I had the opportunity to attend the 1Spatial Smarter Data Smarter World conference in London. A presentation by Seb Lessware, CTO of 1Spatial, of Realworld 4D for BIM and facilities management demonstrated an impressive integration of large volumes of 3D scanned underground data with traditional GIS data streamed across the web for asset management of underground pipe networks.
Earlier this year 1Spatial announced the acquisition of GEOMAP-IMAGIS a geospatial software solutions provider in the areas of utilities/telecom and facilities management, transportation and other sectors. One of GEOMAP-IMAGIS applications is Realworld4D which enables the integration of 3D models including point clouds and meshes from LiDAR scans, BIM models, and high resolution photographic imagery with traditional 2D GIS data. The application enables streaming access to anyone with a laptop and internet access.
Seb demonstrated an example of a sewer system and showed on a single screen a 2D map of a small part of a city and its sewer system on the left side of the screen, and on the right a 3D mesh derived from a LiDAR scan and high resolution imagery from a photographic record of the same area. The applications makes it possible to simulate walking down the sewer line and follow your progress in all three views. The application also showed the direction of the flow of water. Seb also demonstrated accurately measuring distances between objects in the sewer line.
The total volume of data that this represents for all of the city would be calculated in the terabytes. But users can access small parts of the city infrastructure model without opening the whole model. Seb demonstrated this on a standard notebook with an internet connection showing that this application enables streaming access to huge volumes of data. The application includes a live link to GIS data stored in a traditional GIS and MongoDB for the scanned data.
Furthermore, the application enables showing above-ground and below-ground simultaneously together in a "long profile" view together with a 2D GIS map of a section of the facility. For gravity-fed sewer lines this makes it possible to see the slope in the sewer line and the direction of flow. Clicking on a location on the 2D GIS map instantly shows what the underground and above ground look like along a section of the network.
This was a very impressive integration of 3D scanned data with traditional GIS data to enable streaming access to large volumes of data to anyone with a notebook and internet access. It has application to facilities and asset management of any underground pipe network that can be scanned including gas, water, and wastewater mains. I can also imagine this being to enable creating a network model for underground pipelines from scanned data.
Seb reported that benefits of this approach are significant. However, it does require a substantial up-front investment to scan the network, but it is not necessary to capture the entire network before realizing benefits. Furthermore keeping the scanned data up-to-date does not require recapturing the entire the network. Only those sections that are changing rapidly or that are of high consequence need to be rescanned.
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