Between the Poles

Smart power spatial power

For the first time in a hundred years, the electric power utility industry is undergoing a momentous change. Distributed renewable power generation, especially solar photovoltaics (PV), is introducing competition into an industry that has been managed as regulated monopolies. Consumers with solar PV panels on their roofs (and in not-too-distant future with Tesla batteries in the basement) and companies like Solar City (co-founded by Tesla co-founder Elon Musk) are fundamentally changing the traditional utility business model. A recent report from the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) report refers to disruptive challenges that threaten to force electric power utilities to change or adapt the business model that has been in place since the first half of the 20th century.

As a result, every aspect of the the electric power industry is changing. One of these changes involves the role that geospatial data and technology play in the electricity industry. In the past, geospatial has been a tactical tool — it was (and still is) used in a variety of applications — in outage management, asset management, mobile work- force management, energy density modelling, vegetation management, demand modelling, transmission line siting, substation siting and design, energy performance modelling of buildings, disaster management, and mapping renewable resources, to name just a few. However, with the changes that the industry is undergoing now, geospatial is poised to become a foundation technology for the smart grid.

The Energy Issue of Geospatial World Magazine explores the impact that this momentous change is having on the application of geospatial technology in the electric power utility sector.  Below I'm providing an overview of the material relating to electric power you'll find in this issue.

GIS has been widely used by utilities for years for automated mapping/facilities management, back office records management, asset management, transmission line siting, and more recently for design and construction, energy conservation, vegetation management, mobile workforce management (MWFM), and outage management (OMS). Now, utilities are integrating GIS with automated meter infrastructure (AMI) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. Intelligent design has crossed over from the office to the field in utilities, also enabled by the capabilities of GIS, says Smith. Geospatial-related analytics (spatial analytics) is seen as one of the key aspects of success for electric utility operations in the smart grid era. Looking for patterns and correlations between different land, weather, terrain, assets, and other types of geodata will be increasingly important for utilities. Power-related analytics with geospatial components include network fault tracing, load flow analysis, Volt/VAR analysis, real-time disaster situational awareness, condition-based maintenance, and vegetation management. The smart grid is all about situation awareness and effective anticipation of and response to events that might disrupt the performance of the power grid. Since spatial data underlies everything an electric utility does, GIS is the only foundational view that can potentially link every operational activity of an electric utility, including design and construction, asset management, workforce management, and outage management as well as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), distribution management systems (DMSs), renewables, and strategy planning.

Peter Batty reports on the major growth in geospatially-enabled Web and mobile applications with a special focus on the open source geospatial community and the significant impact of these technologies in the utility sector. "In general, there are a lot of geospatial open source software components available now that have the capabilities and robustness to be used in serious enterprise applications."  John McDonald, Chairman of the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel has been a firm believer for a long time that geospatial information is part of the foundational platform for smart grid.  SGIP has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Open Geospatial Consortium with the goal of incorporating more geospatial standards into SGIP standards.  Cindi Smith of Bentley goes even further and argues that  “geospatial technology is already a foundational component of electric power utilities’ IT/OT systems.  Smart grid simply brings more focus to the role it can play by virtue of the visibility of smart grid projects and processes in a utility and their need to exploit the vast amounts of data produced by the smart grid." Loek Bakker & Jan van GelderIt of Alliander, a Dutch utility company, describe how essential it has been for Alliander to integrate GIS, ERP and SCADA systems for a correct picture of its assets.  As electric utilities evolve into increasingly data-driven organisations, Jeffrey Pires and G. Ben Binger describe how GIS is fast emerging as the backbone for data management platforms. 

Cities are beginning to develop 3D models of underground infrastructure motivated by new underground remote-sensing technologies and by ROIs of up to of US$21.00 saved for every US$1.00 spent on improving the quality level of subsurface utility information.  Steve Dibenedetto, Senior Geoscientist and Technology Manager, Underground Imaging Technologies (UIT), part of Caterpillar describes new remote-sensing technology for detecting and geolocating in 3D underground utility infrastructure such as Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Electromagnetic Induction (EMI). 

The Indian on-going Restructured – Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Program (R-APDRP) is one of the largest IT initiatives by electric utilities anywhere in the world — in one integrated project, all state-owned distribution utilities in India are building IT infrastructure, IT applications and automation systems.  The programme set out to create baseline data in the form of consumer indexing, GIS mapping and asset mapping. Reji Pillai & C. Amritha assess how GIS can be applied in this context.  

Integrating  geospatial and BIM is a key enabler for energy performance modeling which is a fundamental instrument for reducing the energy consumption and improving the energy performance of new and existing buildings. According to a report from Navigant Research, global zero energy buildings revenue is expected to grow from $629.3 million in 2014 to $1.4 trillion by 2035.

Wolfgang Eyrich of Entegra shares how Entegra’s primtech product, which is designed to help substation designers deliver designs based on integrated product modelling, provides a geographical context to substation designing. 

Matt Zimmerman of Schneider Electric highlights one of Schneider Electric's key techologies "graphic work design" which is integrated geospatial and engineering design (CAD or BIM).  Schneider Electric's geospatial division focuses on developing integrated, location-aware enterprise solutions such as integrated outage management (OMS), customer information system (CIS), GIS, and external weather reporting and forecasting service to help plan crew deployment during a storm.  Matt foresees that location-aware predictive analytics for electric networks is going to be one of the major development areas for utilities in the future.  Brad Williams of Oracle points out that spatial analytics is becoming a key technology for electric utilities because everything a utility does - customers, assets, and operations - involves location. 

One of the biggest challenges that utilities are experiencing is increasing volumes of structured and unstructured data (big data) that is overwhelming traditional enterprise systems.  The structured data comes from smart meters and intelligent electronic devices, and the unstructured data from social networks including Twitter, Google, Facebook and other social applications.  Consumerization of geospatial technology (we are all GPS-enabled sensors) will enable crowd-sourcing new sources of information about electric power networks most of which involves location (big spatial data).

Smart cities market forecasted to reach over $ 1 trillion by 2019

Urbanization is a worldwide phenomenon.  Smart city technology is becoming an essential element in the development of the world's megacities.  For example, the new Indian government's just released budget includes an allocation for initiating the development of 100 smart cities.  Songdo IDB in Korea and Fujisawa in Japan are two smart cities already under development. China has 36 smart cities in development and a low carbon model city in Tianjin.  Singapore plans to become a smart nation by 2015.  Iskandar is Malaysia's first smart city.  The Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) incorporates smart city concepts. 

According to the report "Smart Cities Market - Worldwide Market Forecasts and Analysis (2014 - 2019)", published by MarketsandMarkets, the global smart cities market is forecasted to grow from $410 billion in 2014 to $1.1 trillion by 2019 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.5%.  This includes smart homes, intelligent building automation, energy management, smart health, smart education, smart water, smart transportation, smart security, and related services.  Most of this activity is expected to occur in Asia and the Middle East.

Navigant Research forecasts that cumulative global investment in smart city technologies, including smart grid, advanced water monitoring systems, transportation management systems, and energy efficient buildings, could total $174.4 billion from 2014 to 2023, growing from $8.8 billion annually in 2014 to $27.5 billion in 2023.  Navigant forecasts that annual smart city technology investment in Asia Pacific will increase from $3.0 billion in 2014 to reach $11.3 billion in 2023.

What are cities already doing ?

In a recent study by Arup and University College London, Delivering the Smart City, the researchers analysed the spending patterns of eight U.K. cities; Leicester City Council, Manchester City Council, Leeds City Council, Portsmouth City Council, Sheffield City Council, Liverpool City Council, Bristol City Council and Coventry City Council.  These are medium-sized cities with populations between 200,000 and 760,000. 

This type of analysis has become much easier because of the open data movement in the U.K. which has generated significant amounts of accessible  data about government spending and procurement.   The analysis showed that the eight cities were spending on average 6% of their expenditure on information technology (IT). That's an average of £23 million a year on IT.  Four of the eight spent between 8 and 10% of their budgets on IT. To put this in context the proportion that these city governments are spending on IT is more than many industries and is comparable to the banking and financial services industry which spends on average 8% of operating expenditure on IT.

This research shows that cities are already investing a significant amount on something which is a foundation for smart city technology.  IT already underpins many services offered by city governments today including public security and health, transportation, public works, natural resource management, and permitting and licensing.

Other research also shows that city governments globally are spending a significant proportion of their budgets on IT.  Gartner analysed the IT spending patterns of 99 local governments across 80 countries in the U.S. and found that that IT accounted for 3.8% of their total operating expenses.  U.S. local governments, including 3,200 counties and 19,000 cities, spent approximately $34 billion on traditional IT goods and services in 2013. 

According to Gartner national and regional governments in the Middle East and North Africa will spend US $12.2 billion on IT products and services in 2014, up 1.3 % from 2013. This includes internal services, software, IT services, data center, devices and telecom services.  Saudi Arabia is investing in various digital government initiatives including King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC).  The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is planning multiple smart cities.

City governments are not the only organizations providing IT services to support city operations.  For example, installation of 5,000 smart meters in homes and businesses across London involved investment from private companies including EDF Energy, Siemens, Logica, as well as the electricity transmission and network operators, National Grid and U.K. Power Networks, the transport operator Transport for London, and the city government Greater London Authority.

The U.S. spending analysis also showed that local governments, in addition to more traditional IT products and services, are procuring cloud-based services to modernize citizen services and reduce operational costs.  An example is online portals for tax collection and business licensing.  These IT projects are usually part of wider modernization projects being carried out within departments rather than standalone technology initiatives at the city level.

UK city governments buy IT products and services from large vendors

City governments in the U.K. tend to purchase their IT products and services from large vendors.  According to the UK analysis of eight cities large and middle-sized vendors accounted for the overwhelming majority of IT spending (98%) with small businesses only accounting for 2%.

Open source spatial data versioning coming for utilities

The Research and Markets report Global GIS Market in the Utility Industry 2014-2018 identifies an important new market trend in the increasing penetration of open-source geospatial software into the utility market. According to the report many small and medium-sized organizations that cannot afford to invest in expensive proprietary GIS solutions are now choosing open-source software. In the U.S. most of the 3000 electric power utilities are small to medium-sized organizations, primarily municipal and rural electric coops.

Spatial data versioning (long transactions) for utility records management

Two essential capabilities for utility and telecom records management are storing spatial data in an SQL database and long transactions, more commonly referred to as data versioning these days  For a utility data versioning makes it possible to store spatial design data in the same database as as-built data, enabling design engineers to work on new designs at the same time as operations staff are relying on as-built information to operate and maintain active utility networks.  Many of the largest telecoms and utilties have outside plant solutions based on these technologies, in some cases since the 1990s.

Open source spatial data versioning

In the most recent Eclipse LocationTech Newsletter, Paul Ramsey describes the latest development on a major open source initiative to support spatial data versioning.  Paul points out that software developers have long had extremely versatile tools, such as Git, for managing software versions which tracks the details of all changes made to source code including dependencies in a distributed environment.  He and others have asked why don’t we have this capability for spatial data management ? 

The answer is GeoGig which takes the concepts used in distributed version control such as Git and applies them to versioned spatial data.  GeoGig is written in Java and is available under an open source  BSD License.

At the Location Intelligence Summit earlier this year in Washington, Juan Marin, CTO at Boundless,  gave an overview and demonstration of what was then called GeoGit, a distributed system for geospatial data versioning using the same philosophy as Git.

To further leverage the abilities of GeoGig, Boundless has announced Versio for organizations to manage their spatial data.  According to Paul Versio is a "hosted service built on GeoGig that provides easier toolks for data authors to collaborate on spatial data while streamlining the creation, maintenance, and distribution of spatial data."

Git

By way of background Git is a distributed revision control and source code management (SCM) system.  Git was initially designed and developed by Linus Torvalds for Linux kernel development in 2005.  It is free open source software distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL)  V 2.

Every Git working directory is a full-fledged repository with complete history and full version tracking capabilities. Each local repository is standalone and is not dependent on network access to a central server. Git is known for very fast performance and for scalability.

History of long transactions for telecom/utility records management

Two capabilities that are essential for utility and telecom records management, storing spatial data in an SQL database and long transactions, were introduced in the early days of Automated Mapping/Facilities Mapping/Geographic Information Systems (AM/FM/GIS).  The first commercial systems implementing this technology in the early 1990's were IBM's GFIS which ran on DB2 and VISION* which managed versioned spatial data in an Oracle RDBMS (this was long before Oracle Spatial and Workspace Manager).  VISION* systems are still running at First Energy, supporting hundreds of concurrent utility network designers, and at CenturyTel (at the time US West then Qwest) and Telefonica Sao Paulo (at the time Telebras where the far-sighted visionary was the late Geovane Magalhaes) where each VISION* system supports about a thousand concurrent telecom outside plant designers.  VISION* was acquired by Autodesk in 1999.

Over 900 attendees at this year's FOSS4G in Portland

Over 900 attendees were at the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) conference in Portland this year.  Last year's FOSS4G 2013 in Nottingham attracted 833 delegates.  This year's  attendance matches Denver's FOSS4G in 2011 record.

There are also equally successsful regional FOSS4G conferences, most notably FOSS4G-Asia which just took place in Bangkok, Thailand and FOSS4G North America 2015 which is coming up at the San Francisco Airport Hyatt Mar 9-12.

Next year's FOSS4G 2015 will be hosted in Seoul (South Korea) Sep 14-19.

Michael Byrne receives national award for development of the National Broadband Map

Michael Byrne, who was Geographic Information Officer (GIO) of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and led the development of the National Broadband Map (NBM), has just been awarded the Citizen Services Medal for creating a series of online maps (National Broadband Map and derived maps) and geospatial visualizations that helped people make informed decisions about the country’s communications systems.  It was developed in seven months from a standing start, launched Feb17, 2011, and got half a million hits in the first ten hours it was up.

The Service to America Medals are awarded every year to federal employees who achieve amazing results and epitomize public service.

The National Broadband Map allows users to use a web tool to search broadband availability across the United States and compare real download speeds to advertised broadband performance. All of the data is available for download. The map was part of an FCC stimulus (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) initiative to improve broadband coverage/speed across the U.S.

The development of the National Broadband Map is a fascinating story.  The business objectives of the National Broadband Map, which were were mandated by Congress, included searchability, interactivity, responsive on-line access and a very tight development timeframe.

The data collection part of the story was a challenge because the FCC had to rely on the states to collect the data.  The FCC ended up with data on 3500 broadband providers, submitted by 50 states, 2 territories and the District of Columbia.  Michael's team had to take all this data in many different formats and load it into the NBM database. The end result was a database covering 1650 broadband providers with 25 million records showing where broadband Internet service is available, the technology used to provide the service, the maximum advertised speeds of the service, and the names of the broadband providers.

Michael and his team's biggest technical challenge was the tight development timeline.  The second major challenge was ensuring fast user response time. 

Seven months is an incredibly tight development timeline for any enterprise system.  Early in the development cycle, the technical team, which was comprised of only eight people including Juan Marín Otero, the lead geospatial architect, decided that a RESTful architecture and open source geospatial software were the only way they were going to complete the project within the timeline because they recognized that they had to communicate directly with the developers if they were going to resolve issues in days, rather than months. 

After deciding on the open source software and open data stack, the system was developed in four and a half months.  It survived a deluge of traffic in its first hours and days.  The first day the map went live, the site received 158 million hits.

The open source software and open data stack used for the NBM includes

• Apache Web Server
• AspectJ
• Cloudmade
• EHCACHE DX
• jQuery
• Geolytics
• GeoServer
• GeoWebCache
• Google Analytics
• Google Geocoder
• Google Maps API
• Hibernate
• Hibernate Spatial
• HSQLDB
• Jersey JAX-RS RI
• Junit
• Mapbox
• Maven
• Mockito
• MySQL
• OpenLayers
• OpenStreetMap
• PHP
• Spring Framework
• Wordpress

Open source geospatial developers will recognize OpenLayers, Mapbox, GeoServer, GeoWebCache, and Hibernate Spatial (on MySQL) software, Google Maps API and Google Geocoder services and OpenStreetMap geodata.  The software incorporates many Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) geospatial standards.  For example, Hibernate Spatial uses the Java Topology Suite (JTS) as its geometry model. JTS is a Java implementation of the OGC Simple Features Implementation Specification for SQL v. 1.1 (SFS).

Integrating BIM and GIS for full lifecycle civil construction projects

Construction is being transformed.  I've blogged about the startling (at least to traditional construction contractors) vision of the future of highway construction of the Chief of Surveys at the Oregon Department of Transportation (DoT) in which BIM for Infrastructure and geospatial play a central role. 

At the first GeoBIM conference in Amsterdam, Jothijs van Gaalen gave some real world examples of highway construction transformation including GIS+BIM integration including using laser scanning/LiDAR for reality capture at the beginning of a design/construction project. 

Jothijs is Manager of the (civil) BIM Programme and Head of the Structural Modelling department at the Royal BAM Group nv / BAM Infraconsult.  The Royal BAM Group nv is a large infrastructure engineering consulting firm with 23,500 employees operating in over 40 countries, primarily in Europe.  Its goal is to be among the top 10 companies in its market segment.  To achieve this is has targetted supply chain integration focused on a sustainable built environment.  One of the key areas of integration in GIS+BIM.  BAM has BIM/GIS modelling departments in Amsterdam, The Hague, Gouda, Singapore, and Jakarta.

Full lifecycle construction projects

BAM's motivation for investing in BIM+GIS are market developments especially more complex construction assignments and an increasing demand from customers for service provision throughout the entire life cycle of a project.  The other major drivers are internal business needs especially being able to control safety, quality, costs, planning, and sustainability through the lifetime of a project. 

A project at BAM starts with 2D geographic data that is visualized through a GIS web portal. The web portal gives everyone on the team an early perspective on the project site including underground utilities and aboveground structures before design begins.  During the tender process the geospatial data is combined with 3D data including 3D representations of nearby natural and man-made features as well as proposed designs to create a 3D environment for assessing alternative designs.  The 3D environment improves collaboration among the team members as well as enabling better communication with the client through 3D visualization of proposed designs. After award, the first step is conducting LiDAR scans of the site/proposed route.  At completion of construction, the data collected during design and construction is migrated to an integrated GIS + asset management system system to support maintenance activities. 

Level of development (LoD) is critical for full lifecycle construction projects at BAM because it specifies the level of detail for both graphical and non-graphical data that is required at each phase of a project's lifetime; roughly tender (LOD100), design (LOD200), construction (LOD300), and  operate and maintain (LOD400). 

Design, Build, Finance and Maintain project

The N33 highway project in the Netherlands is an example of a Design, Build, Finance and Maintain (DBFM) project. In a DBFM contract, the contractor is not only fully responsible for designing and building the project, but also handles the administration and all maintenance. In a DBFM contract the government buys a service: the provision of an available national road.  BAM is responsible for design and construction,  which occurred during 2012 – 2014, and for 20 years of maintenance.

During design and construction BAM used a BIM for Infrastructure process based around a geospatially-enabled database.  At completion of construction, the data collected during design and construction was migrated to an integrated GIS + Maximo system designed to support maintenance activities during the 20 year period that BAM is responsible for highway maintenance.  Maximo is IBM's enterprise asset management (EAM) software product.

Best practices

Jothijs discussed some of the best practices that BAM has developed during the N33 and other projects.  These include integrated BIM + GIS with time (4D), and financial (5D), training of multi-disciplinary teams, standardizing LoD for graphical and non-graphical data and involving suppliers as early as possible in the project. 

The one that really struck me as potentially transformational is BAM's recommendation to collect accurate geometrical data (reality capture) at the beginning of the project, before design, using laser scanning.  Since laser scanning is not normally part of a surveyor's skill set, I was interested in who was responsible for conducting  the scans and how BAM's surveyors were involved.  Jothijs said that BAM's survey group performed the laser scanning as well as traditional surveys.  This sounds like the result of another of BAM's best practices, training multi-disciplinary teams.

Canada unlikely to meet Copenhagen 2020 emissions target

As part of the 2009 Copenhagen Accord Canada committed to a target of a 17 % reduction in emissions below 2005 levels for Canada’s economy as a whole.  Without action from governments, consumers and businesses since 2005, emissions in 2020 are projected to be 857 megatonnes (Mt). Projected emissions taking into account all current measures since 2005 including land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) are expected to reach 727 Mt in 2020.  611 Mt represents Canada’s Copenhagen target level of emissions in 2020 (17% below 2005 levels). 

According to Environment Canada’s Canada Emissions Trends 2014, sector-specific regulations currently in place, primarily in electric power and transportation, will reduce emissions by about 130 Mt in the year 2020.  For example, in 2007 the Ontario Government committed to phasing out coal generation, representing 19 % of power generation in the province, by 2014.

The recently released 2014 Fall Report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development concludes that the evidence is growing stronger that the growth in Canadian emissions will not be reversed in time and that the target will be missed. Canadian emissions in 2020 are projected to be about the same as 2005. The audit covered the period between January 2011 and July 2014.

Successful launch of NASA's new spacecraft Orion

Orion is now more than 3,000 miles above Earth after its launch on a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Florida this AM. Orion is not carrying people, but NASA wants to find out about how the spacecraft behaves in flight and what conditions it encounters in orbit and during re-entry.  Onboard sensors will gauge the heat shield, radiation levels and exact conditions as Orion flies two orbits around Earth that will take it through high radiation zones of the Van Allen belts and the high temperatures of re-entry through the atmosphere.  Orion is expected to splashdown in the Pacific at around 11:29 a.m. EST.

Geospatial + BIM and full lifecycle building management

Over 50% of the cost of maintaining a building is what is called operations and maintenance which is comprised of administration, maintenance and repairs, and restoration projects.  In most building construction projects, even if BIM is used for design and construction, the building information (specifications, submittal information including  equipment and performance data and warranties, finished information, O&M manuals, panel schedules, and the building control system) required for operations and maintenance has to be (re)collected after completion of construction even though the designers and contractors may have already collected this information. 

At the BIM Worldwide: Solutions for Canada conference in Toronto, Birgitta Foster, VP Operations and Facility Integration, VDCO Tech, member of the bSI Standards Executive Committee, and involved in developing the buildingSMART Data Dictionary, gave her view of the flow of facility information through the full lifecycle of a building, BIM and the key role of geospatial in this process.

From Birgitta's perspective BIM is a database of building information with a 3D model interface.  It stores and links to information about the building and the equipment in the building.   BIM is essential to the project process including design and construction, but she believes (and the UK government also believes) that the full value of BIM can only be found during the operational life of the building where the majority of the life cycle costs occur.  To realize this value requires that projects be perceived as not ending with the owner, but starting with the owner, who really knows best what information is important to his/her business processes for operating and maintaining the building.

Birgitta outlined what a full lifecycle facilities information flow looks like.  It starts with a facilities information specification from the owner identifying the building information included as part of the final deliverables at the time of commissioning.  The facilities information specification should be part of the contract between the owner and the designers and contractors who will construct the building.

The facilities information required by the owner's specification are entered into BIM database during design and construction by the designers and contractors.

At the completion of construction the facilities information data collected by the designers and contractors and stored with the BIM model in digital form represents a key deliverable to the owner together with the BIM model.    The facilities information can then be used to populate the building manager's asset management/facilities management system database.

One of the challenges is orchestrating a data flow through the various players each of whom has his/her own perspective.  Architects, engineers, and contractors live in a model-centric visual world, but building owners live in an information-centric  world.  Birgitta's perspective is that most owners are not yet ready to manage “live” BIM models,  but many are ready to manage the rich data sets of building  information that can be obtained from models.

Geospatial and BIM and full lifecycle building management

Since the world has become aware of the human impact on the environment, it has become increasingly difficult to design buildings without reference to its geographic context.  Many cities have environmental, zoning and other types of by-laws that require designers to take into account neighboring buildings, infrastructure and vegetation.  States and national governments are developing building codes that require designers to assess the energy, water, emissions, and other environmental impacts of a new building.  Several countries such as the US, EU, and Japan have already mandated zero energy buildings in the near future.  This means that when designing and constructing a building, the traditional approach ( often associated with a 0,0 coordinate system ) of design in isolation is no longer adequate for sustainable design. For example, in the UK right-to-light is a legal requirement, so that when designing a a new building in London, the designer has to be able to model the shadowing of neighbouring buildings.   Energy performance modeling for buildings involves natural lighting, solar irradiation, and other  analyses which require information about neighbouring structures and vegetation.

Birgitta argues that integrated geospatial+BIM is even more critical during the operations and maintenance phase of a building.  Utilities, transportation, emergency planning, first responder access, energy performance, and evacuation management all require information about internal and external infrastructure.  A common geospatial coordinate system enables a comprehensive operational view of all infrastructure including internal and external structures.

COBie

Birgitta learned through hard experience that custom or proprietary spreadsheets creates problems and highly recommends using an industry standard called Construction Operations Building information exchange ( COBie ) which is a free and open standard that in the U.S. is part of the National BIM Standard-US V2.  The UK government plans to include a requirement for the UK version of COBie in all national government procurements. 

Birgitta’s experience with COBie began in 2007–2009 when she ran a project in which she created a facilities information spreadsheet, which captured all the required asset information in a single place.  But she subsequently found that the time and expense of the custom mapping of this information to existing asset management software meant that her spreadsheet for sharing facilities information could not be realised in practice.  Fortuitously, at about the same time the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) had undertaken to develop a spreadsheet for exchanging facilities information for its construction projects.  This spreadsheet ultimately became COBie, which was proposed and accepted in version 2 of National BIM Standard-US in 2012.  Once COBie was recognised as an industry standard information exchange standard, vendors began integrating COBie into their software for users.

Birgitta recommends that owners use COBie as the basis for the facilities information specification that should be part of every construction contract.  During and as part of the deliverables after construction it can be used for the transfer of facility information between virtual design and construction software and owners.  Her recommendation for designers/contractors is to avoid over-stuffing the model with information the owner "might" need, for owners her recommendation is to never ask for more than you can maintain.

COBie offers huge benefits to the facilities manager.  Most importantly it enables importing digital facilities information into asset management/facilities management software systems.  Another benefit is that the widespread adoption of COBie would transform FM pricing.  Pricing an FM contract is cumbersome, with numerous stages before a price can be calculated, and with significant uncertainty in the result. With COBie information, the process is radically streamlined, with fewer stages and greater accuracy. 

National Building Modeling Standard United States V3

Version 3 of the National Building Information Modeling Standard-United States (NBIMS-US V3) is expected to be released by year’s end.  It includes a BIM Project Planning Guide for Owners and a number of new facility data exchange standards and extensions.

• Lifecycle Information Exchange for Product Data (LCie) - for products and product type data exchanges throughout the facility life-cycle
• Building Programming Information Exchange - for managing client’s (owner's) requirements
• HVAC Information Exchange - Specification and standardization for representation of HVAC systems
• Plumbing Information Exchange - Specification and standardization for representation of water systems - Extends the (industry Foundation Classes 4) IFC4 specification to cover plumbing practices in North America.
• Electrical Information Exchange - Specification and standardization for representation of Electrical systems. Extends IFC4 specification to cover wiring practices in North America

NBIMS-US V3 also includes Practical BIM Contract Requirements, the requirements used by the USACE for its contracts for construction projects.

Airbus constellation of Earth observation satellites adds SPOT7

Last June Airbus Defence and Space's SPOT 7 Earth-observation satellite was launched successfully from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in India. The first images from SPOT7 were released three days after the launch,

Today SPOT 7 was commercially launched, making its high-resolution imagery available to all users. SPOT 7 joins Airbus's constellation of SPOT 6, Pléiades 1A & 1B, TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X Earth observation satellites.  SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 cover wide areas with a resolution of 1.5m.   Pléiades 1A and 1B offers 50 cm resolution. TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X can dependably acquire 25 to 40 cm resolution as well as wide-area radar images independent of weather conditions.

With SPOT7 the acquisition capacity of the Airbus constellation has reached six million square kilometres per day. SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 are phased 180° on the same orbit as the Pléiades constellation, thus combining wide-area collection with the ability to image and revisit point targets the same day.  The Airbus constellation makes it possible to view every day, every point on the globe in both high-resolution (1.5 m) by a SPOT satellite and in very high-resolution (50 cm) by a Pléiades satellite.