Between the Poles

Over $4 million awarded for fracking contaminated drinking water

In the culmination of a court case running for seven years, a jury in Pennsylvania found that Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation had been negligent and had contaminated the drinking water of two families near Dimock, Pennsylvania.  $4.24 million was awarded to the two families.  Cabot began drilling and fracking the Marcellus shale formation near Dimock in 2008.

As I have blogged about, a series of ProPublica reports identified instances where it was claimed that ground water had been contaminated in drilling areas across the United States.  The film Gasland showed examples of combustible tap water (methane in tap water) and other effects in drinking water attributed to fracking. 

The serious concerns about hydraulic fracturing’s potential impact on drinking water, human health and the environment had become serious enough that Congress appropriated funding for the EPA to undertake a major study of hydraulic fracturing and its impact on drinking water.Needless to say there is a lot of money and jobs involved.  Hence, the study was very controversial and the oil/gas companies did not cooperate.   Based on the limited evidence the EPA was able to collect, the study's draft executive summary said that it had not found evidence of "systemic, widespread effects on drinking water".  But even the study's Science Advisory Board (SAB) disagreed with the conclusion, saying the evidence did suggest a wider problem.

 A recent study by academics from Stanford in a peer-reviewed journal (Environ. Sci. Technol.,March 29, 2016, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b04970) has confirmed that fracking did pollute an aquifer in Pavillion, Wyoming.  The authors state "that they have, for the first time, demonstrated impact to Underground Sources of Drinking Water (USDWs) as a result of hydraulic fracturing."

The U.S. is predicted to become the biggest oil producer in the world, ahead of Saudi.  This is largely because of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and other well stimulation techniques, both for natural gas and oil.  There are over half a million natural gas wells in the U.S.   "Unconventional oil and gas" as fracking is often referred to has become a significant part of the U.S. economy employing millions.

But the environmental cost of fracking remains uncertain.  In 2005 Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which was an omnibus energy bill (that among many other things changed daylight savings time in the US).  Among the provisions of the bill was one (the so-called "Halliburton loophole") that exempted hydraulic fracturing from protections under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Safe Drinking Water Act, which means that fracking has never been regulated at the federal level (EPA).

The 2005 bill, which was passed during the GW Bush administration, prevented the EPA from doing any assessment of the environmental impact of "wild west" drilling and fracking.  However, in the last few years so many reports and two documentary films including Gasland have been circulating about water contamination from fracking that Congress authorized the EPA to do the study of the impact of fracking on drinking water quality.

Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. has asked the courts to set aside a jury’s recent verdict.

Confirmation of drinking water contamination by fracking suggests widespread problem

A new study that confirms drinking water contamination by fracking, something the EPA has been unable to do, signals the beginning of a process to assess the environmental cost of "wildwest" drilling and fracking.  This study relates to drinking water contamination.  The other area where reports are also circulating about the environmental cost of fracking is the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

The U.S. is predicted to become the biggest oil producer in the world, ahead of Saudi.  This is largely because of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and other well stimulation techniques, both for natural gas and oil.  There are over half a million natural gas wells in the U.S.  There are even wells at the Forth Worth airport to give you a feel for how ubiquitous they are in parts of the U.S. and Alberta.  "Unconventional oil and gas" as fracking is often referred to has become a significant part of the U.S. economy employing millions.

But the environmental cost of fracking remains uncertain.  In 2005 Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which was an omnibus energy bill (that among many other things changed daylight savings time in the US).  Among the provisions of the bill was one (the so-called "Halliburton loophole") that exempted hydraulic fracturing from protections under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Safe Drinking Water Act, which means that fracking has never been regulated at the federal level (EPA).

The 2005 bill, which was passed during the GW Bush administration, prevented the EPA from doing any assessment of the environmental impact of "wild west" drilling and fracking.  However, in the last few years so many reports (and a film) have been circulating about water contamination from fracking that Congress authorized the EPA to do a study of the impact of fracking on drinking water quality. 

Needless to say there is a lot of money and jobs involved.  Hence, the study was very controversial and the oil/gas companies did not cooperate.   Based on the limited evidence the EPA was able to collect, the study's draft executive summary said that it had not found evidence of "systemic, widespread effects on drinking water".  But even the study's Science Advisory Board (SAB) disagreed with the conclusion, saying the evidence did suggest a wider problem.

Now a study by academics from Stanford in a peer-reviewed journal (Environ. Sci. Technol.,March 29, 2016, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b04970) has confirmed that fracking did pollute an aquifer in Pavillion, Wyoming.  The authors state "that they have, for the first time, demonstrated impact to Underground Sources of Drinking Water (USDWs) as a result of hydraulic fracturing."

The study involved a comprehensive analysis of all publicly available data and reports to evaluate the impact to underground drinking water sources as a result of acid stimulation (pumping acids into a well to stimulate the flow of gas or oil) and hydraulic fracturing in the Pavillion, WY, Field.  The study found that the concentrations of major ions such as chloride in samples of water from the geology surrounding wells were outside the expected levels for the aquifer, in other words, injected water and chemicals had leaked into the surrounding rock. They also found direct evidence of  leakoff of stimulation fluids into surrounding rock and inadequate casings during stimulation at several production wells.  The authors concluded that acid stimulation and fracking had impacted (polluted) the aquifer.

 

Furthermore, the authors found evidence of organic chemicals used for well stimulation in samples from two monitoring wells that had been drilled by EPA.  This was interpreted as additional evidence of impact to the aquifer and indicated that the chemicals had migrated upwards into the aquifer used for drinking water.

 

They also compiled well depths at which stimulation and fracking occurred and compared them to to the depths of drinking water wells. They found that well stimulation occurred many times at less than 500 meters from the surface and, in some cases, at or very close to depths of the deepest domestic wells.   This is evidence of shallow hydraulic fracturing, which has been shown to be of higher risk to drinking water sources than deeper hydraulic fracturing,  especially given the issues found and documented in several wells in the Pavillion field.

 

In addition they  found evidence of diesel range and other organic chemicals in domestic wells less than 600 meters from unlined pits that had been used prior to the mid-1990s to dispose of diesel-fuel based drilling mud and production fluids.

And because there is nothing especially unique about the geology and drilling around Pavillion, the study suggested that this is likely evidence of a wider problem, "given the high frequency of injection of stimulation fluids into USDWs..., it is unlikely that impact to USDWs is limited to the Pavillion Field requiring investigation elsewhere."

The problem is likely poor drilling practices and management of "produced water" because of lax or no regulation.  If the drillers neglect to put in concrete casings or if they are insufficient and leak, then the chemicals (including known carcinogens) injected into the well can get into drinking water sources.  If the water returning to the surface containing a variety of chemicals (produced water) is stored in unlined ponds as it used to be, this can also get into drinking water sources.

One third of Be Inspired Awards involve mapping, managing, rehabbing and replacing aging infrastructure

Worldwide there is increasing demand from building and infrastructure owners for service provision throughout the entire life cycle of a building or infrastructure. This represents a distinct break with the design/build tradition which has dominated construction for years.  At the Year in Infrastructure conference in London, a dominant theme was the growing recognition of the importance of full lifecycle management of infrastructure.  I found it symptomatic of the direction of the construction industry that fully one third of the 54 finalists for the annual Be Inspired Awards involved mapping, rehabbing, retrofitting, replacing and managing existing infrastructure.  This is my classification of these Be Inspired finalists;

Be Inspired Finalists

1 Full lifecycle workflow
2 Replacement
7 Renovation, rehab, retrofit
3 Mapping existing infrastructure
1 Historic site protection
5 Utility asset management

Full life cycle management

Patrick MacLeamy, Chairman of buildingSMART and CEO of HOK, has been pushing a very simple message about the U.S. construction industry for years.  Buildings are too expensive, are too inefficient to operate and maintain, and don't last long. As a result the U.S. construction industry is falling behind the Nordic countries, the U.K. and Singapore.  His solution is a full life cycle approach to construction.  Information has to be shared between owners, designers, contractors, operations and facilities management over the entire life cycle of the building or infrastructure.

Buildings

Over 50% of the cost of maintaining a building is operations and maintenance which is comprised of administration, maintenance and repairs, and restoration projects.  In several countries BIM has become essential for design and construction.  But many including the UK government believe that the full value of BIM can only be found during the operational life of the building where the majority of the life cycle costs occur.  The UK 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".

Road and highway infrastructure

Highway construction is being transformed, due in part to the arrival of autonomous vehicles.  I've blogged about the startling (at least to traditional construction contractors) vision of the future of highway construction of the Chief of Surveys at the Oregon Department of Transportation (DoT) which targets the full lifecycle of highway assets from planning through design and construction and operation and maintainenance.  Some large construction projects are already being designed, built and operated and maintained with a full lifecycle perspective.

Utility infrastructure

Industry surveys report that up to 80 percent of a utility's resources and budget can be spent on operating and maintaining existing utility infrastructure.   Surveys also show that aging utility infrastructure is a top priority for most utilities.

Be Inspired Awards: Mapping, Monitoring, Rehabbing, and Replacing Infrastructure

One of the projects focused specifically on full lifecycle data management for highway construction.  The project, which was submitted by the Roads Directorate, Denmark, is for the $ 580 million 39-kilometer Herning – Holstebro highway which includes eight interchanges, four railway crossings, and five bridges.  The important achievement of the project was to create a digital workflow with meaningful requirements for sharing data among disciplines and across the entire project lifecycle.  The project was a finalist for the year's Be Inspired Award for Innovation in Roads.

Seven of the finalists' submissions involved renovation, rehabbing, and retrofit.  An outstanding example of a rehab project is the Bond Street to Baker Street Tunnel Remediation Project.  This is a London Underground  project in the UK.  It involved the replacement of the existing elastoplastic concrete lining of a 215-meter tunnel segment on the Jubilee Line with a spheroidal graphite iron lining - all while the line was running at full capacity.  This achievement won this year's Be Inspired Award for Innovation in Rail and Transit at the Year in Infrastructure 2015 conference.

Two of the finalists' projects involved replacement. An example of a replacement project was the Decommissioning and Replacement of Del Rio Bridge on US 20  this was carried out by Harper-Leavitt Engineering for the Idaho Transportation Department with minimum disruption to traffic.

Five of the finalists submitted projects that involved monitoring and extracting more value from existing transportation and utility infrastructure including rail, electric substations, electric and water and waste water distribution networks.

An example is a project submitted by SA Water which won the Be Inspired Innovation in Asset Performance Management Award.  The project involved integrating a hydraulic model and an operational analytics tool with network sensors to help them optimize their network.  These tools enable them to optimize chlorine dosing for different water sources (runoff, desalinization, rivers), minimize electric power costs, and improve water quality by mapping water age across their entire network. SA Water have not only been able to reduce their power bill by A$3 million, but also have cut their network operating costs by nearly a A$ million.  It has also resulted in improved water quality.  More fundamentally it has given them much greater insight into sources of revenue and the costs of various aspects of operating a water network.

Four of the finalist projects involved mapping and historic site protection.  An example is a gas main project submitted by Utility Mapping Services Inc.  This project involved creating a 3D map of underground utilities along a stretch of highway with complex utility infrastructure woven through dense commercial and residential areas with limited right-of-way and heavy traffic congestion.  Most critically from a safety perspective, there were no utility strikes on the project.  As a result the 3D model is credited with reducing construction time from 10 to 7 weeks.  Most importantly from a budget perspective, there were no change orders and the total cost of the project came in at 10-15% less than estimated in the absence of a 3D model.

Another example is a project submitted by the Singapore Land Authority (SLA).  Singapore intends to be the world's first "smart nation".  Part of this initiative involves developing a virtual Singapore that is intended to be the source of authoritative information about Singapore for use by government agencies.  The project involves capturing large amounts of data using multiple rapid mapping technologies including oblique imagery, airborne laser scanning, mobile laser scanning, and terrestrial scanning.  The data has been compiled into 3D city model in a single database repository which includes geometry, topology, semantics and appearance.  The database relies on CityGML, a standard managed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), for the database schema and for data exchange.  The total volume of data is more than 50 terabytes. The database is open and accessible to all government agencies. The most challenging part of the project has been the development of business processes and technologies for ensuring the data remains current.  At the the Year in Infrastructure conference in London the SLA the won the annual Be Inspired Award for Innovation in Government.

Year in Infrastructure 2015: Open electric power network documentation in the UK

At the Year in Infrastructure conference in London in the Utilities breakout session I was invited to participate in an industry panel discussion on "Repair, Rehab, and Replacement of Aging Infrastructure".  The two panelists I joined were Dr Nicole Metje, Senior Lecturer at Birmingham University, whose   research focus is mapping and assessing the condition of buried utilities (a favorite topic of mine and will come back on this), and Paul Jewell, with Western Power Distribution (WPD), part of the NYSE listed PPL group.  Paul is Policy Manager for WPD, responsible for WPD’s approach to innovation as it brings together the work of the Future Networks Team with the more traditional elements of management of an electricity distribution network.

One of the topics that came up early in the discussion was documentation about underground utility networks including geolocation.  My experience in North America is that this information is treated as national security information and is not publicly available.  I assumed that this was fairly typical of the rest of the world (although several years ago I did find a water utility in New Zealand, North Shore City, that had made its water network documentation available on the web).  In the discussion Paul interjected that Western Power Distribution had made its network documentation including maps publicly available.  I was very (pleasantly) surprised.  I have blogged about countries, states, counties and cities making their data open.  But open data and utilities almost seemed an oxymoron.  (An exception is the  Green Button program for consumers, which started as a United States Department of Energy initiative and was conceived as a way of bringing innovation into utilities.)

I followed up after the discussion and checked the Western Power Distribution web site (The site says that domestic/private customers should request plans using the phone number, email or postal address provided on the site.) Companies and organizations are referred to LinesearchbeforeUdig (LSBUD) which is a free service that allows a user to check their planned excavation against over 50 asset owners’ utility assets which include underground and overhead pipes and cables in the electricity, gas, high pressure fuel, water and fibre optic networks.  WPD is a member utility of the LSBUD service.  All that seems to be required to become a user of LSBUD is providing a UK street address and a valid email address.

This seems similar to the Dutch KLIC-Online system.  In 2010 the Netherlands switched to a digital online call-before-you-dig system.  With KLIC-Online the turnaround time for call-before-you-dig calls was reduced to hours compared to the manual system. Both the manual and KLIC-Online one-Call systems were voluntary until 2008 when made KLIC was made mandatory for both network operators and excavators with severe penalties for excavators who circumvented the system. In the Netherlands there is also a charge of € 29.50 for every excavation request, whereas the English system is free.

One of the 50 utilities participating in LSBUD is ESP Utilities Group Ltd, which operates gas and electricity infrastructure networks across Britain.  It reports that LSBUD has meant that 99% of excavation enquiries are responded to automatically within 10 minutes.

How Vancouver became the world's fourth greenest city

According to the annual ranking by the Global Green Economy Index (GGEI) Vancouver is the world's fourth greenest city.  The most recent GGEI analysis covers 60 countries and 70 cities. It tracks how investors rank the appeal of cities and countries as markets for green investment and it provides a global measure of performance in key efficiency sectors, including buildings, transport, tourism and energy.  It also integrates environment & natural capital measuring perceptions and performance in environmental areas like air quality, water, forests and agriculture.  According to the GGEI the top three greenest cities are Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Stockholm.  The countries corresponding to these cities (Denmark, Netherlands, and Sweden) also rank high, in the top 5 country rankings.  Canada is 12th. The Nordic cities have achieved their high standing with the help of their respective national governments, whereas Vancouver has achieved its high green ranking on its own with little help from the federal government.

How did Vancouver do this ?

I have blogged on several occasions about geospatial developments at the City of Vancouver.  Vanmap, which is the City's geospatial portal, was an early development that has supported a number of the City's green initiatives.  Vancouver was one of the first cities that made its geospatial and other data open and free.

Yesterday at Ottawa's City Hall,  Andrea Reimer, Vancouver's Deputy Mayor, described in a fascinating presentation how Vancouver achieved its high GGEI ranking and its plans to rise even higher to become the world's greenest city by 2020.  In addition the City has recently committed to running 100% on renewable energy by 2035. This means only green energy sources for electricity, heating and cooling and transportation.

This all started about a decade ago, when a public consultation about greening the city attracted an incredible 2300 people.  The enthusiastic response was unexpected.  It cost participants ten dollars and the organizers were expecting something on the order of a few hundred people.  It turned out that they had to change the venue twice to accommodate everyone.  The mega response clearly showed a tremendous interest in green by Vancouver's citizens.  From this beginning Vancouver's greenest city initiative has continued to be a grass roots movement supported by the City government.

The City started off with some quick start projects which had high visibility and were inexpensive.  These included separated bicycle lanes, provision for organic waste (food scraps), a deconstruction bylaw, drinking water stations, community gardens, urban commercial farms, green buildings, city power utility that generated electricity by burning sewage and waste, commercial car sharing, and an urban forest initiative. 

The City developed the Greenest City Action Plan (GCAP) which focussed on 10 goal areas addressing three overarching areas of focus; zero carbon, zero waste and healthy ecosystems. The 10 goal areas were arrived at by a process of public consultation.

The Greenest City Action Plan includes commitments to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions, both from City operations and the community; generate 100 per cent of electricity from renewable resources; and implement the greenest building codes in North America. This commitment has helped stimulated the local green economy.  5% of all jobs in Vancouver are green and Vancouver is among the top 10 green technology clusters.  World-leading companies such as Westport Inovations (advanced natural gas engine-maker), General Fusion (nuclear fusion), Ballard Power Systems (hydrogen fuel cells) and Saltworks Technologies (waste water remediation) are based in Vancouver.  In Vancouver's case economic development and greening the city have gone hand in hand.

The results of the greenest city initiative to date are impressive; for example, 8% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, 18% reduction in waste going to landfills or incinerators, 18% reduction in water use per capita, 19% increase in jobs in the green sector, 30% increase in food assets, and 10% increase in trips by bicycle, on foot or using public transit.

Vancouver's greenest city initiative is an amazing story with concrete measurable achievements.  As David Chernushenko, Ottawa City councilman,  said in his comments after Andrea's presentation, there is no reason from a technology perspective that other cities such as Ottawa cannot follow in Vancouver's footsteps  with their own solutions reflecting their unique environment.  But the key ingredient that enabled Vancouver's green revolution is broad public participation, which Vancouver had right from the beginning.

Predictions of the future of the utility business 2015-2018

For the first time in a hundred years, the electric power utility industry is undergoing a momentous change. Distributed renewable power generation, especially solar photovoltaics (PV), is introducing competition into an industry that has been managed as regulated monopolies. Consumers with solar PV panels on their roofs are fundamentally changing the traditional utility business model. A recent report from the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) report refers to disruptive challenges that threaten to force electric power utilities to change or adapt the business model that has been in place since the first half of the 20th century.

Most utilities are in the midst of deploying smart grids, which basically amounts to applying the internet to the electric power grid to link intelligent electronic devices, sensors and grid control applications to enable data-driven decision making.  One of the most important changes driven by the implementation of smart grid is the much greater importance of location. Geospatial technology (location, geospatial data management and spatial analytics) is seen as foundational techology for the smart grid.

The other major global change in energy is the shift in energy demand from the world's advanced economies to emerging economies.   Energy demand from OECD countries has hit a plateau.  Currently China is driving world energy demand. The International Energy Agency's (IEA) World Energy Outlook 2014 projects that in the future  as demand slows from China, world energy demand will be driven by India, the Middle East, and Africa and Latin America.

Recently IDC Energy Insights released a report IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Utilities 2015 Predictions with predictions for the future of the utility business.  Some of these are startling, suggesting that the utility industry is going to experience fundamental changes in how they do business over the next few years.

New business models

IDC predicts that utilities will be looking less at generation as a source of revenue.  IDC predicts that by 2018 45% of new data traffic in utilities' control systems will originate from distributed energy resources that are not owned by the utility.

To make up for this loss of generation revenue IDC predicts that utilities will be looking for new business opportunities such as services.  Specifically, IDC predicts that utilities will derive at least 40% of their earnings from new business models by 2017.

Technology

• Cloud - By 2018 cloud services will make up half of the IT portfolio for over 60% of utilities.
• Integration - In 2015 utilities will invest over a quarter of their IT budgets on integrating new technologies with legacy enterprise systems.
• Analytics - By 2017 45% of utilities' new investment in analytics will be used in operations and maintenance of plant and network infrastructure.
• Mobility - 60% of utilities will focus on transitioning enterprise mobility to capitalize on the consumer mobility wave.
• Smart systems - By 2018 cognitive systems will penetrate utilities' customer operation to improve service and reduce costs.

Some  of the important drivers for these trends include the global redistribution of energy demand from the world's advanced to the emerging economies, the rapid emergence of cloud-based provisioning and services, increasing regulatory pressure responding to customer demand to improve energy market transparency and competitiveness, cross-industry competition for technical, especially IT skills, smart analytics, and virtual and augmented reality beginning to be applied in business.

Top 10 technology trends

In March 2014 Gartner, Inc. identified the top ten technology trends which it saw impacting the global energy and utility markets.  There is considerable overlap between IDC's business predictions and the technology trends identified by Gartner, Inc.

Social Media

Social media are beginning to be used as a customer acquisition and retention medium, as a consumer engagement channel to drive customer participation in energy efficiency programs, a source of information about outages, and as the emerging area of crowd-sourcing distributed energy resources coordination. Social media are also being used by utilities for communicating information about outages with customers.

Big Data

Smart grid will increase the quantity of data that utilities have to manage by a factor of about 10,000 according to a recent estimate.  This trend is driven by intelligent devices, sensors, social networks, and new IT and OT applications such as advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), synchrophasors, smart appliances, microgrids, advanced distribution management, remote asset monitoring, and self-healing networks.  The type of data that utilities will need to manage will change: for example, real-time data from sensors and intelligent devices including smart phones and unstructured data from social networks will play a much greater role for utilities in the future.

Mobile and Location-Aware Technology

Mobile and location-aware technology which includes hardware (laptops and smartphones), communication products (GPS-based navigation, routing and tracking technologies), social networks (Twitter,Facebook and others) and services (WiFi, satellites, and packet switched networks) are transforming all industries.  Utilities for the most part have been slow to adopt consumer mobile technology, but  this is changing.

Cloud Computing

Acccording to Gartner, areas such as smart meter, big data analytics, demand response coordination and GIS are driving utilities to adopt cloud-based solutions.  Early adopters of cloud technologies include small utilities with limited in-house IT skills and budgets, organizations which provide application and data services to multiple utilities, such as cooperative associations and transmission system operators,  and investor-owned utilities (IoUs) conducting short-term smart grid pilots.

Sensor Technology

Sensors, which are being applied extensively throughout the entire supply, transmission and distribution domains of utilities, provide a stream of real-time information from which a real-time state of the grid can be derived.

IT and OT Convergence

Virtually all new technology projects in utilities will require a combination of IT and OT investment and planning, such as AMI or advanced distribution management systems (ADMSs).  This will be a challenge for many utilities, especially smaller ones, which don't have in-house IT skills.

Advanced Metering Infrastructure

AMI provides a communication backbone aimed at improving distribution asset utilization and facilitating consumer inclusion in energy markets.

Internet of Things

Sensors and actuators embedded in physical objects are linked through wired and wireless networks, using the same Internet Protocol (IP) that connects the Internet.  When intelligent objects can both sense the environment and communicate, they become tools for understanding utility grids and responding to changes in near real-time.  Following McKinsey there are two key benefits arising from the Internet of Things for utilities

• Enhanced situational awareness - acheiving real-time awareness of physical environment, in this case, the grid
• Sensor-driven decision analytics - assisting human decision making through deep analysis and data visualization

Asset performance management

Traditional asset management approaches are too limiting for today’s performance-based, data-driven utility environment. Asset performance management solutions need to deliver real-time equipment performance, reliability, maintenance and decision support for effective resource management so that operations and maintenance teams are empowered with real-time decision support information, providing the right information to the right people at the right time and in the right context.  The result is improved operational performance and better asset availability and utilization.

Business Intelligence and Advanced Analytics

Analytics will become essential as the volume of data generated by intelligent devices and sensors, mobile devices (the Internet of Things) and social media increases and huge pools of structured and unstructured data need to be analyzed to extract actionable information.  Analytics will become embedded everywhere, often invisibly.

Open source GIS for engineers

Very excited to see this course given at IIT Bombay.  We need more courses on geospatial technology for engineers and architects.

Title : GIS for Civil Engineers - A Short Term Course at IIT Bombay, India

When : 01 Dec 2014 to 05 Dec 2014

Where : IIT Bombay Website : http://www1.iitb.ac.in/~qip/QIPBrochure-Q7.pdf

Description : The short term course is intended to introduce the following themes:

- To spread the importance of GIS in Civil Engineering

- To promote the use of open source GIS softwares

- Teach the basic concepts and hands on experience on few applications so that at the end of course, participants reach such a level that they can further explore themselves according to their needs.

Officers, Engineers and Scientists working in Water Resources Engineering, Urban/town planning, Municipal agencies, Consulting companies, NGO’s as well as self-employed practitioners engaged in spatial analysis of our surrounding environment would benefit from the proposed program. As participants are expected from all over India, this course would provide an excellent opportunity for the participants to interact with one another and discuss problems and solutions of mutual interest.

Asian smart city investment projected to quadruple by 2023

Urbanization is a worldwide phenomenon, but most of the world’s largest and fastest-growing urban areas are found in Asia.  Smart city technology is becoming an essential element in the development of Asian megacities. There are several smart city initiatives already underway in Asia.  For example, the new Indian government's just released budget includes an allocation for initiating the development of 100 smart cities.

Songdo IDB in Korea and Fujisawa in Japan are two smart cities already under development. China has 36 smart cities in development and a low carbon model city in Tianjin.  Singapore plans to become a smart nation by 2015.  Iskandar is Malaysia's first smart city.  The Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) incorporates smart city concepts.

A new report from Navigant Research analyzes the smart ciity market including smart energy, smart transportation, smart water, smart buildings, and smart government in Asia  (Australia/New Zealand, Greater China, India, Japan, Southeast Asia, and South Korea).  Navigant forecasts that annual smart city technology investment in Asia Pacific will increase from $3.0 billion in 2014 to reach $11.3 billion in 2023.

Public-private infrastructure industry leaders present plan to resuscitate U.S. infrastructure

The state of U.S. public infrastructure was given a cumulative grade point average of D+ (poor) by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in its 2013 infrastructure scorecard. A grade of D is defined as “in poor to fair condition and mostly below standard, with many elements approaching the end of their service life. A large portion of the system exhibits significant deterioration. Condition and capacity are of significant concern with strong risk of failure.”  According the the World Economic Forum the quality of United States infrastructure is now ranked 19th among the World's nations.

A symposium of public-private infrastructure industry leaders has agreed that the time has come to issue an experts’ consensus report on the seriousness of the state of the U.S. infrastructure and the pressing need for change.  At At the National Press Club on June 26-27, a report Making the Grade was released by  experts representing 45 different corporations, professional organizations, think tanks, financial advisers, academic institutions and others which presents a six-point plan to resuscitate U.S. infrastructure and revive the U.S.'s global competitiveness.

In the report infrastructure is defined as the basic public physical and organizational structures needed for society to function including drinking water, waste water, solid and hazardous waste disposal, telecommunications, energy, streets, roads, highways, bridges, transit, rail, aviation, schools, parks, levees, ports, and inland waterways.

The annual cost of the status quo, with increasing water main breaks, electricity failures and transportation delays, is estimated to increase to $1.2 trillion for U.S. businesses and $611 billion for all American households by 2020.  Some of the issues highlighted in the report include

• 42 % of major U.S. urban highways are congested leading to $101 billion in lost worker productivity and fuel wasted  idling in traffic every year.  By 2020,  it is estimated that  the time stuck in traffic will triple increasing the risk of economic gridlock in the densest urban corridors.
• Every year that are 240,000 water main breaks in the U.S.  Without extra investment to close the investment gap in water infrastructure, there is a risk of losing $416 billion from the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP).

National six-point plan

1. Make Infrastructure leadership a presidential and cabinet priority to convey and support the vision, arbitrate competing interests, and remove obstacles to success.
2. Form U.S. infrastructure regions to integrated infrastructure agendas and efficiently allocate capital and natural resources.
3. Establish a national infrastructure bank to accelerate projects that can align with the visions goals, i.e., innovation, and prudent use of capital, modernize project delivery methods, and societal benefit, among others,
4. Sell opportunity bonds to raise more infrastructure capital to fulfill the generational obligation,
5. Create a national infrastructure index that clearly articulates the current state, ambition, and the relative contribution of proposed projects and programs to encourage long-term, sustainable ROI through transparency.
6. Engage the American people to build support for the importance of infrastructure policy.

Making the Grade Infrastructure Symposium 2013—Attending organizations

American Public Works Association
American Society of Civil Engineers
American Structurepoint
Anchin, Block, & Anchin
Arcadis
Arup
ASLA New York Chapter
Autodesk
Berger Group
BioCities
Black & Veatch
Brookings Institution
City of Boston, MA
Dewberry Companies
Ernst + Young
Forum for Urban Design
Genivar/WSP
Golder
Granite
Grimshaw Architects
Harrisburg Area Community College
HatchMottMacDonald
HDR
HNTB
Impact Infrastructure
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Infrastructure USA
Institute for Large Scale Innovation
Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure
Jacobs
Jonathan Rose Companies
Kiewit
Malachite
Parsons Brinckerhoff
Polytechnic University of NYU
Riverkeeper
Skanska
Stantec
Syska + Hennesey
Tectonic Engineering
Transportation Issues Daily
NY Chapter Urban Land Institute
VHB (Vanasse Hangen Brustlin)
Weidlinger

Dutch One-Call system for underground utilities based on INSPIRE-US (utility services) standard

I have blogged numerous times about the challenge of accurately geolocating underground utilities.For example,  I blogged about the estimated ROI for investment in improving the geolocation and other information about underground utilities and the remarkable project of the City of Las Vegas to create a 3D model of its underground utilities.

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One-Call in the Netherlands (KLIC)

I blogged previously about the Dutch KLIC system which implements what is called in North America a One-Call or Call-Before-You-Dig system and has been in place since 1967. The objective of the system is to prevent damages to the utility network and to ensure the safety of excavators during excavations. 

Anyone planning an excavation would call the One-Call telephone number and communicate the location, duration, and other information about the planned excavation. The One-Call center would contact the relevant utilities (network operators) who would then send maps of their network infrastructure to the excavator. (In North America the utilities would more typically send vans and staff with equipment to try to locate underground facilities.) The Dutch service was free of charge for excavators and funded by the network operators. It took about three working days to provide the required information including maps to the excavator.

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KLIC-Online

In 2010 the Netherlands switched to a digital information system (KLIC-Online) that works in a similar way except that everything could be done online.  With KLIC-Online the turnaround time was reduced to hours. Both the manual and KLIC-Online One-Call systems were initially voluntary. ON July 1, 2008 the Sub soil Cables and Pipelines Information Exchange Act (WION) came into effect. WION made KLIC mandatory for both network operators and excavators with severe penalties for excavators who circumvented the system. There is a charge of € 29.50 for every excavation request.

 

KLIC-WIN

 

At Geospatial World Forum 2014 in Geneva this year as part of the GeoEnergy track, Ad van Houtum of the Dutch Kadaster, Land Registry and Mapping Agency, gave an overview of KLIC-WIN, which is an adaptation of KLIC-Online to meet the future needs of the industry a as well as to be compliant with the national WION legislation and the European INSPIRE Directive.

 

One of the 34 themes of the INSPIRE standards initiative concerns Utility Services (INSPIRE-US), which obligates public network operators to make their data available online through viewing and download services. INSPIRE-US (Annex III Sub-theme 6a Utility Services) is obligatory for 80% of Dutch network operators.  There is a strict roadmap for implementing the directive. 

• Metadata published (2013)
• Webservices exposing existing data  (OGC WMS/WFS) (2013)
• Data harmonized (2020)

There are also requirements for responsiveness and availability,

• 24x7 availability
• 99% uptime
• View service < 5 seconds
• Start download < 20 seconds
• Support for 20 or more concurrent users

The stakeholders (ministries, Kadaster, network operators, and excavators) have agreed and decided to adapt the existing KLIC-Online system to satisfy both WION and the INSPIRE-US requirements.  There are some challenges including authentication, authorization, and accounting (A3), how to include  the private sector, specifically telecom, and the IT architecture.  Different architectures have been proposed including centralized, distributed, and a hybrid model.

An outline of the KLIC-WIN development program is expected to be completed by Spring  2014. It will be based on a concrete use case of INSPIRE-US.