Between the Poles

Geospatial data bill before Congress would stifle the geospatial sector in the U.S.

At a GITA-sponsored webinar yesterday John Wertman, responsible for government relations at the American Association of Geographers (AAG), gave an insightful presentation about the Geospatial Data Act (GDA) of 2017 (S.1253) which has been introduced in the Senate. (Representatives Bruce Westerman (R-AR) and Seth Moulton (D-MA) introduced a companion bill in the House as H.R.3522.) This bill has some history. It was originally proposed in 2015 by Orrin Hatch, a Republican Senator from Utah, and sponsored by five Republicans and five Democrats. The 2015 bill consisted of 10 sections and basically codified and strengthened federal government practices relating to geospatial data. For example, it proposed that the chair of the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) be the Director of the Office Management and Budget (OMB), an agency that has statutory authority and can set standards and enforce practices for all government departments.  This would provide FGDC with the authority to make other agencies follow existing common sense rules. The bill established a clear vision, assigned responsibility, provided authority and ensured oversight of Federal activities by Congress. These improvements were intended to help ensure that the U.S. is able to build a robust National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI).  According to Wertman the 2015 bill enjoyed wide support in the geospatial community throughout the U.S. and was generally viewed as a positive step forward.

However the 2015 bill was blocked in the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. It has been suggested that MAPPS, an organization representing some engineering and surveying firms that is attempting to restrict procurement of geospatial services by extending the Brooks Act to cover the geospatial sector, was instrumental in getting the 2015 bill blocked in committee. As a result the 2015 bill was rewritten with two additional sections that broadly extended the definition of survey data and mandated rules (Brooks Act) for procurement of geospatial services by the federal government.  According to MAPPS it worked closely with Senator Hatch and others, particularly NSGIC, on this legislation. 

According to Wertman the 2017 bill would mean that many government contracts would no longer be available to GIS shops and academic institutions. The bill would effectively exclude everyone but licensed architects, engineers, and surveyors from federal government contracts for GIS and mapping services of all kinds, not just those services traditionally provided by surveyors. The bill as currently formulated would also have implications for state government procurement because they often implement statutes similar to the federal government. For those who believe that a free and open geospatial sector has encouraged the high level of innovation that has characterized the sector this is not viewed as a positive step. The AAG argues that the bill will limit competition, innovation and free-market approaches for a crucial high-growth information technology sector of the U.S.economy and would cripple the current vibrant GIS industry, damage U.S. geographic information science, research capacity, and shackle government agencies, which depend on the existing GIS and mapping workforce.  Wertman said that the AAG views the 2015 bill as a positive step forward for the U.S. geospatial community but is opposed to the 2017 bill because of the restrictive procurement rules that were added to the bill.

$2 billion LRT could have been completed one and half years earlier with reliable underground utility information

The Sydney Light Rail Project is a $2.1 billion PPP project for 12 km of light rail to be completed by 2019.  Prior to awarding the contract for construction the Department of Transport for New South Wales undertook 12 months of night work to map 5,000 subsurface utilities along the route.  500 existing subsurface utilities were identified for relocation to make way for the new light rail infrastructure. 

The first problem that was encountered was that as-built information from utility providers was frequently unreliable - incorrect location, incorrect materials, and so on - which caused disruption and delays with construction.  The second problem was that during construction an additional 400 unknown services, not on the DoT maps, were found.  Each of the unknown utility services that was encountered had to be treated as potentially live and all utilities in the area had to be contacted to try to identify the service, a process that typically required a month. Of the 400 unknown services that were found, a few were claimed by one of the utilities, but most of the unmapped services were found to be no longer in service.  Unnecessary costs to the construction program were incurred as a result of these unforeseen delays.  In addition completing the relocation of utilities was delayed by 5 months. 

ACIL Allen (3D QLD Road Map - preliminary findings. Brisbane: #D QLD Task Force 2017 reported in Economic Value of Spatial Information in NSW 2017) has estimated that if a complete and reliable 3D map of underground infrastructure had been available at the project planning stage, the project could have been completed at least one and a half years sooner, at less cost with a much lower level of risk.  While the project apparently remains ‘on time and on budget’, ACIL Allen says that this is only because the risk of delays and additional costs resulting from unidentified underground utilities were included in the contract pricing and schedule.

Construction folks will not be surprised by this.  It once again points out advantage of 3D models replacing unreliable as-builts because it enables a process that speeds up project development because it leverages existing engineering data rather that requiring a "complete resurvey" (usually incomplete with respect to underground utilities) at the beginning of every project..

Antarctic ice core record extended to 2.7 million years ago

Last week at a Goldschmidt conference in Paris it was reported that ice cores captured in Antarctica have been dated to 2.7 million years ago. Previously the oldest ice cores from Antarctica from the Dome C site, which have provided the best information we have about past temperature and atmospheric composition, were limited to the past 800,000 years.

Geospatial technology captures wall instability and collapse in an open pit mine

One of the most exciting presentations at the SA Geotech conference in Johannesburg was a presentation by Jason Richards of Maptek.  He talked about using geospatial technology to map in space and time the instability and ultimate collapse of a wall of the Kanmantoo Copper Mine in South Australia.  This is an open pit copper mine that was in operation 1970-1976 then closed but has reopened after significant additional deposits of copper and gold were confirmed.   The copper and gold deposits are mined using well established open-pit excavation techniques including drilling, exploring, blasting, loading and hauling. Two operational pits were dug at the mine site to a depth of 270m for extracting the reserves.  The larger pit (Giant Pit) spans up to 1.2km long and 600m wide. Hydraulic excavators and highway trucks are used to transport the ore to the processing plant.  The roads used by the trucks wind along the walls of the mine.  The surrounding rock is brittle and liable to fracture.  Collapse of a wall has occurred in the past and is a serious hazard for the trucks carrying the ore out of the mine for processing.

Unexpected geological conditions occur in the east wall of the Kanmantoo Giant Pit resulting in threatening wall movements.  A Maptek Sentry system was put in place to map wall movements to monitor the stability of the wall.  The Sentry system combines laser scanning and photography and can monitor multiple areas within a scene in real time without the need for targets or reference points. Movement can be detected down to 1 millimeter per hour. Heatmaps colored by displacement or velocity provide an overview of movement in real time.  Animations of time changes can be used to show morphology of terrain changes over time. Time lapse capability allows users to see changes and use this information to predict future movement.

In the Giant Pit a Sentry system was set up to monitor a 550 meter wide section of the brittle east wall of the Giant Pit at Kanmantoo.  The wall was scanned initially every 23 minutes, but after significant continuing movement was detected scans of a more focussed area were made every 7 minutes.  Movements were detected that were directly related to blasting with sharp jumps in displacement that usually stopped moving after an hour or so.  But after one blasting sequence a 364 tonne block initially jumped 30mm with the blast.  Two hours later it accelerated again, ultimately failing 4 hours after the initial blast.  The Maptek system was able to capture the movement, raise an alarm and visualize the movement with heat maps and video.  Jason showed a time lapse video of the movement and ultimate collapse of the wall which is one of most impressive videos of the progress of a geological event I have seen.

This is another example of how geospatial technology, in this case laser scanners combined with photography with real-time geoprocessing, is able to provide solutions in a wide range of industries.

Open source geospatial application reduces copper cable theft by 70%

A highlight of the SA Geotech conference in Johannesburg was a presentation by Ryno Goosen of Suritec Geospatial.  Ryno, who was awarded the Best Paper prize at SA Geotec, gave a fascinating presentation about how he developed an open source GIS solution to fight copper cable theft.

In Canada copper cable theft costs the Canadian electricity sector an estimated $40 million annually.  In South Africa in 2014 there were 72,533 reported incidents of copper cable theft resulting in 10,736 arrests.  Copper theft incidents in the U.S. have tripled in the last 5 years.

Goosen Goosen's solution architecture was based on open source geospatial software.  He chose open source for several reasons.  First and foremost, it enabled massive scalability by providing an elastic IT infrastructure.  Secondly it provided open interoperability with other open source software as well as proprietary systems. He also emphasized the importance of using software that was "battle-tested" in both military and commercial environments. 

His solution architecture was built on Cesium, GeoServer, Boundless Desktop/QGIS, Protobuf, Cassandra, WildFly, Solr and GeoTrellis.  Using this solution he was able to combine data from different sources including ground patrol and remote sensors.  By analyzing this data geographically and temporally he was able to determine spatial and temporal patterns of copper cable theft.  This enabled optimum deployment of resources.  The results were impressive.  Over a 30-month period cable theft was reduced by 69%.

The success of Goosen's shows that open source GIS software has become a viable alternative for building complex and highly scalable solution-oriented architectures.  He also suggested that it levels the playing field for small to medium size enterprises by providing them with similar intelligence capabilities to their larger counterparts.