Between the Poles

ESRI and Autodesk partnership for BIM and geospatial interoperability: one year later

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.

ESRI and Autodesk partnership

In the mid-1990s Autodesk and ESRI, market leaders in their respective areas of CAD and GIS, attempted to collaborate to address the CAD and GIS interoperability problem. The result of the agreement between Jack Dangermond and Carol Bartz at the time resulted in an unsuccessful product called ArcCAD, which satisfied neither CAD nor GIS users.

A year ago Autodesk and ESRI, again agreed to collaborate. Expected benefits cited by Autodesk and ESRI from BIM and GIS interoperability include "unprecedented reductions in permitting through improved stakeholder engagement, more sustainable and resilient design through enhanced project insight, reduced risk via improved end-to-end flow of materials, resource availability and scheduling during construction," and "providing industry and city planners the ability to design in the context of the real world enabling communities to build connected, resilient, sustainable cities and infrastructure." This time around they are probably more aware of the technical and cultural issues hindering AEC and geospatial interoperability.

Integrating BIM and CAD with GIS

Revit is Autodesk's market-leading BIM application that is utilized by designers for vertical BIM (buildings), although there are landscape architects that have managed to use it as well. Revit models include spatial data and related non-spatial information.  With the release of ArcGIS Pro 2.2 in June 2018 direct reading of Revit BIM (.RVT) files is now supported. In the past Revit models had to be imported through conversion to IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) files and then go through a second conversion to a geodatabase.  ArcGIS Pro 2.2 makes it possible to open a Revit BIM model directly. Tools are provided for correctly georeferencing BIM models in ArcGIS. Revit data added to ArcGIS behaves like any other 3D GIS data and can be queried, measured and analyzed.

ESRI has provided for some time a product for AutoCAD users who want to work with ArcGIS data in a familiar context. It allows CAD users to edit GIS data, navigate drawings using location, imtegrate with GIS, and turn CAD data into GIS data. Shortly after the partnership announcement, an incremental release of ArcGIS for AutoCAD 370 was announced with support for the latest versions of AutoCAD. ESRI product management also promised that the future of ArcGIS for AutoCAD would continue with improved integration with ArcGIS Online/Portal. ArcGIS Pro 2.2 provides updated support for reading and exporting AutoCAD version 2018 and 2019 format files. Furthermore ESRI product management said that other CAD/BIM/AEC applications were being considered for future development using a similar integration pattern as ArcGIS for AutoCAD.

Integrating GIS with civil workflows

InfraWorks is Autodesk's application that allows civil engineers to perform conceptual design for roads and highways in context. InfraWorks 19.2, released in September 2018, now supports the Autodesk Connector for ArcGIS. Designers and engineers can bring GIS content from ArcGIS Online into InfraWorks allowing content such as roads, pipelines, and electrical transformers to be directly imported. The link is dynamic making it possible to build an InfraWorks model directly from GIS data published into ArcGIS Online. When the GIS data is updated, the InfraWorks model can be updated and refreshed. With the release of Autodesk Civil 3D 2019 InfraWorks models can be brought into Civil 3D, Autodesk's civil design product. Together these enhancements enable workflows from ArcGIS through InfraWorks to Civil 3D.

Integrating civil and geospatial workflows with BIM

A major challenge is interoperability between Autodesk's own products. A first step for integrating geospatial workflows into Revit is for site preparation. Autodesk offers a Site Designer for Revit plug-in that is intended to enable architects, designers, and planners to shape the terrain for building sites using grading tools to model pads, parking lots, streets, sidewalks, and retaining walls. But the integration between Autodesk's BIM and civil engineering products still inhibits site preparation workflows. Civil 3D was developed on the AutoCAD platform. Revit, which was acquired from Charles River Software in 2002, was built on different data structures. As a recent post from a landscape architecture site pointed out there remains a "gaping hole ... between Civil 3D and Revit".

Improving interoperability between the two products has now become a priority for Autodesk product management. According to the latest Autodesk roadmap associated with the Revit 2019 release, Autodesk is investing in improving how civil engineers and architects can collaborate better on the site design process. The very good news is that according to the Revit product management roadmap, collaboration with Civil 3D and Revit is now an "Accepted Revit Idea", which confirms that Revit/Civil 3D interoperability has become a development priority. Furthermore new features in Civil 3D 2019 includes enhanced structural and civil design collaboration for Civil 3D with Revit..

In conclusion the new relationship between Autodesk and ESRI is being translated into concrete actions to improve the interoperability between the AEC and geospatial worlds.  There is a considerable distance to go yet, but there are grounds for optimism that there is a commitment to BIM and geospatial interoperability so that in the future workflows that involve both AEC and geospatial data and software will be able to surmount the CAD+GIS barriers that have represented major inefficiencies for the construction, utility and other sectors for decades.

Innovative electric power for a sustainable future

We are not on track to constrain global temperature rise to 2°C let alone 1.5°C.  Therefore we need some innovative technologies to get us back on track.  At the Geography2050: Powering our Future Planet conference at Columbia University in New York, several presentations described innovative, potentially disruptive technologies that could dramatically change how electric power is generated and transmitted.

Wireless power transmission

General Rick Deveraux of Viziv Technologies described a way of transmitting electric power wirelessly using a technology called a Zenneck surface wave that orovides a direct wireless connection from a generator to a load. It supports much higher field strengths than conventional Hertzian waves and follows the Earth's curvature. Viziv is currently working in a global demonstration project that involves building a fiberglass transmission tower and field intensity monitoring stations around the globe. An advantage of this technology is that it could deliver power to people who are currently off grid. Testing of this configuration starts within 30 days and actual power delivery next year.

On demand emissionless power generation

Christofer Mowry of General Fusion, described how nuclear fusion can provide energy dense, low environmental impact, manufacturable, and dispatchable power generation. In other words a fusion installation requires very little land and can be placed near the sources of load avoiding long haul transmission lines. There are no emissions and very little waste. It does not require fuels that are constrained by supply like fission does. It can supply large volumes of power on demand. The amount of investment in fusion has increased dramatically since about 2007.

Cell phones not requiring recharging

Frank Prautzsch of Velocity Technology Partners described what is potentially a disruptive technology that could affect everyone carrying a cell phone. Thermionic energy conversion (TEC) provides a way of generating power from ambient thermal energy using nano technology. Developed by Birmingham Technologies the Nano-Boxx consists of two metal plates composed of different metals that are placed less than 10 nanometers apart with a nanofluid in between. An electric current is generated when electrons from one plate vaporize and collect on the other plate. The device that was shown was the size of a postage stamp. By stacking them the device can scale from milliwatts to megawatts. 8 to 9 of these will power a cell phone, 800-900 a satellite. It can produce power for about eleven years without charging. To date it has been tested by using it to power an LG Nexus cell phone for the past few years. It is cheaper to produce than a lithium ion battery, has 40% more energy density, and has no emissions.

Powering the world for a million years

Kevan Weaver of the Idaho National Laboratory outlined the results of their calculations that advanced reactors would enable depleted uranium stockpiles and known reserves of uranium to supply 80% of the world's electric power demand for about 2000 years with no carbon emissions. If you add the uranium in the oceans there is enough to provide a source of power for a million years. China and India are investing heavily in fission power generation.  Micro-reactors and small modular reactors can provide safe power to data centers, remote locations that are off-grid, and locations where fossil and other fuels are expensive. The latest reactors (generation III and III+) are much safer than the first and second generation reactors like those at Fukushima, primarily because they do not require an external source of power to cool them in the case of an emergency shutdown.

Geospatial data and analytics applied to things you never imagined

Orbital Insights, a company headquartered in the World Trade Center Tower 1, accesses data generated by satellites, drones, balloons, smart phones, and sources which it process and analyze at petabyte scale to make it actionable for businesses, governments, and NGOs. Last evening at a reception for people attending GEOGRAPHY 2050 Powering Our Future Planet, I had an opportunity to chat with a couple of their technical experts about some the ways they are applying geospatial data that I doubt anyone would have imagined just a few years ago.  As an example of a commercial application Orbital Insights tracks global oil Inventories which lets you follow oil stock fluctuations on a map.  Their data correlates with the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data, but is available 2-3 days before EIA data is released which provide early valuable insight into price fluctuations.

Counting cars in airport parking lots as a measure of economic activity

Using satellite imagery from Digital Globe and other providers, Orbital Insights used machine learning to identify and count the number of cars in parking lots at Damascus and Aleppo airports.  One of the periods they analyzed was during and after the government's successful attack on Aleppo.  While the number of cars parked at Damascus airport remained fairly constant, at the cars parked at Aleppo's airport gradually dropped as the government attack intensified.  Ultimately it dropped to zero and then gradually began to increase again.  But inspecting the high resolution imagery, it was possible to make out that the aircraft parked at the airport after the fall of Aleppo were not commercial as before, but military aircraft.

Monitoring cell phone activity as a measure of car manufacturing activity

Anonymized cell phone activity data, which is available commercially from Apple, Google and others, carries a location and time stamp.  In a creative application of how this data cal be used, analysts at Orbital Insights defined polygons that enclosed the automobile assembly plants of two car manufacturers in the southern U.S. This provided a surrogate for activity on these assembly lines.  They looked at a period that included a couple of weeks prior to a major hurricane coming through the area and for week or two subsequent to the hurricane.  They were able to determine that one of the manufacturers ramped production up sharply before the hurricane hit while the other proceded in a business as usual mode.  They were also able to determine how long it took to restore production to pre-hurricane levels.

In both cases it is difficult to imagine how this kind of information could have been acquired and made public using a traditional approach.  I doubt that the Syrian government would have been forthcoming with this data, and in the second case this is competitive information that would have been difficult to acquire and release publicly.

Moving toward a digital system for underground infrastructure locates in Canada

In a previous blog I noted that in Florida when locating underground utilities in response to a notification of intention to excavate network owners are only required to paint or otherwise mark the ground. The legislation does not require a written record. In Ontario a written record is required in addition to marking the ground.  At the federal level in Canada there is legislation initiated in the Senate and now before the House of Commons that offers the alternative of the exchange of only a written record of the location of utilities mapped prior to excavation - no visit to the site to mark the ground is required. This would open the door to exchanging a digital record of the location of utilities found prior to excavation which would be much more efficient because it could obviate the need to visit the site of the proposed excavation.

Professional Surveyors Canada working group on underground infrastructure

In its report on the state of our knowledge about the location of underground infrastructure in Canada, the Professional Surveyors Canada working group concluded that underground infrastructure in Canada is often not surveyed or mapped accurately, if at all. Currently the systems in Canada dealing with underground infrastructure are a patchwork of regulatory and voluntary regimes. They range from the City of Edmonton which maintains a database of underground infrastructure and the City of Calgary that mandates that information about underground infrastructure be shared among utilities and communications firms operating within city limits, through to one-call centres operating in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec, to other provinces and territories where there is no one-call centre leaving it up to construction contractors to identify and contact utilities and communications companies before they excavate.  The Professional Surveyors Canada working group is very clear about the problems with the current regulatory regimes and business practices in Canada; creates loss of use situations to critical infrastructure such as telecommunications; creates hazards for workers; creates inefficiencies in locates for customers; reduces efficiencies and productivity of one call systems; increases cost for new development; increases cost for each new installation of underground infrastructure; greatly increases the amount of redundant locates being done; increases risk to the public; and increases risk to the environment.

Example of a provincial one-call centre

Ontario One Call is an example of a one-call centre currently operating in Canada.  In Ontario every municipality, utility, communications company and others with underground infrastructure are required to become members of Ontario One Call which is a not-for-profit corporation.  All members are required to provide Ontario One Call with information that describes where the member has underground infrastructure.  This typically takes the form of maps showing service territories, and not necessarily maps showing the actual location of underground networks.  Anyone planning to excavate within the province is required to contact the one-call centre which is responsible for identifying and contacting all of its members that may have infrastructure in or near the area of the planned excavation.  Upon being notified of an excavation potentially affecting its infrastructure each member is required (at no cost to the excavator) to locate any infrastructure it may have that would be impacted by the planned excavation.  An important effect of this legislation is that each utility and communications operators maintains a fleet of field staff with vans and locate equipment or contracts a locate service to provide the service.  For a utility operating in a medium-sized city this can easily amount to something on the order of a million dollars annually. 

In Ontario a utility operator is required to mark on the ground the location of its underground infrastructure and provide a written document containing information describing the location of the underground infrastructure.  This differs from many state one-call centres in the U.S. where a written document is not required.

Senate Bill S-229 An Act respecting underground infrastructure safety

At the federal level Senate Bill S-229, which was introduced in 2015, passed third reading in the Senate in May 2017 and is awaiting consideration by the House of Commons, is ground-breaking in that it opens the door to a digital underground locating system similar to those operating in the Netherlands and Belgium.  Bill S-229 aims to create a federal underground infrastructure notification system (federal one-call centre) that requires operators of underground infrastructure that is federally regulated or that is located on federal land to register their underground infrastructure with a federal one-call centre. It is similar in many respects to the legislation creating Ontario One Call, but has some important differences. All members must provide a description of the geographical location of the underground infrastructure "such as the digital geospatial data or legal description of the location."  Anyone excavating on Federal land tis required o contact the one-call centre prior to beginning excavation.  In response to a notification of intention to excavate operators are required to either

mark the location of their infrastructure on the ground and provide accurate and clear descriptions of the location of the underground infrastructure in written form to the excavator

or

provide accurate and clear descriptions of the location of the underground infrastructure in written form to the excavator.

The important difference between the Ontario One Call and Bill S-229 legislation is that the latter opens the door to a digital system (similar to the Dutch KLIC and Belgian KLIP) that does not require an operator to actually visit planned excavation sites.  This enables operators with accurate maps of their underground infrastructure to reduce the costs associated with locate operations.

Challenges

While the proposed federal legislation is a step forward, there remain two areas that it does not address.  The first is that the quality of the information about the location of underground utilities maintained by many operators is low.  To begin improving this information requires some mechanism for sharing of the results of on-site locates - potentially by uploading the location of underground infrastructure in digital form to a shared database.  Secondly, it also requires sharing the location information about underground infrastructure exposed during excavation.

To begin to address these issues the Professional Surveyors Canada report recommends requiring that all new underground infrastructure be surveyed and mapped in 3D with high precision and reliability and sharing basic information on the type, location and depth of underground infrastructure in a standardized form through a common, accessible system.   Furthermore, all underground infrastructure surveyed should be in a common format that can update a master map/GIS data set.  Such a master database would limit visibility of networks in such a way that sensitive information would not be accessible to competitors (especially important for communications firms) or to others for privacy or security reasons.

A major challenge in the Professional Surveyors Canada proposal is finding a way of capturing information about the location of underground utilities accurately and efficiently without impacting construction budgets and schedules.  Modern technology offers ways of reality capture that are accurate and efficient.  Experiments have shown that modern geoprocessing in the cloud makes it possible to capture the required location information about underground utilities with mobile LiDAR, ground penetrating radar (GPR), combined mobile LiDAR and GPR, consumer digital cameras or smart phones obviating the need for professional surveyors to actually be onsite.  This would reduce the impact on construction budgets and schedules.

Other issues are organizational; who is responsible for hosting the database - an enhanced one-call centre, a non-profit, public-private partnership, or some other organization;  how it is to be financed - by the operators or by charging excavators a fee; and data visibility and security - ensuring that visibility is rigourously controlled. 

Many thanks to David Gariepy for pointing me to the Professional Surveyors Canada report UNDERGROUND INFRASTRUCTURE IN CANADA Moving toward a more responsible and responsive system on underground infrastructure.

 

Carbon dioxide emissions from electric power generation decoupled from economic growth in US

As a rule of thumb increasing electric power generation is closely coupled with economic expansion.  Between 2005 and 2017 the U.S. economy as measured by real GDP expanded by about 20 % from $15 trillion to $18 trillion. New data from the U.S. Energy Information administration (EIA) reveals that over this same period, emissions from power generation dropped primarily because of flat demand which is evidence of a decoupling between economic growth and power generation.

Data from the EIA reveals that during this time US power generation remained flat, but the makeup of U.S. power generation changed significantly.  Generation from natural gas now exceeds that from coal and generation from wind, solar and other renewable sources now exceeds hydroelectric generation.

With respect to emissions the change is even more impressive.  In a business as usual scenario assuming that demand continued to increase as it had prior to 2005, energy intensity (the energy required to produce a dollar of GDP) had remained at its 2005 value, and the energy mix had remained at its 2005 value, the expected emissions from electric power generation would have been about 3,043 MMmt (million metric tonnes). In 2017 actual emissions were much less, about 1,744 MMmt.  About half of the drop in emissions in 2017 compared to the projected business as usual emissions was due to less demand (654 MMmt).  Since the economy expanded over this time this is attributable to a drop in energy intensity and is evidence of decoupling of economic growth from power generation.  The other important factors were switching among fuels, primarily switching from coal to natural gas (329 MMmt) and replacing fossil fuels with non-hydro renewables (316 MMmt). 

In 2017 actual emissions from power generation were 43% less than that projected in the business as usual scenario and 28% below 2005 emissions. This is important progress toward the Paris accord targets (which the U.S. has dropped out of) since emissions from electricity generation are about 28% of U.S. total emissions.

Mobile app uses consumer 360° cameras for visual construction documentation

At this year's BIMForum in Las Vegas, I came across an intriguing new company in the construction technology space called HoloBuilder.  I had an opportunity to follow up with Harry Handorf to gain a better understanding of how their solution, a combination of an app for iOS and Android with cloud processing, makes it possible to use a consumer 360° camera such as Ricoh Theta cameras to quickly document progress on a construction site.

The handheld app is called JobWalk, which makes it possible after uploading a floor plan to walk through a job site placing the camera and tripod in the middle of each room to take a series of 360° photos.  After the photos are uploaded to the HoloBuilder cloud, virtual tours of the construction site are available to anyone with a web browser on their platform.  In the virtual walkthroughs, dimensions can be measured with 99% accuracy.  The only input data that is required to make this possible is the distance between the camera lens and the floor.  Plug-ins are available for Revit and Navisworks which make it possible to view as-designed BIM model renderings side-by-side with as-constructed.  It is also possible to time travel over the lifetime of a construction site comparing images taken at different times to track construction progress.

HoloBuilder introduced its technology to the broad market in 2014. In 2015 it won the grand prize at the RICOH THETA Developers Contest.  Since then it has focused its solution entirely on the construction market.  It even offers a solution for real-time construction monitoring.  Harry told me that it has many customers in the construction market including the likes of Skanska, McCarthy, AECOM, Hensel Phelps, Mortenson and others.

As a practical example of how HoloBuilder is used, Skanska is currently building a 185,000-sq. ft. hotel with a construction contract value of $52.3 million.  Skanska is using HoloBuilder on the project to document existing site conditions, share progress with stakeholders and make decisions requiring the agreement of remote stakeholders scattered around North America. One of the use cases where Skanska found a lot of value with HoloBuilder is capturing images as part of pre-pour inspections - necessary inspections that occur before pouring concrete.  The challenge is to document all the in-slab deck conditions prior to pouring in a very limited window of time.  Cables, heating and ventilation, plumbing and electrical, rebar, and other equipment need to be captured.  Skanska’s Project Engineers use HoloBuilder to take 360° photos in conjunction with the bi-monthly concrete pour cycle.  Each of the floors scheduled for concrete pouring is captured and uploaded during a one-hour site walk using the JobWalk app and a standard 360° camera. HoloBuilder estimates that one 360° photo contains approximately the same visual information as 11 single lens photos. The resulting HoloBuilder project provides information about the contents and layout of materials in the slab including mechanical, electrical and plumbing as well as the rebar size, spacing and number. The images also contain additional context related to site conditions, weather, and location where the 360° photos were captured. Skanska is able to share the site conditions with the architect and structural engineer as a supplement to the inspection.  With HoloBuilder, Skanska’s project team reduced photo documentation time by 50%.  It also was able to offer a valuable deliverable that could be shared with the owner, architect, facilities management team and other project stakeholders.

This is another example of how consumer devices are changing the construction industry. The number of startups like HoloBuilder, Dot Product, Enscape, Revizto, Fuzor, Skur, Cupix and others in the construction industry is increasing and many are using consumer technologies such as gaming engines (Unity, Unreal Engine). As new technology gains traction in a $10 trillion industry that has traditionally been ranked at the bottom of R&D spending and digitization, construction productivity will rise and infrastructure will become increasingly attractive to private investors who are expected to become the source of most of the money required to develop, renew and maintain our infrastructure for the next two decades.

The advantages of using open source components to develop geospatial web applications

Open source geospatial software provides a way develop scalable solutions that avoid licensing costs and that can be adapted for particular requirements with the help of a large developer community. At GeoAlberta 2018, Ebrahim Poorazizi described the advantages of using open source components to develop a web-based solution for converting legal land descriptions to geographical coordinates. Since open source libraries are based on open standards this provides a way to develop solutions that are interoperable, flexible, and easy to integrate with other applications.

The web-based application that Ebrahim developed is Township Canada and it provides a way to browse and find the Canadian legal subdivisions, geographical coordinates, and places on a map. It enables users to lookup legal land descriptions, geographical coordinates, and places, to see the results on a map and to export them into CSV, KML, Shapefile, and GeoJSON to use in other applications.

The open source stack that Ebrahim used comprises PostgreSQL/PostGIS, GeoServer, MapBox GL JS, Map Box Tile Server, and Vuetify.  Vuetify is a material design component framework which provides a number of easily adoptable components adhering to Google’s Material Design guidelines.  The application is hosted on AWS EC2.

As an example of legal land descriptions, any parcel of land in Alberta can be located by its legal land description which is based on the Alberta Township Survey (ATS) system. The ATS is a grid network dividing the province into equal-sized parcels of land.

Using publicly available environmental data in a spatial analysis of low birth weight babies

A spatial analysis of possible environmental factors contributing to the increase in the number of underweight babies born in Canada was presented by Charlene Nielsen at GeoAlberta 2018. Termed low birth weight at term (LBWT), this is the second most important cause of infant mortality in Canada and costs the medical systems hundreds of millions of dollars every year. It is also linked to childhood and adult diseases. Charlene's hypothesis was that environmental factors including chemical pollution, the man made environment, and socioeconomic level were contributing factors to low birth weight babies in Canada.  She used spatial analytics to study the problem which she used as the basis for her PhD thesis at the University of Alberta.

Using open, publicly available databases Charlene related the spatial distribution of low birth weight babies to geographical proximity to air-based chemical emissions or to land-based pollutants related to electrical power lines, dumps and solid waste sites, gas stations, mine sites and tailings, oil and gas well pads, transformer stations, and crop lands.

One of the publicly available data sources for chemical emissions that she used is the National Pollutant Release Inventory which has been maintained by Environment and Climate Change Canada since 1993.  It currently monitors the emissions of 324 chemical substances.

Her study found that air-released or land-based pollutants may be more important depending on geographical location. There was a greater correlation of low birth weight babies with the environmental factors she studied in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia. While this study found that  environmental factors did contribute to low birth weight babies, these are not the only factors. This study was particularly interesting because it used the geographical distribution of low weight births and the spatial distribution of environmental factors to try to determine some of the factors contributing to low weight births. Secondly it used publicly available environmental data which demonstrates that this type of spatial analysis can be easily applied in other studies.