Between the Poles

Grid resilience demands we understand our infrastructure above and below ground

Jay Cadman, SVP Enterprise, IQGeo

As the glue interlinking everything from the industrial ‘Internet of Things’ to smart grids and underpinning the real-time social and economic services of the future, full fiber and 5G is increasingly recognized as an essential national utility. With superfast broadband forming the enabling technology for social and economic progress, any outages could have an equally devastating effect to power or water shortages. Europe is already pioneering ways of improving infrastructure’s resilience to climate change. This is becoming increasingly critical as superfast broadband faces a more distributed, fluctuating and unpredictable threat landscape than ever before.

Full-fiber cables are vulnerable to underground water while 5G will move radio signals to even higher frequencies where they are more susceptible to weather interference. For example, Hurricane Sandy damaged Verizon’s Northeast network and some basement-level communications hubs, while in 2018 Hurricane Michael caused major flood damage to underground fiber-optic cables in Florida. Achieving resilience across the telecoms sector will mean understanding the complex intersection of infrastructure above and below ground. Future fixed and mobile connectivity networks will all be 5G so that everything from underground fiber cables to radio waves will need to be managed as a single interconnected ecosystem above and below ground. Knowing the location of all infrastructure will be critical to understanding where all our fiber optic cables and 5G antennae intersect with the people and places that will need them. It is also vital to understand the common vulnerabilities that could produce a single point of failure affecting multiple overground and underground networks. Infrastructure planners will need to know the location of 5G networks in relation to nearby threats and hazards. Hazard data may even need to be shared with rival telecoms operators and authorities to ensure common resilience across the sector.

The Data Gap

This presents a major challenge because many telcos do not have current, comprehensive data on overground and underground assets in an integrated, easily accessible and shareable format. Many current systems fail to fully capture live insights from both workforce and network assets. Network data is rarely held in a modern, mobile-friendly format which is accessible to field workers or contractors. Many networks do not link all network data with location, which is critical to understanding risks in all regions of their network. Smaller operators are frequently not documenting their network in a digital SoR (System of Record). All too often, network data is not only siloed within an organization, but also incompatible with external datasets such as meteorological or ecological satellite data. This also means it cannot easily be shared with other organizations or authorities to help combat common vulnerabilities and ensure sector-wide resilience.

For example, there are 3.4 million miles of underground infrastructure including data lines and fiber-optic cables in the UK alone, yet there is no up-to-date or integrated map of this subterranean labyrinth. This makes it impossible to achieve common resilience against underground threats such as flooding or to see how other present or planned underground utility infrastructure might pose hazards to telecoms networks.

To help prioritize critical services and customers for maintenance or upgrades, operators need comprehensive and current location-based information on underground fiber-optic networks in relation to all the critical settlements and services that depend on them. Similarly, without a single map of infrastructure above ground, operators cannot predict how local weather might affect antennae.

In a pioneering example of what could be achieved, London is working with companies to create a combined mobile-friendly map of its subterranean infrastructure where the site and source of hazards in relation to overground services can be swiftly identified.

Achieving resilience

Telecoms’ unpredictable, varied, and fluctuating threat landscape means operators must now go beyond reactive risk management and recovery and adopt forward thinking and predictive network resilience. Creating resilient 5G networks will require a holistic overview of the site and the source of potential threats across overground and underground infrastructures. Crucially, all fixed and mobile networks will need to be managed as an interconnected ecosystem regardless of the location of physical infrastructure. Key to this challenge is the ability to combine data from multiple sources and harness all of a network’s assets as a source of real-time threat intelligence. This means adopting geospatial information systems capable of capturing a wide array of network data from employee smartphones to IoT sensors and matching it with precise and accurate location data to reveal the locus and the solution for every problem anywhere in the network. Accurate SoRs and ‘as-builts’ are critical to ensuring a comprehensive and current risk overview across all infrastructure and effectively targeting mitigation strategies, from repositioning antennae away from threats to replacing copper wire with fiber-optic cable. Matching all telecoms data with location data is essential to contextualizing threats, revealing interdependencies with neighboring infrastructure that could create shared vulnerabilities, and identifying priority customers or communities to protect. Using open platforms capable of integrating network information with external sources is also vital to allowing important information to be shared with authorities or other operators. This also allows network data to be merged with relevant external sources of risk intelligence such as weather or vegetation data.

Below I have outlined some steps companies can take to create data-driven resilient grids.

Step 1: Democratize network data

Operators must devolve responsibility for updating network information across the workforce, from field technicians to office managers. This involves harnessing open, mobile-friendly geospatial information platforms that can capture information from a decentralized array of sources, from IoT sensors to field worker smartphones. As-builts and systems of record should be digitized and easily accessible to workers on the ground who can ensure they stay accurate and up to date. This empowers workers, creating a sense of collective responsibility for network intelligence and resilience. Opening up network data should also extend to the use of open APIs to integrate location-based network data with important information from external sources such as weather hazard data.

Step 2: Risk assessment and resilience

Assess the network to identify and remove systemic vulnerabilities and single points of failure. Since all fixed and mobile networks will ultimately be 5G, organizations must ensure they have integrated, comprehensive and current geospatial information on all infrastructure above and below ground so they can easily identify threats. Companies should be creating network-wide digital ‘dashboards’ tracking live, location-based intelligence revealing the site and source of hazards such as storms or cyber-attacks. Operators must ensure they can capture live information from any device in the field, and that their network location data is accurate and up-to-date, so they can take rapid remedial action or mitigate risks specific to each region. Virtualization of networks also means the equipment itself can indicate risk or damage and this can be matched with location data to create a digital twin of networks that encourages more agile, adaptable risk management.

Step 3: System resilience & security

Whether organizations adopt third-party cloud environments or bring this in-house, they must support geographic resilience, system redundancy, and the latest advances in cyber security. Critical network software must ensure data is duplicated and encrypted to drastically lower the likelihood of singular points of failure.

Step 4: Incident response

Have a company-wide damage assessment and incident response strategy, both to preempt current threats and to provide insights which can be used to predict and prevent future risks. Organizations should start by creating a live, location-based overview of damage, degradation, or hazards to the network across both overground to underground infrastructure. Incorporating this data into incident reports not only helps create more rapid and even predictive maintenance of networks, but also encourages a proactive and predictive risk management model that can draw on past incidents to inform future solutions. For example, data on regions at risk of flooding can be used to protect nearby fiber-optic cables but also to inform planning of future networks that mitigates identified risks. In this way, networks grow collectively stronger and smarter from every incident.

Step 5: Practice

Stress-test systems, people, and processes with regular rehearsals to ensure resilience is drilled into all company procedures, workers, and systems. Just as companies perform health and safety training, they should test and train all assets for network resilience. This will ensure that best practice is baked into the organization.

The threats facing the telecoms industry today are constantly changing, extreme weather and other recent trends pose the threat of a ‘black swan event’ that affects entire systems of networks. However, by digitizing and decentralizing network data and creating proactive resilience strategies, telecoms organizations can take control. As 5G networks increasingly comprise a mix of networks and infrastructures above and below ground, the key is to integrate live data from all assets and manage telecoms grids holistically as a single living ecosystem. It is vital that network geospatial systems are a ‘living document’ constantly drawing on live intelligence from the field.

Contributed article by Jay Cadman, SVP Enterprise, IQGeo

 

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.

Modeling multi-utility interdependent underground networks for disaster management in cities

On this blog most of the discussion relating to underground infrastructure has been focused on construction focussing on the risks to workers and the public and the drag on the economics of construction.  There are other important impacts to not knowing where underground utilities and telecommunications infrastructure are.  During natural and man-made emergencies, there are two problems relating to underground infrastructure that emergency managers have to face.  The first is that, as Scott Sternfeld emphasized at the December Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Energy Summit at EPRI in Charlotte, there is no public regional, state or national outage map in the U.S.  Emergency management personnel have to go to each utility one by one. Utilities may not have an online outage map, which means calling them.  This problem is exacerbated by a lack of shared, reliable information about the location of infrastructure.  Together these problems severely hamper first responders.  At the Energy Summit Tatjana Kutzner, working with Thomas Kolbe, presented on a utility extension to the OGC standard for city modeling, CityGML, that allows modeling of multi-utility networks in an urban environment including interdependencies between them.

Disaster management use case

Thomas Becker; Claus Nagel and Thomas H. Kolbe

I remember being impressed by the UK Environment Agency's flood modeling simulations after the 2007 floods in the UK.  And also by Ergon Energy's flood assessment during the Queensland floods in 2011.  In both these examples a digital terrain model and information about building footprints and elevations were used to determine if a substation or a pumping station were likely affected.  It seemed to me at the time that using that information plus network connectivity from utilities would make it possible to determine customers who likely were without power or water.  From a utility GIS perspective this is not a difficult calculation.  Many utilities know for about 85% of their customers which feeder they are attached to and a simple network trace would enable them to determine who will likely be affected by a transformer or substation outage.  Thomas Kolbe and co-workers having been working for some time on a standards-based model for interdependent utility networks to provide a foundation for this type of modeling.

Thomas Becker; Claus Nagel and Thomas H. Kolbe

The next step is determining interdependencies.  If a feeder providing power to a pumping station has lost power, then using the water utility's network connectivity it is possible to determine which customers are likely without water.  If all interdependencies are considered including electric power, communications, water, district heating, and others it is possible to determine all the customers who are affected by a storm or other disaster, how they are affected and to prioritize restoration efforts.

Integrated modeling of multi-utility networks

Standards exist for modeling specific types of utility networks, for example, for electric power the CIM and Multispeak standards are widely used.  However, there is currently no standard for representing all utilities in an urban environment including interdependencies. At the Energy Summit Tatjana Kutzner presented on the work that she and others are doing to address this serious lack of sharable information for emergency managers.

To provide emergency managers access to the utility information they need to put together a composite assessment of the impact of a storm, flood or other disaster requires a model that can model network 3D geometry (location), topology and function, can represent all utility networks simultaneously, can represent the interdependencies between them, is hierachical - able to represent high, medium and low voltage electric or transmission and distribution water networks, and is able to interact with a city model to ultimately determine who is affected by a disaster and how.  Such a model makes enables analysis and visualization during a disaster and to simulate different different disaster scenarios.

Utility application domain extension (ADE)

Thomas Kolbe and co-workers are the developers of the CityGML standard that has been adopted by the Open Geospatial Consortium.  There are several Application Domain Extensions (ADEs) that have been developed to extend CityGML to other domains.  In 2010 a basic extension Utility Networks ADE was proposed for city utility networks.  The intention is to model infrastructure networks both as a 3D topographic, topological and and functional network. In other words, this is not simply a compilation of network as-builts, but includes the function of each component and its relationships to other components.  It knows the difference between different network topologies; water, electric power, steam, wastewater, and communications.  It also knows the interdependencies between different networks.

Tatjana explained how the Utility Network ADE extends CityGML to utilities with a common network core, different network components including functional components and materials classes and packages for specific utilities: electricity, district heating, water and so on.  She also discussed how the Utility ADE relates to existing network  standards.  For example, the electric network package is based on CIM and allows interoperability with CIM.  It doesn't include all of CIM, but only those elements that are important for the use cases that the Utility ADE is intended to address.

Underground utilities in Berlin SIMKAS 3D

Applications

She described a several projects that have used the utility ADE to model different disaster scenarios.

• Simulating cascading failures in Berlin (SIMCAS 3D)
• Risk analysis of supply infrastructure for the German Armed Forces.  Simulation of the propagation of an explosion at a substation to determine how many people would be affected in order to estimate the number of water trucks that would be required to provide water.
• Linking below ground and above ground infrastructure (Xander den Dujin Masters Thesis TU Delft).  Simulation of damage to the below ground electric power network and using pgRoute to determine which street lights would be out.
• Modelling, simulation and visualization of dependencies between drinking water and electrical networks at a combined drinking water facility hydroelectric power station in Nanaimo, British Columbia (Isaac Boates Masters Thesis University of Applied Sciences Karlsruhe).

I should add parenthetically that although there is no public regional, state or national outage map in the U.S.  there are ways of mapping outages using social networks.  DataCapable's Global Power Outage Tracker mines social media and then generates map visualizations using a GIS.  The data is presented on a mapping dashboard, showing the time and location of each tweet found.

Conclusion

The Utility Network ADE Core extension supports geospatial, topographic and functional modeling of multi-utility networks.  It supports modeling of different types of networks including electric power, water, and gas networks.  Because it is an extension to the CityGML urban model the ADE supports linking utility networks with city structures including residential, commercial and industrial.  It is designed to build on existing utility network models such as CIM for electric power networks. It provides a data model for modeling multi-utility scenarios including interdependencies and can be applied for analyzing, visualizing and simulating the disaster scenarios mentioned at the beginning of this blog which involve cascading network failures.  In addition it probably contains all of the data elements required for including distribution analytics for electric power and water networks which would enable this to provide the basis for dynamic modeling of multi-utility networks.

Standards-based intelligent modeling of urban multi-utility networks

In a paper Semantic 3D Modeling of Multi-utility networks in Cities presented at GSDI 2012 in Quebec City, Thomas Becker; Claus Nagel and Thomas H. Kolbe have outlined how they 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
• City life-cycle management

The see ciities as being very complex, diverse and highly interrelated, that is a system of systems, buildings, utility infrastructure, transportation infrastructure, health and social, and so on.  Many different players are involved in designing, building, running and maintaining a city, and each needs a different view of the city. The advantage of having a model of the city is that it provides a simplified representation of the city that provided "ontological and semantic clarity".

Thomas Kolbe and co-workers are the developers of the CityGML standard that has been adopted by the Open Geospatial Consortium.  There are several Application Domain Extensions (ADEs) that have been developed to extend CityGML to other domains.  In 2010 a basic extension UtilityNetworksADE was proposed for city utility networks, and at Quebec it was announced that this was being futher extended.

The intention is to model infrastructure networks both as a 3D topographic, topological and and functional network. In other words, this is not simply a compilation of network as-builts, but includes the function of each component and its relationships to other components.  It knows the difference between different network topologies; water, electric power, steam, wastewater, and communications.  It also knows the interdependencies between different networks.  For example, in case of a flood, from the digital terrain model, it is possible to determine which electric power substations are flooded, from the electric power network topology, which feeders are no longer operative, from the relationships between the electric power and water networks, which pumping stations are no longer operating, and ultimately who is without water and power.

Functionally, every utility network ias modeled by three types of components

1. Distribution elements (conductors, pipes, fiber cables) − For distribution of electric power, gas, and messages.
2. Protection devices (fuses, relays, breakers, and ducts) − Does not actually carry electric current, water, gas, or messages, but supports the distribution system.
3. Functional components (man-holes, water treatment plants, substations, pumping stations and switches) − Needed for linkage, maintenance, and measurement

I like to think of these as connected elements where the connectivity between elements allows traces, from a customer experiencing an outage to a failed device such as a transformer or substation or from a failed device to all affected customers, structural elements, which support the connected elements such as poles or ducts, and devices which generate, transform, switch, and measure.

To better understand this implication of this approach,Kolbe et al have compiled a model database of 1.313,821 infrastructure elements including interdependencies between different networks. Addendum According the Thomas Kolbe (personal communication), for each utility company in Berlin involved in the SIMKAS-3D project (Vattenfall - electricity and district heating, GASAG - gas, and Berlin Water - drinking water and waste water), his team implemented a converter from the respective utility's dataset to the CityGML ADE utility model using Safe Software's FME.

EEA report focuses on integrated water, energy, and landuse efficiency

The European Commission intends to publish a 'Blueprint to safeguard Europe's Water Resources' by the end of 2012. The Blueprint will set out policies for efficient use of water resources in Europe.   Since the Water Framework Directive(WFD) was adopted in 2000, EU water policy has aimed at achieving "good status" of all EU waters by 2015. 

Among other objectives the Blueprint will address water efficiency.  The Blueprint will provide "first indications" for water efficiency targets including the development of water efficiency targets at the sectoral and river basin level. In addition, it will ain at improving water efficiency in buildings and in distribution networks.  The time horizon of the Blueprint is 2020, but the analysis supporting the Blueprint will cover up to 2050.

The European Environment Agency (EEA) has just published the first in a series of five reports that EEA will publish in 2012 to support the development of the Blueprint. This first report focusses on resource efficiency.

Some of the major global issues that will impact the EU are growing global demand for food and increasing cultivation of biofuel crops, recognition of the interdependence of water, energy and land use, and the impact of climate change.  As a result of climate change much of Europe will likely face reduced water availability during summer months and the frequency and intensity of drought is projected to increase in the south.

The report argues that to enable sustainable economic production future economic growth must be decoupled from environmental impacts and that this requires increased resource-efficiency innovations and limits to environmental impact.  The Water Framework Directive was intended to define the limits to water environemntal impact by defining and mandating 'good status' objective for EU water bodies.

Resource-efficient technologies in agricultural irrigation, water supply and treatment can deliver substantial water savings.  Sustainable public and industrial water management depends on innovative production treatments and processes, ecological design in buildings and better urban planning.

The report recognizes the interdependence of water use, energy production, and land use.  For example, technologies that cut water use also help to reduce energy use. The energy intensity of deslaination
requires the development of renewable energy.  Hydropower while reducung emissions has impacts on water ecosystems, which limits the growth potential of hydropower compared to wind and solar energy.

Some of the economic measures that the report anticipates can inprove water efficiency includes water pricing and market-based policies.  Water prices and tariffs should reflect the true costs of water including environmental and resource costs. In the case of public water supply, volumetric pricing and metering needs to generate adequate revenues to finance resource-efficiency measures and upgrade aging infrastructure. Utilities expenditures and investments needs to be transparent to consumers.  For water used in irrigation, pricing structures should provide more incentives for resource efficiency removal of adverse agricultural subsidies should be a priority.

The report also promates an integrated apprioach to sustainable water management,  Water efficiency must be consideres together with resource efficiency s energy and land use.  The WFD provides the limits to environmental sustainability that should be applied in an integrated approach to define common limits for sustainability for the competing users in all sectors including agriculture, energy, transport and tourism. This will require strong intersectoral exchange, particularly in operational water management at the river basin level.

GITA Japan: Critical Infrastructure

Last week I had the opportunity to present at GITA Japan's 19th annual conference, held this year at Tokyu University. I found it very well attended both vendors and service providers and utility and telecommunications companies.  There were some very thought provoking presentations by international as well as Japanese speakers.

Introduction - Professor Sakura Shinoaki

Professor Shinoaki is well-known in Japan and in GITA because he was instrumental in designing the Road Administration Information Center (ROADIC)  system which was deployed first in Tokyo and then in most major cities in Japan.  I visited the ROADIC site in Tokyo several years ago and GITA sponsored a ROADIC Study Mission in 2003. 

Thanks to the ROADIC system Tokyo in one of the few places in the world where there is a single location where you can find accurate maps of all outside infrastructure including telecommunications and utilities, and in what I would call 2.5D.   The other cities I am aware of are Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta, and Sarajevo, Bosnia, where until recently the location of all utilities was recorded on paper maps.  This has been done for the past 40 years.  In the UK the Traffic Management Act, which received Royal Assent two years ago, but has only been implemented in April of this year, is a first step toward achieving a similar capability on a national scale.

The business benefits of a single site mapping all utilities and telecom infrastructure, for example, for  call-before-you-dig services, are so compelling that I continue to be surprised that every jurisdiction has not mandated this.  But I think that when you consider the additional benefits in a disaster situation such as Ike or Katrina in the US or the 2007 floods in the UK, I really think it is just a matter of time.

The Importance of Infrastructure Interdependencies - Bob Samborski

In 2004 GITA responded to Federal Government initiatives by beginning what became GITA's Geospatially Enabling Community Collaboration (GECCo) to enhance a coordinated response to emergencies using geospatial data.  Bob Samborski and Dave DiSera has been instrumental in this initiative and their presentations focussed on issues relating to critical infrastructure protection.

Perhaps the most startling slides that Bob showed  was the size of the challenge in the US.  The sheer numbers of facilities is staggering. 

One of the very persuasive examples of the interdependence of critical infrastructure is the Baltimore Howard Street Tunnel train derailment.  The derailment caused a fire, which lead to a water main fracture, which resulted in a flood, which led to a power outage which affected 100 000 people.  As well a fibre optic cable running through the tunnel was destroyed, and train services was disrupted for a significant period of time with the result that coal could not be delivered to a thermal power plant, ...

The Geospatial Dimensions of Critical Infrastructure - Dave DiSera

Dave discussed how proximity is an important factor in the interdependence of critical infrastructure and gave as one example a high voltage power line, a gas pipeline, and a waterway all within close proximity so that a major problem with the pipeline, for example, would most certainly impact power transmission and thereby a large number of people, as well as a significant transporation artery.

He also discussed models that have been developed for critical infrastructure interdependence by a number of organizations, but singled out those developed by Idaho National Lab, Argonne National lab, the Government of Canada, and Las Alamos National Lab.

An Overview of the Victorian Government Spatial Strategy...Initiatives and Issues - Neil Smith

Neil Smith is with the Department of Transportation of the Victorian Government.  I have blogged previously about the industry leading initiatives in the area of spatial data sharing by the Victorian Government.  Neil provided insight into the organizational structure of the Victorian Government that have enabled these initiatives to happen.  But the thing that Neil talked about that really rang a bell with me is how pervasive data redundancy is within governments, indeed organizations, everywhere.  The concepts of a single point of truth and custodianship appear to be the central foundation on which Victorian Government is attempting to do to address the problem of data redundancy.

Geographical Survey Institute - Yamato Tanaka

One of the interesting presentation in Japanese that I only partly understood was by Yamato Tanaka who talked about an initiative at the Federal government level to create a shared database that integrates geospatial data from all levels of data including Prefectural and Municipal.  From what I understood tallking to people in local government is Japan, one of the challenges is how this effort is going to be funded, by the Federal government or my local government.  It struck me that there are there are analogies with the attempt by DHS to create and implement a common data model GDM for sharing geospatial data at the state and local level in the US.

Crumbling Infrastructure

I've blogged several times about crumbling infrastructure in North America and the score card prepared by the American Society of Civil Engineers assessing the state of US infrastructure.  I mentioned this during my presentation in Japan and I was surprised to learn that there is a similar effort going on in Japan.  I say surprised, because Japanese infrastructure, at least what I have seen of Japanese streets, roads, and highways, and electric infrastructure, appears to be so much better maintained that what we are famliiar with in much of North America, both in the US and Canada.

UMPC for utilities

Finally, I'll mention that I have been interested in UMPCs for several years.  I have carried an OQO around with me for several years.  I've blogged about UMPCs and have encouraged utilities and telecommunications firms that I meet with to take a look at them.  At least two vendors at GITA Japan were showing mobile applications running on handheld devices.  The one I looked at was running on a Fujitsu U810 with a 5.6" screen, 40 GB h/d and running Vista.  Quite an impressive small device for about C$1200 which is about US$1000 these days, much cheaper than Panasonic Toughbooks, the standard mobile device for many utilities, that cost 4X to 6X times more.