Between the Poles

Integrated infrastructure management and urban planning at the City of Vancouver

 

Directions Magazine is hosting a webinar about how the City of Vancouver has implemented an integrated solution  focusing on urban planning and infrastructure management.  Jonathan Mark, Senior Manager GIS and CADD Services and Dan Campbell, Graphics Planner, will discuss their implementation and the use cases that drove it. The City of Vancouver uses both Autodesk and Pitney Bowes Software applications extensively, creating the 2D to 3D work flow.  To date, Autodesk products have been used primarily for the design and maintenance of infrastructure, 3D modeling and visualization and web mapping, while Pitney Bowes Software’s MapInfo Professional has been used for analysis on urban planning projects. With the announcement of the strategic partnership between Autodesk and Pitney Bowes Software, the City is expecting to be better able to integrate these workflows and share information.

Ahmed Abukhater, Pitney Bowes Software Director of Global Product Management, will be joined by Justin Lokitz, Autodesk Senior Product Manager, to explain how the partnership of Autodesk and Pitney Bowes Software will benefit GIS practitioners and designers everywhere, but especially those within municipal government, transportation and natural resources. With a combined solution from both organizations GIS and BIM users are empowered to effectively realize more unified infrastructure lifecycles, from Plan -> Design-> Build-> Manage.

More specifically, the webinar will present
•    Details of the City of Vancouver’s integrated GIS workflow
•    Applications for urban planning, transportation and natural resource management
•    Benefits of full end-to-end workflow solutions

Who should attend
GIS practitioners and managers in any industry, and especially those in government, transportation and natural resource management.

When
Thursday, May 3rd
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT

You can register here

EPA announces new rules for toxic air emissions from hydraulic fracturing

According to the EPA, greenhouse gas emissions from burning natural gas are 50% less that those from coal for the same amount of energy.  But some researchers argue that the leakage of methane, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, during hydraulic fracturing operations actually makes the total greenhouse gas emissions associated with natural gas from shale deposits comparable to or even greater than those from coal.  According to Scientific American the Environmental Defense Fund recently released a study that found that methane leakage in hydraulic fracturing and transportation of natural gas has the potential to remove some or all of the benefits of being a low-carbon fuel, compared to coal, gasoline or diesel.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released a new rule, Oil and Natural Gas Air Pollution Standards, under the Clean Air Act that requires new hydraulically fractured gas wells to use technology that will reduce the emissions of toxic substances, and it is hoped concomitantly methane.  The rule requires that all new wells install technology that separates gas from liquid hydrocarbons from the flowback of wells to reduce toxic atmospheric emissions.  It is estimated that the leakage of benzene and hexane will drop by 20,000 to 30,000 tons per year. Volatile organic compounds that mix with nitrogen oxides to create smog will be reduced by 190,000 to 290,000 tons per year, a nearly 95 percent reduction, according to the EPA.

The new standard does not mandate a reduction of methane emissions during hydraulic fracturing operations, but this would be a co-benefit of reducing toxic emissions.

Impact of the EPA's MATS standard on employment

In December 2011 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), the first national standards for mercury, arsenic, acid gas, nickel, selenium, and cyanide emissions from power plants under the Clean Air Act Amendments, signed by President Bush in 1990.  The EPA says that MATS and the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), issued earlier this year, are the most significant steps to clean up pollution from power plant smokestacks since the Acid Rain Program of the 1990s.  Power plants have three years to comply, though there are provisions in special cases for four years or even longer to achieve compliance. An associated Presidential Memorandum directs EPA to implement the MATS in a cost-effective manner that ensures electric reliability.

Primary economic benefit

The EPA also released a regulatory impact analysis (RIA), which concludes that the primary economic impact of MATS is on health and quality-of-life. The improvements to health and quality of life stemming from the proposed rule changes would be very large and make the regulatory change worthy of support in and of itself. Specifically, the EPA estimates that adoption of the proposed toxics rule would lead to the  outcomes:

• 6,800 to 17,000 lives saved (which the EPA describes as “avoiding premature mortality
• 11,000 fewer heart attacks
• 12,200 fewer hospital and emergency room visits
• 225,000 fewer cases of respiratory symptoms
• 850,000 more work days (because workers are healthier)

The value of these and certain other health benefits would amount to $55–146 billion per year, exceeding the $11.3 billion annual cost of the program.

Employment impact

The RIA also attempted to estimate changes in employment in the directly regulated industry (utilities) and the increased demand for labor from the construction and installation of pollution abatement and control (PAC) equipment.  However, according to a study by the Energy Policy Institute (EPI), the EPA's RIA is not close to an exhaustive review of how MATS would affect overall labor demand.

The EPI report is intended to give a more complete picture of MATS’ effect on employment.  The major effect would be job growth spurred by new investments in pollution abatement and control,  as well as by small increases within the utility sector itself. Furthermore, gains from job growth would be amplified through re-spending effects, as those who gain jobs increase their consumption thereby generating jobs throughout the economy.

The major findings of the report are that MATS would have a positive net impact on overall employment, likely leading to the creation of 28,000 to 158,000 jobs between now and 2015.

• The employment effect of MATS on the utility industry itself could range from 17,000 jobs lost to 35,000 jobs gained
• MATS would create between 81,000 and 101,000 jobs in the pollution abatement and control industry.
• Between 31,000 and 46,000 jobs would be lost due to higher energy prices leading to reductions in output.
• Assuming a re-spending multiplier of 0.5, and since the net impact of the above impacts is positive, another 9,000 to 53,000 jobs would be created through re-spending.

Government of Canada announces plan to streamline federal natural resources and environmental oversight

The Government of Canada has announced plans to streamline federal natural resources and environmental oversight.  The objective is to reduce federal oversight of natural resource development projects by restricting federal involvement to only those projects with national significance and with significant environmental effect.  The Canadian Environment Assessment Agency currently handles environmental assessments of which 94% were small projects.  Presumably oversight for most of these small projects will become the responsibility of the provinces.  There will also be a time limit on the duration of environmental reviews.  And instead of up to 40 agencies participating in environmental reviews, in the future only three agencies, Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, the National Energy Board and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission will be responsible for reviews.

Specific details as announced today are

• “One project, one review” system for reviews of major projects by recognizing provincial processes as substitutes or equivalents to federal ones as long as they meet the requirements under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act
• Time limits for hearings and assessments, namely, 24 months for panel reviews, 18 months for National Energy Board hearings and 12 months for standard environmental assessments.  Setting legally binding timelines for key regulatory permitting processes, including the Fisheries Act, the Species at Risk Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and the Nuclear Safety and Control Act;
• Consolidating the number of organizations responsible for reviews from more than 40 to three: The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, the National Energy Board and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission;
• Focusing federal assessment efforts on major projects that can have significant environmental effects;
• Introducing enforceable environmental assessment decision statements under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. The proposed penalties could range up to $400,000;
• Requiring follow-up programs after all environmental assessments to verify the accuracy of the predictions regarding potential environmental effects and to determine if mitigation measures are working as intended;
• Providing federal inspectors with the authority to examine whether or not conditions of a decision statement are met;
• Authorizing the use of administrative monetary penalties for violations of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, the Nuclear Safety and Control Act and the National Energy Board Act.
• Providing more than $35 million over two years for marine safety. 
• Prioviding $13.5 million over two years to strengthen pipeline safety, including regulations to strengthen the tanker safety regime and increasing the number of oil and gas pipeline inspections each year by 50 percent, from 100 to 150 inspections.

Last flight for Discovery space shuttle

A 747 with the space shuttle Discovery took off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center this morning. The shuttle will land at Dulles International Airport this morning and will be on exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy annex at Dulles.

Discovery's first launch was on Aug. 30, 1984.

STS-41D
 
Mission: SBS-D; Satellite Business System SYNCOM IV-2; Solar Wing TELSTAR
Space Shuttle: Discovery
Launch Pad: 39A
Launch Weight: 263,477 pounds
Launched: August 30, 1984 at 8:41:50 a.m. EDT
Landing Site: Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
Landing: September 5, 1984 at 6:37:54 a.m. PDT
Landing Weight: 201,674 pounds
Mission Duration: 6 days, 0 hours, 56 minutes, 4 seconds
Returned to KSC: September 10, 1984
Orbit Altitude: 184 nautical miles
Orbit Inclination: 28.5 degrees
Miles Traveled: 2.5 million

STS-133

This was the 35th shuttle mission to the space station and the final flight of Discovery.

Federal government forms interagency working group to coordinate federal regulation of unconventional natural gas

The Obama Administration has released an Executive Order creating an Interagency Working Group to support the safe and responsible development of the domestic unconventional natural gas industry by coordinating federal environmental and regulatory oversight of the unconventional natural gas industry.  The agencies directly involved include the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and the Department of Energy.

The Working Group is tasked with coordinating agency policy activities, coordinating sharing of scientific, environmental, technical and economic information, long-term planning of research, natural resource assessment, and the development of infrastructure.

Government of Canada unveils open government data plan

The Government of Canada has announced its Open Government Action Plan.  The fundamental principle is the issuing of a government-wide directive that will make government information and data available to the public by default.  The pilot Open Data Portal now has a total of over 272,000 data sets including geospatial data from 20 organizations.

Directive on Open Government

The Directive will provide guidance to 106 federal departments and agencies on what they must do to maximize the availability of online information and data, identify the nature of information to be published, as well as the timing, formats, and standards that departments will be required to adopt.

Open Government License   

To support the Directive and reduce the administrative burden of managing multiple licensing regimes across the Government of Canada, a new universal Open Government License will be issued with the goal of removing restrictions on the reuse of published Government of Canada information (data, info, websites, publications) and aligning with international best practices.

In the Anthropocene humanity is a planetary-scale force

The first State of the Planet Declaration coming out of the Planet under Pressure 2012 conference in London warns that the continued functioning of the Earth climate system and its support for human civilization is at risk. There is the potential for a humanitarian emergency on a global scale, relating to water, food, biodiversity and other critical resources, that requires urgent action.

It argues that humanity’s impact on the Earth system has become comparable to planetary-scale geological processes such as ice ages and that we have driven the planet into a new epoch, the Anthropocene, in which many Earth climate system processes are now dominated by human activities. The Earth has experienced large-scale, abrupt changes in the past and there is the risk that human activies could lead to abrupt, large scale changes in the future. Researchers are beginning to identify planetary and regional thresholds that, if crossed, could generate unacceptable environmental and social change.  For example, researchers are analyzing the abrupt retreat of Arctic sea-ice cover in 2007 and the detection of a new low ice cover state that suggest the Arctic may be approaching a tipping point that would trigger a strongly non-linear response in the internal dynamics of the Arctic climate system.

Assessments of current mechanisms for governing global environmental change show that existing international arrangements are not dealing quickly enough with current global challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss.  The United Nations Rio+20 Conference in June 2012 is seen as an opportunity to provide a strong strategic framework for a sustainable future including the creation of a Sustainable Development Council within the UN system to integrate social, economic and environmental policy at the global level.

Major milestones for open source: Red Hat exceeds $1 B and Microsoft accepts external code

It has been reported that Red Hat has become the first company making its money primarily from open source technology to exceed $1 billion in annual revenue.

Microsoft has announced that it will allow developers outside of Microsoft to submit patches and code contributions that the Microsoft development team will review for potential inclusion in its products.  Microsoft has announced that it is releasing pieces of its ASP.NET development framework (ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web API and ASP.NET Web pages) under the Apache 2.0 license.

Canadian emissions intensity continues to decrease

Environment Canada has released the National Inventory Report which includes data collected from Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reporting Program.  Canada has an objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 17% by 2020 compared to 2005 levels.

According to the report, between 2009 and 2010, Canadian emissions remained virtually constant while the economy grew 3.2 per cent.  As in many of the world's advanced economies, such as the U.S., China and the E.U., Canadian energy intensity and emissions intensity, energy and emissions per dollar of GDP, is declining.

The Minister also chose to highlight that per capita emissions remain at a historic low of 20.3 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per person, their lowest level since tracking began in 1990, and 2.6 tonnes of CO₂ lower per person compared to 2005 levels.  However, Canada remains at the top of the list among the countries with the highest per capita emissions.

Since 1990 Canadian emissions have grown by 17 per cent.  Since 2005, annual greenhouse gas emissions have dropped by 48 megatonnes, with emissions decline in almost all sectors, including oil and gas and electricity generation.

For comparison, in 2007 the European Council adopted the Energy 2020 policy, which commits the EU by 2020 to at least 20 % reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990, a goal which the EU appears to be on track to achieve.