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| Welcome to the GITA Ontario Chapter blog site! |
3/9/2010
Autumn 2009
This report summarizes the results of an industry trends forum held at the GITA Ontario Chapter Fall Forum 2009 held in Oakville Ontario on November 4, 2009.
Workshop participants represented a wide range of industries including (ranked highest to lowest by proportion of participants from each sector):
· Electricity
· Transportation
· Gas
· Pipeline
· Public Sector
· Telecommunications
· Water/Waste Water
· Environment
Participants represented users, developers, professional service providers and vendors. Participants worked in mixed tables and considered the following questions:
1) What are the top 2 or 3 applications and technologies for your table?
2) What are the drivers (i.e. why are they important to you)?
3) What are the challenges?
The overall top applications of importance to the GITA Ontario community at this time are:
- Asset Management (including Critical Infrastructure Management)
- Smart Grid
- Emergency Response and Management.
The overall top technologies of interest to the GITA Ontario community at this time are:
- Web Services
- Distribution Automation – SCADA and its evolution into Smart/Intelligent Grid
- Data and system integration/Interoperability
- Mobile computing technologies.
The top business drivers for the applications and technologies are:
- Legislation and compliance
- Public accountability and transparency (incl. PSAB 31500 & IFRS)
- Operational efficiency, green footprint and cost management
- Safety.
The top challenges are:
- Continuous change in how our organizations operate (i.e. changes in government and changes in legislation or regulation)
- Securing adequate funding and resources
- Overcoming interoperability challenges relating to data and systems.
11/3/2009
ONLINE REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED.....
PLEASE REGISTER AT THE DOOR
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7:30 – 8:45 |
Registration, light breakfast and Exhibition (Foyer and Exhibition Hall) |
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8:45 – 9:00 |
Welcome and Opening remarks |
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9:00- 10:00 |
Industry Trends Analysis Forum
A facilitated discussion and opportunity to learn about the latest infrastructure related GIS application and technology trends in Ontario. |
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10:00 – 10:30 |
Coffee Break and Exhibition (Exhibition Hall) |
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Track 1 |
Track 2 |
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10:30 – 11:15 |
Presentation 1.1
Dan Amyot, Guelph Hydro
- Evolution of GIS at Guelph Hydro
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Presentation 2.1
Dan Charron, Chatham-Kent Energy
- Reliability and Efficiency of Distribution Systems with Enterprise GIS |
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11:15 – 12:00 |
Presentation 1.2
Mike Robertson, Land Information Ontario
- Creating Partnerships for Imagery |
Presentation 2.2
Jody Wilson, Collingwood Utility Services
- EAM through Field Asset Capture |
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12:00 – 1:15 |
Lunch Break and Exhibition (Exhibition Hall) |
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1:15 – 2:00 |
Presentation 1.3
Geoff Cameron, AGSI
- Smart Grid
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Presentation 2.3
Brock Kingston, Latitude
- A GIS-centric approach to Mobile Workforce Management |
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2:00 – 2:45 |
Presentation 1.4
Intergraph, Analyzing Geospatial Infrastructure Data |
Presentation 2.4
Mike MacLean, City of Peterborough
- How a Disaster and Legislation Brought GIS Awareness to the City of Peterborough |
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2:45 – 3:00 |
Refreshments and Exhibition(Exhibition Hall) |
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3:00 – 3:45 |
Keynote: Geoff Zeiss, Autodesk
Smart, Green & Sustainable Power |
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3:45 – 4:00 |
Closing Remarks, Door Prize and Vendor Showcase draw |
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4:00 |
Conference Close | 10/21/2009
Wednesday, November 4 2009
Oakville Conference & Banquet Centre
2515 Wyecroft Rd (at Bronte Rd and QEW)
Oakville, ON L6L 6P8 Map
ONLINE REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED.....
PLEASE REGISTER AT THE DOOR
|
Registration, Light Breakfast and Exhibition |
|
Welcome and Opening remarks |
|
GIS Industry Trends Forum
A facilitated discussion and opportunity to learn about the latest infrastructure related GIS application and technology trends in Ontario. |
|
Coffee Break and Exhibition |
|
Dan Amyot, Guelph Hydro
Evolution of GIS at Guelph Hydro
|
Dan Charron, Chatham-Kent Energy
Reliability and Efficiency of Distribution Systems with Enterprise GIS |
|
Mike Robertson, Land Information Ontario
Creating Partnerships for Imagery |
Jody Wilson, Collingwood Utility Services
EAM through Field Asset Capture |
|
Lunch Break and Exhibition |
|
Geoff Cameron, AGSI
Smart Grid
|
Brock Kingston, Latitude
A GIS-centric approach to Mobile Workforce Management |
|
Intergraph
Analyzing Geospatial Infrastructure Data |
Mike MacLean, City of Peterborough
How a Disaster and Legislation Brought GIS Awareness to the City of Peterborough
|
|
Refreshments and Exhibition |
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Keynote: Geoff Zeiss, Autodesk Smart, Green and Sustainable Power |
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Closing Remarks, Door Prize and Vendor Showcase draw |
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. 10/15/2009
|
The Agenda for the Fall Forum is nearly finalized.
Keynote Speaker:
- Geoff Zeiss, Director of Geospatial Technology, Autodesk, Inc., Keynote Presentation "Smart, Green and Sustainable"
Confirmed Speakers:
- Dan Amyot, Guelph Hydro, Evolution of GIS at Guelph Hydro
- Dan Charron, Chatham-Kent Energy, Reliability and Efficiency of Distribution Systems with Enterprise GIS
- Mike Robertson, Land Information Ontario, Creating Partnerships for Imagery
- Jody Wilson, Collingwood Utility Services, EAM through Field Asset Capture
We will also be continuing the GITA Industry Trends Analysis dialogue by having round table discussions on industry trends. To help you prepare, we encourage you to think about things that are topical to you in your business right now. Check out the GITA Industry Trends Analysis Group site: http://www.gita.org/about-gita/committees/ITAG/itag.asp
Fall Forum Registration fees:
- GITA Members: FREE
- URISA Members: $25.00 CND
- Non-Members: $50.00 CND
- GITA Membership: $99.00 US* (this includes the Fall Forum and a 1-year membership to GITA and all of the benefits of membership. Membership applications must be submitted by12/31/2009 to take advantage of this discounted rate; normal membership rate is $125 US.)
- GITA Student Membership: $25.00 US* (proof of full-time student enrollment must be provided at Fall Forum registration.)
*GITA membership fees are charged in US funds and sent to GITA Headquarters in Aurora, Colorado.
See you on November 4th!
The GITA Ontario Chapter Executive Committee
| 9/21/2009
|
 President's Column
Here Comes Fall, the Learning Season
By Mike MacLean
Land Information Services Manager
City of Peterborough
Many people regret the passing of summer each year, but to me there's always a bright side - the return of the fall season when I can once again have fellowship with people I like to work with and talk to.
My friends in the geospatial world just never seem to be around in the summer. But when fall arrives I can look forward to seeing them again and finding what they're up to. Events such as the GITA Ontario Fall Forum are just right for that.
When you think about it, there are three ways for geospatial professionals - or any professionals - to learn from one another: on the job, at educational events or by communicating one-on-one. The Fall Forum provides two out of three of those opportunities, by creating one of the year's most important educational events and by bringing like-minded people together in an atmosphere devoted to collegial learning.
The 2009 Forum will take place November 4 at the Oakville Conference Centre. Do you want to contribute to the day's harvest of knowledge? GITA Ontario is now accepting abstracts for presentations. If your organization has developed or implemented a good new idea in geospatial technology, be sure to apply for the chance to describe it to an audience of geospatial specialists. Please send your abstracts to me at MMacLean@peterborough.ca.
Attendee registration for the Forum will be available soon at http://gita.org/chapters/ontario/exec.html.
GITA Ontario is also accepting vendor registrations. Make sure you book early for a great location for your booth! For more information please contact:
Andy Mackie, account manager
Teranet Inc.
416-643-1036
andy.mackie@teranet.ca
Our goal is to provide educational resources and events that help geospatial professionals work together with greater mutual understanding. Looking beyond the Forum to 2010, GITA Ontario will provide even more resources and events that bring together this diverse community.
We are gratified that energetic and talented people continue to come forward to contribute to our association. We welcome two new members of the Executive Committee: Fiona Bruce of Galdos Systems Inc. and Randy Cracknell of RGAC and Associates.
GITA Ontario Chapter is helping to build a vibrant geospatial community across all sectors throughout the province. If you haven't done so already, join us! Become part of the growing Ontario Chapter. For details please see the GITA Web site, gita.org/membership/membership.asp.
Green Transformation Seen in Electric Utility Industry
 The legislated introduction of distributed generation into Ontario's electrical distribution system will completely transform the electric utility industry in the province in the next few years, and transform the application of geospatial technologies along with it, an industry consultant says.
Geoff Cameron, executive vice-president, intelligent networks with Angus GeoSolutions Inc. (AGSI), described for a GITA Ontario audience how the "smart grid" will introduce unprecedented technological challenges to electric utilities. It will force them to rebuild the entire technological foundation for the distribution network in Ontario to accommodate distributed generation and smart switching, at staggering cost.
All of this will be the result of the passage of the Green Energy Act and the need to find sustainable energy sources for the future, Cameron said at the Summer Program Event on July 7, presented at the Hornby Glen Golf Course by GITA Ontario in conjunction with URISA Ontario Chapter.
"In the geospatial world, on the utilities side, everything you can think of is going to change," Cameron said.
The Green Energy Act, which received royal assent May 14, calls among other things for the distributed generation of renewable energy. That is, the legislation enables the establishment of a distribution system in which local producers of energy, such as owners of wind farms or solar panels - even owners of electric vehicles with full batteries -- could feed their available energy into the provincial grid and be paid for it.
Specifically this would be achieved by:
* Creating a feed-in tariff that guarantees specific rates for energy generated from renewable sources;
* Establishing the right to connect to the electricity grid for renewable energy projects that meet technical, economic and other regulatory requirements;
* Establishing a one-stop streamlined approvals process, providing service guarantees for renewable energy projects that meet regulatory requirements;
* Implementing a "smart" power grid to support the development of new renewable energy projects, and prepare Ontario for new technologies like electric cars.
Cameron said that a smart grid has not yet been built anywhere in the world. The Ontario government is working with several utilities in developing pilot projects for various new enabling technologies and so is the Obama administration in the US, which is considering legislation similar to the Green Energy Act.
Cameron and AGSI are consultants to several utilities working on pilot projects. Cameron said in an interview that no one knows what technologies will ultimately support the smart grid and what the cost will be to implement them, but it will be on a scale not seen before.
"My guesstimate is that in North America, if the US passes a similar act, there will be trillions of dollars of investment needed in the electric utility industry in the next 20 to 30 years. Not billions - trillions!"
A smart grid would enable the two-way flow of electrical power and the data it generates, including from smart meters. Bi-directional data would be used to monitor and maintain the grid in real time through the use of smart sensors, smart communications devices and self-healing network technologies.
"To make smart grid work we have to be able to make snap decisions," Cameron told his audience. "In the case of self-healing networks we are talking milliseconds or thousandths of milliseconds for these devices and switches to operate correctly on the network without things blowing up.
"The devices have to be able to talk to our GIS systems and other corporate systems in real time. It is the back-office technology requirements that are scaring utilities and CEOs around the industry."
Data Management
The smart grid will create extremely difficult challenges in data management and storage. Cameron cited a pilot project in Boulder, Colorado, in which a utility has outfitted 30,000 homes with smart meters and installed 4,500 smart devices on the network to monitor the usage data.
The project has already cost $100 million, even without attempting to integrate the back-office technologies, and is in danger of having to shut down, Cameron said.
"They are getting 1 million points of data back a second and trying to figure out what to do with it."
In Ontario, Hydro One plans to begin a pilot project by early 2010 in the Bruce Peninsula to build a high-bandwidth, wireless communications network for use in monitoring, outage management and restoration of the electrical distribution grid. The network is ultimately envisioned to be available free for use by all electric utilities in the province. But the cost to build it has been estimated at up to $1 billion.
Cameron said the province's smart grid is envisioned as a flow of information across many different technologies coming to a central hub for analysis and storage. This will transform GIS and other systems because of the need to pull data from multiple sources, including smart devices, into one application for analysis in real time. This will create a demand for technological interoperability, to the point where many stand-alone systems in use today will become obsolete.
"From a geospatial perspective, we have to open up the technologies, create standards and think about data management as opposed to tools," Cameron declared.
"GIS developers have been great at showing off fancy tools and terrible at linking technologies that integrate in real time with other systems. And nowhere is that more true than in the electric utility industry.
"We have stand-alone data collection and engineering analysis tools, we have stand-alone management systems and stand-alone customer information systems," Cameron explained. "All of these have to come together. That's why nothing is sacred.
"Today we are still stuck with a lot of geospatial platforms that are commonly in use but have their roots in technologies built 25 years ago. They will have to change." 'Go Green' Seminar Hears of New GIS Tools
GITA Ontario delegates at a unique summer event learned how geospatial applications are helping public-sector organizations to keep their assets sustainable and their data-management processes efficient.
The Geospatial Go Green Seminar on July 7 in the village of Hornby, in Halton Hills just north of Milton, was the first summer educational event jointly presented by the Ontario chapters of GITA and URISA.
The educational session took place in the morning preceding a round of golf at the Hornby Glen Golf Club. Four corporate sponsors contributed to the educational presentations: Angus GeoSolutions Inc. (AGSI), ESRI Canada, iPLANcorp and Teranet.
The presentation by AGSI vice-president Geoff Cameron was a revealing examination of how the Green Energy Act will lead to the transformation of electric utilities in Ontario and the GIS technologies that serve them (see separate article).
For municipalities, sustainability programs to protect man-made assets as well as natural ones have high priority. But effective sustainability programs depend on the availability of reliable data about assets - and data, even if it is complete and up to date, is often defined and treated differently by different departments.
The City of Woodstock has found a new way to deal with these problems by using GIS technology as the basis for a central asset-management system. As explained by Barry Kelly, public works account manager with ESRI Canada, the solution is built on a new product called the Asset Value Toolkit (AVT) for ArcGIS. It is a collection of GIS-based tools to collect, manage, amortize and report financial asset information.
The AVT's built-in accounting rules enable managers in Woodstock to examine attribute information such as acquisition cost, expected life and salvage values, and then calculate the depreciation of individual assets. The Engineering and Finance departments can now draw accurate data from the same central source by exporting the AVT toolbar results to simple Excel files.
Woodstock's solution will help to improve its infrastructure maintenance and renewal programs, reduce its infrastructure gap and promote better long-term planning by bringing departments closer together, Kelly said.
Data Delivery Service
Richard Norris, account executive with Teranet, described the company's electronic data delivery service called GeoServer. He summarized its data features and models and explained how Teranet delivers parcel data to clients via the Internet, with no need to produce or dispose of DVDs.
Norris said Teranet clients normally receive updated parcel data for Ontario once a month. If they still receive it on a DVD they have to spend considerable time to upload it, update the mapping and title data and integrate the new data into their systems. All these steps are eliminated with the automated GeoServer delivery.
The majority of features available in the POLARIS data model are available with GeoServer along with attribute information. Data is updated remotely and transactionally from Teranet's GeoWarehouse. Clients can customize the data that is delivered and can easily identify what has been changed.
Norris introduced Thomas Hall, a project leader/systems analyst with the City of Vaughan, who described how using GeoServer helps the municipality to update its data effectively for the Planning, Engineering and Finance departments.
Hall said Vaughan benefits from having a reliable schedule for automated, timely updates of parcel data and from having a convenient source for comparing current and historical data.
Data Delivery Service
The presentation from iPLANcorp described a software product designed to make GIS data available to workers in the field to save time and improve decision-making.
Survey Document Manager is a document-management application that works across all departments in a municipal organization or utility or conservation authority to permit rapid searches of datasets and to position drawings spatially in seconds to improve decision-making.
"It's a browser-based, zero-footprint technology," said Paul Nicholls, account manager for iPLANcorp.
Instead of carrying rolls of plans or drawings, field employees can travel with a tablet or notebook computer enabled with Internet connectivity and Survey Document Manager. The application can search databases and quickly locate all geo-related documents relevant to the task in the field and display them with a mouse click.
The documents can be positioned in a geospatial environment, such as a subdivision or individual parcel, and overlaid one on top of another. Documents such as surveys, site plans and grade plans, can be overlaid so the viewer can find any discrepancies among them, or investigate the accuracy of as-built structures.
Nicholls said the application reduces document management time and protects the quality of paper drawings that no longer have to be taken to the field. | | 6/4/2009
Ontario GITA/URISA Geospatial Go Green Seminar (plus LIO & SWOOP2010)
GITA and URISA Ontario Chapters are delighted to announce they will be co-hosting the Geospatial Go Green Seminar (find details below). Also LIO & SWOOP2010 are holding a general partnership meeting. Click here for complete information on this important meeting.
Geospatial Go Green Seminar & Golf Tournament:
| When: |
Tuesday, July 7, 2009 |
| Where: |
Hornby Glen Golf Club (Trafalgar Rd & Hwy 401)
8286 Hornby Rd
Hornby, ON |
| Format: |
18-Hole Shotgun Start - 4 Person Scramble*, max 144 players |
| **Cost: |
Full event: Members $95, Non-members $150
Seminar only: Members $40, Non-members $75 |
No refunds after June 30, 2009
Full program and registration details available online soon at www.urisaoc.ca
Thank you to all our sponsors; without you, we wouldn't be able to hold this annual event. We encourage all of our members to visit sponsors' websites, through the links on the event page.
- Each player tees off on each hole. The best of the tee shots is selected and all players play their second shots from that spot. The best of the second shots is determined, then all play their third shots from that spot, and so on until the ball is holed.
- Each team must use a minimum of 3 tee shots from each team member.
**Seminar only cost includes morning seminar, continental breakfast, and refreshments. Full event cost includes morning seminar, continental breakfast, refreshments, lunch, golf, cart, prizes, and après golf BBQ.
ALSO...
SWOOP2010
Land Information Ontario and the Steering Committee for the South Western Ontario Orthophotography Project would like to invite all potential stakeholders to a general partnership meeting on June 18, 2009 from 10:00 am until 2:30 pm at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. Click here for complete information. 3/26/2009
Table of Contents
President's Message: New Times, New Ideas
Education Event Demonstrates How GIS is a Key Enabler for Business Intelligence
PowerStream Finds Geospatial Solution to Manage Cable Replacement Program
CSA Developing New Standard to Ensure Accurate Maps of Underground Infrastructure
President's Message: New Times, New Ideas
By Mike MacLean
Land Information Services Manager, City of Peterborough
We are infrastructure! Just as GITA International has redefined its mission to help members apply geospatial solutions to address growing infrastructure needs, GITA Ontario is refocusing its programs and services for members like you.
As the President of GITA Ontario for 2009-10, I'm pleased to report that the Chapter Board is coming up with new ideas to fit the times.
Everyone is looking for value these days. So here's a value proposition you can't beat - free educational events! We have made a policy decision that GITA members will be able to register free for all educational events, including our Fall Forum.
We instituted the policy just in time for our event entitled "Taking the Geospatial Mystery out of Business Intelligence," on February 25 at the offices of PowerStream in Vaughan. This was an example of how our events provide information to geospatial professionals that you can't find anywhere else, as demonstrated in the reports in this newsletter.
We are already making plans for the 2009 Fall Forum, which will take place November 4 at the Oakville Conference Centre. For networking and information exchange among geospatial professionals from many disciplines, nothing beats an intensive, day-long event like the Fall Forum - and it's free to our members, along with many other membership benefits.
More free educational events are in planning stages. We will hold one in June entitled "Taking the Geospatial Mystery out of Municipal Government." In early July, we will join forces with URISA to present another session in conjunction with a golf tournament. We'll give you more details soon about those events.
Benefits Through the Web
If you own, operate, maintain or protect infrastructure, membership in GITA will connect you to people and information worldwide to help find geospatial solutions to your infrastructure needs. Membership in GITA gives you access to a searchable directory of members in 23 chapters around the world and you can reach them through GEOXchange, GITA's e-mail listserver.
The association provides international conferences and symposiums, daily geospatial news, industry publications and reports, the Geospatial Technology Report and hundreds of technical papers. All of this and more is available by joining GITA at www.gita.org/membership.
And now the Ontario Chapter has its own improved Web site! Have a look at http://gitaontario.org. The site has been designed as a blog to help increase communication among GITA members, non-members and the GITA Ontario Chapter Board.
Bookmark the page and stay up to date with geospatial news, technical developments and other blogs of interest in the Ontario geospatial community. At a time of tremendous change and development in the infrastructure that provides fundamental support to our way of life, maintaining a professional network through GITA is more valuable than ever.
MMacLean@peterborough.ca
Education Event Demonstrates How GIS
Is a Key Enabler for Business Intelligence
Geospatial technologies have become essential to compiling business intelligence that helps organizations make better decisions, the latest GITA Ontario educational event showed.
"Geographic information systems help organizations implement business intelligence better and faster, with knowledge spread among all employees," consultant Greg Duffy explained to delegates attending the event entitled "Taking the Geospatial Mystery out of Business Intelligence," on February 25 at the offices of PowerStream Inc. in Vaughan.
The term "business intelligence" refers to concepts and methods to improve business decision-making by using fact-based support systems. The GITA event presented a unique set of perspectives on the key role that geospatial technologies can have in enabling business intelligence.
Speakers gave some practical examples and discussed some of the technologies and standards behind the growing geospatial influence on business decisions. (Please see separate articles on presentations by PowerStream and the Canadian Standards Association.)
A talk by DMTI Spatial Inc. demonstrated the ability of geospatial technologies to unify data within an organization and eliminate the silos that impede or block corporate knowledge. Boris Gutkin, director of product management, enterprise solutions for DMTI, and account manager Billy Ormerod discussed the company's data-governance solution, which has been implemented at several large utilities and telecommunications companies. It is based on a methodology and technology collectively called master address management.
"This is a technology to support business intelligence," Ormerod explained. "A lot of companies think business intelligence is the answer to all their problems but if your data is not governed at the smallest level of geography, which is an address, your decisions could be made on the basis of disparate and inaccurate reports."
DMTI software consolidates all the corporate address data from billing, engineering and other systems and creates an index for each unique location, which serves as a universal identifier regardless of how the address appears in different data silos. This index can be enriched with attributes to enable the organization to analyze its services and performance in relation to each customer.
Gutkin said, "Through the address we can manage parcels, we can manage buildings, and provide all kinds of information that is significant in making decisions."
Duffy's presentation showed why geospatial technologies can bring even larger benefits when channelled through business intelligence.
Business intelligence and geomatics are about the same things - gathering and analyzing information to make decisions, posited Duffy, who is the principal consultant of Woodfield Consulting.
"If you adopt GIS in your organization, you have in fact already invested heavily in subsequent downstream applications such as business intelligence," he said. "GIS helps organizations implement business intelligence better, faster, cheaper, sooner."
That investment can have an impact beyond what management expects. It can spread business intelligence not just to executives, but throughout the organization.
"GIS transforms organizations; it's not just information," Duffy asserted. "It equips employees to be more confident because they have access to information to make decisions -- and they actually do make decisions based on this data.
"The organization no longer has such a vertical structure. Employees can make decisions on their own, at the moment when a decision is needed, with this new intelligence. And the president and other senior executives become more directional."
For many large organizations, however, such a transformation has to overcome legacy barriers, as Laverne Hanley's presentation showed.
Hanley is manager of mapping services for Union Gas Limited, which needs to manage about $5.5 billion in assets. Essentially all of them - including 141,000 gas pipeline valves spread over 400 communities - are mapped by the company's GeoMedia system. It is effectively the corporate system of record for assets.
But that system has become overloaded with too many tasks over the years, Hanley said. The work-management program for pipeline inspections, for example, is embedded within it. Union Gas has realized that GIS systems were not intended for such purposes and is reorganizing to "decouple the inventory from the history."
It has a Facility Information System (FIS) strategy to accomplish that reorganization in a first phase, followed by later phases to integrate a number of other systems that do not talk to each other.
"What we need to do is move through this phase to the point where we can make true business intelligence decisions, to be more safe, reliable, compliant and efficient," Hanley said. "We see geospatial technology as being the key enabler in our FIS strategy and in our asset-management strategy."
PowerStream Finds Geospatial Solution
To Manage Cable Replacement Program
When your infrastructure includes many thousands of pieces of equipment and thousands of kilometres of cable that connect them, all subject to natural decay, how do you decide which ones to replace or upgrade at a sustainable pace?
That is a fundamental management issue at PowerStream Inc. Decisions have to be made with the best possible business intelligence. That's why the company relies on geospatial technologies and techniques to support its decision-making models.
Kris Philpott, manager of GIS Development at Powerstream, the second-largest municipally owned electrical distribution company in Ontario, told the audience at GITA Ontario's Feb. 25 educational event how the company has spatially enabled its business intelligence, specifically for its asset-replacement program.
PowerStream sets priorities for replacing its cables, transformers and other assets by using a mathematical model it calls ACA, for asset condition assessment. Spatial data fed into this model is enabling the company to build a 10-year plan for replacing the cable installed in 11 municipalities throughout Simcoe and York regions.
That's a more effective and reliable way to manage the replacement cycle than the previous method, Philpott remarked.
"In the good old days we could go to Steve the lineman, who knows everything about every asset in the field, and say, 'Tell us which cables are the oldest and which ones have the most faults.' And he would rhyme them off.
"That doesn't cut it any more. Those guys will all be retiring soon."
PowerStream still consults its field teams for advice on scheduling replacements but relies more on its ACA model. Its results are displayed through the company's ESRI technology as polygons, colour coded by certain ranges in the ACA benefit-cost ratio to indicate which areas have highest priority for cable replacement.
Building this capability was not easy because PowerStream initially lacked the historic data showing precisely when its cable assets were installed, Philpott explained. It found the answer by the ingenious method of turning work-order data into maps.
PowerStream's work-order data is tied to its GIS system so that each work order is given spatial representation as a polygon. The dates and descriptions of the work orders can be applied to any assets within the polygons.
"Having that spatial index of our historic work orders means we have spatially enabled our business intelligence to make more informed decisions about project selection," Philpott said.
"We can now forecast our replacement needs for 10 years. And we plan to build ACA models for all of our asset classes."
CSA Developing New Standard to Ensure
Accurate Maps of Underground Infrastructure
Geospatial technologies support business intelligence by enabling corporate-wide access to reliable data. But what if the data itself is questionable?
That is a problem, especially when applied to underground infrastructure. What's needed is a framework for publishing, cataloguing, accessing and exchanging accurate utility-related records.
The Canadian Standards Association is attempting to do that by implementing a new standard, S250, for the mapping of underground infrastructure. The chair of the technical committee for this project, Bob Gaspirc, described its importance in a presentation to GITA Ontario's educational event, "Taking the Geospatial Mystery out of Business Intelligence," on February 25 in Vaughan.
"If utility owners and operators across Canada apply this CSA standard to their operations, will it improve the reliability of their records to support business intelligence?" asked Gaspirc, who is manager of mapping services for the City of Toronto.
"The technical committee of the CSA S250 Mapping of Underground Infrastructure standard believes that accurate, complete and dependable records will make for improved decision making."
Municipalities have complained records provided by utilities with out-of-date and inconsistent data. Municipalities themselves have differing requirements governing data about underground infrastructure. There are high costs associated with today's multiple standards.
CSA S250, scheduled for release in the summer of 2010, is intended to ensure that the reporting of underground infrastructure will be sound enough to give assurance to the public that the data can reasonably be relied on.
The standard will require that data on underground installations has to be collected at or near the time the event occurred. It will have to be collected by a person competent to do so and who is authorized to compile reports as legal evidence.
"Standards support the business intelligence world," Gaspirc said in urging his audience to understand and support CSA S250.
| | 3/10/2009The GITA Ontario Chapter will be hosting the annual Fall Forum on November 4th, 2009, at the Oakville Conference Centre.
2/10/2009The GITA Ontario Chapter is always looking for ways to give back to the GIS community.
This site has been designed as a blog to help increase communication between GITA members, non-members and the GITA Ontario Chapter Board.
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