The American Public Works Association (APWA) has just created the APWA Center for Sustainability. The mission of this organization is to create the next generation of public works professionals that work closely with a more engaged and better informed public, and take an integrated systems approach to addressing livability and community issues.

A statement from APWA president Larry Koehle sums up the mission and approach:

“We believe we are creating better solutions for public works management by focusing on sustainable ideas for innovation, collaboration, leadership and whole systems thinking. The Center’s leadership team includes 12 sustainability leaders and subject matter experts from North America who are already creating a foundation for sustainable action throughout public works departments.”

There’s a growing (renewed?) interest in the Internet of Things around the benefits for a more instrumented and connected city. IBM organized a session at SXSW in Austin that took place this morning titled, “City as Platform.” The objectives of the session was to discuss the role of information architects, the interface of systems with the built world, the steps needed to transform the thinking of planners and builders toward viewing the city as a platform, and the role of citizens  in the design.

Participants include an impressive array of technologists, city advocates, and planners/designers. The session is certainly an important one for wider advocacy of this “system of systems” thinking. The makeup of the panel and the objectives of the session are fully outlined on this Blog post from the Smarter Planet blog, with promises for a recap post and podcast to follow.

The following video from IBM was posted today to YouTube, and it provides a great overview of IBM’s view of “The Internet of Things.”

The Federal Communications Commission is poised to announce a new 10-year initiative to give the United States “the fastest and most extensive wireless networks of any nation.” The goal is to assure that at least 100 million homes have access to broadband networks at speeds of at least 100 megabits per second (20 times faster than today’s average speed).

The Broadband Initiative is funded through the Recovery Act, and details can be found at www.broadband.gov. Among the details coming out about the National Broadband Plan roadmap is the creation of a wireless network for first responders (fire, police, public safety) to communicate and share data and video during major emergencies. The use of broadband for education and access to healthcare records is another priority.

Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman, asserts that the United States is lagging far behind other countries in broadband adoption and speed, with a third of Americans having no access to high-speed Internet service.

Senator Chris Dodd aims to pass the Livable Communities Act prior to his retirement at the end of this session. The Act aims to fund transit-oriented development and other green transportation efforts. The Act would provide $4 Billion in competitive funds for projects, would establish an Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities within the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, and would establish an independent Interagency Council on Sustainable Communities. The effort builds on the $150 Million of sustainability grants that were part of the 2010 White House budget and formalizes the inter-agency efforts of the Office of Livable Communities.

The new digital resource center at the State Library of Queensland envisions the future library as a place for creativity for, “art, design, gaming, engineering, sound, science, craft and architecture.” The idea of the new facility called the Edge is to foster connections for multidisciplinary design work and to foster innovation.

The $7.9 million construction project has created a multipurpose space that includes sound and image recording labs and meeting and function rooms, all equipped with high end digital equipment. The director of the center has an idea for the center to become a hub for urban informatics – the study of how people interact with urban spaces by tapping information and data of our digital lives.

Read more about this cutting-edge facility in this feature in The Australian.

The fusion of both LIDAR and hyperspectral imagery for the creation of realistic urban models for simulation purposes was the focus of a presentation this morning at ILMF by Raul Campos-Marquetti, senior hyperspectral scientist at Merrick & Company. The ultimate purpose of this model was a simulation for military training purposes by the U.S. Army’s RDECOM.

Hyperspectal provided the means to classify features and to create a spectral library of road surface types, roof types, vegetation classifications, and an understanding of different building types. The hyperspectral classifications were then used to do a pixel by pixel, point to point fusion to create an informed 3D model with real world features and land cover/land use classifications.

The “physical morphology” model informed the synthetic creation of building exteriors and interiors based on real observation of different material types. The resulting large-scale city model was more of a true modeled reality than what can be accomplished with simply point clouds, because the classifications informed more realistic simulation that could take into account the physics of the different material types.

Cost of entry into Mobile Mapping work is a considerable expense according to Lewis Graham of GeoCue from the ASPRS Hot Topics Session at ILMF 10 in Denver.

• $750 to 900K for the mapping system
• Vehicle $50K
• Production hardware $150K
• Production software $125K (can share some hardware and software if you already have airborne)

Personnel costs include the need for a driver, equipment operator and surveyor on the collection side. On the office side there’s a need for a production manager, geometric correction specialist, and at least two data collection technicians.

Mobile mapping has hit its commercial stride in 2009. As many as 10 different systems were sold last year even in a down economy.

Software is lagging now to exploit the data, but more software and solutions will emerge to speed up the data processing and visualizations of the final product.

Louisiana Senator David Vitter wants to stop the Federal Emergency Management Agency from updating flood maps in areas where levees have been found deficient. The senator would like to see a phased levee certification fix that would allow repairs prior to mapping in order to avoid steep insurance hikes that would hamper redevelopment.

The sticking point seems to be the need for local dollars to fix the problems, with a federal entity that is pointing out the risks.

Given the state of the economy, any announcement of jobs provides reason for celebration. Today’s front page of the Denver Post was jubilant about the U.S. Air Force six-year contract with Raytheon Co. for GPS-related work worth $886.5 million that is set to bring more than 300 high-paying jobs to Colorado. The contract is to modernize the ground control segment of the Next Generation GPS Control Segment (OCX).

Intelligent infrastructure combines sensors, network connectivity and software to monitor and analyze complex systems to uncover inefficiency and inform optimal operations. The sensor component collects operational detail over time as well as providing real-time inputs on current conditions. The network connectivity ensures the flow of information between systems, other sensors, and practitioners. The software component provides oversight and analysis, integrating insight from various systems and personnel. The approach incorporates the management of multiple processes for more collaborative and multidisciplinary workflows. Intelligence is constantly improving from such a system through incremental improvements that are informed through constant monitoring and analysis.

The idea of intelligent infrastructure has been around for a long time in one form or another. Early forays into real-time monitoring of systems include industrial control systems such as SCADA. What largely sets the newer concept of intelligent infrastructure apart is an advancement in sensors, systems and networks that enable us to go beyond simply monitoring. Instead of the more passive alarms when inputs exceed accepted norms, intelligent infrastructure is a more holistic approach that aims to model and manage with a greater understanding of the interconnectivity of systems and the implications of events.

Big Blue Leads the Way

IBM is well out in front of publicizing and practicing the concept of intelligent infrastructure with their Smarter Planet campaign and their SmarterCity initiative. The company trades on their large-scale integration work and their understanding of complex systems to promote this idea of instrumented, interconnected, and then intelligent systems.

At the core of this concept is the idea of a system of systems approach. In the complex urban core, it’s a combination of transportation, healthcare, economic development, public safety, energy and utilities, and education systems. Each of these individual systems is in themselves a system of multiple inputs from multiple sensors and systems. IBM asserts that it’s largely an issue of constant data collection and open data exchanges that yield smarts for these systems. The resulting repository yields the ability to see how things are performing and a clear picture on how to redeploy resources quickly in advance of any problems or failures.

IBM takes a partnership approach toward achieving their Smarter Planet goals, working with a number of geospatial players to map assets and analyze details geographically. IBM’s Maximo Spatial Asset Management system integrates with ESRI’s ArcGIS Server to incorporate the GIS view, display map content, provide geospatial querying capability, and read data direct from multiple geodatabases. The geospatial component is clearly needed, particularly in the complex environments of an urban setting, and location often acts as the glue to integrate disparate data and systems together.

Flexible and Responsive

Given the changes of rapid urbanization and the pressures to adapt to climate change, it’s imperative that we fine tune our systems to be more flexible and responsive. The concept of intelligent infrastructure is also strategically timed for great demographic shifts that will leave many high-level jobs vacant due to retirements. These systems can bridge the knowledge gap by recording and modeling best business practice and process in advance of losing legacy operational knowledge.

Examples of industry approaches that might qualify as “intelligent infrastructure” in my mind are:

• the skeletonization of water networks for better understanding of full-network issues
• intelligent traffic systems and sensors on bridges to measure and monitor performance
• the detailed use of spatial analysis for renewable energy siting and ongoing monitoring of in situ conditions for optimal energy generation
• more efficient building heating, cooling and lighting systems for energy conservation
• detailed underground models for more informed oil and gas extraction

In all the above examples, there is a considerable increase in infrastructure and mapping efforts, but the payoffs can also be huge. An energy savings of 40 percent translates into a lower energy bill, less of a dependence on foreign energy sources, and reduced emissions. Intelligent traffic can dramatically reduce drive times and congestion, while cutting down on carbon emissions. While the solutions themselves are smart, the investment is also smart because the benefits far outweigh the costs.

Unleashing Creativity

Given the cross-cutting nature of intelligent infrastructure, where operational data from multiple separate operations are combined, there’s a great deal of opportunity for creative approaches to problem solving. Instead of being constrained by traditional business silos, these new systems will unlock cross-organization information to reveal the inefficiencies that exist between different systems.

As the systems mature and much more is known about operations, solutions to problems can be tested almost as in a laboratory setting. With the sensor-based feedback, and the growing knowledge base, pilot projects can be tested and the great deal of data that is generated can be analyzed to determine any performance improvements.

Through the application of intelligent infrastructure, we can gain a much better handle on the materials and resources that our systems consume. This conservation-first approach will go a long way toward improving our efficiency for a more sustainable approach, and will greatly improve the way we manage and construct our built world.

Get Involved: The Geospatial Information & Technology Association will be exploring the geospatial dimension of intelligent infrastructure at their upcoming annual meeting in Phoenix in April. I’ll be acting as facilitator for discussions with the Industry Trends Analysis Group (ITAG) on Monday morning of the event. If this topic is of interest to you, be sure to become involved.

Additional Resources

IBM – A Smarter Planet Initiative

Intelligent Infrastructure Definition – University of Toronto, Dept. of Civil Engineering

Intelligent Infrastructure – Water Matters Blog at the Earth Institute at Columbia University