Between the Poles

OGC's new Urban Planning group releases draft charter

An Urban Planning Domain Working Group (DWG) is being chartered to define the role for OGC standards and related activities related to urban planning.  It is also intended to provide an open forum for the discussion of interoperability requirements, use cases, pilots, and implementations of OGC standards in this domain.  The OGC seeks comments from the public on the draft new charter. The comment period closes on  6 August 2014.

Technologies and trends such as Augmented Reality (AR), Smart Cities, Smart Grids, Sensor Webs, the Internet of Things (IoT), LBS (Location Based Services), Facilities Management, navigation (indoor and outdoor) and “Big Data” Analytics all can play important roles in informing urban planners.  In these technology domains, open standards can facilitate the development, publication, discovery, and use of information. The OGC Urban Planning DWG intends to discover requirements for open geospatial standards in information systems involved in the planning, design, use, maintenance and governance of publicly accessible spaces.

The Internet of Things forecasted to include 26 billion intelligent devices by 2020

In 2009 there were about 10¹⁹ transistors shipped in 2009, or over 1 billion per person.  It is estimated that the  number of smartphones, tablets and PCs in use will reach about 7.3 billion units in 2020.  It is projected that component costs will become so inexpensive that connectivity will become a standard feature even for devices costing less than $1.

According to a Gartner report, the Internet of Things (IoT) which Gartner defines as the "network of physical objects that contain embedded technology to communicate and sense or interact with their internal states or the external environment" and which excludes PCs, tablets and smartphones,  will expand to 26 billion units installed by 2020 up significantly from 0.9 billion in 2009. 

According to Gartner the IoT includes the devices (hardware), embedded software, communications services and information services such as geolocation associated with the things. Gartner refers to the companies that provide the hardware, software and services as IoT suppliers.   Gartner said that IoT product and service suppliers will generate incremental revenue of about $309 billion, mostly in services. 

The economic value-add which represents the aggregate benefits that businesses derive through the sale and usage of IoT will reach $1.9 trillion across all sectors in 2020.  The verticals that are leading the adoption of IoT are manufacturing (15 %), healthcare (15 %) and insurance (11 %).  The IoT includes sector-specific technology such as automated manufacturing systems and more generic technology such as "smart building" technologies.

A recent study by Cisco of the Internet of Things (Cisco calls it the Internet of Everything) estimated that it represents a $19 trillion global opportunity over the next decade.

Standards for the Internet of Things

Geospatial information is a cross-cutting requirement of many intelligent devices participating inthe IoT.  The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC, which creates and manages standards that enable geospatial interoperability, and the International Telecommunications Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) are jointly collaborating on the advancement of standards for the Internet of Things (IoT).  As part of this effort the OGC has submitted the OGC Open GeoSMS standard for adoption through the ITU.  In addition the ITU-T has just published a ITU-T Technology Watch Report: Location matters: Spatial standards for the Internet of Things, written by staff and members of the OGC in collaboration with the ITU Secretariat.

UK Government aims at BIM Level 3 potentially supporting whole lifecycle modeling by 2018

The UK Government's goals for construction industry is to reduce the CAPEX for public construction (design and build) projects and to reduce the UK's carbon intensity in line with its EU carbon committments. To reach its goal for the construction industry the UK Government has undertaken several initatives, one of which is a commitment to embrace Building Information Modelling (BIM) in Government projects over a 5-year time frame, to encourage industry to participate in this effort, and to position the UK to become a world leader in BIM.

The UK Government has explicitly targeted Level 2 BIM in the maturity ramp, defined as “file based collaboration and library management.”  Level 2 BIM is a series of domain specific models (e.g. architectural, structural, services etc)  where structured data can be shared based on COBie UK 2012.

The inital focus is on the design/build part of the lifecycle, but the government has said that "the 20% saving refers to CapEx cost savings however we know that the largest prize for BIM lies in the operational stages of the project life-cycle"

BIM Level 3

The UK Government is projecting that Level 3 BIM will be introduced in 2018. BIM Level 3 is not yet clearly defined but according to Peter Hansford could include big data, support for intelligent infrastructure including smart grid, and enabling smart city models. It could go beyond several subsystem BIM models in BIM Level 2 to a single model.  Most interestingly according to Peter Hansford it could provide the basis for whole lifecycle modeling, allowing a building design to be optimized for the whole life cost and whole life carbon footprint.

According to Paul Morrell, Former Chief Construction Adviser, UK, although some companies are claiming to use BIM Level 3, no one is delivering its full potential of this technology.  A recent poll of 410 live webinar participants found that no one is operating at BIM Level 3 at present. 

Whole Lifecycle

In a panel discussion on BIM Level 3, Rich Saxon, the UK Government's BIM Ambassador dor Growth, pointed out that some aspects of BIM Level 2 are incomplete which makes talking about adoption of BIM Level 3 extremely ambitious.  In agreement with Peter Hansford, he see an important goal of BIM Level 3 should be to go beyond projects to whole lifecycle.  In the future he foresees that firms will offer whole life projects including design, build, and maintain. For example, Phillips will design, build and maintain building lighting which is leased to the building owner.  He warned that the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) is poised to be disruptive.  We can imagine buildings with sensors and analytics able to monitor, analyse and dynamically respond without human intervention to building situational awareness.

Interoperability across the construction lifecycle and the need for standards

Ian Chapman, Director of the National BIM Library, said that part of BIM Level 3 should be standards - because these make it possible for software to interoperate, which enables data integration across the construction lifecycle (plan, desing, build, O&M).   It also makes it possible to find efficiencies by direct comparison of different projects and project outcomes.  Software interoperability requires a BIM geometry standard like IFC, a clasification standard like Uniclass 2, an information delivery manual (IDM), and a data dictionary (DD).  For example, ISO 29481-1:2010 specifies a methodology and format for the development of an information delivery manual (IDM) and is intended to facilitate interoperability between software applications used in the construction process, to promote digital collaboration between actors in the construction process and to provide a basis for reliable information exchange. The data dictionary as Ian Chapman presented it appears to be very close to the concept library (CB-NL) sponsored by by the Dutch Council on Building Information (BIR) that maps the same objects with different names across the construction lifecycle.

Enabling the right people to make decisions

Anne Kemp, Director of BIM at Atkins Global, argued that there needs to be conversation at the national level to deicde what do we really want from BIM Level 3 ?  .Her perspective is that the most important goal of BIM Level3 is that it  needs to enable the right people to make decisions.  For example, in 2007  Tewkesbury was flooded, but not in the most recent flooding because changes were made – the right people were enabled to make the right decisions.

Itron study finds that the utility industry needs to reinvent itself through technology

Itron has published its first annual Itron Resourcefulness Index. It is a study based on a survey of utility executives from the gas, water and electricity industries as well as utility consumers. 800 informed consumers and 600 utility executives in 14 countries were asked to respond to questions about the state for the global utility industry.

Concern about the current state of the utility industry

Respondents indicated that there is a significant level of concern about the state of the utility industry.   60 percent of utility executives and 70 percent of customers believe that utility operations are not efficient. 70 % of utility customers and 40 % of utility executives agreed that operational inefficiency lowers customer satisfaction.  The discrepancy between the utility executives and consumers points to another problem identified in this study.

94 percent of utility executives surveyed agreed that transformation of operations was essential to improve efficiency. The concern was greatest in the developing countries, especially China and India. Developed countries, in particular Spain, Australia and  Canada, had the lowest overall concern among both consumers and executives.

Noteworthy is the gap between the level of concern expressed by utility executives and consumers.  In every country consumers expressed greater concern about the state of the utility industry than utility executives.

Eight out of 10 consumers said they do not receive enough information from their utilities today, and seven out of 10 said they want to know more.

The survey also asked executives in the event that they lost 10% of their current budget, what would they cut.  Nearly six out of 10 executives said they would cut consumer education if budgets were reduced.  This points to a serious lack of communication between utility executives and consumers.

If utility executives had to deduct 10 percent from their budget, what would they reduce

• 23% Energy Efficiency / Water Conservation
• 26% Staff / Employees
• 20% Infrastructure
• 21% Upgrading Our Technology
• 33% Consumer/educational programs

Barriers to change

94 percent of utility executives identify government policy and uncertainty about regulations in the future as the most important barrier to infrastructure investment.  Consumers also seem to agree that government or a lack of policy is hindering infrastructure investment.

Which if the following do you believe are barriers to infrastructure investment ?

• 54% Government regulation that delays investment
• 45% Lack of clarity of government regulation
• 40% Uncertainties about the future of the industry
• 34% Difficulties with prioritizing where to invest
• 32% Lack of public funding
• 25% Lack of private funding
• 19% Need more time

Role of technology

Utility executives were also asked in the event that their budget was increased by 10%, where would they spend the money,  More than half of utility executives said that the very first thing they would do with more budget is spend it on technology.  Of these 68 % said they would invest in IT services and 58 % would invest in the sensor web often termed the “Internet of Things."

If Utility executives had an extra 10 percent in their budget, what would they spend it on ?

• 51% Upgrading Our Technology
• 43% Infrastructure
• 41% Staff / Employees
• 39% Energy Efficiency / Water Conservation
• 25% Consumer / Educational Programs

Big data and analytics

A large proportion (74 %) of utility executives feel big data analytics is going to be central to infrastructure modernization efforts. Six out of 10 consumers also believe big data drives utility operational efficiency.

According to this survey 46 percent of utility executive respondents feel prepared for big data analytics today. ( This is surprising.  A similar recent Oracle survey found that utilities are more prepared to manage the huge volumes of data that smart grids are capable of generating in 2013 than they were one year ago, but the majority still say they are unprepared.  In 2013 17 % of respondents said they are completely prepared compared to 9 % in 2012.) Consumers are very concerned about big data readiness, with only two out of 10 responding that utilities are prepared to take advantage of big data analytics today.

Utility executives liekly to invest in technology would choose

• 68% IT services (programs, software, hardware, etc.)
• 58% Internet of things (i.e. embedding sensors in physical objects)
• 45% Sensors
• 38% Meters

In summary

The Itron study found that there was near unanimity among utility executive and consumer respondents that the industry needs to transform itself. It found that consumers want help from utilities to better manage their resources and that policy and regulation are perceived as critical, but they are seen by both utility executives and consumers as a barrier to progress.  Communications between utilities and consumers needs to improve. Most of respondents see technology as the key to the transformation the utility industry needs to go through.

Internet of Things estimated to be a $19 trillion global opportunity over the next decade

A new study by Cisco of the Internet of Things (Cisco calls it the Internet of Everything) estimated that it represenst a $19 trillion global opportunity over the next decade. Of that $4.6 trillion is available to public-sector organizations through cost savings, increased productivity, new revenues and improved citizen experiences. 

The Internet of things is already affecting how cities deliver services and how citizens interact with government.  For cities Cisco estimates that IoT could provide $1.9 trillion in benefits by saving money, improving employee productivity, generating new revenue without increasing tax rates and improving citizen benefits.

Some specific areas where Cisco sees the potential for significant benefits include

• Smart buildings - by reducing energy consumption through the integration of HVAC and other systems could save generate $100 billion in operating costs
• Gas monitoring (gas AMI) -  by reducing meter-reading costs and increasing the accuracy of readings for citizens and municipal utility agencies could save $69 billion
• Smart parking - by providing real-time visibility into the availability of parking spaces across a city could save $41 billion
• Water management (water AMI) - connecting the household water meter over an IP network to provide remote information on use and status could save $39 billion
• Road pricing -  by implementing automatic payments as vehicles enter busy zones of cities could generate $18 billion in additional revenue.

Internet of things is becoming a reality: Nest Labs acquired by Google

Monday Google announced that it has entered into an agreement to buy Nest Labs for $3.2 billion in cash.

Back in November 2011, I blogged about several ex-Apple iPod engineers who got together to find a new way to change the world, and of all things decided that what the world needed is a high end smart thermostat that you don't have to program manually.   The result was Nest Labs and the Nest thermostat, which is not only stylish as you would expect from anyone with Apple experience, but smarter than any thermostat I have ever seen. There was a very good review in engadget.  According to Nest, The Nest Learning Thermostat programs itself in a week using its six sensors, which track temperature, ambient light, humidity and motion, near and far.  It knows, for instance, that no one is in the house after 8:30 am and that people are back after 5 pm. The Nest also detects if you're at home, even if you're not normally at home at that time, or that you're not when you normally are. You can install multiple thermostats and they can communicate with each other.  It also supports Wifi so you can control it from anywhere on the Internet.  This device could significantly reduce energy usage while maintaining or increasing consumer comfort levels

Since then they have developed a smoke and carbon monoxide detector called Nest Wave, that is also smarter than any of these types of devices.  In Ontario 22% of fires occur where there is no smoke detector or it has been disabled.  Smoke detectors are frequently disabled because they issue a really annoying, strident sound most often when you have burned the toast or overfried the chicken.  Nest Wave is designed to avoid that.  It's called Wave because waving at it will turn off the alarm sound.  Like the thermostat it is smart and automatically configures itself to the room.  If you move furniture and appliances around, it will reconfigure itself.  Best of all in my opinion the device gives you an early warning,  It lights up yellow and speaks with a human voice and tells you where smoke is or that carbon monoxide levels are increasing. This is an earlier warning if there’s a real emergency.  But if you know that you havee just burnt the chicken, you can wave at it and it will subside.  The most important thing is that unlike normal smoke alarms it isn't designed to encourage you to disable it.  I am convinced this device will  prevent fires and save lives.

For both of these devices there are significant benefits for the consumer.

Regulating the internet of things

These devices learn a lot about your habits and even your furniture arrangement.  The are connected via wifi and can be linked to the internet. With the Google acquistion this is the internet of things impacting consumers directly in the home. 

There are clearly privacy issues.   According to Nest,

Our privacy policy clearly limits the use of customer information to providing and improving Nest’s products and services. We’ve always taken privacy seriously and this will not change.

As with geospatial data such as personal location that is now widely available via smart phones, the technology is moving so fast that regulation and legislation haven't been able to keep up with it .  According the the Federal Trade Commission, which is responsible for protecting privacy at the Federal level, the four holy data types are financial data, medical data, data about children, and geographic data.  The first three are treated as very sensitive and there is a legal framework to ensure these data types are protected.  When it comes to geographic data, on the other hand, there is very little by way of policy or legal infrastructure to protect personal geographic data.  Technology, including GPS, GIS and smart phones, has moved so rapidly and regulation and legislation move so slowly that for personal geographic data (where you are and where you have been), the horse has already left the barn and it is too late to close to the door.  I suspect with the broader internet of things including thermostats and smoke detectors, we may be seeing the same situation.  When the legislators and regulators grasp what the technology is capable of, it may be too late to regulate.

Towards spatial standards for the Internet of Things (IoT)

Geospatial information is a cross-cutting requirement critical to many different domains.  Therefore the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has entered into alliances with standards organizations in many different sectors from buildings to transportation to utilities and real estate. Many of these organizations collaborate with the OGC on standards development, particularly when an interoperability solution depends on consistency between standards from different standards development organizations. 

The OGC collaborates with over twenty different standards organizations including the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), International Augmented Reality Standards Coordination group, IEEE Technical Committee 9 (Sensor Web), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), ISO Technical Committee 211 (ISO TC/211) - Geographic information/Geomatics, National Institute for Building Standards (NIBS), Organization for Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), buildingSMART alliance, and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to name just a few.

Standards for the Internet of Things

As an example, the OGC and International Telecommunications Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) are jointly collaborating on the advancement of standards for the Internet of Things (IoT).  As part of this effort the OGC has submitted the OGC Open GeoSMS standard for adoption through the ITU.  In addition the ITU-T has just published a ITU-T Technology Watch Report: Location matters: Spatial standards for the Internet of Things, written by staff and members of the OGC in collaboration with the ITU Secretariat.  The objective of the ITU-T Technology Watch publications are to survey the ICT landscape to capture new topics for standardization activities.  The objective of this report is to help stakeholders understand spatial standards for Social-Local-Mobile markets and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Spatial standards for communications

Wireless mobile devices are not only consumers of data; but are also producers of data. Different kinds of data such as text, imagery, video, and spatial data require different sets of standards. The Pew Research Center’s “Internet & American Life Project” reported that by February 2012 74% of smartphone owners were using their devices to get directions and other location-related information.  And this seems to be increasing.  A previous survey in May 2011, found that 55% were using their phones for location-related infirmation.  Today all new smartphones are location-enabled with built-in GPS chips.

Location-enabled applications are being used in many sectors including transportation, emergency response, disaster management, environmental sampling, meteorological and oceanographic research, municipal and utility maintenance operations, and location marketing.

Spatial standards enable interoperability through the exchange of spatial data between software systems. The spatial standards community is concerned with the consistent encoding of location data and the use of well-defined, consistent service interfaces for finding, accessing and invoking spatial and associated data.

Communicating simple latitude-longitude coordinates requires a standard. The point data type of the Geography Markup Language (GML) or the coordinate parameter of Open GeoSMS, is a standard that has been submitted to ITU for adoption as an ITU-T Recommendation.  There are many Earth coordinate reference systems or projections (CRS) in use today, so specification of the CRS is critical.  GML is a joint OGC/ISO standard that defines an XML grammar for encoding and transporting geospatial content including coordinate system. GML is vendor and technology neutral and is designed so that any kind of geospatial information can be encoded.  The standard enables cities and countries to provide vendor-neutral public access to data about elevation, water bodies, transportation infrastructure, population density, land cover, vegetation, geology and other data layers that comprise spatial data infrastructure. GML is embedded in international encoding standards for domains such as weather, aviation, hydrology, geology, augmented reality, and emergency response.

Geospatial standards must meet interoperability requirements beyond defining a standard way to express a lat-long coordinate. Standards define and provide consistent ways to exchange and process Earth referenced data that may be encoded using grid cells, vectors, polygons or other methods of representing Earth features. Interoperability is essential because in today's web environment these operations are more commonly performed on distributed systems than in a GIS running on a single computer.

Gaps

While GML and related standards give smartphone app developers access to geospatial resources that enable interoperability, critical gaps remain.

While outdoor location systems are well defined and widely used, the same is not true for indoor navigation.. Users expect a seamless transition when entering a building, but this is not currently possible. There is no single technology that provides for uniform coverage of positioning information indoors. 

Things in the Internet of Things all have location and many of these things are inside buildings. The location of a sensing device such as a digital thermometer in a building is highly relevant to applications that use data from that sensor.   Access to accurate information about buildings including the location of sensors is becoming increasingly important. Building Information (BIM)-based standards are needed to provide building information, such as the location of devices, throughout a building’s lifecycle.

BIM standards and other built environment standards also require open standards for communicating information about spatial data provenance and rights of ownership and access. Data provenance involves tracking not only rights and the lineage of data through many operations, but also information about uncertainty and quality.

Systems for design (BIM, CAD and Civil Engineering software) and systems for observation and management (sensors, imaging and geospatial processing) were created by different professional communities to solve different kinds of problems. Despite these differences, progress toward interoperation is accelerating as the concept of intelligent citiesi becomes more compelling for both government and business.

Spatial standards affect many sectors

Spatial standards enable people to communicate about features and phenomena that have a particular location on the Earth. Open spatial standards offer extraordinary socio-economic value, and evidence of this can be found in several application domains including emergency and disaster management and response, smart Infrastructure for transportation; public works; electricity, natural gas, water and sewage utilities where there is pressure to become more efficient and to address issues such as fossil fuel depletion, water shortages, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the sanitation needs of growing cities.

Surveying/civil/geospatial interoperability is part of a longstanding set of challenges that includes BIM interoperability and 3D modeling interoperability. The OGC CityGML Encoding Standard for 3D modeling provides a foundational part of the solution. The Netherlands has made CityGML-encoded 3D data a key part of their National Spatial Data Infrastructure. One major BIM standards effort is the conversion of  buildingSMART International's Industry Foundation Classes to service interfaces and encodings that are consistent with CityGML and with service-oriented computing in general. Standards organizations working on intelligent cities and smart infrastructure need to consider open spatial standards to enable interoperability between the many different domains comprising modern cities.

The OGC has been working with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) since mid-2009 to improve water management by improving the discoverability, accessibility and usability of water information. Part of this effort is WaterML 2.0, a standard for encoding water observation time series enables linking local, regional, national and global water information sources into connected water information networks.

Spatial standards efforts underway

Open GeoSMS

The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) contributed its Open GeoSMS specification to the OGC in 2009. Open GeoSMS facilitates the communication of location content in Short Message Service (SMS) transmissions. SMS is a feature in every mobile phone; all mobile phones therefore have the potential to communicate location information in a standard way.

Augmented Reality (AR)

AR allows the user to see the real world with virtual objects superimposed upon or composited with the real world.  Kocation based services used with smartphones and other types of mobile technology are a major driving force behind AR’s entering the mainstream.  To further development of AR standards in 2010 the OGC became an active participant in an International Augmented Reality Standards Coordination group.

IndoorGML

Indoor location is getting a lot of attention primarily because of the commercial opportunities it enables. Beyond locating a mobile device in an indoor environment, the indoor environment presents a number of standardization challenges, such as how navigation directions are supplied (take the elevator to the 3rd floor and turn right); semantics (my first floor is not your first floor); special zones (heating, security, Wi-Fi, etc.); and the lack of a standard for modeling and encoding floor plans. In addition, indoor navigation must necessarily be 3D. The objective of the OGC's IndoorGML initiative is to enable the representation and exchange of the geo-information required to build and operate indoor navigation systems.

Sensor Interface for Internet of Things

The OGC has recongnized the growing importance of the IoT for some time.  In 2001 the OGC took on the task of standardizing sensor communication because every sensor has a location, whether in situ (such as a rain gauge) or remote (such as an Earth imaging device), and the location of a sensor is highly significant for many applications. The resulting suite of SWE standards – now being implemented worldwide – enables developers to make networked sensors, transducers and sensor-data repositories discoverable, accessible and useable via the Web or other networks.  The OGC created a standards working group (SWG) for a “Sensor Interface for IoT/WoT”. The scope of work for this SWG is to develop a candidate standard for access to sensors in an IoT/WoT environment.

The Internet of Things will be a $1.9 Trillion business by 2020

Gartner defines the "Internet of Things as the network of physical objects that contain embedded technology to communicate and interact with their internal states or the external environment."  In 2009 2.5 billion personal devices "things" were connected. By 2020 it is estimated that will grow to 30 billion "things".

The sheer diversity of Internet of Things applications that have emerged to date is very broad, but many applications that appear to be completely unique share an underlying functionality that is essentially common across the different applications.

Much of business value of the Internet of Things is not in the devices themselves, but in the data aggregation, data-processing and decision-making activities that take advantage of the data streams coming from the devices or from the ability to control the devices via the internet.  According to Gartner the Internet of Things will be a $1.9 trillion business by 2020.  Gartner sees the potential size and diversity of the Internet of Things as creating immediate opportunities for IT leaders.