GITA Ontario Chapter - Blog

Wednesday, November 4 2009

Oakville Conference & Banquet Centre

2515 Wyecroft Rd (at Bronte Rd and QEW)

Oakville, ON L6L 6P8  Map

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Presentation Abstracts

Keynote

Geoff Zeiss, Autodesk

Smart, Green and Sustainable Power

Geoff is a 2008 and 2009 GITA Speaker Award winner and we are very pleased to welcome him as our keynote speaker this year.  Geoff will be talking on Smart, Green and Sustainable Power.

The reliability of the power grid is decreasing while our dependence on it is increasing.   For example in 2008 chip technologies consumed 40% of US power production and this is expected to increase to 60% in 2015.    Outages and interruptions cost Americans at least $150 billion annually. As an example, a one hour outage can cost a brokerage operation over $6 million.  The risks associated with our current, increasingly fragile power grid and the impact of global climate change require us to invest in a more resilient, efficient, and green smart grid. The passage of the Green Energy and Green Economy Act (GEGEA) in Ontario in May of this year has propelled Ontario into the forefront of smart grid implementation in North America.  The current reality is that each utility is figuring out how to implement a smart grid by the seat of their pants.  But some common elements of the smart grid are emerging.   A common characteristic of smart grid is the infrastructure to support for distributed renewable power generation.  The effort to design, build and maintain  the infrastructure to do this including new transmission lines, new and upgraded substations, storage, and associated communications network is going to be massive.  Another important objective of the smart-grid is a dramatic increase in network reliability through new capabilities such as self healing and real-time asset condition monitoring.  To do this is going to require 100% reliable, real-time data about the network.  The poor quality of existing network facilities records data in North America means that power utilities implementing a smart grid are going to have to radically improve the flow of network facilities design information within the organization.  This presentation will discuss relevant technological advances that will help utilities address these challenges.

Track Presentations

Dan Amyot, Guelph Hydro

Evolution of GIS at Guelph Hydro

Guelph Hydro’s approach regarding GIS mapping has been to keep things simple. That simple approach has provided Guelph Hydro with a robust and integrated information environment. Guelph Hydro is currently assisting 15 other Electrical Distribution Companies in Ontario with a cost effective solution to the many complex reporting requirements currently found within our industry. This demonstration will focus on the challenges that Guelph Hydro has encountered and the solutions implemented from Customer Information System, Archived drawing retrieval, Customer outage totals for SADI, CADI and SAFI information to Smart metering deployment, Asset Management, site inspections and International Financial Reporting (IFRS).

Dan Charron, Chatham-Kent Energy   

Reliability and Efficiency of Distribution Systems with Enterprise GIS

Chatham-Kent Hydro is on the leading edge of the movement toward a smart grid and is taking steps to increase the reliability and efficiency of its overall distribution system. Hear about the utility's background in smart grid development and their plans to move forward.

• Building the backbone for the smart grid
• Benefits of interfacing smart meter data with GIS
• Plans to expand the Peaksaver program to empower customers

Mike Robertson, Land Information Ontario

Creating Partnerships for Imagery

Land Information Ontario (LIO) has coordinated imagery acquisition funding partnerships across areas of Ontario for a number of years. LIO is now on a path to adopt an Imagery Strategy that will help establish a predictable, sustainable schedule to update high resolution imagery on a regular basis. One of the primary goals of the LIO Imagery Strategy is to allow potential partners to plan and budget for those partnership based approached acquisitions. Through the development of public and private sector partnerships, and the funding model that has been adopted for these projects, significant cost savings can be realized by all organizations participating in these projects.

This presentation will review some of the projects that have recently been completed as well as what is being planned for 2010. The presentation will also provide insight into the LIO Imagery Strategy that will be presented to Senior Management in the Ontario Government for approval later this year.

Jody Wilson, Collingwood Utility Services  

EAM through Field Asset Capture

Over the past 2 years Collingwood Utility Services [COLLUS] has been developing and building a GIS to assist in the management of their Electric and Water based assets.  As an integral part of data collection, COLLUS has recently taken the GIS to the field.  This presentation will provide an outline of the general processes that COLLUS went through to leverage the power of GIS in the field.  Items to be covered include:

• the technology from a hardware and software point of view
• current projects underway
• lessons learned
• what the future holds

This is a grass roots look at implementing a Field GIS at a Small Utility from the ground up.

Geoff Cameron, AGSI

Smart Grid

AGSI will provide an overview of Smart Grid initiatives for North America. This Smart Grid overview will lead into discussions about approaches to Information Technology including SPATIALnet and GO360 required to make Smart Grid a reality. AGSI will provide examples from various electric utility pilots and desired future visioning driving the cultural, electric network infrastructure and technology change of the future Smart Grid landscape.

Brock Kingston, Latitude

A GIS-centric approach to Mobile Workforce Management 

GIS offers the promise of efficiency in the management of a mobile workforce.  The challenge has been to unify GIS with a multiple third party AVL technologies.  This presentation outlines how your organization can combine the underlying power of GIS with:

• a classic set of AVL tools (geo-fencing, reporting, alerts, vehicle follow, search, etc.)
• your existing and/or new hardware (vehicle mounted GPS or cell phones)
• and your organization’s investment in GIS data.

We will detail how you organization can self-host this combined solution, execute post-event analysis and build its own unique reports.  This presentation will conclude with a case study for a municipal government customer.

Mike MacLean, City of Peterborough & GITA Ontario Chapter President

How a Disaster and Legislation Brought GIS Awareness to the City of Peterborough

In the past five years there have been two major events that have brought a greater awareness of the power of GIS to the City of Peterborough.

In 2004 a major flood happened in the City, and in 2008 the PSAB legislation involved extensive work utilizing GIS to gather spatial data.

When the flood happened in 2004, about seventy percent of the sanitary and storm sewers had been mapped.  After the flood, consultants were hired to perform storm water modeling that required complete GIS data of the storm sewers.  Contract staff was hired to assist LIS in completing the data collection.

Like many municipalities in Ontario, the City of Peterborough had to be PSAB compliant by the 2009 deadline.  An Asset team was hired, and LIS was asked to help out.  After analyzing the amount of useful data LIS had acquired over the years and the workload that was going to be required by LIS, a contract GIS Technologist was hired to assist LIS. 

This presentation will show how the data gathering and analysis of spatial data helped the corporation in both of these events, how they ended up being tied together and the evolution and awareness of the City of Peterborough’s GIS at all levels as a result of these two events.