Between the Poles: Battle over Free and Open Access to County Geospatial Data Continues

Geoff Zeiss

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Gene Roe's laser scanning industry news
Open Source Geospatial Foundation OSGEO
OSGeo was created to support the collaborative development of open source geospatial software and promote its widespread use
Proven guidelines for reducing underground infrastructure damage at airports, university, industrial, and commercial campuses, and towns
There are proven measures that an administration, owner, or municipal government responsible for an airport, university, industrial or commercial campus, or town can undertake to reduce the risk of underground utility damage, the associated disruptions to operations and business and the danger for workers and the public.
Sharing information about the location of underground utilities
The U.S. devotes an estimated $10 billion annually to locating underground infrastructure. Every construction project requiring excavation involves significant efforts in locating underground utilities prior to and during construction to reduce the risk of injuries and unexpected project delays. But this information is rarely shared and the location of underground infrastructure is recaptured over and over again. There are successful examples around the world where municipal and regional governments have helped enable a shared underground utility network database.
Growing evidence of the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach to construction
Building information modeling (BIM) has been applied to design-build construction projects for many years. A growing number of countries are mandating BIM for public projects. While the UK government has said that "...we know that the largest prize for BIM lies in the operational stages of the project life-cycle", until recently there has not been hard data to support this conjecture. Similarly there has been only anecdotal support for an integrated BIM and geospatial approach for design, build, operate and maintain projects. Now we are beginning to see data from real world projects that offer evidence for the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.
Progress in geospatial, civil, and BIM interoperability promises efficient workflows for infrastructure
The BIM and geospatial interoperability challenge is the latest symptom of the broader problem of integrating AEC and geospatial workflows, that has contributed to low productivity in the construction sector. After the announcement about a year ago by Jack Dangermond and Andrew Anagnost of a new relationship to build a bridge between Autodesk and ESRI technologies, I thought it a good time to review progress toward interoperability between the AEC and geospatial worlds.
Geography2050: Accurate location information about underground infrastructure is essential for powering our future planet
I thought it would be worth while to include here a talk I gave at GEOGRAPHY 2050 Powering Our Future Planet at Columbia University in New York about the importance of accurate location information about underground infrastructure for the future development of the energy grid. With some notable exceptions accurately recording the location of subsurface infrastructure including oil, gas, electric power and other energy infrastructure is ignored - perhaps this is a case of out-of-sight is indeed out-of-mind. The reality is that knowing the location of underground energy infrastructure is critical for national security, for disaster planning and management, for public safety and for economic efficiency. Everyone is aware of at least one disaster resulting from or exacerbated by not knowing where our energy infrastructure is - the explosions in San Bruno in California (2010) and Belgium (2004) immediately come to mind.
Deep learning enables automated extraction of building footprints and road networks from satellite imagery
Automated feature extraction from satellite imagery has made major progress in the last year. Accurate building footprints extracted from high resolution satellite imagery are becoming available from companies such as Ecopia, which has just announced a partnership with DigitalGlobe, whose satellites are capable of 30 cm (approximately one foot) resolution. Also NVIDIA has demonstrated the ability to automate detection of many road networks using sophisticated algorithms and multi-spectral high resolution imagery.
BIM + geospatial interoperability would avoid another CAD + GIS quagmire
A specific challenge currently facing the AEC and geospatial industries is integrating building information models (BIM) and geospatial infrastructure and building models. There are parallels between what happened in the 1990s in unsuccessfully addressing CAD+GIS interoperability and the current challenge of BIM+geospatial interoperability. But there are also important differences which provide grounds for optimism that the availability of both BIM and geospatial standards, a vibrant open source geospatial community, and a new willingness on the part of major software players in the BIM and geospatial industries will make it possible to successfully address the latest interoperability challenge facing the AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) and geospatial industries.
BVLOS drones improve power line inspections amid increasing fire and storm risks for utilities | Utility Dive
Transmission line inspections for vegetation management and other purposes are essential in ensuring grid reliability and resilience. We saw the devastating effect of vegetation encroachment in the recent California fires, which in part have been blamed on failure to maintain properly cleared transmission lines. With drones that can cover great distances in a single flight and provide detailed and accurate aerial imagery of transmission lines and other infrastructure, it is now possible to almost completely automate this expensive process. Automating transmission line inspections for vegetation management using BVLOS drones not only saves money, but also could improve the resiliency and reliability of the transmission grid.

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June 06, 2011

Battle over Free and Open Access to County Geospatial Data Continues

I blogged previously about a court case involving Santa Clara County in California that was decided in favour of free and open access to county GIS data under California's Public Records Acts (PRA).

May 31 a different California appelate court decided in favour of Orange County which charges $375,000 for their parcel database. After trying to obtain Orange County's parcel file at the cost of reproduction, in 2009 the Sierra Club initiated a lawsuit against Orange County under the PRA. In 2010, the Superior Court decided that the PRA exempts GIS databases from public record disclosure because the court concluded that they are "computer software developed by a state or local agency". A California appellate court agreed with the Orange County Superiro Court that a GIS database is covered by the PRA software exclusion because it concluded that "computer mapping systems" as defined by the PRA includes software and data.

Since this decision conflicts with the another California appellate court's decision in the case of Santa Clara County, it may take a California Supreme Court decision to resolve the issue.

Thanks to Bruce Joffe for pointing me to this.

Posted at 04:01 PM in Access to Spatial Data, Open Data, Sharing Spatial Data | Permalink

Comments

My question is that if I pay them the $375k, do I get a copy of their Oracle Spatial and SDE? Sounds like a good deal to me.

Posted by: James Fee | June 06, 2011 at 06:06 PM

Great question James, I'd like to see Orange County's response to that one.
A project I am currently on we have ran into this same issue across the country. With revenues down for many gov't agencies some see these GIS requests as a revenue stream, but if the data capture & maintenance is paid for with public dollars then isn't said data public? Furthermore, if company X is paying some sort of franchise fee to operate within the county is it out of line for them to expect access to this data? My answer is "No". What do they get for those franchise fees? The privilege of doing business there and that's it?
It'll be interesting to see where this one goes.

Posted by: Evan Wagner | June 16, 2011 at 07:17 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

Between the Poles

Geoff Zeiss

October 2024

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June 06, 2011

Battle over Free and Open Access to County Geospatial Data Continues

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