Between the Poles

Severely restricted access to critical infrastructure information in the U.S.

The Critical Infrastructure Information Act of 2002 of the U.S. Congress provides a mechanism for severely restricting access to proprietary critical infrastructure information voluntarily shared by network operators with the federal government.  It prevents consumers and organizations from accessing this information under the Freedom of Information Act, by a regulatory agency, or as part of civil litigation.  What this means is that a utility, telecom, or other organization can elect to submit proprietary network information including the location of above and below ground facilities to the Department of Homeland Security's critical infrastructure information program (PCII) after which it is protected from access by anyone except certified Federal government employees and contractors.

Introduction

Information about infrastructure in the United States is regulated by an act of Congress and several presidential directives. The earliest federal directive is the 1998 Presidential Decision Directive/NSC-63 Critical Infrastructure Protection that identified the need for a private public partnership, preferably voluntary, to protect critical infrastructure.  The Critical Infrastructure Information (PCII) Act of 2002 followed very closely after September 11, 2001,   The Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7 in 2003 established a national policy for Federal departments and agencies to identify and prioritize critical infrastructure and to protect them from terrorist attacks.  The Presidential Policy Directive 21 (PPD-21), Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience of 2013, established a national policy on critical infrastructure security and resilience as a shared responsibility among the Federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments and public and private owners and operators of critical infrastructure. This directive also clarifies the critical infrastructure-related responsibilities across the Federal Government.  The National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP) 2013 is a plan resulting from Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7. The NIPP's goals are to protect critical infrastructure and key resources and ensure resiliency. The NIPP is based on the 1998 Presidential Decision Directive-63, which identified critical sectors of the economy and identified government agencies to each of them on sharing information and on strengthening responses to attack.

Critical Infrastructure Information Act of 2002

The U.S. Congress established standards for protecting critical infrastructure information through the Critical Infrastructure Information Act of 2002. In response, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) created the Protected Critical Infrastructure Information (PCII) program to protect private sector infrastructure information voluntarily shared with the government for the purposes of homeland security. The 6 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) part 29, Procedures for Handling Critical Infrastructure Information; Final Rule, published in 2006, established uniform procedures on the receipt, validation, handling, storage, marking, and use of critical information information voluntarily submitted to DHS. Information submitted by utilities, telecoms and others to the PCII is broadly protected from disclosure. This includes disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act; State, local, tribal, or territorial disclosure laws; regulation or civil litigation.  Only trained and certified U.S. government employees or contractors may use PCII. All users of PCII must have homeland security responsibilities and duties, possess a valid need-to-know, and sign a non-disclosure agreement.  Organizations that can submit proprietary information to the PCII includes privately or publicly owned companies, industry associations and State and local government officials.  Federal government agencies may not submit information to the PCII Program.  Information that is in the public domain cannot be submitted.

Presidential Decision Directive/NSC-63 1998 Critical Infrastructure Protection

Directive NSC-63 identified critical infrastructure whose physical and cyber-based systems were essential to the minimum operations of the economy and government. These included telecommunications, energy, banking and finance, transportation, water systems and emergency services, both governmental and private. Since most infrastructure is privately owned, the protection of critical infrastructure is necessarily a shared responsibility and partnership between owners, operators and the government.  The directive specifically identified interdependence between different utility, telecom and other systems as a growing challenge. Its goal was to create a public-private partnership to enable a closely coordinated effort of both the government and the private sector to avoid increasing government regulation or putting a greater burden on the private sector. To that end it stated that it is preferable that participation by owners and operators in a national infrastructure protection system be voluntary. It also emphasized that privacy rights of consumers and operators of utility, telecom, and other networks must be protected and information handled accurately, confidentially and reliably.

Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7: Critical Infrastructure Identification, Prioritization, and Protection 2003

Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7 establishes a national policy for Federal departments and agencies to identify and prioritize critical infrastructure and to protect them from terrorist attacks. It directs that federal agencies will collaborate with the private sector to encourage the development of information sharing and analysis mechanisms. Its objective is to identify, prioritize, and coordinate the protection of critical infrastructure and key resources and to facilitate sharing of information about physical and cyber threats, vulnerabilities, incidents, protective measures, and best practices.

President issued Presidential Policy Directive 21 (PPD-21), Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience 2013

This directive establishes national policy on critical infrastructure security and resilience as a shared responsibility among the Federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, and public and private owners and operators of critical infrastructure.  Its objective is to enable information exchange among these organizations by Identifying baseline data and systems requirements for the Federal Government. Federal departments and agencies are directed to ensure that all existing privacy principles, policies, and procedures are implemented consistent with applicable laws and policies.  The Secretary of Homeland Security, in coordination with other Federal departments and agencies, was directed to convene a team of experts to identify baseline data and systems requirements to enable the efficient exchange of information and intelligence relevant to strengthening the security and resilience of critical infrastructure.

National Infrastructure Protection Plan 2013

The National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP) 2013 was mandated by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7. The latest version of the plan was produced in 2013.  The NIPP's goal is a mechanism for developing coordination between government and the private sector.  As the Nation’s critical infrastructure is largely owned by the private sector, managing risk to enhance security and resilience is a shared priority for industry and government.  The goal is collaborative public-private partnership that operates as a unified national effort, as opposed to a hierarchical, command-and-control structure.  The eighteen sectors identified by DHS as critical infrastructure are: chemical, commercial facilities, communications, critical manufacturing, dams, defense industrial base, emergency services, energy, financial services, food and agriculture, government facilities, healthcare and public health, information, technology, nuclear reactors, materials, and waste, transportation systems, water and wastewater systems.  While it lauds the investment in some critical infrastructure it specifically refers to A National Academy of Sciences report that the Nation’s earlier heavy investment in the design, construction, and operation of critical infrastructure systems—water, wastewater, energy, transportation, and telecommunications—has not been matched with the funds necessary to keep these systems in good condition or to upgrade them to meet the demands of a growing population.

Information about critical infrastructure is vulnerable to unauthorized access that could affect its confidentiality, integrity, or availability. The distribution of such information to those entities that can use it for efficient and effective risk management remains a challenge. It is critical to maintain the availability of information and distribute it to those who can use and protect it properly. This entails being transparent about information-sharing practices; protecting sources and methods; and ensuring privacy and protecting civil liberties, while also enabling law enforcement investigations.  It references the PCII program, authorized by the Critical Infrastructure Information (CII) Act of 2002 and its implementing regulations (Title 6 of the Code of Federal Regulations Part 29).

The National Plan identifies certain lifeline functions that are essential to the operation of most critical infrastructure sectors. These lifeline functions include communications, energy, transportation, and water. To manage critical infrastructure risk effectively, it directs that partners must identify the assets, systems, and networks that are essential to their continued operation including interdependencies. Interdependencies may be operational (e.g., power required to operate a water pumping station) or physical (e.g., co-located infrastructure, such as water and electric lines running under a bridge span) and include infrastructure that requires accurate and precise positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) data. PNT services are critical to the operations of multiple critical infrastructure sectors and are vital to incident response.

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.

Advanced BIM modeling at US Corps of Engineers includes GIS

The mission of BIMForum, part of the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC), is to further the adoption of BIM in the construction industry in the U.S. At this year's annual BIMForum conference Johnny Fortune and Steve Hutsell of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) gave a presentation about advanced BIM modeling and how it ensures that the requirements of advanced modeling are met not only on its design/build projects but also in managing the 500,000 sites that the USACE operates and maintains. As a result of the full-lifecycle perspective at USACE advanced modeling includes not only BIM and BIM for infrastructure (called civil information modeling or CIM at USACE), but also GIS.

Since 2006 USACE has been required to use BIM for all projects over $3 million. Its goals in developing advanced modeling include improved collaboration among stakeholders, improved design and construction processes, reduced risk, fewer errors and omissions, and higher quality design and construction quality.

But USACE not only designs and builds facilities. It is also responsible for operating and maintaining some 500,000 sites around the world. Therefore one of the key goals of the advanced modeling initiative is enabling more complete information-loaded deliverables so that data and information is not lost through the planning, design, build and operate and maintain life-cycle (See USACE Roadmap for Life-cycle BIM with supplements for Autodesk and Bentley). USACE has found that integrating GIS along with BIM into the life-cycle is a key enabler for full-lifecycle BIM.

USACE has been been working with industry through consortia to define clear advanced modeling requirements for their projects. The have developed a toolbox of documents, templates, tools, checklist and guides to enable the advanced modeling goals of USACE which are also used by other Department of Defense (DoD) agencies. As an example, one of tools is the minimum model matrix, which defines a minimum level of development (LoD) for each element which must be modeled. This includes not only the standard LoD categories 100, 200, 300 but also whether the element must be modeled in 3D, 2.5D, or 3D.

USACE is also part of the FedBIM Working Group which includes many federal agencies outside of DoD which means that USACE's toolkit is a model for other federal agencies.

US 3D elevation project as a model for a national infrastructure map

A number of years ago an initiative was funded under the ARRA economic stimulus package to initiate what was then called LiDAR for the Nation.  This has resulted in a USGS initiative called 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) whose goal over an eight year period is to develop a 3D elevation map with horizontal resolution of a meter and vertical resolution of 10 cm for the entire U.S. and territories.  This entails LiDAR scanning the contiguous continental U.S. and Hawaii and interferometric synthetic radar over Alaska.  It also includes bathymetric data for the U.S. coastline.  To date 48% of the U.S. has been covered or scanning is underway.  An inventory of these projects is available.

At GIS in the Rockies this year Carol Lydic of the USGS gave an overview of this program and the most recent initiatives to broaden the partnerships that are instrumental in creating the national 3D elevation map.  The program is based on partnerships with federal, state, local, and tribal government agencies, academic institutions and the private sector.

In 2012 a study was completed that estimated the economic value to 27 different sectors of accurate 3D data.  The top five included in this study (National Enhanced Elevation Assessment) are

• Flood risk management                                  $295m to  $502m
• Infrastructure and construction management $206m to  $942m
• Natural resources conservation                     $159m to  $335m
• Agriculture and precision farming                  $122m to $2,011m
• Water supply and quality                                  $85m to  $156m

The total economic benefits for all sectors was estimated to be between $1.8B to $13B.   I find this to be a very conservative estimate. 

A number of years ago I remember hearing about an outstanding program by the state of North Carolina in cooperation with federal agencies that involved a statewide LiDAR scan and the creation of a database of all structures with a footprint of over 800 square feet that allowed estimates to be made of the economic impact of any type of flood anywhere in the state or of a rise in sea level along North Carolina's coastline.  This is of inestimable value in assessing any mitigation project.

In the infrastructure and construction sector, one of the largest contributors to the cost of a civil construction project such as a highway or a railway, is the amount of earth that has to be moved which can be derived from a 3D terrain model.  Having a reliable digital terrain model is of great value to any civil project for assessing alternative right of ways during the planning stage and could also be used during the design and construction phases especially if supplemented by information about the soil and geological structure of the subsurface and location of underground utilities.

I found the 3DEP project particularly interesting because it represents a potential model for creating a national infrastructure map including underground infrastructure.  Federal organizations that could be involved include USGS, National Map, US DOT, FERC, and NERC.  Partners might include NARUC (National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners), CGA (Common Ground Alliance), state and municipal DOTs, AGC (Associated General Contractors of America), utility and telecom network operators, general contractors, tribal government agencies, and academic institutions.

British guidelines for BIM targeting 33% savings in TOTEX to become international ISO standards

The BS 1192 suite of guidelines and best practices developed under the auspices of the BSI, the national standards body of the UK, are designed to help the UK construction industry adopt BIM Level 2 and applies to both building and infrastructure assets. These standards target 33% savings over the full life-cycle of a building or infrastructure asset. BSI has announced that beginning this year the BS 1192 British standards will become international ISO standards.

An introduction to BIM Level 2 for folks for whom BIM is new can be found here.

BS 1192 (2007 + 2016)

The principles for information sharing and modelling of BIM Level 2 are outlined in this standard. BS 1192 provides a ‘best-practice’ method for the development, organization and management of production information for the construction industry and provides the template for common naming conventions and approaches to collaborative working for use in architecture, engineering and construction. It is also designed to assist efficient data use in facilities management.

Will be replaced in 2018 by;
"BS EN ISO 19650–1 Organization of information about construction works – Information management using building information modelling – Part 1: Concepts and principles."

PAS 1192-2 (2013)

PAS 1192-2 focuses on project delivery, specifically, the graphical data, non-graphical data and documents that are accumulated from design and construction activities.

Will be replaced in 2018 by;
"BS EN ISO 19650-2 Organization of information about construction works – Information management using building information modelling – Part 2: Delivery phase of assets."

PAS 1192-3 (2014)

PAS 1192-3 addresses the recognition that the cost of operating and maintaining buildings and facilities can represent up to 85% of the whole-life cost of a facility. PAS 1192-3 provides guidance to asset managers on how to integrate asset management during operations and maintenance with the accumulation of information about assets during design and construction. The UK government has targeted cost savings of 33% across the entire life-cycle of a facility by implementing the processes outlined in PAS 1192-2 and PAS 1192-3.

Will be replaced in 2020 by;
"BS EN ISO 19650-3 Organization of information about construction works – Information management using building information modelling – Part 3: Operational phase of assets."

PAS 1192-5 (2015)

PAS 1192-5 outlines the cyber-security vulnerabilities to hostile attack when using BIM and provides an assessment process to determine the levels of cyber-security for BIM collaboration which should be applied during all phases of the life-cycle.

Will be replaced in 2020 by;
"BS EN ISO 19650-5 Organization of information about construction works – Information management using building information modelling – Part 5: Specification for security-minded building information modelling, digital built environments and smart asset management."

The announcement by the BSI did not include two other parts of the suite;

• BS 1192 4 (2014) outlines the UK usage of COBie, an internationally agreed information exchange schema for exchanging facility information between the employer and the supply chain.
• BS 8536-1 (2015) aims to involve the operator of the facility from the outset by documenting building performance requirements early in the design phase to ensure that designers design for optimum performance of a facility.

Avoiding a repeat of the CAD/GIS quaqmire of the past quarter century

Yesterday at Distributech 2018 in San Antonio I listened to a talk from a consulting company contracted by an electric power utility to clean up GIS data originally sourced from CAD drawings.  This reminded me once again that is a challenge that telecommunications and cable companies and electric and water utilities have been attempting to deal with at least since the early 1990s and for some even before that.  Telecommunications and cable and leading electric power utilities resolved this problem at least a decade ago, but for some electric power and even more water utilities it remains a problem that is going to hold these utilities back when they should be accelerating their adoption of digital technologies.

I began working in the utility and telecom sector in 1993, specifically in developing software for records management (called network documentation outside of North America), and at that time the magnitude of the AEC+geospatial cultural mismatch problem was just beginning to be appreciated by utilities and telecoms. In utilities and telecoms planners tend to use GIS tools, engineers and designers CAD tools, construction folks in the field paper CAD drawings, and asset managers GIS integrated with their FM tools. Fashioning AEC and geospatial data into an efficient data flow from planning through design and construction to operations and maintenance represented a challenge that remains a problem for utilities. The Between The Poles blog is over ten years old and one of the persistent themes from the very beginning in 2006 was the challenge of integrating CAD and GIS data in a common workflow (some examples; 2006, 2007, 2008 ).

A workflow that is found at every utility and telecom involves the design-build-maintain information flow. The workflow begins with an engineer and drafter producing a design, typically a CAD drawing, which is printed for the construction contractor to use in building a facility. The contractor uses the drawing in the field and then returns it as an "as-built" to the utility's records management group, who enter it, traditionally by manually redigitizing it from the paper drawing, into a GIS that is intended to contain the digital twin of the network. The data in the GIS is used for network maintenance, outage management and other functions. The reason for the manual redigitization step is the "errors" that CAD drawings inevitably contain unless drafters are forced to adhere to "geospatial rules". This entire process is slow and error-prone and backlogs of as-builts waiting to be entered into the GIS stretch into months and even years. The result is that utility GIS data is more often than not incomplete, out-of-date, and unreliable. For example, at the beginning of the broadband revolution, telecoms needed to be able to tell customers whether they were close enough to a terminal and fiber to be eligible for ADSL. In one of the largest telecoms in the U.S. the GIS records were so incomplete and unreliable that survey teams had to be sent out at considerable cost to resurvey the location of their terminals and fiber cables.

Because there was no standards-based solution to the CAD+GIS problem, every utility and telecom has had to try to find its own solution to the problem. This problem has persisted from the 1990s and remains a problem for utilities - as I said I heard a presentation yesterday that wasn't that different from presentations on the same topic I and others gave a quarter of a century ago.

Over the years the poor CAD/GIS interoperability has cost the utility and telecom sectors considerable amounts of money. Large telecoms have spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to cleanup their GIS data and streamline their CAD+GIS workflows. A rough back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests this problem has cost directly and indirectly trillions of dollars over the past 20 years. In addition unreliable and out-of-date network infrastructure data that results from this problem has safety implications.  

The juncture between distinct sectors each with its own technologies and business models, AEC (Autodesk, Bentley, and others) and geospatial (ESRI, Hexagon, and others), has analogies with the clash of tectonic plates and the associated incessant seismic events. In the mid-1990s pressure from customers motivated Autodesk and ESRI, 800 lb gorillas in their respective areas of CAD and GIS, to attempt to collaborate to address the CAD+GIS 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.

Averting a tectonic clash repeat: BIM+geospatial interoperability

The prospect that, by analogy with CAD+GIS problem, we could still be individually finding solutions to BIM/geospatial integration 20 years from now is discouraging. While there are parallels between CAD/GIS and BIM/geospatial, there are grounds for optimism that this time around we may find ways the address the problem in a general way. Firstly, in the mid 1990s there were virtually no geospatial or 3D AEC data standards. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and builsingSmart were both only founded in 1994. It required quite a while for the OGC geospatial and buildingSmart's IFC standards to broadly penetrate industry and government.  Nowadays, there are many widely adopted geospatial standards; Simple Features for SQL, WMS, WFS, GML, KML, InfraGML, CityGML to name just a few from the OGC. buildingSmart's IFC standard is supported by all major BIM design tools including the market leader Revit.

Perhaps most significantly there has been significant progress in developing common conceptual models for geospatial and AEC views of city infrastructure. The major breakthrough in bringing the architectural and geospatial views onto a common footing is the OGC LandInfra Conceptual Model developed by the OGC in cooperation with buildingSMART International and approved as an OGC standard in August, 2016. The LandInfra conceptual model was developed by Bentley Systems, Leica Geosystems, Trimble, Australian Government Department of Communications, Autodesk, Vianova Systems AS, and buildingSMART International and provides a unifying basis for land and civil engineering standards including the OGC's InfraGML and buildingSmart International's IFC for infrastructure standards.  InfraGML is the OGC's application schema supporting land development and civil engineering infrastructure facilities. InfraGML supports a subset of the existing LandXML standard. buildingSmart International's IFC-Alignment project uses this common conceptual model of alignments for roads, railways, tunnels and bridges. The objectives of the IFC-Alignment project is to enable the exchange of alignment information through the full infrastructure lifecycle from planning through design and construction to asset management.

Secondly, in the 1990s and the early 2000s there were few open source geospatial projects. The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGEO) was only founded in 2006. Since then there has been rapid development of open source geospatial projects. There is enough open source geospatial code now that at the GEO|Design+BIM conference in Amsterdam, Sanghee Shin described a web-based geo-platform integrating massive, complex BIM models using open source geospatial libraries and tools including PostGIS, GeoServer, and Cesium and NASA WorldWind virtual globes. The importance of this project is that it shows that it is possible using the available open source geospatial APIs and libraries - together with some genuine innovative development - to create an open, non-proprietary, 3D geospatial platform for integrating geospatial and BIM. Given the critical importance of addressing the cultural and technical divide between the AEC and geospatial worlds, clearly many believe that a viable open source alternative will be essential for developing the innovative solutions to the challenge of interfacing the two worlds. 

Finally, major players in the AEC and geospatial industries, Autodesk and ESRI, have again agreed to collaborate. This time around they are probably more aware of the technical issues hindering BIM+geospatial integration. Both have adopted open standards when it made business sense - often under pressure from government clients - and both have also adopted open source technology where it made business sense. Together the combination of major players supporting the effort, standards organization like the OGC and buildingSmart already working to address the problem, and a broad range of open source code and a vibrant developer community may be enough to address the technical problems. If building and infrastructure owners and facilities managers including government as well as regulators become aware of the risk of not solving the problem, a solution may be found so that we will not be having the same BIM+geospatial integration discussion a quarter of a century from now.

An important role for national geospatial agencies: mapping underground infrastructure

Since Google Earth's release in June 2005, the rise of crowdsourced OpenStreetMap, the deluge of remote-sensed imagery from private satellite companies Digital Globe, Planet Labs, UrtheCast, and others, and private geospatial data companies like HERE, national mapping agencies and related government organizations involved with geospatial data and technology have found that the traditional role of the government mapping agency is no longer viable.  It has been suggested that national mapping agencies are an anachronism that are no longer required since the private sector is flooding the world with huge volumes of timely, frequent, high resolution geospatial data.   As a result all national mapping agencies have had to reasess their role in the geospatial ecosystem.   At the GeoBuiz conference in Hyderabad, a panel discussion moderated by Karthik Ramamurthy, Regional Director, IPSOS Consulting included Dorine Burmanje, Chair of the Executive Board of the Dutch Kadaster, Dr. Virginia Burkett, Chief Scientist at the US Geological Survey, Nigel Clifford, CEO of the UK Ordnance Survey, and Major General Girish Kumar, Surveyor General of the Survey of India provides a fascinating perspective on how different national mapping agencies are coping with the post Google Map world.

Dutch Kadaster

One of the roles for national mapping agencies which Dorine Burmanje mentioned about which there appears to be a consensus is as custodians of authoritative data. This includes property boundaries (referred to as parcel files in North America), data used to monitor pollution and climate change, and other data that is closely tied to monitoring and measuring national objectives and priorities. Governments have also an important role in making data, whether collected by themselves or more typically by the private sector, available to the public for free.  This is important because it contributed to the public good.  She identified a further key role that a government mapping agency can fill - as a custodian of data about the underground including underground infrastructure. The Netherlands is just embarking on implementing legislation passed by the States General in 2015 and the Dutch experience could be come a model to help the rest of the world address the pressing problem of cost-effectively geolocating underground infrastructure.

US Geological Survey

President Trump's fiscal year 2018 budget requested a 15 percent funding cut for the U.S. Geological Survey and proposes deep cuts for all mission areas.  This is not the first time the USGS has faced large cuts in its funding. 

At GeoBuiz Virginia Burkett gave two very intriguing examples of how the USGS is finding new and interesting roles for itself.  The USGS continues to develop with NASA the Landsat series of satellites.   Landsat 7 and 8 are currently operational, and two more, Landsat 9 and 10, are in development to replace them.  The USGS is finding new ways to reuse the existing Landsat data that currently stretches back to 1972.  Using data cube technology the USGS is able to track individual (cloud free) pixels over time, currently back to Landsat 4, but ultimately to Landsat 1. She gave an example of a pixel in a forested area of the US which recorded the evolution of the forest since 1982 including a fire and the slow recovery after the fire.

She also described how the USGS is supporting citizen science using crowd harvesting - mining social media of evidence of earth tremours and quakes to be able to provide earlier warning - within 29 seconds - than is possible using only seismological analysis.

Ordnance Survey

The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the world's oldest national mapping agency - having begun in Napoleonic times as a military mapping agency. Since then the OS has weathered several disruptions including the industrial revolution, the digital revolution, and the current disruption of the tradtional national mapping agncy business model. Currently the OS is effectively a private, for profit company, albeit with a single shareholder, the UK Government.  As CEO not only is Nigel Clifford responsible for national mapping objectives, but he has to generate a financial return to Parliament.  One role he sees for national mapping agencies is becoming custodians for national registers - of addresses, property boundaries and other core national data. Nations also require new data sets including detailed street furniture and vegetation. IGN, the French national mapping agency, is currently piloting a data model for doing this called PCRS 2.0.  Nigel also sees national mapping agencies as undertaking projects that are considered too risky by the private sector but for which the social payoff may be large.  He emphasized that national mapping agencies have to follow a fine line since they should not be perceived as competing with the private sector.  He also mentioned a role for national mapping agencies in providing data for startup incubation, for example, the Geovation hubs in the UK.

The immediate challenge the OS is facing is that Parliament has recently created a Geospatial Commission tasked with determining the role of geospatial data in developing the national economy.  55% of OS revenue derives from selling their premier data set, the OS Mastermap, to government and private companies. The Geospatial Commission is proposing making Mastermap data available at no cost to small business as an economic development stimulus for the SMB sector. Since this initiative would directly impact OS revenues, either large customers would have to pay proportionately more to make up for the short fall or the OS has to find alternative revenue sources.

Survey of India

The Survey of India has been around for 150 years. Incredibly until 2005 the national datum remained the Everest datum - named for the Surveyor General responsible for the first survey of India. General Girish Kumar was unambiguous in recognizing that the availability of huge volumes of private data has changed the national mapping agency business model.  These are clearly challenging times for the Survey of India.  His view is similar to the Ordnance Survey - national mapping agencies cannot and should not compete with the private sector.  He still sees a role for national mapping agencies collecting data in rural areas that are financially unattractive for the private sector.  He also sees that national mapping agencies have a role in setting standards for data quality to ensure that the private sector is collecting data reliably and to prevent "fake data".  National mapping agencies can also provide training to support capacity building so citizens are able to understand how different types of geospatial data should be used.  General Kumar singled out a new role that he suggested only a national mapping agency can take on - mapping underground infrastructure.  He revealed that the Survey of India has already mapped the underground infrastructure of Delhi.

New roles for national mapping agencies

These are clearly challenging times for national mapping agencies, but new roles are emerging for these agencies. There is a consensus that an increasingly large proportion of geospatial data is sourced from the private sector and from crowdsourced data such as OpenStreetMap.  There is also an consensus that government agencies have a a role as the custodian of authoritative data including registers of national base data and data for monitoring and measuring national objectives and priorities such as air and water quality and climate change.  While government agencies are, with some exceptions, no longer in the business of collecting data themselves, they need to quality control data that gets the government imprimatur.  Speakers also said that government mapping agencies have a role in ensuring that nationally significant geospatial data which may come from from many sources including private commercial sources is made open and available to the public for the benefit of society at large.

Mapping underground infrastructure

Two speakers identified as a new role for which national mapping agencies are well suited - mapping and being the custodian for underground infrastructure. Increasing urbanization throughout the world challenges the sustainable development and resilience of cities.  The importance of the ground beneath cities is often overlooked. In many parts of the world the location of underground infrastructure including electric power, water and wastewater, gas, district heating, and other networks is unknown or poorly known.  Information about the underground is captured during excavation and drilling, but this data is typically stored in project or private databases and is not shared.  Government may be uniquely qualified for mapping and maintaining information about national infrastructure, much of which has a national security dimension.  For example, in the U.S. access to infrastructure data including location is restricted under Protected Critical Infrastructure Information (PCII) Program.  There are successful examples around the world where municipal and regional governments have helped enable a shared underground utility network database. 

Capturing this data in a shared, open database is a first step toward developing a model of the subsurface that can be reliably used for urban planning, design, construction and maintenance.  The Netherlands has recently embarked on a national program supported by legislation and standards to do just that.  In 2015 a new law was passed by the States General or parliament in the Netherlands creating a Basisregistratie Ondergrond (BRO) or Key Registry for the Subsurface. This law mandates that if you excavate or drill you have to share your data with the registry. In addition if when using the data in the registry you find something is incorrect you have to report it. The registry is required to be open and accessible to all citizens of the Netherlands. This new registry will require new standards for recording data and there is a major effort underway in the Netherlands to develop these standards. The implementation of the new subsurface registry will begin this year.  Furthermore at the Geobuiz conference I was encouraged to hear from the Surveyor General of India, Major General Girish Kumar, that the Survey of India has mapped the underground infrastructure of Delhi.  After the panel discussion General Kumar said that information about the Delhi underground mapping project will be forthcoming.

Progress in advancing integrated BIM+geospatial standards for infrastructure

There has been impressive progress in developing open standards for the integration of geospatial and AEC (architecture, engineering and constcruction) views of city infrastructure which provides a standards-based basis for full-lifecycle management from design through to operations and maintenance of infrastructure projects.

At GeoBusiness 2017 in London, Nigel Clifford, CEO of the Ordnance Survey, described a project that is intended to create a smart city model for four square kilometers of Manchester called cityverve.  The objective is to apply Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to a real city.  It is supported by Manchester City Council, Manchester Science Partnerships, the University of Manchester, Ordnance Survey, Cisco, BT and other tech players and well as government and Innovate UK.  It is intended to provide an open platform of platforms.  Among the fundamanental things that will be required to do this is open standards for modeling city infrastructure and to make this accessible to the geospatial and AEC communities.

Years ago private Dutch engineering and construction companies began adopting an integrated geospatial/BIM approach to construction.  I blogged previously about the firm Royal BAM Group nv / BAM Infraconsult that adopted integrated BIM and GIS because many of its projects require full life-cycle BIM.  At the first GeoBIM conference in Amsterdam, Jothijs van Gaalen gave some real world examples of Design, Build, Finance and Maintain (DBFM) highway construction that included GIS+BIM integration. BAM's motivation for investing in BIM+GIS are market developments especially more complex construction assignments and an increasing demand from customers for service provision throughout the entire life cycle of a project.   As another example, ARCADIS Netherlands has delivered a number of projects that integrate geospatial into the design process.

The Netherlands has also led in the development and application of open BIM/geospatial standards‎ in the construction industry including NL/SfB, BS&I, ETIM, CB-NL, IMGeo, CityGML, NLCS, GB-CAS, COINS, IFC, VISI, SALES, National Model BIM Protocol, and National Model BIM Implementation Plan.  The Netherlands has created a BIM Loket (BIM Gateway) that is intended to be a national portal for information about BIM and open BIM standards in the Netherlands including related geospatial standards. 

In the AEC world Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) are the open and neutral data format standard for the exchange of building information models (BIM) that is widely used in the AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction)  sector.  The IFC standard was developed and is supported by buildingSMART International.  The IFC BIM standard is used in the construction industry in many countries and is mandated in some such as Finland.  The first versions of IFC were intended for buildings (vertical BIM).  Recently buildingSMART initiated the IFC for Infrastructure project to extend the IFC standard to support linear transportation infrastructure (horizontal BIM or BIM for Infrastructure) such as rail, road, bridges, and tunnels. 

In the transportation infrastructure world the widely used LandXML standard, which is supported by  800 members in the roads and highway transportation sector, includes alignment, road, rail, survey, terrain, land parcels, drainage, wastewater, and water distribution systems.  LandXML is not associated with a recognized international standards organization and has had limited support for the past few years. 

In the geospatial world a widely used international geospatial standard for cities is CityGML.  Thomas Kolbe and co-workers are the developers of the CityGML standard that has been adopted by the Open Geospatial Consortium.  Kolbe et al. are translating a vision of the city as an interactive system comprised of functional components, utility networks connecting components, and interdependencies between utility networks into standards-based intelligent models that can be used to analyze urban environments for a variety of purposes including risk- and disaster management energy consumption, carbon balancing and city life-cycle management.

Currently CityGML includes 3D geometry, topology, semantics, and appearance for urban environments. CityGML also supports a standard mechanism for adding extensions, called Application Domain Extensions (ADEs).  There are several Application Domain Extensions (ADEs) that have been developed to extend CityGML to other domains.  For example,  I blogged about a basic extension UtilityNetworksADE that was proposed for city utility networks.  The INSPIRE Data Specifications Annex III contains use case encodings and a data model for Buildings the development of which was strongly influenced by CityGML. There have been attempts to integrate or at least develop a mapping between IFC and CityGML. 

The major breakthrough in bringing the architectural and geospatial views onto a common footing is the OGC LandInfra Conceptual Model developed by the OGC in cooperation with buildingSMART International and approved as an OGC standard in August, 2016.  LandInfra  was developed by Bentley Systems, Leica Geosystems, Trimble, Australian Government Department of Communications, Autodesk, Vianova Systems AS, and buildingSMART International and provides a unifying basis for land and civil engineering standards including the OGC's InfraGML and buildingSmart International's IFC for infrastructure standards.  

buildingSmart International's IFC-Alignment project uses this common conceptual model of alignments for roads, railways, tunnels and bridges.  The objectives of the IFC-Alignment project is to enable the exchange of alignment information through the full infrastructure lifecyle from planning through design and construction to asset management. A Candidate IFC-Alignment Standard is open for review now.

InfraGML is the OGC's application schema supporting land development and civil engineering infrastructure facilities. InfraGML supports a subset of the existing LandXML standard. InfraGML is comprised of several parts;

• Part 0: LandInfra Core Encoding Standard
• Part 1: LandInfra Land Features Encoding Standard
• Part 2: LandInfra Facilities and Projects Encoding Standard
• Part 3: LandInfra Alignments Encoding Standard
• Part 4: LandInfra Roads Encoding Standard
• Part 5: LandInfra Railways Encoding Standard
• Part 6: LandInfra Survey Encoding Standard
• Part 7: LandInfra Land Division - Encoding Standard

The Candidate OGC InfraGML encoding Standards was released for public comment in January of this year.  In April the Candidate OGC InfraGML 1.0: Part 7 – LandInfra Land Division - Encoding Standard was released.

At GeoBusiness 2017 in London, Phil Jackson of buildingSmart UK and UK Representative Infrastructure Room provided an update on the progress in extending IFC for infrastructure based on a common BIM/geospatial conceptual model;

• Linear alignments for road and rail - under deployment testing
• Common infrastructure architecture - developed jointly with OGC
• IFC for rail - an initial Chinese specification has been published
• IFC Bridges - just started

and several more are in active planning or ready to start;

• IFC for ports and harbours - starts this summer
• IFC for roads - ready to start
• IFC tunnel - planned

Thus it appears that building geospatial and AEC standards for transportation and land management based on a common conceptual model and developing in parallel is well advanced.

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.

Private infrastructure funding and investment

Until 2004 almost all the funding of investment projects was by governments and traditional lending institutions, primarily commercial banks. Pure financial investors were almost absent as equity investors in major infrastructure projects. Global  infrastructure  fundraising  for  private  equity  investments  in  infrastructure began in  2004.  In  2007, just before the global financial crisis, this type of fundraising had reached  $39.7 billion.  This was  15% of  the total infrastructure project  finance loans  that year.  After the financial crisis,  fundraising for private equity investments dropped significantly to about 10.5% of total project finance loans. Fundraising set a post-Great Financial Crisis (GFC) high in 2015, but the midyear total for 2016 already exceeded that.

Sources of private equity

The primary pure financial investors in equity for infrastructure are pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and insurance companies.  According  to  the  OECD, total assets held by pension funds globally was US$ 16.2 trillion. The top 70 insurance companies hold $20.7 trillion in assets.  Sovereign wealth funds hold an estimated $7.3-7.4 trillion in assets.

The OECD has estimated that the  total  commitment of  pension  funds to  infrastructure  in  2008 was $400 billion, primarily utilities,  but with around $60 billion invested in infrastructure other than utilities. An OECD  survey  of  large  pension  funds in 2013 showed that some funds had allocated important percentages to infrastructure.

The majority of sovereign wealth funds have infrastructure investments. A  recent  paper reported  that with total assets of $5.2tn  at  the  end  of 2012, sovereign wealth funds had invested $52 billion in infrastructure  between  2005  and 2012.  In 2013, the OECD surveyed a sample of the most important sovereign wealth funds worldwide and found that the percentage allocation of assets to infrastructure was signifiant with some reaching 10 - 12% of assets.

There are about  200  insurance companies worldwide with investments in infrastructure. Most of these are  located  in  Europe  and the USA,  with   about 20%  of  them in Asia. Insurance  companies typically invest in primary equity.

The Towers Watson and Financial Times’ Investor Survey 2013 reported that, out of the $3.1 trillion total assets under management by the top 100 investment asset managers, $127.6 billion was invested in  infrastructure.  It was also found that pension funds and sovereign wealth funds were  the most heavily invested  in infrastructure with 9% and 10% of their total assets, respectively.

According to the Willis Towers Watson Global Alternative Investment Assets Survey 2016, almost all private financial institutions are either not yet invested in infrastructure or are below their target allocation, but the demand is there.  According to Willis Towers Watson, "the reality is that the requirement for private investment in infrastructure is immense in all geographic regions."

Sources

Private Equity Institutional Investor Trends for 2016, Probitas Partners

PRIVATE FINANCING AND GOVERNMENT SUPPORT TO PROMOTE LONG-TERM INVESTMENTS IN INFRASTRUCTURE

Global Alternative Investment Assets Survey 2016 – Report Summary

Pension Fund Investment in Infrastructure OECD

World's Top Insurance Companies