GITA's GIS Conference Emphasizes Involvement

Details

By Matt Ball | 27 April 2009 | 1801

The Geospatial Information Technology Association's 2009 Geospatial Infrastructure Solutions (GIS) Conference took place April 19-22 in Tampa, Florida. The event aimed to involve members early and often, with a 'design your own program' appeal to members during the planning stages, followed by the interactive discussions, and an emphasis during the general sessions on the benefits of becoming involved. The new focus on infrastructure and emergency response breaks new ground for geospatial technology events, spurring broader use among utilities, and promoting deeper utlization by the engineering community.

The Geospatial Information Technology Association's 2009 Geospatial Infrastructure Solutions (GIS) Conference took place April 19-22 in Tampa, Florida. The event drew more than 1,000 GIS practitioners, primarily in the elecric, gas and water utility sector. The theme of the event was "Find Your True North," which emphasized the educational impact of the event in a rapidly changing technology sector.

The event aimed to involve members early and often, with a 'design your own program' appeal to members during the planning stages, followed by the interactive discussions, and an emphasis during the general sessions on the benefits of becoming involved. The new focus on infrastructure and emergency response breaks new ground for geospatial technology events, spurring broader use among utilities, and promoting deeper utlization by the engineering community. 

The opening keynote address provided an engineer's perspective on the national need to address aging infrastructure. Blaine Leonard, the president-elect of the American Society of Civil Engineers, spoke to his organizations failing report card, and the amount of investment that America needs to make in order to improve the stability and performance. A direct connection between infrastructure health and economic health was made, with examples of the detrimental effects of failing infrastructure.

The Smart Grid Opportunity

There were many presentations that explored the geospatial component of the movement that's underway to entirely rethink the transmission and distribution of electricity in North America. The Smart Grid adds a great deal of complexity to the network, adding two-way communication between power generation and power use, and making the modeling and maintenance of the network much more critical.

The software vendors at the event see the role of GIS as a foundation for system planning, implementation, managment and maintenance. The demands of a dynamic grid that is adaptive both to use levels and variable power generation levels from distributed sources requires a need for modeling at higher resolution. The new network will ingest power from such sources as wind turbines, solar panels and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Moving away from a centralized power source means that the utility will need to better understand user behavior as well as environmental variables that affect power generation. These many variables require the utility to model the distribution system much more extensively and
accurately.

Smart Grid deployment has many regional nuances that the various American utilities will need to deal with, such as different regulatory environments, different mixes of available renewable energy, and different populations and infrastructure to deal with. GIS technologies have an integral role to play in helping a utility assess their unique environments as well as to plan and project their returns from this investment.

Given the need to customize each and every deployment, the Smart Grid offers a significant opportunity to vendors and service companies in the geospatial community. With all the added complexity of the infrastructure in the Smart Grid, there will need to be a huge mass of data collected. The always-on sensors on the network will be producing a great deal of real-time data feeds that need to be stored and analyzed. The temporal (time) component of the data becomes critical for predictive analysis in both time and place of the networks performance. Details of asset locations will need to be recorded for all chipped components of the grid, meaning huge opportunities for field data collection technology and projects. The dynamic changes on the grid will need to be monitored and modeled, providing opportunities to better automate and improve visualization in the operations center. New decision support tools will need to be created that combine disparate data from both customers and the network.

Aiming for Stimulus Funds

GITA’s Industry Trends Analysis Group (ITAG) met at the conference, and a large part of the focus was the availability of stimulus funds. None of the utilities shared any great insight into acquiring funds, and several indicated that they weren’t interested due to the strings that will be attached. Utilities could learn a great deal from local governments that have had to scrounge grant money related to security initiatives in recent years. Much work will be needed within the next month or so on scoping projects and writing grants to get money for projects that aren’t yet funded.

Speaking separtely with GE about stimulus spending, they placed emphasis on proven technology with well-defined solutions that have clear returns. They stated emphatically that spending in these tough economic times will not be “build it and they will come” projects that are based on the promise of forward looking benefits.

GE is gaining projects and market share with their Smart Grid solutions, because they own most of the pieces to make this work, from wind power generation, to meters in the home, and systems to implement and monitor. Yesterday, GE announced a $200M Smart Grid deployment in Miami for Florida Power & Light, with roughly half of the funds coming from stimulus spending. Companies like GE, that are both well positioned and well connected in Washington stand to gain traction from stimulus spending, given the early emphasis on quick project work. As utilities become telecommunications companies, those players that straddle both communities stand to gain market share.

Outside of the utility sector, there are a great many engineering firms who have adopted the geospatial toolset to aid in designing and building networks, sewer and stormwater systems, roads and bridges.  A good number of sessions at this year's event placed a focus using GIS to plan and model large-scale infrastructure projects as well as digital city models. These sessions offered some insight into the practical application of 3D visualization to improve project implementation.

Emergency Preparedness

The event included a Geospatial Dimensions of Emergency Response Symposium that was concurrent with the infrastructure-focused conference. Sessions in this area emphasized emergency and disaster response for both utilities and municipalities, with a strong focus on interoperability and collaboration.

Electric utilities are greatly impacted by natural disasters, with storm response a significant cost outlay every year. Storm response increasingly involves field force automation and mobile GIS components, and these elements were an integral part of sessions. Mobile device manufacturers and software providers had a significant presence on the exhibit show floor. 

One of the highlights of the specialty conference was a session that brought a cross section of federal agencies together to discuss a unified federal approach to geospatial technologies (see Geoff Zeiss' report on this session for more details). The collaborative nature of emergency response requires the sharing of a common operating picture, and increasingly technologies are enabling this combined view for more effective and efficient operations.

The special symposium dovetailed nicely with GITA's Geospatial Resource for Critical Infrastructure Protection - Emergency Response (GECCo) program. Coincident with the conference location, the association conducted an assessment of Tampa that culiminated in a detailed report.  

Evolving to Meet User Needs

GITA is an organization that is working hard to evolve in order to meet its users needs. The changing technology and business landscape puts any association in a tough spot these days, particularly with travel funds slashed due to the poor economy.

The efforts by the association to align with infrastructure was a fortuitous move given the current administration's emphasis on infrastructure spending and the funds that are being made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The timing of the event precluded significant traction this year from this new spending, but the association in well on course to pick up benefits as their member and the vendor community gain work throughout the coming year.

This year's GIS conference brought together an engaged and motivated audience to explore the frontiers of geospatial technology application, and next year's event in Phoenix in late April will build on this year's momentum.