Between the Poles

New Autodesk Community Blog

Ray Eisenberg is starting a new blog today called the Voice of Community blog.  The blog is for all those interested in community. If you want to locate an online Autodesk community or face-to-face user group that is right for you; if you're looking for community guidelines and best practices; if you want pointers to the latest in community thinking, this is a good blog to follow. 

I've known Ray for quite a few years.  Ray is originally from Manchester, England and now lives in Oakland, California.  He's not only passionate about all matters community and all things soccer, but also all things Zinfandel.

GeoREST at Where 2.0

Next week is Where 2.0 in San Jose, California and Haris Kurtagic and I are going to be there to talk about GeoREST.

 Transparency in government promotes accountability and provides information to citizens about what their Government is doing.  An area where Web 2.0 technologies have an important role to play is providing access to raw geospatial data. 

Searching for raw geospatial data is a challenge, because it is not the same as finding the location or a map of something where you can use Google Maps or Bing Maps.  You typically will start by going to a site like data.gov, data.gov.uk, geogratis.gc.ca, or data.vancouver.ca, where you will be presented with a data catalog with a list of datasets.   At this point you realize that this is more complicated than finding the locations using Google Maps or Bing Maps. 

Wouldn't it be simpler if you could simply go to google.com or bing.com, enter something about what you are searching for like an address, and immediately be directed to the raw data.  GeoREST allows you to do this.  GeoREST, which is developed and supported by the open source geospatial community (geoREST.org), exposes a geospatial data API to web clients, but one of the most important advantages of GeoREST is that it relies on the technologies underlying the Web, HTTP, HTML, and MIME to provide search capabilities for raw geospatial data.  GeoREST has been implemented at the City of Nanaimo, BC.

Autodesk Announces AutoCAD Map 3D 2011 with Point Cloud Support

Autodesk has announced new versions of its software for the infrastructure industries. 

AutoCAD Map 3D 2011 supports point clouds and adds new data support and expanded workflow capabilities.

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2011 includes scalability and performance improvements, as well as an optimized 64-bit version, tools to better manage the creation and editing of corridors, and expanded superelevation functionality that provides a dynamic link to the alignment and flexible editing options

FDO Toolbox v0.9.3

Jackie Ng has announced the release of FDO Toolbox v0.9.3.

Free Access to Ordnance Survey Maps in April

In April, Ordnance Survey (OS) digital maps should be available for free as announced last November by the prime minister who promised that the OS "will open up its data relating to electoral and local authority boundaries, postcode areas and mid scale mapping information. The Government will consult on proposals to make data from Ordnance Survey freely available so it can be used for digital innovation and to support democratic accountability."  Beginning last December there has been a public consultation run by the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG), to which the OS reports, to discuss which maps should be made available for free, what free means, and how to pay for it.  The public consultation ended last week. The three options considered by the DCLG include

1. No change, the OS would remain a Trading Fund, a wholly government owned profit making entity similar to a crown corporation in Canada
2. All of OS's digital data available for free, meaning with an attribution-only license allowing derivative works and at no cost
3. Some of OS's digital maps available for free

It has been suggested that option 2 will cost the taxpayer about £50 million, half of the £100 million it costs to run the OS, because half of the OS's revenue comes from the public sector.  Option 3 is estimated to cost less, on the order of £20 million.  The Free Our Data campaign has argued that the gross benefit to the UK economy, estimated to be £168 million a year by one study, of free data exceeds the direct cost to the government.  Within a few weeks we should know which of these options HM Government intends to adopt. 

Canadian Geomatics Conference 2010 CONVERGENCE IN GEOMATICS June 15-18

One of my hats is that I am on the Board of the Canadian Geomatics Industry Association of Canada (GIAC) which is helping organize the Canadian Geomatics Conference 2010 in Calgary, JUNE 15 TO 18, 2010 (Pre-Conference Workshops June 14) at the TELUS Convention Centre, Calgary, Alberta, in association with Commission I of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.

The Canadian Geomatics Conference will focus on the yet largely untapped potential of Intelligent mapping and the critical role geomatics can play in bolstering Canada’s productivity, innovation, and global competitiveness.  The conference is designed to attract decision-makers, the general public and non-traditional users of spatial information, as well as those deeply involved within the Geomatics community: educators, developers, government, industry, and scientists. ISPRS Commission I will present a concurrent program focused on sensors and platforms. This will provide insight into the role space and satellites play in developing the ability to observe, detect and capture accurate data from great distances.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Reports Serious Water Quality Impairment

In July of last year, the new Administrator of the EPA, Lisa P. Jackson tasked the enforcement branch of the EPA with "revamping the clean water enforcement program ... to raise the bar of federal and state enforcement performance, to inform the public clearly and fully about serious Clean Water Act violations and actions to address them, and to use 21st Century technology to transform the collection, use, and availability of EPA data."  The result was the Clean Water Act Action Plan.

The report contains alarming statistics.  According to the most recent state-reported assessment findings from 2004 (sic), only a small proportion of US water bodies have been monitored, which means that there is no water quality information for the "vast majority of the nation’s waters."

                                          % Monitored           % Impaired

Rivers and streams (miles)           16%                     44%

Lake and reservoir (acres)            39%                     64%

Bay and estuarine (sq mi)            29%                     30%

Based on the limited amount of data that is available, a significant proportion of water bodies were found to be impaired, meaning they were not clean enough to support activities such as swimming or fishing.

But the EPA and the states are seeing even more dangerous impacts.  Drinking water is being impacted in many parts of the country due to contamination of surface waters from many of these same sources.  Since about 66 percent of the U.S. gets its drinking water from surface water sources, polluting rivers and streams means that the drinking water of the majority of the US population is potentially affected.

I blogged earlier about a New York Times article that said in the last three years more than 9,400 of the US’s 25,000 sewage systems dumped untreated or partly treated human waste, chemicals and other hazardous materials into rivers and lakes and elsewhere.

In Canada the Environment Minister has released 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. Fundamentally it will no longer be permitted to directly release raw sewage into waterways.

Open Data Ottawa Hackfest

I blogged previously about open data access provided by the Cities of Vancouver, Edmonton and Toronto.  These are all examples where city governments have opened public data to the public.

Saturday, April 24th in Ottawa there is going to be something intriguing called an Open Data Ottawa Hackfest.  It will happen at City Hall (110 Laurier Avenue West), but even though it is happening at City Hall, neither the event nor its organizers are affiliated with the City of Ottawa. The event is targeted on developers, designers, librarians, statisticians and citizens.  The idea is that developers will show up with running applications (90% completed) and demonstrate their applications using publicly available, but not easily accessible, data such as bus schedules, restaurant inspection reports, childcare locations, crime statistics, special event license lists, and other types of public data. 

The Hackfest seems to be inspired by the Apps for Democracy and New York City’s Big Apps contests.

Thanks to Jevin Maltais for pointing me to this.

Autodesk Announces Support for Rural Utility Services (RUS) Standards

Autodesk has announced a new service offering supporting Rural Utility Services (RUS) Standards for Autodesk Utility Design (AUD) at DistribuTECH 2010 in Tampa.   By supporting RUS standards with its service offering, AUD helps small and mid-tier rural electric distribution cooperatives design overhead and underground infrastructure, estimate costs and order materials for electrical distribution networks in an AutoCAD environment.

US States with Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS)

The American Clean Energy and Security (Waxman-Markey) bill, which aimed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions 17% by 2020 and over 80% by 2050 compared to 2005 levels, was passed by the US House of Representatives,  but did not make it through the Senate.  So unlike the EU the US does not have a national renewable energy objective.  However, 36 States have enacted various forms of Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) which sets objectives for renewable electrical energy sources at the state level.

Some of the states with the most aggressive RPS are

• California     33%    by 2020
• New York     24%   by 2013
• Colorado     30%     by 2020 
• Texas   5,880 MW   by 2015
• Connecticut    23%  by  2020
• West Virginia  25%  by  2025
• Minnesota       25%  by  2025 
• Illinois             25%  by  2025
• Oregon            25% by  2025