Between the Poles

Geoff Zeiss' Memory Lives on in Urban Infrastructure Mapping Fund | Carleton FutureFunder

For over 30 years, Geoff Zeiss devoted his life to the Geospatial industry and community all over the world.

It was a life focused on the utility and construction sectors, mapping underground utility infrastructure, BIM, CAD, Geospatial interoperability, machine learning, and substation design among other interests. Zeiss was responsible for multiple large and prosperous implementations of records management software and locator-aware enterprise designs.

Zeiss was a knowledgeable, busy, productive, and inspirational individual. He was an author, speaker, creator, leader, and so much more. Holding a Doctorate from McGill University and a Bachelor’s Degree from Cornell University, Zeiss gained experience working in various positions (President, Vice President, Director) for companies such as Tydac Technologies, VISION, DPA, and Autodesk.

Zeiss was an active advisor to National Underground Asset Registry, Minnesota Geospatial Advisory Council Emergency Preparedness Committee, and Singapore Digital Underground Initiative. He wrote articles that appeared in LIDAR Magazine, was Editor for Energy and Building with Geospatial Media (2014-2016) and was involved in founding the Open Sources Geospatial Foundation from 2005-2006.

Throughout his life, Zeiss was a man dedicated to promoting the awareness and evolution of geospatial data, underground utilities, and technology. He often spoke about the importance of mapping underground utilities and infrastructure issues. Zeiss supported open standards as a director of the Open Geospatial Consortium.

With enthusiasm, Zeiss often spoke at events and forums all over the world. He made time for participating in, as well as being a founder and Conference Chair of, SUMSF. Throughout his life, Zeiss also participated in the Geospatial World Forum, Where 2.0, Location Intelligence, MundoGeo Connect, India Geospatial Forum, Middle East Spatial Geospatial Forum, Asia Geospatial Forum, and GITA events.

Zeiss was recognized for his dedication and efforts. During the years 2007 through 2009, he received Speaker Excellence Awards at GITA. He also received one of ten global technology awards from Oracle Corporation for ‘technical innovation and leadership in the use of Oracle’ in 2004. Zeiss continued his work, and at the Geospatial World Forum in 2014, he was yet again recognized for his efforts to increase the awareness of geospatial data and utility awareness. Zeiss received the Geospatial Ambassador Award.

Besides speaking, Zeiss created Between the Poles, a thought leadership blog where he advocated on issues of importance to the community. The blog addresses infrastructure issues and updates, and continues today under the care of GoGeomatics Canada, keeping Zeiss’ life mission of awareness and information moving forward.

Sadly, Geoff Zeiss passed away Sept 14, 2022. 

The Geoff Zeiss Urban Infrastructure Mapping Fund builds on decades of innovation by Dr. Zeiss in developing effective and
sustainable urban infrastructure through research and development supporting urban information systems.  The goal will be to focus on the democratization of utility mapping, creation of infrastructure digital twins, and modernization of data workflows in global construction and infrastructure management. The potential for new technologies and methods to facilitate crowd-sourced mapping and more equitable data access will end the monopoly of publicly funded private assets and improve both efficiency and safety of the construction industry. Depending on the funds raised, several exciting possibilities exist, from graduate student scholarships to post-doctoral fellowships to longer-term and endowed research positions.

Carleton University is an ideal place to house such a research fund. The Department of Geography and Environmental Studies excels at integrative scholarship, bringing together expertise in geomatics, physical and human geography, and environmental studies, while working closely with the researchers from engineering, architecture, industrial design, public policy, law, communications, and urban planning. This multi-sector, interdisciplinary approach is necessary to innovate across the complex socio-technical domain of urban information systems.

Please consider marking Geoff’s legacy with a contribution in his honour to advance this important research.

 

Author: Jon Murphy

Jonathan Murphy is the founder and Managing Director of GoGeomatics Canada, the most popular communications hub for the Canadian geomatics sector. Jon is the founder and chair of GeoIgnite - Canada's national geospatial leadership conference.

Jon has created Canada’s largest professional geospatial network, with the goal of strengthening and empowering our geospatial ecosystem. Jon has had broad range of global experience in marketing and sales for geospatial businesses across a number of sectors and regions globally. He holds a bachelor's degree in Archaeology from the University of Calgary and advanced diplomas in GIS and geomatics from COGS. Jon is a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. In 2020 he joined the ISO/TC 211 Geographic information/Geomatics Technical Committee responsible for the ISO geographic information series of standards.

 

 

A revolutionary source of accurate underground utility location data for SUE and other surveys

Recently jurisdictions such as Colorado have mandated SUE surveys on all public civil engineering projects. Return on investment (ROI) studies of subsurface engineering utility engineering (SUE) surveys applied to highway construction projects conducted since the late 1990s have consistently revealed a large return-on-investment from conducting SUE surveys as part of highway construction projects.  Studies have found that the major benefits of SUE surveys are improved construction efficiency, greater probability of on-time and on-budget project completions, fewer and shorter utility service outages and less traffic disruption and delays for the motoring public. The objective of a SUE survey is to identify and locate all underground infrastructure in the area of the proposed project to ASCE 38-02 Quality Level B or better.

SUE surveys currently rely on on-site detection technologies such as electromagnetic (EM), ground penetrating radar (GPR), and other methods to remotely detect underground utilities.  Potholing is also routinely conducted as part of a SUE survey to confirm the identification and location of utilities that have been detected by remote sensing technologies. Using remote detection methods and potholing requires "boots on the pavement" which raises safety as a major concern when conducting a SUE survey.  EM devices are typically handheld wands and GPR is usually mounted on pushcarts. Data acquisition occurs at a walking pace.  Furthermore the reliable interpretation of GPR scans requires an experienced geotechnical practitioner. Together these factors make current technology used for SUE surveys slow, laborious processes with serious safety issues.

But a revolutionary technology innovation has been developed by 4M-Analytics that could provide SUE practitioners with a source of data without the major disadvantages of traditional remote detection methods.  It is safer because it does not require boots on the pavement, it provides accurate locations reliably, can be conducted without traffic and other disruptions, and can be generated much more rapidly than the traditional on-site remote detection methods and is available in most rural areas in the world. Intended for rural linear civil engineering projects in such as pipelines and transportation routes 4M-Analytics' technology utilizes high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery, computer vision algorithms, and training sets for machine learning developed for different biomes, including forests, grasslands, and deserts. The deliverable to the SUE practitioner is a complete, accurate and up-to-date utility conflict map showing the location of all underground utilities and pipelines intersecting a proposed civil engineering project.

SUE is rapidly growing in importance for civil engineering projects. 4M-Analytics' revolutionary approach to locating underground infrastructure, which utilizes the huge volume of aerial and satellite earth observation imagery that has been built up over the past decades together with machine learning and other AI algorithms, can provide an important source of rapidly produced, safely acquired, and reliable underground location data for SUE practitioners.