40% of global resources, and they emit approximately one-third of global GHG emissions. Faced with rising environmental issues, many governments are mandating energy conservation measures, especially targeting near-zero energy buildings, an industry that is projected to grow by 43% per year to reach $690 billion by 2020.

Building information modeling (BIM) and geospatial technology have central roles to play in improving the energy efficiency of buildings. Several years ago, in an awardwinning paper at a conference organised by Britain’s Association for Geographic Information (AGI), Ann Kemp, then head of GIS at Atkins Global, the design and engineering firm, asked the question ‘BIM isn’t geospatial — or is it?’ and then argued that integration of geospatial and BIM was essential to address the challenges of the 21st century.  The need to integrate geospatial and BIM has been gaining traction for some time now and government mandated energy efficiency for buildings is a major driver of BIM/geospatial convergence.

Construction, power, transportation and municipal infrastructure are important sectors of the world economy. Over the next two decades these will see a massive infusion of investment, motivated by economic development and environmental concerns. In addition, as governments find they have less and less money for capital infrastructure projects, a greater proportion of the investment in infrastructure will come from the private sector, which will drive an increased focus on productivity to improve returns on investment. Th at in turn is driving a transformation of the construction industry which is reflected in accelerating adoption of integrated BIM, geospatial, and 3D visualisation, geospatially enabled data management, and vertical applications based on these technologies.

Excerpted from a recent article. 

Graphics courtesy of e7 Architecture Studio and VNT Consulting.

I-5 bridge classified as Functionally Obsolete in the National Bridge Inventory

Transportation for America has put the National Bridge Inventory of 604,474 bridges on line with Google Maps so you can zoom to any area in the U.S. and see which bridges are structurally deficient and the daily traffic on them.  In this example I've zoomed to the I-5 bridge near Mt Vernon that collapsed this morning.

It is interesting that Google Maps no longer shows the bridge.  The bridge is classified as Functionally Obsolete.  It was built in 1955 and handles 70,526 cars a day. 

Status

Deck 6 (Equal to present minimum criteria)
Superstructure 5 (Somewhat better than minimum adequacy to tolerate being left in place as is)
Substructure 6 (Equal to present minimum criteria)

It is supposed to be inspected every two years.  It was last inspected nearly 3 years ago.

"Functionally obsolete" means that the design of a bridge is not suitable for its current use, such as lack of safety shoulders or the inability to handle current traffic volume, speed, size, or weight.

I-5 bridge collapse: Is private capital the solution for the sad state of American infrastructure ?

In 2009 Blaine Leonard, of the Utah Department of Transportation and the then President-elect of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), gave the opening keynote at GITA 2009.  His talk focussed on the 2009 ASCE Scorecard on American infrastructure and what the stimulus means for addressing some of the infrastructure challenges that the ASCE has successfully attracted public attention to.

 Mr. Leonard presented a breakdown of the part of the ARRA spend that the ASCE believes is going to infrastructure, something over $70 billion, and then discussed the short fall for several of the items.

The key takeway I left with is that the stimulus is making a significant dent, but by itself it is insufficient to resolve the problem.  Of the $2.2 trillion the ASCE estimates is required to bring American infrastructure up to an acceptable level, meaning B- or C+, the money currently allocated by all levels of government is about 45% of what is necessary.

In 2010  a bipartisan report was released that calls for “a fundamental overhaul of America’s transportation policies and programs.  The report estimates a federal shortfall of up to $194 billion a year in infrastructure spending on roads, rail, and air transportation through 2035. Given the poor state of current US transportation infrastructure, as described in the ASCE's Infrastructure Report Card, it is estimated that an investment of $262 billion per year will be required to actually improve the US transportation network.  The report cites lack of  a vision and underinvestment as compromising US productivity and its ability to compete internationally.  The report says that it is time to "rethink existing systems for the 21st century and create an agenda for enacting change."

Deteriorating infrastructure and private capital

Last year President Obama in his State of the Union speech specifically called out infrastructure as requiring significant investment.  He said that "our infrastructure used to be the best", and mentioned countries such as Russia, China, South Korea, and several European countries that are ahead of the US in many sectors of infrastructure.  He also referred to the American Society of Civil Engineers' Intrastructure Scorecard that assigned a grade of "D" to American infrastructure.

He said that the Administration is proposiing to redouble the rebuilding efforts that were initiated over the past two years and identified attracting private funding as important for this effort.

UK National Infrastructure Plan based on private capital

Last year at the Global Infrastructure Leadership Forum, Geoffrey Spence, who heads up Infrastructure UK, the Treasury body that oversees the UK’s infrastructure plan, gave an overview of the National Infrastructure Plan of the UK.  The fact that Geofffrey Spence was a personal economic adviser to Chancellor Alistair Darling during the last banking crisis, gives some indication of how seiously the UK Government is treating infrastructure.

In 2011 the Government released its National Infrastructure Plan, which outlines a plan to invest about £250 billion in the next five yrs and £ 400 billion in the 10 yrs on infrastructure including high speed rail, energy (especially nuclear and wind), aviation, water and wastewater, roads and highways, and high speed broadband.  This is a considerably higher spend than in the past and signals a change in focus from social infrastructure such as hospitals and government facilities to economic infrastructure. 

The most revolutionary aspect of this plan is the intention that 70% of the funding will come from the private sector.

The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) has said that it supports the vision as expressed in the Plan and that it believes that it would enable the UK to compete in the global economy. It specifically recommended that HM Government assign a senior minister with responsibility for monitoring performance against Plan, create a simple set of performance measures for infrastructure that are independently assessed, and develop a two year pipeline of infrastructure projects to help the private sector to improve efficiency.  The ICE also suggested ways to asist the Government to attract private investment.

Geoffrey Spense said that the Government wants full transparency for the infrastructure effort, so that business will know where they should focus its efforts over the next ten years.  It intends to maintain an open pipeline of projects for the next several years so that, for example, companies specializing in tunneling will be able to see for all tunneling projects in one place, whether they are for rail, sewers, or nuclear power plants.  He said that there is a multi-ministry subcommittee that meets regularly to identify where blockages are occurring between ministries and to work colaboratively to streamline infrastructure projects where multiple ministries are involved.

The challenge of construction productivity

McKinsey says that construction productivity has stagnated or declined in many countries and gave historical construction productivity data for the European Union, Korea, Japan, and the U.S.

McKinsey suggested that governments and infrastructure investors could reduce risks and increase returns by focussing on three areas,

• Improving priductivity of existing and new assets

For example, by tuning the regulatory and market structure to improve efficiency and expand capacity.

• Making the economic model more attractive to investors

By being smarter about matching capacity expansions to demand and  finding additional sources of revenue.

• Reducing cost and risk by improving project delivery

By allowing more competition, pushing more risk on to contractors, and encouraging engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) companies to increase their build capabilities.

Several speakers reiterated that one of the major problem in the infrastructure sector is the lack of data for comparing efficiency of construction and operation across projects.

McKinsey suggested that more private sector involvement in infrastructure projects could result in an estimated 30% improvement in construction productivity over 5-10 years, resulting from the combination of 5-15% reduction in the cost of design and planning, 5-10% in engineeering, 5-10% in materials purchase and sub-contracting, 3-5% in construction, and  3-5% from organizational enablers.  They estimate that this would translate into a 20% reduction in overall infrastructure spend.

Infrastructure excellence competition

Infrastructure-excellence.com is hosting the second annual competition showcasing Excellence in Infrastructure— highlighting the best projects done in 2012/2013. The winners will be given over US$10,000 in prizes by the competition sponsors.  The competition is open to anyone 21 years and older who is planning, designing, building, and managing infrastructure projects.  Project types may include the following:

• Transportation (roads and highways, rail, airports, or bridges)
• Land development (commercial sites, subdivisions, public parks, or recreation)
• Water (distribution, water resources, dams and levees, or wastewater)
• Energy (electric and gas distribution, electric transmission, and substation design)
• Urban planning

SPAR 2013: Integrated geospatial, LiDAR and design datasets for large infrastructure construction projects

Kevin Gilson, of the Project Visualization group at Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB), gave an overview of how PB manages 3D+ datasets in support of design and construction for large infrastructure projects such as the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, the I-95 New Haven Harbour Crossing /Q-Bridge reconstrcution, and the Alaskan Way viaduct project.  He showed how the project visualization team leverages geospatial data, LiDAR data, design data and construction planning data together in large integrated datasets that concurrently support visualization, stakeholder communication, design, construction planning and site logistics.

PB has more than 30 staff dedicated to project visualization.  That included folks who do 3D modeling, design visualization, web design, and programming.  3D technologies include building information modeling (BIM), 3D design, virtual desgin and construction (VDC) and laser scanning (LiDAR).

3D modeling for design and construction

Some of the reasons that designers and construction firms are adopting 3D technology are the serious limitations of 2D sheet sets, still legally required fro s-builting but very unreliable, the design efficiencies of 3D parametric models, and the limitations of siloed project data.  PB has adopted the concept of project information models or PIMs, that integrate information about all aspects of the design and build process and that potentially can flow data through for operations and maintenance.

3D modeling and model-based design are used by PB for design validation, clash detection, and parameteric modeling, civil integration management, 4D modeling (time+3D), 5D (cost+time+3D), and design visualization.  Model-based design involves integrating CAD, GIS, survey, analytics, BIM and associated databases, and 3D visualization typically in a vitual gaming environment.

Construction firms in particular see tremendous advantages in 4D models that integrate design and gespatial data and allow the construction team to virtually build the project so that they can check staging and construction sequencing and site logistics virtually.  5D and higher dimensions allow them to add additional metrics including cost, resources, materials, and equipment.

The benefits that PB realize by this integrated approach based on 3D+ dataest include finding and fixing conflicts between different design groups (HVAC, plumbing, electrical, structural, and so on) during the design phase rather than during construction when clashes are much more expensive to fix.  Another benefit is being able to quantify things using analytics, so  that decisions are data-driven rather than subjective.

A major benefit is less re-work is required reducing the risk of cost and schedule overruns.  A big advantage is improved communication and coordination between all project stakeholders, and especially with non-technical decision makers.  Being able to see photorealistic visualizations of what the project is going to look like makes a huge difference in communicating with politicians and the public.  PB uses gaming technology making it possible to experience a project before a shovel has gone into the ground.  For example, on highway projects, PB's visualization makes it possible to drive the highway and even the detours required during construction in a virtual environment so that the public can experience the changes and be prepared for them before they actually happen.

Another important benefit that Kevin sees from a project approach that includes visualization is that "sexy deliverables" get peoples attention, within the project team as well as with external stakeholders.  Several other speakers at SPAR 2013 also emphasized the importance of the "sexiness" factor.

Laser scanning in construction

Kevin described a number of applications of laser scanning (LiDAR) as part of the 3D constrcution process.  A major application of LiDAR is contruction monitoring, capturing construction progress as well as being able to automate the process of checking for divergence from design when contractors for a variety of reasons don't build what is designed. 

Another important Laser scanning application is accurate and reliable as-builts.  At SPAR 2013, speaker after speaker in different sectors of the construction industry reiterated that current 2D as-builts, still legally required, are unreliable and rarely looked at by anyone post-construction.  Marco Vidali Castillo at ICA which is responsible for the Autopista Urbana Sur project in Mexico City  gave an example of how trying to use 2D as-builts can lead to problems necessitating major re-engineering.  LiDAR scans of a completed project can provide the reliability that 2D as-built sheet sets lack.  On the Autopista Urbana Sur project Marco says that ICA intends to deliver LiDAR scans as well as the legally required 2D as-built sheet sets.

3D modeling and sustainability

There are also benefits from the perspective of sustainability to PBs project approach. Collaboration typically has relied on the exchange of paper documents which on a large project can involve many thousands of paper documents.  Collaborating in a virtual environment can dramatically reduce paper flow while improving the quality of communication.  It can also improve traffic flow and resource management during construction, thereby reducing emissions. A life-cycle approach to data management during design and construction, with data being reused for operations and maintenenace can reduce rework resulting in significant efficiencies.  

Selecting software tools

The PB project visualization team takes a best of breed approach in selecting software for 3D modeling and visualization. An important criterion in selecting tools is interoperability between the different technologies.  Currently the software stack that PB relies on includes

Geospatial

• ESRI
• Global Mapper
• Infraworks (Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler)

CADD

• Microstation InRoads
• AutoCAD/Civil 3D
• Solidworks

Visualization

• 3ds Max
• Sketchup
• Realtime - UDK, Unity

Collaboration/4D

• Navisworks

SPAR 2013: Digital highways require integrated engineering and geospatial data

At SPAR 2013 I had the opportunity to hear very forward looking presentations by Ron Singh, Chief of Surveys/Geometronics Manager at the Oregon Department of Transportation.  What Ron sees in the future and what motivates a lot of what Don sees needs to change in the highway construction process is autonomous vehicles, which will provide a major motivation for what Ron refers to as digital highways.

Automation over the last 25 years

If you look at the last 25 years there has been quite a lot of automation in the form of survey automation such as electronic data collection, GPS, and basic 3D laser scanning;  design automation such as computer aided design and drafting, and a bit of construction automation.  The primary focus has been on speeding up the project development process, but the end goal remains  2D paper construction documents.  Some people have been using what is called 2..5 D, a 3D roadbed prism with 2D objects on it.  In Ron's view the current way of designing and building highways has reached the end of it's lifetime and a complete transformation to a new paradigm is required.  The way Ron refers to this is standing the current process on its head and I blogged about it yesterday.  Fundamentally it involves intelligent 3D models replacing the current as-builts and a process that speeds up project development because it leverages existing engineering data rather that requiring a complete resurvey at the beginning of every project..

A new paradigm for intelligent highways

The objective is intelligent highways that will support autonomous and partially autonomous vehicles.  The new paradigm needs to be data-centric and real-time.  It will involve automated construction.   From a data management perspective it will require highway infrastructure lifecycle management, which will involve a very different approach to the survey/design/construct/maintain process that is currently used for highway projects in North America.

First of all, it will involve geospatially enabled 3D digital data. A key requirement is a low distortion geospatial coordinate system that will provide the foundation for geolocatiig all infrastructure including utilities.  It will require interoperability using industry standards for data exchange. Most importantly it will support a construction process that uses post-construction surveys to replace as-built plans with a full 3D engineered model that supports GIS/engineering data integration. 

It will require geospatially-enabled enterprise data management including version control and the ability to search for things geospatially.  It will provide tools for geospatially enabled asset management.  It will provide a framework for developing and maintaining engineering and geospatial data including 3D engineered models as well as scanned data for existiing structures for the entire life cycle of a highway.

SPAR 2013: Turning the construction process on its head

At SPAR 2013 I had the opportunity to hear a very forward looking presentation by Ron Singh, Chief of Surveys/Geometronics Manager at the Oregon Department of Transportation.  It was even more impressive because Ron's background is surveying.  His primary objective is speeding up the project development process.

Ron first looked at the project development process that has been used in the transportaion over the past 25 years.  It starts off with a complete survey of the project terrain to create a basemap - existing as-builts are rarely consulted.  Design of the new project is then conducted based on the basemap produced by the surveyors.  The result is paper drawings which are used by construction contractors to build the project.  After construction is complete construction as-builts are submitted, but they are almost an afterthought.  They are often as-designed rather than as-constructed, and most importantly they are not "sealed", meaning nobody signs off on them putting their professional reputation behind their accuracy and reliability.  Practically what this means is that in the transporation industry, as-builts are treated as unreliable information.

What Ron Singh is proposing is to stand this process on its head by making the post-construction survey the critical source of reliable asset information in the form of a 3D intelligent model. 

Then when a new project is initiated 80-90% of the necessary information is already available in the as-built database making a complete resurvey unnecessary.  All that is required before design can begin is minimal due diligence to validate the as-builts. 

It also implies that there is a reliable asset database that is maintained thoughout the operations and maintenance phase of the lifecycle.

Brazil plans stimulus to attract private investment in transportation infrastructure

A massive spend on infrastructure, globally about $50 trillion, is expected over the next two decades. It is anticipated that the infrastructure spend in the developing countries market is just as large as in the developed countries market. But infrastructure spending growth is significantly higher in the developing countries market.  In many countries there is a shortage of infrastructure funding from governments.  This set the stage for greater private investment.  But there are significant impediments preventing private capital from playing a greater role in funding infrastructure.  Complex regulations and politics which slow infrastructure development and poor construction productivity are important factors in eroding returns on infrastructure and making infrastructure less attractive for private investment.

Brazil's government has announced a stimulus package designed to attract up to R$133 billion (US$66 billion) from the private sector for road and rail projects.  The government plans to take the lead on the project. A new state-run company will be created to manage infrastructure planning and the BNDES development bank will provide subsidized loans for the projects.  The government hopes to attract investments for major highway projects as well as to add 10,000 kilometers to Brazil's rail network.

As in the case of the UK's National Infrastructure Plan, the government will have to find ways to make infrastructure projects attractive to private investors through concessions such as loan guarantees and low cost loans.

Transportation infrastructure in Brazil detracts from economic growth (as anyone who has tried to get between Congonhas and Guarulhos airports in Sao Paulo on a Friday afternoon will know).  Reportedly goods take at least twice as long to move the same distance as they do in China and other more efficient markets.