Between the Poles

Limiting the energy demand of the world's buildings

The energy demand of buildings is expected to rise by 50% by 2050. It is driven by rapid growth in the number of households, residential and services floor area, higher ownership rates for existing electricity-consuming devices and increasing demand for new products.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), this growth could be limited to just over 10% without changing comfort levels or requiring households to reduce their purchases of appliances and other electronic equipment.

The IEA has estimates that limiting global temperature rise to2°C would require a 77% reduction in total CO2 emissions by buildings by 2050 compared to today’s level.  To achieve this will require energy demand reduction, increased use of renewables and decarbonised electric power generation.

It has been estimated that 40 exajoules (EJ), could be saved in the buildings sector in 2050 with existing technologies such as high-performance windows, optimal levels of insulation, reflective surfaces, sealants, heat pumps, solar thermal heating, co-generation, energy efficient appliances and equipment, efficient cook stoves and solid-state lighting (SSL).

The IEA estimates that a combination of efficiency standards, greater use of heat pumps, solar thermal and co-generation with waste heat and renewables could reduce growth in electricity demand by 2 000 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2050.  This would be realized by avoided capacity expansion of 330 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired capacity or 460 GW of gas-fired capacity and savings of between US$ 170 billion and US$ 150 billion in new generation capacity.

Regional priorities

Energy trends in buildings vary from country to country depending on climate, population, income, economic development and household sizes. The IEA has examined nine countries/regions in detail and has identified priorities and made policy recommendations for each.

Energy reduction for buildings involves technology and policy. 

Technology

• Advanced envelope for cold climates - highly insulating windows, air sealing and insulation
• Reduced cooling loads for hot climates - reflective technologies and advanced cooling equipment
• Heat pumps - water heating and/or space heating and/or space cooling
• Solar thermal - water heating and/or space heating
• More efficient use of biomass - more efficient cooking and water heating, and leading to modern biogas

Policy

• Building codes with supporting infrastructure - education, product ratings, and implementation to pursue holistic approach with advanced envelopes
• Appliance and equipment standard - promoting advanced appliances, lighting, heat pumps, heat pump water heater, gas condensing boilers, miscellaneous electrical loads, efficient cooling
• Deep renovation of existing buildings - systems approach with advanced envelopes and high-performance equipment
• Zero-energy new buildings - advanced holistic building design with integrated renewable energy

The first priority in improving the global building stock is to establish and enforce building codes that include minimum energy performance for new and refurbished buildings.  Policies are required to ensure that high-performance building envelopes rapidly become the standard for all new construction globally.  Priority should also be given to refurbishing existing buildings, particularly in the European Union, Russia and the United States, where it is estimated that 60% of existing buildings will still be in use in 2050.

It is estimated that space heating and cooling and water heating account for nearly 60% of global energy consumption in buildings.  Heat pumps, solar thermal and co-generation for space heating and cooling as well as hot water should be prioritized.

Lighting has significant potential for energy efficiency improvements.  With better use of natural lighting and adoption of highly efficient lamp technologies, buildings energy consumption for lighting could be reduced by 40% in 2050 compared to current levels.

In many countries, appliances and other electrical equipment represent the fastest-growing end-use for energy in buildings as household wealth rises in major economies such as China, India and South Africa.  The deployment of best available technology and continued improvements in appliance and equipment efficiency could reduce the growth in electricity demand to 40% of current levels in a low-carbon scenario compared to a near doubling under a business-as-usual scenario.

Recommendations

Rigorous building codes will need to be implemented in all countries. New buildings in cold climates should be subject to progressively tighter regulatory standards, to between 15 kilowatt-hours per square metre per year (kWh/m2/year) and 30 kWh/m2/year for heating purposes. In hot climates, the cooling energy demand intensity should be reduced by around one-third compared with current levels.  In fast-growing economies with rapid new-build rates, the implementation of effective building codes should be the priority.

In OECD countries and non-OECD Europe and Eurasia, large-scale refurbishment of residential buildings should be the priority. Approximately three-quarters of all buildings in these countries will still be standing in 2050 and hence will need to be upgraded to a low-energy standard.

Efficient district heating systems can benefit from thermal energy storage coupled with waste heat and renewables.  Integrate building end-use equipment into smart grids and smart metering should be promoted, to help reduce peak load and bring other economic benefits.

30 years of free and open source geospatial software

July 29 was the 30th birthday of GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System), what I believe is the first free and open source Geographic Information System (GIS) software package.  GRASS is a member of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).

Thirty years ago, on 29 July 1983, the user manual for a new system titled "GIS Version 1 Reference Manual" was first published by J. Westervelt and M. O'Shea.  Prior to that in 1982, Lloyd Van Warren, and engineering student at the University of Illinois (Champaign/Urbana), had began developing a new computer program based on a master's thesis by Jim Westervelt that described am analytic geospatial package called LAGRID (Landscape Architecture Gridcell analysis system).

Further development of the software package was by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (USA/CERL) in Champaign.  Version 1.0 was released in 1985 under the name Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (GRASS). In the mid 1990s  development transferred from USA/CERL to the Open GRASS Consortium.

In 1999 GRASS GIS was released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

The future of national mapping agencies over the next 5-10 years

Since Google Earth's release in June 2005, national mapping agencies and other government organizations involved with geospatial data and technology have been reasessing their role.  At the Geospatial World Forum (GWF) in Amsterdam last year, Paul Cheung of the United Nations Initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management (GGIM) voiced the concern about their role that many national mapping agencies and other government organizations with responsibility for geospatial information have had since the advent of Google Earth, private data companies like Digital Globe, Geoeye, TeleAtlas and Navteq, crowd-sourced geospatial data like OpenStreetMap, and open data policies adopted by many governments around the world.

The UN-GGIM has just published Future trends in geospatial information management: the five to ten year vision.  A number of experts and visionaries across a range of disciplines of the geospatial community including data collection, academics and major users of geospatial information,  the private sector and the crowdsourced/volunteered geographic information  movement were invited
to contribute their views on the emerging trends in the geospatial world. 

Private sector participation

With respect to the private sector the list of contributors includes senior people at Trimble, Hexagon, ESRI, and Digital Globe/GeoEye, but does not include Google, Microsoft, Nokia/Navteq, or TomTom(TeleAtlas).  I also didn't see anyone on the list from OpenStreetMap.  However, Google, Microsoft Bing, and OpenStreetMap are discusssed in the report.

Trends

Given the large number of people contributing to this report, it is not surprising that it includes a comprehensive set of trends that are impacting national mapping and cadastral agencies (NMCAs),  government bodies responsible for the provision of authoritative geospatial information within a country.

• Sensors - the proliferation of low‑cost, network‑enabled sensors in mobile phones, computers, smart meters or cars.
• Big data - estimated at approximately 2.5 exabytes every day, huge volumes of data are expected to increase demand for geospatial technology  to help to make sense of all this data.
• Linked data -  connecting data to other pieces of data on the Web, providing context and adding value to existing data
• Semantic technologies  - the semantic web as been discussed for years, but there are signs within some verticl industries such as construction that something practical may be emerging
• internet of things - a hyper‑connected network of intelligent objects, I have seen estimates of a trillion objects in the near future
• Cloud - infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), software as a
  service (SaaS) and data as a service (DaaS)
• Open‑source - expected to continue to gaim momemntum, already a number of NMCAs have  adopted open‑source solutions into some of their services, OGC reference implementations are open source.
• Open standards - In many ways the geospatial community is an model industry in the development and maintenance of open standards, led and coordinated by OGC in partnership with many organisations
• 3D data - the world is moving from two dimensional (2D) to three dimensional (3D) mapping; many municipalities are developing realistic and intelligent city models including buildings and infrastructure; the report projects that 3D is becoming an intrinsic part of core geospatial data, rather than an add‑on as it is now
• 3D visualization -3D visualization technology much of it arising in the gaming industry makes it possible to convey complex concepts, projects, and analytical results to non-technical folks such as politicians and the general public
• 4D - used widely in the construction industry, for example, linking Primavera to a BIM model helps with construction scheduling, 5D is also being  used; the report also foresees 4D increasing over the coming five to ten years in geographic information systems (GIS), not only to understand change that has already taken place, but to also enable predictive modelling of future trends
• Imagery - forecasts centimeter precision in many areas of the globe, focus is likely to be performance and analytics.
• Mobile mapping - street‑level visual information, points of interest (POI) and attribute data in more detail; especially LiDAR (and oblique imagery) which will facilitate the generation of 3D datasets. [I would add ground penetrating radar (GPR) for mapping underground infrastructure]
• Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) - in the civilian sector UAVs are already being used increasingly in a number of sectors
• GNSS - by 2015, there will be over 100 GNSS satellites in orbit. This will enable faster data collection in very challenging environments, with higher accuracy and greater integrity
• Satellite gravimetry - some nations are already taking the step to move away from traditional schemes defined using large‑scale terrestrial observations and base the national vertical reference system on purely gravimetric geoids instead
• Coordinate systems - are becoming more accurately defined as technology and techniques improve; this is critical large scale construction projects, especially in the transportation sector
• Indoor positioning - an emerging frontier, but one that still represents major challenges
• Passive crowdsourcing - anyone with a smart phone, with or without a GPS, is a sensor which is already being used by private companies to derive infirmation about traffic, shopping patterns, and other information; social media make this an even richer source of information
• Active crowdsourcing - OpenStreetMap (OSM) which grew by providing an alternative to an NMCA is the best known example; some NMCAs still find the concept of crowd-sourced data a challenge
• Funding models - funding the collection of geospatial data remains a controversial topic in some countries; one of the major challenges of the next five to ten years for governments will be demonstrating the value pf geospatial data to the national economy as has been done in Australia and New Zealand and as is currrently underway in Canada

Role of governments

Clearly governments have a role in defining policy, for example,  for access to government spatial data such as free and open data or for protecting consumer privacy.

For some vertical industries the report says that "governments will also play a role in many countries in driving, or at least supporting, cross-sector collaboration in areas such as building, construction and public safety, through building information modelling (BIM)..."  This is already occuring in the U.S., U.K., Finland, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Hong Kong, and Singapore, where national governments ara mandating or at least strongly encouraging the adoption of BIM for public projects.  It is being driven primarily by efficiency and reducing the cost of infrastructure.

The report argues that "governments have a key role to play in bringing all actors together to ensure that our future society is a sustainable, location-enabled one, underpinned by the sustainable provision and effective management of reliable and trusted geospatial information." 

The challenge for NMCAs in the area of traditional mapping is that in parts of the world, Google. Bing, OpenStreetMaps (see here to compare these data sources), or a local crowd-sourced alternative like Malsingmaps provides more comprehensive, accurate, current and accessible data with less restrictive licensing and at a lower cost than the NMCA.  There are those who argue that in the area of traditional mapping, private and crowd-sourced organizations do a better job at lower cost and that government needs to find a new area of focus where it can provide a service that it would be difficult for anyone else to provide.  Examples are managing authorative data such as the parcel fabric or  mapping undeveloped areas such as Northern Canada or the Amazon interior that may be uneconomic for a commercial concern.

Infrastructure Mapping

An area where government may be uniquely qualified is mapping national infrastructure, much of which has a national security dimension.  In many parts of the world the location of underground infrastructure including electric power, water and wastewater, gas, district heating, and other networks is unknown or poorly known. 

According to national statistics, in the United States an underground utility line is hit on average every 60 seconds.  The total cost to the national economy is estimated to be in the billions of dollars.  The problems is that in most municipalities in North America, for years underground utility lines have been put in the ground not according to plan but wherever it has been easiest and cheapest to build them.  In addition 2D as-builts of underground infrastructure are unreliable.  The result is that in most municipalities the location of underground utiltiies is very poorly known.

In the U.S. access to infrastructure data including location is restricted under Protected Critical Infrastructure Information (PCII) Program. In addition utilties, telecommunications and other organizations responsible for operating infrastructure networks are very often reluctant to share information about their networks for competitive and other reasons.  There are successful examples around the world where government has helped enable a shared ulility network database.

The Victorian Spatial Council has developed a framework for sharing based on licenses and metadata, not only within the Government of Victoria, but also among utilities, telecommunications firms, National Government, local governments, quasi-government, and non-government organizations.

As a practical example, the City of Las Vegas has successfully completed a pilot to develope a 3D model of the City's underground and aboveground infrastructure and is expanding the project to cover more of the City.

There is a growing body of information that indicates that the return on investment (ROI) for investing in accurately geolocating underground infrastructure is positive and substantial.  A pilot in northern Italy estimated a ROI of €16 for every € invested in improving the reliability information about underground infrastructure.  For comparison the ROI for investing in improving information about underground infrastructure in the United States has been estimated to range from $3 to $21 for every dollar invested. 

Ultra-high voltage transformer cooled with vegetable oil less prone to fires and coolant is biodegradable

TransnetBW, a grid operator in Baden-Württemberg, is beginning operating an environmentally friendly transformer that uses vegetable oil as a coolant.  The device will link the 380-kV ultra-high voltage level with the 110-kV grid in the Bruchsal-Kändelweg substation plant near Karlsruhe.  The transformer weighs just under 340 tons and contains 100 tons of vegetable oil.

Transformers are usually cooled and insulated with mineral or silicone oil.  These oils are harmful to the environment and highly flammable. Vegetable oils are less flammable and environmentally friendlier.   The types of vegetable oils are rapeseed, soy or sunflower oils, which are are biodegradable and have a much higher flashpoint.  This means that a vegetable oil transformer can be operated without additional protective equipment such as collecting tanks, even in zones with strict environmental requirements.  Vegetable oil transformers are much safer in densely populated residential areas.

UN GGIM meeting expected to result in UN proposal for global geodetic framework

At the Geospatial World Forum (GWF) in Amsterdam last year, Paul Cheung of the United Nations Initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management (GGIM) voiced the concern about their role that many national mapping agencies and other government organizations with responsibility for geospatial information have had since the advent of Google Map/Earth, private data companies like Digital Globe, Geoeye, TeleAtlas and Navteq, crowd-sourced geospatial data like OpenStreetMap, and open data policies adopted by many governments around the world.

The Second High Level Forum on Global Geospatial Information Management (GGIM) occurred in Doha, Qatar in February, 2013.  The final declaration of the Forum, the Doha Declaration Advancing Global Geospatial Information Management listed important focus areas for GGIM activities.

• a sustained operational global geodetic reference frame and infrastructure to support the increasing demand for positioning and monitoring applications
• the greater use of geospatial information in sustainable development by supporting the the Global Map for Sustainable Development (GM4SD) with an initial focus on managing risks of natural disasters to urban populations
• an agreed set of authoritative core global reference datasets to support global sustainable development activities
• a stable, credible, and reliable national geospatial information infrastructure in each country built on internationally recognized standards
• more training programs related to geospatial information management at all levels
• regional collaboration in the promotion and development of geospatial information management

The United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management is holding a special joint session with the Cambridge Conference July 24 to 26 in Cambridge, England.

More than 280 geospatial information leaders from over 75  Member States and 40 international organizations are paartcipating in the UN GGIM third session.   An expected outcome is a proposal to table a draft text during the sixty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly that would urge Governments to support a global geodetic frame and related infrastructure.

Open data in Victoria, Australia

I have always been impressed with the appoach to sharing spatial data in the State of Victoria in Australia.  In 2008 I heard a presentation by Jose Diacono and Danny Broadbent who were associated with the Victorian Spatial Council.

The Victorian Spatial Council developed a framework for sharing based on licenses and metadata, not only within the Government of Victoria, but also among utilities, telecommunications firms, National Government, other government, quasi-government, and non-government organizations.  The program is based on the Victorian Spatial Information Strategy, and incorporates the concept of custodianship.  They have encouraged organizations with data to share to participate in the program as data custodians.  This is a voluntary program, not mandated by legislation.

In August 2012 the Victorian Government released the DataVic Access Policy, which enables the sharing of Government data at no, or minimal, cost to users. In 2012 and 2013, raw Government data from all agencies will be progressively supplied in a machine-readable format.  The DataVic Access Policy provides direction on the release, licensing and management of Victorian Government data so that it can be used and reused by the community and businesses.

Recently the Victorian Government released its first set of raw spatial data online including data about electoral and planning boundaries, transport networks in the state, parks and conservation areas, and oil and gas fields.  The data is available on the government’s Open Data portal. Currently there are about 525 spatial datasets from the Department of Environment and Primary Industries, Department of Justice, and others.  The objective is 1000 datasets on the open data portal by September 2013.

Convergence of technologies transforming surveying and other industries

At the South African Surveying and Geomatics Indaba 2013 today in Johannesburg today Trevor Ventor of Optron gave a very interesting presentation (by Peter Large who wsn't able to make it to Johannisberg) on the topic of the Our Changing World and the Role of Geomatics Practitioners.

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By way of a bit of history he mentioned theodolytes which have been around since 1587 and which have been the basis for modern surveying until the advent of GPS in 1989-94.  President Clinton turned off scrambling in 2000 and since then the impact of GNSS on surveying has been enormous.  For survey precision you need an Earth station.  A number of countries such as the UK have implemented national Earth station systems, which allows you to correct GNSS readings over the internet and achieve centimeter accuracy .

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The Trimble Centerpoint RTX network which provides 4 cm precision in 40 countries worldwide was launched last year.  It is most interesting that it is not surveyors who are the biggest users of the Centerpoint RTX system but farmers, presumably for precision agriculture applications.

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Convergence of technologies

Another interesting point that Peter made is that at the present time it is not so much new individual techologies that are having the biggest impact but the convergence or integration of multiple technologies.  An example is total stations which are a theodolyte and laser distance measurement device combined in a single piece of equipment.

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But on a larger scale the integration of positioning devices such as total stations, laser scanners, wireless and internet connectivity, "big data" management, and analytics is set to transform not only the surveying industry, but agriculture, utilties and other sectors.  Peter suggested that half of the world's GDP of $72 trillion is generated by industries that will be affected by the convergence of these technologies.   For example, precision agriculture has become a major growth area for Trimble.  It is also very interesting that Trimble, which like Hexagon used to be primarily a hardware company, now generates over half of its $2 billion or so annual revenue from software.

Penn State's MOOC courses include Maps and the Geospatial Revolution

I have blogged frequently on the workforce challenges facing the utility industry resulting from accelerating retirement among engineers and skilled workers and by the technology transformation  associated with the smart grid.  Community colleges in partnership with utiltiies have been the quickest to respond to this challenge.  But universities, encouraged by program like the IEEE PES Scholarship Plus program, are responding as well, though they are also facing an aging workforce problem. 

Now something has appeared on the horizon in education that may provide a way of ramping up more rapidly to the challenge of training the next generation of engineers and skilled workers.

From October 10th to December 18th 2011 Stanford offered a free, on-line course, "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence", open to anyone, that  attracted 160'000 students.  The term applied to this type of on-line education is massive open on-line courses (MOOCs).

In August 2012, the online education company Coursera began offering free college courses.  Since Coursera launched, the company has registered a total of almost 2.8 million users, with approximately 1.45 million students enrolling in courses each month. Coursera also recently began offering students opportunities to receive credit and recognition for their work through organizations such as the American Council on Education (ACE).

Earlier this year Penn State joined Coursera, making it possible for the University to provide courses to hundreds of thousands more students than was previously possible. Penn State's initial MOOC offerings will focus on five courses including  Maps and the Geospatial Revolution, taught by Dr. Anthony C. Robinson.  Last year Glenn Letham interviewed Anthony Robinson about geospatial education at Penn State.

Open standards open source projects for sharing geodata among provinces saves €4.5 million

In 2006 the 12 provinces of the Netherlands developed Flamingo, software for managing and viewing geographic maps. They plan to publish a second tool, called CDS (Central Data and Service environment) based around INSPIRE standards.  These applications were developed as open source based on well-known open source tools including Postgis and Deegree, which are supported by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGEO).

The provinces estimate that since 2009 they have saved € 4.5 million by working together and using open source software solutions for their GIS applications.

The provinces have created a foundation to support the Flamingo community.  Next year, they plan to pursue a similar community development approach for CDS.  

The provinces are now taking a similar approach for other applications that have been developed to be compatible with the European INSPIRE directive, a set of standards, many of which are also Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards, for sharing geospatial data about the environment. 

A presentation on this initiative was delivered at the INSPIRE conference this year in Florence.

Thanks to Derek Oswald for pointing me to this.

Google joins LocationTech

Andrew Ross ot the LocationTech open source geospatial initiative that is part of the Eclipse Foundation has just announced Google and Azavea as new members of LocationTech.

LocationTech is the Eclipse Foundation's industry working group focusing on location aware technologies. Members of LocationTech are also full fledged members of the Eclipse Foundation.

LocationTech is hosted by the Eclipse Foundation. Eclipse is a vendor neutral community for individuals and organizations who wish to collaborate on commercially-friendly open source software. The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit, member supported corporation that hosts technology projects and helps cultivate both an open source community and an ecosystem of complementary products and services.

There are four levels of participation at LocationTech.  Google joins IBM, Oracle, OpenGeo, and Actuate as a strategic member.  Strategic members view location aware technologies as strategic to their business. They invest to further develop the technology and influence the direction of the industry. Strategic Members have the right to appoint a representative to governing bodies. Strategic members pay higher annual dues to support LocationTech.

Azavea joins Carleton University Geomatics and Cartographc Research Centre and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGEO) as a participating member.  Participating members view location aware technologies as an important part of their business. They invest to support and participate in the ecosystem. Representatives have the right to be nominated and run for election to the governing bodies. Participating members pay annual dues to support LocationTech.