Between the Poles

Interoperability leading factor determining geospatial software purchasing decisions

Geospatial World has just published the results of a survey of 650 of its readers conducted between November 2014 and January 2015 targeted on their geospatial technology and data usage. 

Geospatial softwarion

One of the questions asked in the survey was

What factors are most important in determining your organization's buying decisions when procuring geospatial software ?

The choices were cost, choice, ease of availability, level of technical support, and interoperability.  I found it very interesting that interoperability came out on top. Nearly all (97%) of respondents found it an important factor.

This supports the effort over many years that many in the geospatial sector have put into developing geospatial standards to enable geospatial interoperability, especially the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards.  The next challenge is multi-disciplinary interoperability in vertical domains such as construction and utilities. 

There are a number of initiatives underway to develop standards and best practices to support interoperability in construction.  The OGC, buildingSMART, and ISO have agreed to work together on developing common standards.  The first result of this collaboration is a common data model for alignments (important in transportation modeling) that is shared by the building and information modeling (BIM)  and geospatial sectors. 

Similarly in the utility sector the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) and the OGC have signed a memorandum of understanding to work together on integrating geospatial with smart grid standards in the electric power sector.  For example, the MultiSpeak standard which was developed for electricity distribution utilities incorporates the OGC Geography Markup Language (GML) 2.1.2 standard for geospatial location.

Recently the OGC and the World Wide Web (C3C) signed an agreement to improve interoperability and integration of spatial data intended to make geospatial a fundamental component of the Web.

Open distributed intelligence platform for microgrids with solar and battery storage

At DistribuTECH 2015, Duke Energy held a session about their Phase 2 project (COW II) of the Coalition of the Willing initiative.

Stuart Laval, Smart Grid Technology Manager at Duke, presented an overview of the COW II project.  At most utilities the current architecture  is a collection of  proprietary application silos with no field interoperability.  What interoperability there is is via the enterprise service bus in the central control office.  Duke is proposing a distributed intelligence platform (DIP) with seamless interoperability in the field.  Duke's plan is to implement a Common Information Model (CIM) into an OpenFMB field message bus which is based on mature standards - OMG Data Distribution Service and Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) which is now an OASIS Standard.  CIM provides semantics in the form of standardized object model representations. 

The use case is a islandable microgrid.  The microgrid will include solar and battery storage and will use wireless to support field communication between all the devices on the distribution grid.

Some of the objectives of the COW II project are

• Demonstrate operation of an islandable microgrid utilizing solar PV and battery storage.
• Demonstrate a functioning distributed intelligence architecture.
• Demonstrate interoperability based on CIM between open publish/subscribe standard protocols including DDS and MQTT.
• Develop and demonstrate "edge of the grid" applications such as volt/var and solar smoothing.
• Demonstrate live interoperability at DistribuTECH 2016.

Duke has lined up 25 vendor partners to support the COW II effort.  For most types of equipment, there are two vendor partners that can provide the equipment.  For example, Elster and Itron manufacture smart meters.

A key part of the demonstration is a field message bus based on open standards.  Duke is working with a number of partners to support this effort.

• Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP)
• North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB)
• National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) DOE INTEGRATE project
• EPRI Integrated Grid program
• CPS Energy "Grid of the Future" deployment in San Antonio

The Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) has already created an OpenFMB working group to support this effort.

An open distributed architecture for the smart grid based on seamless interoperability

At DistribuTECH 2015, Raiford Smith of CPS Energy and Jason P. Handley of Duke Energy, presented their perspectives on the smart grid; what is motivating it in terms of business and technology drivers, a roadmap for implementing it at their utilities, and the benefits that are expected from it for customers and for utilities.  They also outlined a smart grid architecture based on open standards to enable seamless interoperability that enables distributed as opposed to centralized intelligence.  Some of the advantages of a distributed architecture are scalability, reduced latency and implementing security at the grid edge instead of via the central control application.

Megatrends driving smart grid

Raiford Smith sees four major megatrends that are major motivating forces behind the smart grid.  Moore's Law means there are intelligent devices for power networks with greater capabilities and at less cost.  Metcalfe's Law means more interconnections and greater interoperability.  Big data analytics means the ability to extract more meaningful information and insights from rapidly increasing volumes of data coming from thousands and even millions of intelligent devices.  Distributed energy generation (DER) means more complicated power management - balancing intermittent generation and new load profiles from an increasing number of new electronic devices. 

From a business perspective a major benefit is greater customer choice.  In the future the customer will be able to not only manage his/her consumption of power, but also its generation. With rooftop solar PV and batteries the customer may elect to not even be on the grid, but to create his/her own microgrid.   But it also means the utility business model will have to evolve from what it has been for the past 100 years.  New York is one of the jurisdictions that is already changing its regulatory framework to enable utilities to move to a new business model.

Microgrids

As an aside, at this year's DistribuTECH if there was one technology that seemed to be everywhere and on almost every utility's radar, it is microgrids.  Duke Energy is even playing with the idea of offering  microgrids as a service.

Technology roadmap for the smart grid

From Raiford Smith's perspective the technology roadmap for the smart grid involves the deployment of increasing numbers of intelligent electronic devices for sensing and for control.  The challenge is federating the data from all of these devices, extracting information from it, and dispatching the information to the right control devices.  From an architectural perspective this drives the need for a field message bus which enables interoperability between different devices from different vendors.  It also requires a common semantic model, such as the Common Information Model (CIM), adding security at the edge of the grid in addition to the central control room, and analytics to extract information from the huge volume of data collected from the sensors.

To test different smart grid configurations, CPS Energy is assembling a test facility for a three year smart grid testing program.  It will have 30,000 customers, 15 circuits, solar generation, smart inverters, battery storage and the ability to disconnect from the grid to form a microgrid.

Benefits of the smart grid

Raiford expects major benefits for customers and for the utility from implementing a smart grid.  For customers, perhaps the biggest benefit is that the smart grid avoids divergence of utility services and customers needs.  Sometimes referred to as disaggregation, in this context it means a 3rd party coming between a utility and its customers. Historical examples are Microsoft Hohm and Google Powermeter which were perceived as threats because utilities found the idea of a Microsoft or Google insinuating itself between the utility and its customers unattractive. Opower is an example of a different approach that is much more attractive to utilities.  Instead of doing an end-run around the utility,  Opower focussed on the utility as their direct customer.  Services using Opower's solutions is then offered by the utility to its customers.

Secondly, smart grid provides a flexible foundation for providing new services to customers (which also creates new sources of revenue for utilities).  Raiford suggested some examples including electric vehicles and charging, premium (high quality) power, premium reliability, and asset control (for ex, inverters and batteries) and advanced demand response (the utility would provide these as a service to customers, rather than customers buying these devices from a 3rd party). The result is greater customer satisfaction and improved brand recognition as CPS Energy is perceived as a leader in providing new and improved services to customers.

The benefits that Raiford sees for utilities are equally important.  They include improved operational metrics (SAIDI, SAIFI, asset utilization), better financial metrics (O&M spend, revenue generation), environmental benefits, improved safety, better trained and skilled staff, and more reliable risk modeling (better predictions of revenue, costs, customer satisfaction, and asset condition).

Probably the greatest challenge Raiford sees is managing organizational change, because the smart grid will mean that just about everything will change including the utility business model and most aspects of how we design, build, maintain and operate the grid. 

Drivers for utility industry change

Jason Handley, of the Emerging Technology Office at Duke Energy, reviewed some of the major drivers for industry change.  Many applications currently used by power utilities are proprietary, with the result that the utility has many application silos that don't interoperate.  The rapid adoption of DERs is requiring utilities to move toward faster response times, reduced costs, better safety, and improved reliability.  Dynamic load management and low voltage power electronics will mean greater adoption of rooftop PVs and other DERs.  Increasingly utilities will invest in standards-based, modular systems for hardware, multi-function devices, and a field message bus for software that will enable interoperability.  From a business perspective broader interoperability facilitates more competition which lowers costs, encourages innovation and improves reliability.

Other important drivers that Jason sees that are impacting utilities include demand response, electric vehicles, in-premise automation, cybersecurity threats, aging infrastructure, big data complexity, and avoiding stranded assets.  The smart grid is requiring utilities to change how they do things.  Utilities realize they have to be  more proactive in their operations, rather than waiting for something to happen and then reacting to it.  Situational awareness has become a critical capability for utilities in enabling utilities to be more proactive.  It is made possible by having a variety of sensors in the field that together can present a snapshot of the status of the grid.  The key functionality required to enable this to happen is seamless interoperability.

Centralized or distributed intelligence

As utilities implement thousands and even millions of smart devices in the field, a centralized architecture runs into scalability and latency problems.  Duke's solution is an architecture with distributed as opposed to centralized intelligence.  Duke sees this as comprised of layers so that with this architecture, not all data needs to go to the central control application.  Some can be handled at lower levels.  A self healing network is an example where a problem can be handled locally without the central control application knowing anything about it.  Distributed intelligence also enables fast edge decisions that can be made without waiting for the central control application.  For example, an advantage that cannot be underestimated with this architecture is that it enables security at the edge of the grid, not just via the central control application.  Based on this concept Duke has defined a Distributed Intelligence Platform (DIP) Reference Architecture designed to take advantage of the tremendous intelligence that is out in the field in addition to the intelligence in the control centre.

Duke Energy, CPS Energy and 25 vendors, called the Coalition of the Willing (COW) have just embarked on an implementation of this architecture that supports a microgrid.  The smart grid requires exchanging data between different devices from different manufacturers in the field.  Traditional utility technologies are very often vendor silos utilizing proprietary hardware, telecommunications and software platforms.  The goal of the “Coalition of the Willing" (COW) is to demonstrate that data  and control commands can be shared across multiple vendor platforms (typically proprietary) to achieve interoperability with lower costs and faster response times.  A key part of the demonstration is an open standard field message bus implemented as an open source project.  The Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) has created an OpenFMB working group to support this effort.

SGIP announces OpenFMB project for open standards-based interoperability platform for utilities

At DistribuTECH 2015 the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) has announced the launch of the OpenFMB Project, a special SGIP working group designed to leverage existing standards and structured processes to create a new paradigm for true interoperability and peer-to-peer communication across vendors' architecture that will increase business intelligence and operational efficiencies while allowing for secure and reliable communication and fast decision-making in the field.

The smart grid requires exchanging data between different devices from different manufacturers in the field.  Traditional utility technologies are very often vendor silos utilizing proprietary hardware, telecommunications and software platforms.  Duke Energy and six vendor companies formed a group called the “Coalition of the Willing” (COW) whose goal was to demonstrate that data  and control commands can be shared across multiple vendor platforms (typically proprietary) to achieve interoperability with lower costs and faster response times.  A key part of the demonstration was an open field message bus implemented as an open source project.

Duke Energy has announced the next phase of their interoperability project (COW II) with an expanded group of 25 vendor partners and a utility partner CPS Energy. The second phase will include the operation of a microgrid system which will integrate distributed renewable resources such as solar PV and battery storage with a field message bus-based distributed intelligence platform with wireless communications to devices. 

For COW II Duke Energy defined a Distributed Intelligence Platform (DIP) Reference Architecture.  According to Duke, the reference architecture is intended to document Duke Energy’s technology roadmap for interoperability using open standards-based distributed information systems.  Part of the reference architecture is a field message bus.  According to Duke the Field Message Bus (FMB) is intended to be an open standard-based, common logical publish/ subscribe interface that connects multiple disparate grid devices, telecom networks, and information systems. It is the key technology enabler to demonstrate the benefits of the distributed architecture by facilitating interoperability between multiple different vendor’s OT, IT, and telecom systems.

Starting with the  Distributed Intelligence Platform reference architecture from the COW project, SGIP has defined the OpenFMB concept as the way distributed applications and open interfaces can enable interoperable peer-to-peer data exchanges between power systems devices. The OpenFMB framework provides a specification for power systems field devices to leverage a non-proprietary and standards-based reference architecture platform, which consists of internet protocol (IP) networking, Internet of Things (IoT) messaging protocols, and standardized common semantic models (such as CIM), to enable  communications and peer-to-peer information exchange between devices on the electric grid.

Smart grid multi-vendor interoperability based on open standards and open source

The smart grid requires exchanging data between different devices from many manufacturers in the field.  Traditional utility technologies are very often vendor silos utilizing proprietary hardware, telecommunications and software platforms that communicate to a centralized hub. Last year at Distributech 2014 a group of Duke Energy and six companies called the “Coalition of the Willing” (COW) – Accenture, Alstom Grid, Ambient Corporation, Echelon, S&C, and Verizon, demonstrated interoperability between their products.  The goal was to demonstrate that data  and control commands can be shared across multiple vendor platforms (typically proprietary) to achieve interoperability with lower costs and faster response times.

At Distributech 2014 Duke energy also described  the challenges Duke has encountered in cleaning,  merging and managing operational data, combining it with other types of data including social media, and developing analytical tools to extract meaningful information.  Duke also described an innovative approach for involving vendors in the development of their smart grid platform and applications, which provided the basis for vendor involvement in COW.

COW 1 Volt/Var Optimization

The first phase of this project was to convert a Volt/Var Optimization (VVO) function to run on a distributed platform.  It used a “communications node” and a standards-based messaging architecture to enable peer-to-peer communications to integrate data from different vendors' systems.  Each of the COW participants exposed some data via a standards-based interface (Field Message Bus).  The application read two residential meter voltages supplied by Echelon meters and brought the data back via Power Line Carrier (PLC) to the Ambient communication node. If an under voltage condition was detected, the application sent a close command to the control via DNP3 through peer to peer messaging over the Verizon Wireless network. The capacitor control closed the capacitor bank to alleviate the under voltage condition on the meters.  Finally, the Alstom DMS was updated with the new state of the capacitor.

Open standards, open source

The COW 1 project involved open source hardware (Raspberry Pi), open source software and open standards.  According to Duke the Field Message Bus (FMB) is intended to be an open standard-based, common logical publish/ subscribe (pub/sub) interface that connects multiple disparate grid devices, telecom networks, and information systems. It is the key technology enabler to demonstrate the benefits of the distributed architecture by facilitating interoperability between multiple different vendor’s OT, IT, and telecom systems.  It uses open-source software to translate data to a common publish and subscribe messaging interface using the IEC Common Information Model (CIM) data model.  Other open standards that are being used in this project include industry-standard protocols as DNP3 and Modbus and messaging protocols like MQTT (for lightweight applications) and AMQP (for heavy duty messaging).

COW 2 Islandable microgrid

Last June Duke Energy announced the next phase of their interoperability project with an expanded groups of vendor partners. The second phase will include the operation of a microgrid system which will integrate distributed renewable resources such as solar PV and battery storage with a field message bus-based distributed intelligence platform with wireless communications to devices. 

The new project will support another open standard.  The Object Management Group's (OMG) Data Distribution Service (DDS) for Real-time Systems provides a secure publish-subscribe messaging protocol.  Many real-time applications involve publishing “data” which is then available to remote applications that are interested in it.  In a utility setting this communications model needs to scale to thousands of publishers and subscribers in a robust manner.

A data model based on the CIM standard will be implemented into an open field message bus to support standardized object model representations. The use case for this demonstration project will be an islandable microgrid which Duke will implement and operate at its smart grid test facility.

Duke Energy has defined a Distributed Intelligence Platform (DIP) Reference Architecture for this project.  According to Duke, the reference architecture is intended to document Duke Energy’s technology roadmap for interoperability using open standards-based distributed information systems. 

First infrastructure standard based on a common BIM/geospatial model released

There are several initiatives underway to develop multi-disciplinary interoperability standards for the convergence of BIM, 3D and geospatial.  The first BIM standard based on a common conceptual model shared between the BIM and geospatial worlds has just been released for public comment by buildingSMART.  Simultaneously the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has just released the OGC LandInfra Conceptual Model, the first draft of the InfraGML conceptual model for land parcels and the built environment.

Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) are the open and neutral data format standard for the exchange of building information models (BIM).  The IFC standard was developed and is supported by buildingSMART International and is  registered with ISO as ISO16739.  IFC is widely used in the construction industry in many countries and is mandated in some such as Finland.

However, the current versions of IFC are intended for buildings (vertical BIM).  buildingSMART has 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.

The first IFC for Infrastructure extension project is the IFC Alignment project. It is intended to provide the data model for geolocation information for 3D and 2D alignments and has been developed in concert with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).  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. 

The IFC Alignment project will also provide a conceptual model of road alignments that will be used in both OGC and buildingSMART standards for roads, railways, tunnels and bridges. A common conceptual model (typically represented in UML) is extremely important because it is a first step in developing full lifecyle models for infrastructure from planning through design and construction to operate and maintain.  OGC standards focus on planning and operation whereas design and construction are buildingSMART’s focus area.  A common conceptual model will enable IFC alignment models to be mapped onto InfraGML (a standard being developed by the OGC) models.  The OGC has just released the OGC LandInfra Conceptual Model, the first draft of the InfraGML conceptual model for land parcels and the built environment.  (The document was submitted by Bentley Systems, Inc, Leica Geosystems, Trimble, Australian Government Department of Communications, Autodesk, Vianova Systems AS, and buildingSMART International.)

BuildingSMART International has just released drafts of the IFC Infrastructure Alignment Conceptual Model and the Candidate Standard for IFC Alignment and is asking for public comment.  Once it is finalized and becomes part of the IFC standard, it will be submitted to ISO/TC 59/SC 13 to be incorporated into ISO 16739.

W3C and Open Geospatial Consortium announce new collaboration

The social value of the Web is that it enables human communication, commerce, and opportunities to share knowledge. One of World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) primary goals is to make these benefits available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability.  This includes Web access from mobile phones and other mobile devices as well as the use of Web technology connecting intelligent devices in consumer electronics, printers, broadcasting, automobiles, and utility and transportation networks, to name just a few - what is becoming collectively known as the Internet of Things (IoT).

Everything has location.  In the context of the Internet of Things it is increasingly being realized that location is vital to the emerging field of connected devices.   To improve interoperability and integration of spatial data on the Web the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) are announcing today a new collaboration which is intended to make the geospatial a fundamental component of the Web.

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international industry consortium of over 500 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available interface standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web.

There is a gap between the specialized world of geographic data and that of the Web.  Bridging GIS systems and the Web will create a network effect that enriches both worlds.  At a March 2014 Workshop on Linking Geospatial Data, co-organized by OGC and W3C and in partnership with the UK Government Linked Data Working Group, Google, and the Ordnance Survey, participants discussed the challenges of integrating geospatial data and technology into the web.  Based on the challenges identified in that Workshop, the collaboration announced today will enable publishers of spatial data, providers of services that consume the data, and application developers to establish common practices and reduce the cost of integrating spatial data on the Web. The Geospatial and Web communities will document use cases and requirements with the goal of developing best practices for publishing spatial data on the Web.  The collaboration is also expected to result in new W3C Recommendations and OGC standards.

Multi-disciplinary interoperability standards for the convergence of BIM, 3D and geospatial

At the ISO/TC 59 Plenary Week in Toronto this week, a day long collaboration session was organized by ISO/TC 59, buildingSMART, and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).  This is a major milestone for the development of standards as a foundation for the convergence of building and civil engineering design and geospatial technology. 

ISO (International Organization for Standardization) is an independent, non-governmental membership organization and the world’s largest developer of voluntary International Standards. ISO, which is made up of 165 member countries with a Central Secretariat in Geneva, has published more than 19 500 International Standards covering almost every industry, from technology, to food safety, to agriculture and health care.

BuildingSMART International (bSi) cooperates with ISO.  Specifically it has liaisons with two ISO committees; ISO/TC 59 (Buildings and civil engineering works) and ISO/TC 59/SC 13 (Organization of information about construction works).  BuildingSMART's main standard Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), which is a standard for sharing BIM in the construction and facility management industries, was adopted as an official ISO standard in 2013 as ISO 16739:2013.

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) develops publicly available geospatial interface standards. OGC Standards enable interoperable location-aware solutions for the Web, wireless and location-based services and mainstream IT.  Over the years, the OGC has been building a network of alliance partner organisations, many of whom are standards development organizations in market domains related to the built environment.  One of these alliances is with buildingSMART which has an official memorandum of understanding (MOU) with OGC to co-operate. Recently the joint effort has focused on using BIM for Infrastructure and requirements for interoperability between BIM and Geospatial domains.

In 2008/2009 the AECOO-1 Testbed, which was led by the Open Geospatial Consortium  and the buildingSMART alliance, looked at streamlining interoperable communications between parties in the conceptual design phase to get an early understanding of the tradeoffs between construction cost and energy efficiency. Major achievements from the AECOO Testbed include delivery of BIM through open web services (OWS) for multi-disciplinary interative design analysis in real time. [George Percivall personal communication]

In 2012 the OGC, BuildingSMART International, ISO TC 211 and ISOTC 59/SC 13 began discussing ways of cooperating to support harmonization. A Civil Summit held in Waltham, Massachusetts (USA) and Abu Dhabi was organised cooperatively by bSi and OGC.  Since then several domain working groups (DWGs) have been formed to identify gaps and work toward cross-disciplinary standards.  For example, The OGC 3DIM Domain Working Group (DWG) works jointly with ISO TC 59 and buildingSMART to facilitate the definition and development of interface and encoding standards that enable software solutions that allow infrastructure owners, builders, emergency responders, community planners, and the traveling public to better manage and navigate complex built environments.

Geospatial domain working groups (DWGs)

At the ISO/TC 59 Plenary Week Leif Granholm of Trimble gave a quick but comprehensive overview of the work of the three geospatial domain working groups (DWG) in which all three standards groups are involved.  

3D Information Management (3DIM) DWG

3DIM, which used to be called CAD/GIS DWG, is involved in some areas of 3D interoperability that are creating the foundation for moving forward in the direction of modeling entire cities.  These include CityGML, which with extensions can model most of the above ground features of cities excluding inside buildings, augmented reality markup language (ARML), 3D  portrayal, and a first start at a successor to LandXML (which is an orphan right now) called InfraGML, and Indoor Geographic Markup Language (IndoorGML).

IndoorGML

One of the most important initiatives is IndoorGML.  Leif Granholm and others foresee that this may be the "the next big thing", as important for navigating indoor spaces as GPS was for outdoors.  Anyone with a mobile phone with a GPS or a GPS in their car is familiar with how easy it is to navigate anywhere on the planet - as long as it's not in a building.

There are two dimensions to this challenge.  The first is finding a technology analogous to GPS for assigning an XYZ location to people and things in buildings.  For example, in a hospital it is often urgent to be able to determine instantly where Dr Morgan is and where the nearest "crash cart" is.  In a mall it is important for a shopper to know where he or she is at any given instant, where whatever they are looking for is, and how to navigate between the two.  Determining where you are in a building is a technical challenge that is still getting a lot of attention from researchers.
 
The other dimension is context, typically represented by a 3D model of the interior spaces of buildings.  This can show context for shoppers to direct them to whatever they are looking for.  For a maintenance person, it is also necessary to be able to dissolve walls, ceilings, and floors to expose the building's infrastructure, electrical, fire, water, HVAC, and so on.  IndoorGML is intended the provide a standard for modeling indoor spaces.  But it is a more complicated problem.  Compared to outdoors there is a hundred times more data indoors.  Outdoors there are a relatively small number of data providers; national mapping agencies, national space agencies, commercial data providers like Digital Globe, Microsoft, Google, Nokia, TomTom and volunteered data like OpenStreetMap, and so on.  Indoors there are likely to be hundreds of thousands of data providers.  Just as every firm nowadays develops its own web site, many foresee that every firm will develop its own 3D presence and map of its space, for example, to enhance its attractiveness to customers navigating their way around the mall using a 3D map.  IndoorGML provides a standard that will enable this to happen.

The first version of IndoorGML was approved a week ago.

CityGML 3

Development of the next version of CityGML is just ramping up.  But unlike the standards development process used in the past which relied on sharing Microsoft Word documents and wikis, CityGML3 will be developed using a novel approach that was successfuly used for developing the GeoPackage standard.  One of the major innovations from an OGC perspective of the GeoPackage standard development process was achieved by putting the GeoPackage specification out on GitHub, which made it much more accessible to the developer community than if it had been made available in the traditional OGC way. 

The other innovation that CityGML3 will benefit from is a modular approach to standards development. CityGML 3 is actually comprised of 10 sub projects rather than one mega project.

Urban Planning DWG

This is a brand new DWG.  Its objective is to identify the gaps and to facilitate the development of standards to enable interoperability between smart city applications.  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 DWG already has plans for an OGC Smart City Testbed focused on urban resilience and in 2015 an OGC Smart City pilot.

Land and Infrastructure DWG

A major project for this DWG is to develop a standard called InfraGML for exchanging information relating to highways and roads.  By way of background, LandXML is a widely used standard supported by almost 800 members in the roads and highway transportation sector.  A number of years ago an unsuccessful attempt had been made to make LandXML compliant with the Open Geospatial Consortium's (OGC) Geography Markup Language (GML) standard for geospatial data.

The immediate issue is that LandXML, which is not associated with a recognized international standards organization, has been unsupported for over five years.  To address this issue the Land and Infrastructure DWG chartered a LandInfraSWG (Standards Working Group) for LandXML. Its first activity was to reverse-engineer a UML model and documentation (which were lacking) for LandXML 1.2 as a basis for assessing the viability of supporting LandXML as an OGC interoperability standard. A number of deficiencies relative to the OGC baseline were identified.  The LandInfraSWG has proposed developing a new standard, dubbed InfraGML, that will encompass a subset of LandXML functionality, be defined by a UML conceptual model, would incorporate GML and most importantly for the future, would be supported by the OGC.

CityGML and IFC common data model

Another very interesting project with important implication for the future of geospatial-BIM convergence is creating a conceptual model of road alignments that will be used in both OGC and buildingSMART standards for roads, railways, tunnels and bridges. This is particularly challenging, but extremely important because it is a first step in developing full lifecyle models for infrastructure from planning through design and construction to operate and maintain.  OGC focuses on planning and operation whereas design and construction are buildingSMART’s focus area.

Oracle Database Cloud Service supports Spatial

At Oracle Open World in San Francisco 2014, September 28–October 2 the Oracle Spatial and Graph SIG held a Meetup.  By way of background Oracle Spatial and Graph support geospatial data and analytics for land management and GIS, mobile location services, sales territory management, transportation, LiDAR analysis and location-enabled Business Intelligence. The graph features include RDF graphs for applications ranging from semantic data integration to social network analysis to linked open data and network graphs used in transportation, utilities, energy and telcos and drive-time analysis for sales and marketing applications.  

There were several very interesting discussions at the Meetup that revealed some interesting aspects of Oracle Spatial itselef and its interoperability with other products such as ESRI ArcGIS, Autodesk Map3D, and Bentley.  These are taken from a summary recorded by Nick Salem moderator of the Meetup.

The Meetup was attended by about 20 users came from industries such as rail, local city government, national land management agencies, and defense. The SIG Board and members of the Oracle Spatial product development team joined up with them in the Oracle Technology Network Lounge.

Some of the most interesting discussion topics include new features in Oracle Spatial 12c and real world experience interoperating Oracle Spatial with CAD and GIS products from other vendors.

• Oracle’s new Database Cloud Service offering now includes Spatial. 
• A new Oracle Spatial 12c SDO_POINTINPOLYGON function can be used to ingest large point datasets (point clouds) without the overhead of creating a spatial index.
• Bechtel has developed a way to use ESRI ArcGIS versioning with Oracle Workspace Manager (OWM).  They have developed in-house custom tools to usefeature-level metadata to be able to retrieve spatial content from their project and public spatial databases, as well as to compile the revision history of layers in the database to retrieve maps impacted by changes to individual features.
• Dan Geringer, Oracle Spatial Solutions Architect, advised that other large enterprises have also successfully implemented OWM with ESRI ArcGIS.
• Bulk processing and interoperability are two of the important advantages of Oracle Spatial for enterprises. Bechtel has large project-based deployments of Autodesk and Bentley CAD systems, and has worked with Autodesk in recent years to successfully write spatial data to their Enterprise GIS Oracle Spatial database from Autodesk Map 3D. They also have developed a GIS Desktop Procedure that details the required Autodesk client software configuration for Oracle Spatial and ESRI ArcSDE database connections. They will be updating it for use with Autodesk 2014 and 2015 clients.
• Latest version of MapViewer (11.1.1.7) supports HTML5 and JSon and the ability to work in disconnected mode. Standalone, web-based vector editing is also available. Wish Li and Jayant Sharma demonstrated  MapViewer on mobile devices, an Android phone and an iPad.

 

Call for presentations for inaugural OGC Academic Summit 2014 issued by Open Geospatial Consortium

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has issued a call for presentations at the inaugural OGC Academic Summit 2014 to be held 15-16 September 2014 at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada.  Presentations should be related to research in the development and application of geospatial interoperability standards.

Emerging technologies and trends such as cloud computing, mobile computing, UAVs, Smart Cities, Discrete Global Grid Systems, sensor networks and the Internet of Things bring new means and purposes for collecting, accessing, sharing and analyzing geospatial information. Mature OGC Web Service standards play an increasingly important role in this progress. At the same time, new technology approaches not bounded by the established web services paradigm – JSON, REST, and linked data and the Semantic Web –  bring new challenges and opportunities to to the geospatial interoperability research community as well as the geosciences and all the domains served by the OGC. The organizers of the OGC Academic Summit welcome presentations that advance knowledge and understanding in any of these thematic areas.

The OGC Academic Summit 2014 will provide a unique international forum in which to present and discuss progress and future directions of geospatial interoperability as it applies to computer science and to sciences in which geoprocessing has become an essential tool. Academic Summit attendees will have an opportunity to network with OGC member representatives from around the world and participate directly in OGC working groups, plenary sessions, dinners and outings.  The Summit coincides with the September OGC Technical Committee Meeting.