Between the Poles

BIM + geospatial essential for improving UK construction productivity

At GeoBusiness 2017 in London, Simon Rawlinson of Arcadis, argued passionately for improving the efficency of the construction industry, which is 8% of the UK's GDP.  Digitalization, in which BIM + geospatial play a key role, is essential to delivering on making construction attractive for private investment.  In the UK construction productivity has not improved in 25 years and right now the construction industry is so unproductive that it can't attract top labour talent, wouldn't attract an Uber or Google and is a drag on the rest of the economy.

Clients/owners have a big role in the transformation of construction.  One of the practices that is responsible for the low level of motivation for construction productivity improvement is procurement.  Lowest bid based on CAPEX does not encourage innovation.  But there are signs that this procurement policy is being replaced in some government procurements by lowest OPEX or TOTEX.  For example, the competition to provide rolling stock for the Crossrail line was based on lowest OPEX and resulted in an important innovation, smart, sensor-equipped trains.  One of the goals of the Construction Leadership Council (CLC), one of several Leadership Councils in the UK, is to lower construction costs by 33% and to deliver projects 50% faster - providing clear benefits to owners.

Another problem is that the construction industry doesn't collaborate very well.  Collaboration needs to be encouraged among folks who have traditionally competed or not collaborated.  There are signs that this is changing too.  Large projects like Crossrail have driven more collaboration, in an industry that historically discouraged collaboration and created employment for the legal profession.  To increase collaboration the construction industry needs to develop common ways of working with shared data by adopting common standards, which will work to increasing innovation by enabling competition based on a common platform.  Much as a BIM model is a digital twin of a building or linear infrastructure, a 3D map of underground and above ground infrastructure is a digital twin of a city or town.  To make this accessible to all requires shared standards for spatial data - BIM and geospatial.

The entire UK economy is moving towards becoming data-driven and construction is lagging behind.  Simon's recommendation is that the new government needs to keep to the existing program and deliver on the goals of Digital Built Britain and Construction 2025 including better management of data and information, digital fabrication instead of on-site development, procurement based on TOTEX, and using regulation, through ofgem and ofwat, for example, to drive digitalization of the construction industry. 

 

Satellites and geospatial together help detect illegal fishing

At GeoBusiness 2017 in London, Stuart Martin, CEO of Catapult Satellite Applications, made the case for importance of the integration of satellite data into geospatial technology.   He cited a widely publicized figure that we capture 2.5 x 10**18 bytes (2.5 quintillion bytes or 2.5 exabytes) per day.  Earth observation satellites are rapidly approaching new records with respect to coverage, geospatial resolution, temporal resolution and breadth of hyperspectral range.  Satellites are capable of sub-meter resolution.   Satellite constellations can capture the entire Earth daily and this is expected to apporach hourly soon.  Radar on satellites can see through clouds and radar interferometry can detect changes with a resolution of two centimeters.  There are plans in place for over 50 satellite constellations to be launched in the next 10 years.

The Catapults network was established by Innovate UK to support innovation by UK business by providing access to expert technical capabilities, equipment, and other resources required to take innovative ideas from concept to reality.  Catapults are not-for-profit, independent physical centres which connect businesses with the UK’s research and academic communities.

The other part of the increasing importance of Earth observation satellites is that access to this data is becoming more open and less restricted either by regulation or economics.  Google and Yahoo and others incorporated Digital Earth and other imagery into their basemaps a long time ago, but this imagery is usually out of date and of varying quality, especially with the current state of earth observation imagery where new imagery is being captured daily.  Bird.i, based in Glasgow, is committed to making digital earth observation imagery available to the mass.   At the beginning of 2017, three leading imagery suppliers, Airbus, Bluesky and DigitalGlobe agreed to become Bird.i’s image suppliers.   Now Bird.i curates more than 10 million sq km of the satellite, airborne, and drone imagery every day from multiple sources with 1.5 meters resolution or better.

As an example of how geospatial technology works with satellites to solve major world problems is illegal fishing.  Between a third and a fifth of all fish landed are caught illegally which increases the difficulty of preventing overfishing of vulnerable species.  Satellites are now being applied to detecting illegal fishing. Satellite-AIS (S-AIS) is a satellite-based automatic tracking system used for collision avoidance among over 200,000 ships, especially in international waters.  AIS provides unique identification (signature), position, course, and speed for individual ships.  Satellites have special AIS receivers which are capable of deconflicting a large number of signatures.  The International Maritime Organization requires AIS to be fitted aboard international voyaging ships with 300 or more gross tonnage and all passenger ships regardless of size.  Global Fishing Watch analyzes data from AIS, which is collected by satellites and terrestrial receivers, to identify apparent fishing Apparent Fishing behavior based on the movement of vessels over time. Currently over 60,000 fishing vessels are tracked.  Partners supporting Global Fishing Watch include Oceana, Skytruth and Google. 

Indonesia, one of the largest fishing nations, has just announced that it is now sharing its proprietary Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) data for public display on Global Fishing Watch site  and Peru has announced that it will also share its VMS data on Global Fishing Watch.

Perceptality: new laser scanning applications potentially transforming construction

At HxGNLive Juergen Dold, President of Hexagon Geosystems which is responsible for the Leica Geosystems brand, gave a talk about perception and reality.  Perception is how we see the world, but perceptions are subjective and are not always reliable.  Reality can be quite different.  If you have ever worn a pedometer,  you will know exactly what he is referring to - the actual number of steps you walked or ran is often quite different from what you think you did.  Until now measuring things in construction and other industries has been so laborious that it is frequently not done.  Decisions may end up based on the "biggest salary's" opinion.  With laser scanning, photogrammetry, UAVs and other technologies measuring things has become several orders of magnitude easier and we can replace some of our perceptions with reality - Juergen called it fusing reality and perception - and coined a new term for it perceptality.  Since as Peter Drucker said, you can't manage what you don't measure, increasing the reality domain at the expense of someone's perception has the potential to dramatically change construction.

Juergen provided several interesting real world examples of how this translates into practice.

1 Vegetation management for transmission lines - inspecting transmission lines for vegetation encroachment in North America is mandated by NERC.  This is typically an expensive, slow process involving a helicopter carrying a LiDAR camera.  To capture the necessary density of points to be able to identify cables, pylons, and different types of vegetation requires flying at low altitude.  With the latest single photon laser scanner (Leica SPL100), it is possible to collect 80 points per square meter (m²) flying at an altitude of 2,500 meters (about 8,000 ft) as opposed to 3 points per m² with traditional linear laser scanning.

2 Urban mapping - urban mapping can also be time consuming and expensive, but with multiple cameras including LiDAR, photography, and near infrared it is possible to capture a more realistic 3D representation faster.

3 Scanning industrial plants - Cepsa (Compañía Española de Petróleos, S.A.U.) is a Spanish energy company who are scanning their chemical plants which requires thousands of scans.  A major software advance (Leica Cyclone) allows them to automate the registration process saving a lot of time.

4 Forensics - scanners in backpacks (Pegasus Backpack) or handheld scanners make it possible to walk through the scene of an accident or crime and capture trusted data without disturbing the site.  The data can be used in scientific forensic analysis and to visualize the results of the analysis in court.

5 Digitalizing AEC - The construction industry is one of the most inefficient industries.  $10 trillion is spent on construction goods and services every year. But whereas the average worker adds $37 of value for every hour worked, a construction worker adds only $25 per hour worked. Construction productivity has stagnated over the past decades in many of the world's advanced economies.  To attract the private financing that is necessary to build and maintain the world's infrastructure will require improving productivity.  Digitization can play an important role in this process or even be disruptive (transformative) as it has been in other industries. Innovative firms have increased productivity by 50 to 60 percent by infusing digital technology, new materials, and advanced automation, reskilling the workforce, changing business practices and pushing government to change regulations.

Our existing stock of structures will be with us for many years to come.  Maintaining this infrastructure is currently inefficient and expensive.  New technology can dramatically change this by making renovation more efficient and affordable.  A first step is democratizing scanning.  I have blogged about the deluge of handheld, low cost scanners that are now available.  Many see handheld scanners as potentially revolutionizing the construction sector.  Mantis Vision has offered a handheld scanner F5 for professionals for several years.  Originally targetted on the real estate industry, the Matterport Pro allows you to scan a house in an hour or less, upload the captured data to the cloud (Amazon Web Services) and a couple of hours later you will have a fully-rendered model that can be used for walkthroughs with potential buyers.  The Faro Freestyle is targetted on the architecture, accident reconstruction, civil engineering, construction, facility management, and industrial manufacturing sectors. 

I have blogged previously about the Leica Geosystems BLK360 and Cyclone Register 360  which together appear to be a game changer for professionals in construction.  It is a bit of a stretch to call it a handheld scanner, but it weighs only 2.2 lbs (1 kg) and is incredibly small 6.5 by 4 inches.  Unlike other "handheld" devices it is a full laser scanner and imager - it captures 360,000 points/second with a range of 0.6 - 60 meters with millimeter precision. It has three cameras, laser scanner, photo, and near infrared.  It's one button operation redefines simplicity.  It can capture a full 360 degree scan in less than 3 minutes.  Cyclone Register 360 allows automated registration of scans from many devices to be merged with "one-button" simplicity.

The other half of the laser scanning revolution in construction

I have already blogged about the Leica BLK360 whose size, capabilities, one button operation and price point promise to revolutionize professional scanning for construction.  Anyone who has used a Leica scanner is familiar with Cyclone software and, in particular, with  Cyclone Register which is used to register point clouds when carrying out scanning at construction sites.‎ Professional surveyors who have been using Leica P30/P40 and other scanners have learned to navigate the complex Cyclone Register workflow. But what about the people for whom the BLK360 with its one button operation is opening the door to scanning for the first time ? Having to learn Cyclone Register could be a frustrating and potentially showstopping experience.

This is where Cyclone Register 360 comes in. At HxGNLive this morning Greg Walsh, who leads the software design group that developed Register 360, presented an overview of the the thinking, design objectives and implementation behind Register 360, which is just as important as the hardware in BLK360 in revolutionizing the professional use of laser scanning in construction.

Greg described a completely new way to register point clouds from many scans, relate scans to each other, optimize, generate deliverables and report estimated errors for scans involving multiple BLK360s deployed on different floors and in different areas of a construction project. To do this simplified workflow requires new terminology.  This will make things easier for people new to laser scanning, but will require learning a new perspective for people with scanning experience.  Register 360 is not intended to replace Cyclone Register, so folks who are familiar with the traditional Register can continue to use it.

For professionals for whom the BLK360 is their first scanning experience, Register 360 is intended to dramatically simplify the registration experience even for scans of large complex construction sites. Three "big red buttons" analogous to the single button on the BLK360 should enable anyone to register scans, optimize and create finished scans for visualization and analysis using other products such as Revit, TruView and Jetstream.  Underneath the covers there is heavy-duty processing going on - we are dealing with billions of points after all, but the software is designed to do the heavy-lifting while you are doing other things such as getting coffee.

Currently Register 360 is intended for terrestrial scanning using BLK360s on tripods. But it is planned to extend it to mobile and other types of laser scanning.‎ For those people who read manuals it comes with a tutorial, but the implication of three red buttons is that the tutorial is optional.  The BLK360 is not a consumer device, but with Register 360 it should dramatically extend the professional user community beyond surveyors.

Industry standard tools for underground utility detection and mapping

At HxGNLive in Las Vegas this week I attended a session on using Leica technology to locate underground assets presented by Brett Black, GIS Solutions, Simon Pedley, Utility Detection Solutions and Mike Baker, G/Technology Product Manager.  This presentation covered the type of utility detection solutions that are widely used in the industry and provided a good introduction into the equipment that is industry standard for utility detection.

The Leica DIGiSYSTEM is an easy to use electromagnetic detection wand that can be combined with a signal generator to detect conductive pipes and cables. It uses several frequencies to detect shallow and deep infrastructure, but is basically a 2D locator.   The Leica ULTRA is also a wand but is much more configurable.  It can use any frequency between 50 Hz and 200 kHz and has a selectable antenna configuration. 

The Leica ULTRA signal generator can be controlled remotely and the wand supports Bluetooth.  The DIGiSYSTEM and ULTRA are fine as long as the underground infrastructure is conductive. 

For non-conductive infrastructure such as plastic pipes and fiber optics the Leica DS2000 uses ground penetrating radar (GPR) which finds the location in 3D about underground infrastructure.  In principle GPR is a superior tool for mapping underground features because unlike traditional electromagnetic detection it can pick up non-metallic objects and can detect utility infrastructure that cannot be accessed by a signal generator. This makes the use of GPR almost mandatory in an industry that is increasing its use of plastic piping (GPR is not particularly good at detecting the plastic pipe itself, it detects the contents of the pipe such as water).  However, GPR does have drawbacks.  It requires a trained surveyor to interpret the scans.  It is unable to accurately identify utility type and in some soil types such as aggregate and clay it does not perform well.

When combined with Leica GNSS locators (Leica Zeno 20 or Leica GG04 Smart Antenna) this equipment can determine accurate location of underground infrastructure in 2D and 3D.  But these devices are intended to be used at a walking pace which limits their use to very localized applications such as locating underground utilities to avoid incidents on construction projects.

Underground utility mapping requires a different level of equipment. I blogged previously about Hexagon's investment in GeoRadar technology from IDS (Ingegneria dei Sistemi) in Italy.  The towable Pegasus: Stream array combines above and below surface multi-sensor scanning. It includes a Leica Pegasus: Two scanner for above ground features and a Stream EM ground penetrating radar (GPR) array for below ground objects and can be used to create 3D models of above ground and below ground facilities. The combined multi-sensor scanner can be towed at up to 12.5 miles an hour (about 15 km/hour), although 5-10 miles an hour is more typical.  The towed GPR arrays combined with LiDAR have more mapping uses than just mapping utilities.  They can also be used for pavement, bridge, and roadway inspection, for example.

Practical BIM/laser-scan round tripping on construction projects

At HxGNLive in Las Vegas this week a very interesting presentation with practical implications for anyone involved in construction, whether buildings or horizontal infrastructure was provided by Stanley Lawrence, Reid Flamm, and Michael Moore of Datum Tech Solutions, a Hexagon partner who focus on bridging the divide between the model and the field for owners.  They described a very practical approach applying laser scanners to ensure that the owner is reassured during construction that what is actually being built is what was designed .  Since this is a Hexagon event they reported used Leica ScanStation P30/P40 scanners with Cyclone software.  The model is designed in Revit.  I expect the process is general and could be used with other hardware and software.

 

The detailed process involves setting up the scanner and capturing control points and then performing scans.  The point clouds are imported into Cyclone and then exported to a PC.  The data is registered and aligned and a ModelSpace coordinate system is setup for Revit.  The scanned data and coordinate system are imported into Revit using CloudWorx.  The scanned data is used to manually create a level of detail (LoD) 350 Revit model.  To verify that their model accurately reflects what was scanned, they take their scanned data back out into the field and verify it with a Total Station.  Then they use Autodesk Point Layout (APL) to compare what has been built to what was designed and look for divergences.

 

They report that this process is very efficient so they are able to carry out scans frequently during construction to catch problems early.  For example, they will scan right after pouring concrete for floors or after installing electrical wiring, plumbing or HVAC for a floor.  In addition to keeping the owner in the loop during construction, at the end of construction they are able to provide the owner with scans of the final building.  They also can provide scans from during construction to provide digital "as-builts" of hidden infrastructure such as electrical wiring, HVAC and plumbing.  Owners find that this information is useful for facilities management during operations and maintenance.

Monitoring integrity of water networks with satellites

I am at HxGNLive in Las Vegas this week.  One of the several very interesting presentations with important implications for a number of industries is a talk by Massimo Zotti of Planetek.  He described an application called Network Alert that uses satellite observations to monitor ground displacements including subsidence with millimeter precision.  An application of this technology is water utilities who use it to look for subsidence and other ground displacements which are symptoms of water leaks.

Network Alert uses Sentinal-1 satellites whose frequent revisits over the same area allow changes in land cover to be closely monitored.  Sentinel-1’s C-band synthetic aperture radar provides ‘radar interferometry’ by combining two or more radar images over the same area to detect changes occurring between acquisitions. Interferometry allows for the monitoring of even slight ground movement – down to a few millimetres – across wide areas.

Network Alert uses radar interferometry to provide accurate, current information about ground instability and displacements in a water pipeline network that indicate leaking pipes. It alerts the utility to prioritize inspection and maintenance activities.  Monthly updates provide accurate information based on continuous satellite monitoring of ground movement and displacement.  For example, over one and a half years a 3 cm subsidence was evidence of a substantial leak.

Importance of implementing cybersecurity for engineering projects using BIM

At GeoBusiness 2017 in London, Hugh Boyes, a Cyber Security specialist outlined some of the security risks of digital engineering and the importance of cybersecurity for engineering projects.  BIM models, floorplans and 3D LiDAR scans of sensitive buildings and infrastructure can often be found on the web.  He mentioned the floorplan of a major police station, a BIM model of a young offenders facility, and a BIM model of the Victoria Underground station.  All of these could potentially be very useful to anyone interested in disrupting infrastructure.  It is well-known that mapping underground infrastructure reduces risk during construction and also during disasters, natural and man-made.  However, it can also provide information about sensitive infrastructure.  Hugh mentioned substations as particularly sensitive elements of the energy grid.  With traditional centralized generation, substations are critical elements of the grid and are particularly vulnerable.  In many countries disrupting a small number of large substations can leave significant parts of the country without power.   (An advantage of a decentralized grid comprised of many microgrids with their own generating and storage facilities is that it is much less vulnerable.)

For people who are designing and building sensitive infrastructure using BIM, he recommended following the PAS1192-5 guidelines and incorporating security into the design from the start.  PAS 1192-5 specifies processes which will assist organizations in identifying and implementing measures to reduce the risk of loss or disclosure of information which could impact the safety and security of personnel and users of infrastructure or the built infrastructure itself.  PAS 1192-5 is applicable to any built asset or portfolio of assets which is deemed sensitive. It is for use by asset owners and organizations involved in the design, construction, maintenance and management of built assets, especially those who wish to protect their commercial information and/or intellectual property.  Hugh is the joint technical author of BS PAS1192-5 - Specification for security-minded building information modelling, digital built environments and smart asset management.