Between the Poles

Oracle Announces Agreement to Acquire Sun (and MySQL)

I and probably many others were very surprised to hear today that Oracle intends to buy Sun Microsystems.  This means that Oracle is now a hardware (Sparc/Ultrasparc) and operating system (Solaris) company as well as being the prime mover behind Java.  To me the most intriguing part of this acquisition is what does it mean for MySQL, acquired by Sun some time ago ? Some folks had seen MySQL as Oracle's biggest open source competitor in the desktop/web relational database management system (RDBMS) space.  Oracle acquired InnoDB, one of the database engines supported by MySQL, several years ago.

Autodesk Announces LandXplorer Server 2010

Autodesk has announced the release of Autodesk LandXplorer Server 2010.  LandXplorer Server allows 3D city models prepared using LandXplorer Studio Professional to be exposed over the Web to any client with a browser.  Users can now navigate through a LandXplorer 3D city model over the Web.

At the same time Autodesk announced the release of LandXplorer Studio Professional 2009 Update 1. LandXplorer Studio Professional allows urban planners to aggregate data from civil, utility, geospatial, 3ds Max, ImageModeler and other data sources to create a shareable city model.   Modelers can also create AVIs, panoramic, and static images of an urban environment which can be packaged on a  DVD to share with users. To enable LandXplorer models to be widely sharable, LandXplorer Studio Professional 3D urban models can be stored in CityGML format and published as KML for viewing in Google Earth.

Global Climate Change and Forests: The Good and the Bad

A report by the "Global Forest Expert Panels" initiative, which is led by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) has been released.  It forecasts what the impact of global warming might be on the world's forests.

As reported by Natural Resources Canada , the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has produced projections of green house gas emissions (GHG) and global surface temperatures through 2100.  The original 2001 report has been recently updated (Climate Change 2007: Impacts , Adaptation and Vulnerability. Working Group II Contribution to the Fourth Asesment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.) 

Based on these projections the Global Forest Experts Panel has forecasted what the Earth's forest cover might look like in 2100 under different scenarios.  

Scenario "a"

This scenario is business as usual. GHG emissions continue to grow over the rest of the century at rates similar to those in the second half of the 20th century.

Scenarion "b" 

GHG emissions decline during the current century as a result of major green initiatives permitting atmospheric CO₂ concentrations to approach a new equilibrium by the year 2100.

The detailed projection of the impact of Scenario a (business as usual) on Canadian forests, specifically, were modeled by Natural Resources Canada and were published yesterday in the Globe and Mail.

The areas where forests would be most negatively affected are the subtropical and temperate areas including southern and western Canada, western U.S., northern China, southern Europe, Australia and subtropical Africa. The reports suggests that some parts of the US West would become so arid that forests would cease to exist.

But for northern countries like Canada, Sweden, Finland and Russia, the temperature increase would open up areas of the far north to forestation. Boreal forests would start to shift northward. Areas like Baffin Island, the northern coast of Hudson Bay, Southampton Island, the Ungava Peninsula in Quebec, and the northern tip of Labrador, which are now above the tree line, could become forested, even by as soon as 2070.

Speak at Autodesk University: Request for Proposals

Autodesk University 2009 (AU 2009) will be held from December 1-4 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

If you are interested in speaking at AU 2009, you're invited to submit a proposal online. AU welcomes multiple submissions from experienced presenters and also offers several formats, such as classes, lectures, hands-on labs, and discussion panels, to fit your speaking style. Also, new this year is the addition of a 60-minute Virtual session.

We’re definitely in need of intermediate and advanced classes in using geospatial tools like AutoCAD Map 3D, MapGuide, FDO, Autodesk Utility Design, Raster Design, and Topobase, but we’re also very interested in industry case studies for the utility/telco industry segment.  For example, how are you addressing key issues such as smart grids and sustainable design, aging infrastructure renewal, substation design, plant design, and network design and management,  in the electric & gas, water / wastewater, and telco industry segments?

The deadline for submissions is April 30th, 2009, so there’s still time to become a speaker at AU 2009.

Click here to submit your proposal. 

AutoCAD 2010 Available for Free for Student Engineering and Design Community

Autodesk has announced that AutoCAD 2010 software will be available for free to members of the worldwide Student Engineering and Design Community.  The Student Community was created three years ago to help architecture, engineering and digital entertainment students gain access to educational resources and technical expertise. The Student Community now has more than 570,000 members representing more than 19,000 schools in 139 countries. 

With AutoCAD 2010, the Student Community has access to more than two dozen free software products. 

Silos of Technology, Interoperability, and Digital Cities

There's an interesting article by Rob Colman in Green Business who chatted with Dan Campbell of the City of Vancouver and myself about digital cities and how  by enabling interoperability between architecture, engineering and construction design models such as BIM, telecom and public works network design, and gaming engines for video games, we can model cities holistically by creating 3D urban models that not only look good but offer the depth of information required to make real decisions.

For example global climate change has created an intense interest in sustainable design, and you can talk about sustainable design at a building level or a city level, but enabling different disciplines to work on a design  together by creating a seamless digital environment for them to design in wouldn’t have been possible in the past, when architects, civil engineers, and utility designers had to work within non-interoperable technology silos.

The Autodesk Digital Cities initiative is aimed at creating something that everyone understands.  When you’re trying to convey to a mayor or city council or the citizen in the street what the implications of a new development are going to be, it’s very hard to do so with a bunch of paper drawings, and it’s not going to be as effective as a ‘live’ demonstration using a dynamic 3D simulation of what that change is going to look like. A two-minute video simulation conveys what a new development is going to look like much more effectively to a non-technical audience than hundreds of blueprints.

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.

A More Open Grid: Real-time Access to Energy Consumption Information for Consumers

I came across a fascinating talk by Dan Reicher , now with Google but who was Assistant Secretary of Energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) from 1997-2001.  His presentation was at the Energybiz Leadership Forum in Washington, DC.  I wasn't aware of this but Dan Reicher is the source of the intentional misquote of Bill Clinton's "build a bridge to the 21st century", instead we need to "build a fridge to the 21st century". His point being that instead of refrigerators that use 2000 kWh/month, we need refrigerators that use 450 kWh/month.  

Imagine walking into a grocery store where there are no prices on the items.  You fill your shopping cart with what you need and when you leave you find out that the total bill is $95.36,  but you don't see an itemized breakdown.  The point Mr. Reicher and Google are making is that to make informed decisions about how we use energy, we need more information about how and when we use energy.  The quote from Lord Kelvin that Mr. Reicher and others at Google use is Lord Kelvin's "If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it."  What Google and others are working on is bringing IT to the power industry to empower the consumer by providing real-time access to energy consumption data.   There is good evidence from a number of sources that providing information about energy consumption to consumers can reduce energy usage by 5 - 15 %.  In its simplest form this means devices that can connect to the power grid and provide real-time information about your power usage.  These may be smart meters installed by the power company or alternatively devices that you can install yourself.  In either case internet-based software would allow you to access this information on the web based on an open architecture, open protocols, and open API's from Google and others.  In jurisdictions like some places in Ontario where you are billed based on time-of-use, which I blogged about before, this means that the consumer can decide to run the dish washer or a backup process at off-peak times to reduce the power bill.

Google has pre-announced new software called Google PowerMeter, which will be a free, downloadable, iGoogle gadget that will allow you to monitor power usage in your home.  To use it you will either have to buy a hardware device from a third-party company that you can connect to your fuse box, or a smart meter from the power company, which ever comes first.

Initially this will simply show you your power usage as a function of time.  But if this information is shared, then you will be able to compare your usage with others'.  According to Google PowerMeter will be an open API which will allow third parties to develop applications.

There are companies like  AMEE that attempt to convert power usage into carbon consumption, so in the future you not only will know how much energy you are consuming, but what kind of energy, renewable, coal, and nuclear, and how much CO₂ you've just emitted by running the hair dryer.

The Aging Workforce, The Economic Downturn, and Generational Software

I just came across an interesting article by Jeffrey Joerres on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal Europe (April 9, 2009) entitled Aging Your Work Force.  The article is about the challenge of an aging workforce in Europe and says that “a loss of productivity and intellectual capital as baby boomers leave the work force could devastate some businesses.  Europe’s work force will begin shrinking in the coming years and is expected to become 15% smaller within five decades, according to the OECD.  The countries with the biggest threat are those with the oldest populations, particularly Germany and Italy.”

This has long been recognized as a problem in North America as well.  In the US a Conference Board study Managing the Mature Workforce predicts that by 2010, the number of workers aged 35 to 44 will decline by 19%.  This is a world-wide phenomenon.  The number of workers aged 35 to 44 was forecasted to decline by 27% in Germany, 19% in the U.K., 9% in Italy, 10% in Japan, and by 8% in China.  A study from the American Public Power Association (APPA) Work Force Planning for the Public Power Utilities: Ensuring Resources to Meet Projected Needs reports that the loss of critical knowledge and the inability to find replacements with utility-specific skills are the two biggest challenges facing the industry.   In the utility industry the average age of utility workers is close to 50 and by 2010, as many as 60 percent of today’s experienced utility workers will retire. A Booz Allen Hamilton study has predicted a 20% decline in productivity in the US power industry.  

Many utility companies are facing a triple challlenge.  Retiring workers are leaving faster than younger replacements can be hired and trained. Secondly the workers who are retiring have many years experience and are being replaced with younger, inexperienced workers.  Thirdly utilities are having a difficult time retaining younger workers.

The economic downturn could exacerbate the problem of retiring experienced workers.  Laying off or accelerating the retirement of older, experienced workers may be seen as a way to reduce costs in the short term, but could have dire consequences in the longer term.  One of the key points Jeffrey Joerres makes is "one of the biggest mistakes companies make is to alienate employees aged 50 and older by assuming they are no longer interested in training and career development."

To help younger workers get up-to-speed quicker, utilities are investing in smarter rule-based software tools that not only prevent mistakes (underengineering), but also reduce costs by helping designers and planners to avoid overengineering.

One way companies and government agencies are utilizing to help retain younger workers is the concept of what I call "generational software".  The younger generation has been brought up on  Wii's, PSP's, and Xbox's and the 3D gaming technologies that the gaming industry has developed for this market.  These 3D gaming technologies are now being integrated with engineering design applications.  Many of the younger generation feel much more at home with these new 3D applications, and some companies and govenrment agencies are beginning to see 3D technology as a retention as well as a productivity tool.

Japan Announces Additional Stimulus of 10 Trillion Yen

Accoding to the BBC  Japan has announced another stimulus of more than 10 trillion yen (about $100 billion). This is in addition to the 12 trillion yen stimulus spending that has already been allocated. In total this amounts to over 2% of GDP.

Apparently the money will be used to promote solar energy generators, as well as to support nursing and medical services.