Between the Poles: Sharing geospatial data among government and municipal agencies

Geoff Zeiss

About the Author

July 2023

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

Links

Lidar News
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.

« Brazil uses satellite imagery to reduce illegal deforestation | Main | Smart cities: BIM, GIS and the internet of things »

September 12, 2013

Sharing geospatial data among government and municipal agencies

In a very interesting presentation at the Latin America Geospatial Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Juan Acuña Arenas, Program Director of CEDIZ in the Secretariat for Economics and Small Business in Chile, gave an overview of Chile's CEDIZ program whose objective is to reduce the time it takes to start a business in Chile to a single day.

One of the requirememts of starting a new business is identifying the location of the new business to ensure that it complies with zoning and other requirements. One of the initiatives undertaken as part of the CEDIZ program is to create a national Urban Parcels Base Map (CBPU) to provide a common base map for all government agencies and municipalities to share, The CBPU will be the first map in Chile with a scale less than 1:5000 standardized for the entire country. When an entrepreneur decides to start a new business, he or she will be able to acces the CBPU map on line, identify the location of the new business, know immediately the zoning and other restrictions of that location, and if compliant get a digital zoning certificate for the new business. In addtion it allows the goverment to monitor new business activity geographically to enable it to ensure that zonng and other regulations are designed to maximize economic activity.

Wadih João Scandar Neto, Director of Geosciences at the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), who chaired the session pointed to two important trends occuring worldwide that are facilitating the sharing of information among government agencies.

Shared acquistion of satellite and other imagery to improve efficiency and reduce costs
Government institutions collaborating to establish standards for sharing geopatial information

Posted at 10:30 AM in Geospatial Standards, Municipal infrastructure, Parcel fabric, Sharing Spatial Data | Permalink

Comments

The comments to this entry are closed.

Between the Poles

Geoff Zeiss

July 2023

Links

September 12, 2013

Sharing geospatial data among government and municipal agencies

Comments

RSS Feed

Search

Categories

Recent Posts

Archives