Having attended Autodesk University in Las Vegas this week, I’m immersed in the idea of model-based design. The concept is a paradigm shift for the AEC community as it breaks free of the drawing-oriented design process toward an intelligent model that informs all phases of a building’s life and is acted upon by all of the disciplines that are involved in the process. The idea that informs this is Building Information Modeling (BIM), which is basically a GIS for a building. BIM introduces a database to store all details and components of the building as well as the domain knowledge of a team of collaborators.

GIS has always been about the aggregation of policy-oriented details about our planet. The very first GIS, the Canadian Geographic Information System, was a necessary step to pull together nationwide-scale land use planning by the central government to inform social, economic and environmental decisions. As such, the GIS became the repository of details about agricultural suitability, the details about natural resources exploitation and management, and a means to gauge the demographics of the populace as well as the potential impacts of policy decisions on society.

In much the same way that BIM is about extending the collaboration process to make the best possible building as a holistic design exercise, GIS has the same process and outcome for crafting and managing policy for a better and more efficient society. The extension of this concept is that we can begin to build global best practice approaches for eradicating poverty, managing our resources, stewarding our environment in a way that preserves biodiversity, and adapting together to the climate and resource scarcity issues that face our finite planet.

The concept of GIS addresses all elements of living most efficiently on our planet. GIS informs policy, manages policy implementation, monitors policy effectiveness, and provides the means of communicating policy success. In much the same way that BIM will revolutionize the building design, construction and management industry, GIS has and will continue to transform the effective creation, administration and accountability issues related to public policy.

It was obvious coming into this year’s AU conference that the role and prominence of the word geospatial has changed within Autodesk as a result of recent reorganization. Certainly there’s good ongoing support for Map 3D and Autodesk Mapguide, but there were no tracks identified as geospatial.

Instead, Autodesk has expanded their infrastructure group to encapsulate their geospatial tools and domain expertise in specific markets. The idea that was articulated is that geospatial data and visualization serve to inform infrastructure projects, and Autodesk has identified opportunities around specific market segments rather than geospatial platform development.

Among the areas that Autodesk feels there are opportunities within the newly redefined infrastructure grouping are transportation (with beefed up capabilities in Civil3D), water/wastewater, electrical utilities and renovation and retrofit of buildings. The software tools that dominate the opportunities in this group are Revit and Navisworks, with an emphasis placed on analysis with Ecotect and Green Building Studio as well as increasing the capabilities of Revit to work as a better collaboration tool for larger distributed project teams.

Last year’s push for digital cities has been muted by the state of the economy, and particularly the overwhelming challenges that cities face due to reduced tax revenues. Autodesk’s acquisition of Land Explorer is still undergoing a transition from its German roots to become standardized for the North American market and the rest of the world. The tool’s ability to create detailed 3D models quickly has generated excitement within the group, particularly for scenarios where cities seek to manipulate their future design.

While the role of geospatial thinking within the product lines has been shifting for a while, it speaks most clearly to a convergence of technologies. While model-based design feeds nicely into the role of geospatial tools to form the base reality that everything is built upon, there still isn’t a strategy for sharing models between tools other than the FDO process. While this capability addresses many user needs, the vision of a detailed city model that ingests the building models and as-built drawings from multiple Autodesk tools seems a far way in the making.

The Utility Symposium at Autodesk University yesterday provided a good overview of multiple scales of utility operations and a global perspective, with representation from North America, Europe and Australia. The focus was on the user, with presentations from a wide variety of electric and water utilities. It all kicked off with a “speed-dating” format aimed at creating a strong feeling of community among Autodesk’s utility customers. The event provided a forum for discussion among peer groups, an overview of process issues and some creative approaches to common challenges.

The first panel discussion started with a question about the challenges due to the down economy. Surprisingly, there was little lamenting with more of an emphasis on opportunity. Among the benefits of the slowdown have been more time to train, a chance to look more closely at process to improve efficiencies, the ability to improve business by focusing on key differentiators, and the benefits of adding top talent because so many good people are out of work.

Presentations began with Southern California Edison’s ambitious and long-term goals of a more streamlined operation. The utility needed to revamp a siloed operation that used to have five different crews in the field using five different systems. The revamped system has SAP at it’s core along with Autodesk’s utility design services (AUD). The utility is undergoing incremental change that focuses more on process than technology.

The utility makes great use of Google Maps and Google Earth Pro to form the basis of their base map for design projects. They haven’t decided on a GIS component yet for this major revamp, but did state that Oracle Spatial will be a key component and that they would be GIS “front end agnostic,” meaning that there would no longer be a GIS system competing against another within different parts of the organization. There are still a number of challenges for the utility to address, including a year of mapping updates backlogged, but they’re committed to organizational change as well as technology change with this process.

The panel discussion provided some good insight into utility data quality issues that expanded on the year of backlogs, and Google Maps as base layer. While this low-quality level seemed appalling to some, there were several surprising comments about the more the data is used the worse that it gets. The issue that all users shared is that any large-scale changes to systems cause great disruptions that take time to recover, and that lapses in funding for field data maintenance (often the reaction in a down economy) take a great deal of time to recover from.

When the panel was asked where they are placing their development emphasis, there was varied reaction. Las Vegas Valley Water is placing a great emphasis on custom solutions with Web 2.0 technologies, saying that the paradigm shift of the Web is upon us and that there’s great opportunity for collaboration. Nashville is placing greater emphasis on automated design process to streamline design work and create rules-based design criteria. The canton of Basel, Switzerland is taking a service-oriented architecture approach for the development of better tools and work processes that are “independent from technique,” stating that there’s now much greater opportunity to organize solutions around work. Hazen-Sawyer is working to leverage their model-based designs so that the utility of the model can live on with the client for ongoing maintenance.

Model-based design was prominent throughout the session, with more of an emphasis on 3D data and streamlined design workflows. As Parsons put it in their presentation, the traditional linear approach to design doesn’t work when moving to a collaborative model-based approach. There is a disruptive change that replaces the “relay race” approach with a more collaborative and streamlined process.

In the end, the issue still revolves around quality data for quality decisions, and a focus on streamlined and more inclusive process.

Vector1 Media has reached an agreement to purchase the Asian Surveying and Mapping (ASM) Newsletter from South Pacific Science Press International. The new arrangement will take effect on Jan. 1, 2010, and will help expand the reach of our content to a fast growing region that can benefit greatly from applied geospatial technologies.

The principals of South Pacific Science Press, Jon Fairall and Wendy Chapman, started the ASM Newsletter in 2003, and it has grown steadily from that point. The publication provides a good resource for companies and individuals that are applying geospatial technology in the region with entirely Asian-focused content. We intent to continue with the same format and coverage, while weaving in content that expands our mission that geospatial technology can improve upon the stewardship of our planet.

We’re excited to expand the reach into Asia with a dedicated regional publication. And even more exciting is that Jon Fairall has expressed an interest in contributing his considerable industry expertise to projects with V1 Research.

Bentley is rolling out a new format called i-model that they’re touting as a container for open information exchange. The format is essentially a DGN but with new concepts to support the workflows of integrated project delivery where multiple disciplines need access to shared information beyond simply the exchange of an individual model or file. The i-model container allows for the combination of multiple models and files within an i-model that becomes a self-describing package that is secure, flexible, reusable and accurate.

Bentley suggests thinking of this format as a Zip file, where users are aggregating project information into a single immutable file. There’s a transformation process to create the file that removes redundant information and compresses the source file at roughly a 10:1 ratio. Unlike other formats, the geometry is retained rather than faceted, so that true measurements are maintained.

One of the key features of the i-model is something that Bentley calls provenance – the ability to see who changed what when, and to capture and record comments and workflows. There’s also the idea that the i-model is a new format that can contain enough information and comments to be “unambiguously interpreted.” With the specific goal of collaboration, there’s also a means to control who can open it, and an expiration date so that old data is not acted upon.

In a press session this morning Bentley was grilled about the need to create one more format. The executive team asserted that this new format is the only one that addresses long-term collaborations, and that it doesn’t step on or over other current standards, because it is in essence a DGN. They were specifically asked why a PDF wasn’t good enough, and answered that PDF isn’t rich enough to handle all the details in a DWG and DGN with various reference files, constructs and geometry. The i-model leaves that information intact for such added tasks as analysis and simulation. They indicated that they saw an opportunity to address a problem with a “conceptually right” approach that allows them to leapfrog other formats to solve current user collaboration problems.

The new i-model format will be supported in ProjectWise Navigator V8i (Select Series 1), and will be available in beta format in a month or two. The format is supported by a free viewer and an SDK to allow others to incorporate the format in their own software. Bentley has also created an Autodesk Revit plug-in that adds the ability to save Revit files as i-models for use with Bentley products.

Bentley today announced a partnership with Pointools to include their Vortex Engine API into the Bentley platform. This integration will allow users to reference and manage point cloud data within MicroStation for better project management, and marks Bentley as the first CAD vendor to incorporate point clouds as an integrated data type and to manage these files through ProjectWise.

“The difficulty of managing and integrating point clouds into infrastructure products has been a barrier to laser scanning adoption,” noted Greg Bentley, CEO of Bentley Systems. “I expect innovations in every infrastructure application domain to leverage point cloud models of existing conditions for lifecycle performance.”

Pointools has been working since 2004 to create a universal point cloud engine for diverse point cloud formats. The integration of this engine into MicroStation means that users will be able to uniquely reference and geospatially coordinate point cloud files with vector geometry and raster data. Current tools only allow management and manipulation outside of a CAD environment.

With the Pointools Vortex API, point cloud data can be loaded, displayed, analyzed and the points can be extracted. The Pointools file format (POD) captures and retails the scanner type, original scan file name, scan date, scan locations and scan keywords.

The point clouds will also be integrated with Project Wise content management tools to index the files and allow them to be searched and managed by project. The file caching capability of ProjectWise will speed the use and transfer of large point cloud files to distributed teams.

This announcement is a significant step forward for model-based design. The integration of point clouds means that project managers can scan and record building progress along the timeline of project development to accurately record as-built conditions. The added capability gives designers more control of the construction process, and increases the communication capability of work teams. The recorded data adds to the intelligence about the building for operation and maintenance once the project has been completed.

Bentley has been exploring the impact and application of 3D City GIS for some time, and they’ve been thinking along the sustainability lines for a while now as well. The design technology for 3D city models have now come together with the concept of sustainability in a new white paper titled, “3D City GIS – A Major Step Towards Sustainable Infrastructure.”

The white paper does a good job of outlining the components and applications of a 3D city geospatial information system. These primary components are:

• 3D Modeling and Quality Control – Creating 3D models requires data, techniques, tools, and effort. Whether a municipality subcontracts the execution of the 3D models or creates them in-house, some quality control steps must be conducted before it can commit to the 3D City GIS.
• Persist, Manage and Serve – A scalable software platform is required in order to manage all the infrastructure related data, resources, and workflows, and to maximize control and productivity. The data can be persisted in various forms such as spatial databases, files, or even paper. Sharing information with the stakeholders, especially through the tremendous potential of the web, makes interoperability
a key component.
• 3D Analysis and Design – The ultimate goal of the system is to enable consumers to make appropriate decisions for sustaining society and the environment. Those decisions can take shape in the establishment of a new design. This is made possible by visualizing and analyzing all of the available information.

The white paper emphasizes the efficiency that can be gained by implementing a city-wide 3D model, along with a comprehensive accounting of the technology necessary to build and maintain such a system. There are also many examples here, mostly from European cities, that illustrate the different applications and benefits of this approach.

Bentley’s product line is well suited to offer the design, maintain and manage components of such a vision, providing a strong foundation that scales nicely. Their Geospatial Server, which is built upon their ProjectWise content management system, is ideally suited to manage files and databases and to offer the search and analysis capabilities for both 2D and 3D data.

Download the full white paper here to learn more about Bentley’s approach to 3D City GIS.

It’s interesting to witness the number of large engineering firms that have adopted geospatial technology into their project planning and implementation workflows, making great inroads and profits in the past five to ten years. A growing number of engineering firms are applying GIS to large architecture/engineering and construction projects that include infrastructure design, environmental planning, facilities management, corridor planning, residential and commercial development master plans, and natural resource management.

The original intent of most of these firms was to diversify themselves to keep a healthy amount of projects coming their way. While they may have only adopted the technology to meet specific project needs to begin with, many have retooled their operations over time to integrate the technology into all aspects of project workflow. What many of these firms discovered is that geospatial improves their internal processes to drive down their own costs while also driving down project costs for their clients.

Firms of Note

The firm that prompted this exploration is CH2M Hill, which this week made the announcement that they’ve sold off their Enterprise Management Solutions division to form a new firm called Critigen. With this announcement we learned that this division of the company has been growing at an accelerated pace of 20 percent each of the past three years, and is set to make similar double-digit gains this year despite the damaged economy.

It’s great to see that there’s such sustained growth in this sector. There area  a number of large engineering firms that have been applying geospatial tools to their projects for some time. I think of PB, Michael Baker, Woolpert, CDM, Arup, Stantec, Tata, EDAW, Timmons Group and the like. Many of these companies are multi-national conglomerates that do work all over the world, therefore these examples are at the top tier and scale of projects. There are also plenty of smaller international and regional players that are doing this type of work as well.

Cultural Differences

The full vision of a GIS-centric system for the management of large-scale projects throughout their lifecycle is being accomplished at these firms, but there are still many barriers that need to be overcome for maximum efficiency. In such projects there are the surveyors who do base mapping, the planners, designers and engineers that typically use CAD tools, and a GIS department that tries to weave all of this data together. There are cultural differences among these different practitioners, and also issues of scale and coordinate reference that sometimes cause stumbling blocks at different phases of project development.

With such a large market at stake, the software developers in the CAD and GIS field are applying considerable resources to solve the various stumbling blocks. There are inroads in interoperability between vendors, the adoption of document management and central data repositories, and the addition of design functionality within GIS. The technical challenges are also being addressed by individual firms that work to further streamline their operations and differentiate themselves from competitors through technology expertise.

Driving Developments

Some of the firms that have shown the greatest innovation in the geospatial engineering area have been those that have applied a great deal of process engineering to the tool integration problem. There are a number of tools out there that help a firm combine all of their drawing and other geospatial data into a central repository for better project management.

Database tools such as Oracle Spatial provide a common repository as well as tools to reference and retrieve all means of geospatial data. There are also tailored document management tools for CAD and GIS such as Bentley’s ProjectWise that have cover all manner of collaborative and content management tools to manage all project phases. The central data store provides the point of integration that addresses the different approaches of the various practitioners, and becomes a focal point for further development to better streamline operations.

Recurring Theme

There have been several other sectors where companies with deep application knowledge have harnessed geospatial technology. In fact, there’s been a progression of hot areas over the time that I’ve been involved in the Industry. When I started my geospatial career the companies that applied the technology to utility asset management were hot, closely followed by the forestry, natural resources and agriculture sector. From there the defense sector exploded. Recently there’s been a focus on infrastructure, and the areas of sustainability planning and implementation is growing strong.

The trend of the thriving technology integrator is an ongoing phenomena. It makes sense that as the technology and markets have matured there have been companies to pull together different tools to create targeted solutions that play off of their domain expertise. Those that are the best at this difficult task seem to gain a lion’s share of the projects over time that leave a solid core of a dozen or so domain experts.

It’s amazing to me that within just three or four years CH2M Hill grew a division of 700 plus people that dealt primarily with the application of geospatial technology. This example clearly illustrates a pent-up demand, and the power of geospatial technology to grow a company’s bottom line in the applied technology space.

While some of the work in the geoengineering sector has slowed due to the downturn in the economy, there are a growing number of government-led projects that will take good advantage of this built up capacity. Stimulus funds are starting to be spent in areas of Smart Grid development, renewable energy siting, corridor planning, carbon accounting, climate change planning and many areas of environmental consulting.The future is certainly bright for firms addressing these areas, and all geospatial practitioners stand to benefit by the pressure that this group places on better surveying, CAD and GIS integration.

References

Bringing GIS and Engineering Departments Closer Together, Charlie Crocker, Between the Poles Blog, June 5, 2006

GIS in Engineering, 2003 ESRI/UC Proceedings, Jennifer Redmund and Noah Benedict, The TSR Group

While it may be a bit premature to pronounce the recovery of the global economy, it’s not too early to start thinking about the technologies that will benefit once things start looking up. 3D laser scanning is one of the brightest spots in the geospatial technology arena, because it’s a relatively new technology without a great deal of installed base, it  introduces some impressive efficiencies in the surveying process, and it addresses sectors that stand to rebound as things look up.

There an increasing interest in 3D visualization, with new software and system capabilities to deal with this data type, and improved hardware to speed its use. 3D brings a lot to the table for quicker communication and improved insight, and it has the potential to dramatically streamline and improve the planning process.

Improved Data Collection

These tools of quick precision can be harnessed to provide a wealth of new details about infrastructure in a relatively short time and at an affordable cost. 3D laser scanners have the promise of largely replacing traditional optical surveying instruments, particularly in urban areas where capturing detailed environments can benefit greatly from the laser point cloud approach.

Laser scanning is a technology that will quickly revolutionize surveying. The ability to take a terrestrial laser scanner to a site to capture the entire area with accurate survey points frees up the surveyor to visit a site once for a specific project, and to take some subsequent measurements from the office, rather than having to know each and every point that will need collecting ahead of time. This provides a huge productivity gain to cut down on repeated visits to the same site. It also improves the safety of the surveyor for they can set up scanner once in a hazardous area rather than having to cover that area on foot several times in the traditional approach.

Digital Planning

The economic stimulus package has placed an emphasis on infrastructure, but the majority of those projects have gone to maintenance rather than new construction. When the intent is quick action, it’s understandable to pick paving projects, but the impact on sustainability is negligible in terms of improving road safety or easing traffic congestion. Planning for new projects is cumbersome and time consuming. What is needed is a whole new digital design process, and 3D scanning is a critical component in all phases of digital project management.

It’s mind boggling that infrastructure planning is largely still a paper-based workflow. Starting each project with a detailed 3D laser scan, and the creation of a 3D collaborative design space makes a great deal of sense to improve project efficiency. Having the designer, engineers and inspectors all working from the same true-to-life  3D environment would greatly streamline the collaborative process. Repeated scans as the work progresses would ensure that the project is progressing as planned, and that it moves forward on time and on budget. Detailed scans of the finished project would be used for ongoing maintenance and as a basis for any future projects in the area.

There’s an increasing need for planning reform in light of the tools and technology that could greatly speed and improve the construction process. If such tools were in place prior to the influx of spending on infrastructure projects, we’d see much greater impact from infrastructure investments. Instead of just a smooth new road surface, we might see the removal of poorly designed road bottlenecks, a direct impact on the efficiency of our transportation networks, and improved lives.

Work Without Workers?

The worldwide construction industry has been  hard hit by the economic downturn, and the resulting fall-off of projects has meant industry layoffs and business consolidation. When construction was booming there was a shortage of available surveyors to meet the demand. Although there are presently fewer jobs available because of the economic climate, when things start to pick up the shortage will not have disappeared and will put greater pressure on surveyors to improve the efficiency of their operations.

The average age of a land surveyor in the United States is mid-fifties, which means that dramatic changes will need to take place in this profession over the next ten years in order to fill the gap as these practitioners retire. The training of new surveyors will be critical, but laser scanning can also have a dramatic impact on efficiency, driving down the time that a surveyor has to be on any one project site, and allowing one surveyor to do the work of an entire crew.

The future of 3D laser scanning stands to improve steadily, with the potential for dramatic gains once construction starts increase. A movement toward a more digital construction process and 4D construction management will spur on the growth of this sector as will the movement to create highly detailed 3D digital city models for the better management of our urban centers. If you’re contemplating business opportunities or a career change within the geospatial space, 3D laser scanning is an area that you must explore.