There are impor­tant sig­nals emerg­ing from COP15 Copen­hagen that are impor­tant to the geospa­tial indus­try. The econ­omy has been in a poker game with envi­ron­ment, and nature has called the bluff, and demands atten­tion. COP15 is now talk­ing about trans­parency, trace­abil­ity, quan­tifi­ca­tion and qual­ity as nations demand to know what each other is doing about the envi­ron­ment. Geospa­tial tools and tech­nolo­gies are uniquely poised to par­tic­i­pate in the debates and to pro­vide the kinds and amounts of infor­ma­tion that will set­tle the dif­fer­ences. The geospa­tial indus­try should take note — the writ­ing is on the wall.

The debate over cli­mate change has been long, heated and often trou­bled by dif­fer­ent view­points. Geospa­tial tech­nolo­gies and tools cut through the thick fog of alter­nat­ing views and bring real data and results to the fore­front. More mea­sure­ment is the basic need and improved meth­ods for describ­ing and even cer­ti­fy­ing improved effi­ciency appear to be on the hori­zon. Let’s look at how trans­parency within the sys­tem could be devel­oped and how the kinds of proof that dif­fer­ent nations are demand­ing can be cre­ated and seen.

Trans­port and traf­fic
Mobil­ity plays a unique role in the devel­op­menty of envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies and energy use and effi­ciency. New research into auto­mo­bile tech­nolo­gies is deliv­er­ing improved engine effi­ciency and gains in pro­duc­tion of less car­bon. The design of roads, the rout­ing of vehi­cles and improve­ments in road use are being devel­oped through in car nav­i­ga­tion sys­tems and improved road con­struc­tion. Old infra­struc­ture is giv­ing way to new infra­struc­ture and dig­i­tal geospa­tial tech­nolo­gies are extendin 3D appli­ca­tions to their devel­op­ment, oper­a­tion and main­te­nance such as the 825 mil­lion Euro being spent on Poland’s road infra­struc­ture by the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank,.

Road net­works are increas­ingly becom­ing live net­worked sys­tems that include arrays of sen­sors that con­tin­u­ously pro­vide data through­out the net­work both in terms of infra­struc­ture per­for­mance and vehic­u­lar move­ments. The quan­tifi­ca­tion of this per­for­mance is held within geo­data­bases and review­able upon demand. A com­par­i­son of many road net­work per­for­mance today against those being built in the future will show improve­ments in per­for­mance. We can see tools like GIS, CAD, GPS and sur­vey tech­nolo­gies involved in these appli­ca­tions. We also see improved topo­graphic map­ping and in car nav­i­ga­tion sys­tems that involve car per­for­mance directly.

Air qual­ity and pol­lu­tion
Ulti­mately the air we see and breathe are good direct indi­ca­tors of the qual­ity and lev­els of aerosols in the envi­ron­ment. These can be mea­sured through a vari­ety of sen­sors, but must also be geo­ref­er­enced to the loca­tions where they are being mon­i­tored and mea­sured. These mea­sure­ments are often con­tin­u­ous in nature and require net­works of sen­sors for the proper mon­i­tor­ing and mod­el­ing of their impacts. The United King­dom recently released its National Emis­sions of Air Qual­ity (NAEI) report that is an exam­ple of these types of mea­sure­ments. The SANY project within the EU is an exam­ple of a ser­vices ori­ented archi­tec­ture being devel­oped for sen­sors. A con­fer­ence is being held today in France that is, “jointly organ­ised by ECMWF, the UK Met Office and Meteo– France, is to review the use of OGC stan­dards in geo-sciences in Europe and world­wide, to pro­mote col­lab­o­ra­tion between mete­o­ro­log­i­cal ser­vices in order to define a set of com­mon stan­dards that will enhance interoperability.”

Agri­cul­ture and forestry
Both agri­cul­ture and forestry have long been asso­ci­ated with car­bon emsis­sions and these indus­tries are poised to play a larger role when it comes to seques­tra­tion of car­bon and the pro­duc­tion of renew­able energy as a form of mixed farm­ing to pro­vide rev­enue to farm­ers. Forestry was men­tioned this week at COP15 and ESRI has been work­ing on devel­op­ing for­est method­olo­gies that are based on GIS tools for the man­age­ment of for­est oper­a­tions and car­bon evo­lu­tion. A small com­pany from Swe­den is devel­op­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools for explain­ing cli­mate change and car­bon sci­ence through visu­al­i­sa­tion car­tog­ra­phy — see Nord­pil. Papers are also emerg­ing from Guyana about ‘Forests, Rights, and Cli­mate.’ The U.S. EPA is also heav­ily involved in the study of car­bon seques­tra­tion by agri­cul­ture and forestry.

These assess­ments and stud­ies are often sup­ported through the use and appli­ca­tion of remote sens­ing tech­nolo­gies. The mar­ket for aer­ial and satel­lite imagery is likely to grow because of the need for greater trans­parency. Addi­tion­ally, soft­ware for the study of forestry and build­ing sys­tems to link with spa­tial data infra­struc­ture are likely to involve soft­ware like ERDAS has been used in the Sach­sen­forst of Germany.

Archi­tec­ture and CAD
There has been an explo­sion in the devel­op­ment and growth of energy effi­ciency tools by many man­u­fac­tur­ers in the build­ing infor­ma­tion mod­el­ing (BIM) area. GRAPHISOFT, for exam­ple, has had suc­cess in devel­op­ing build­ings that are effi­cient energy wise. That com­pany has recently recieved awards for its EcoDe­signer prod­uct.

Don Kuehne has been writ­ing a blog for while and I read it reg­u­larly. He has a good grasp on the rela­tion­ship of CAD to GIS soft­ware and has writ­ten a huge amount on the topic from var­i­ous angles. New land­scape rat­ings sys­tems are also being devel­oped that take into account a vari­ety of fac­tors that con­tribute toward health­ier urban envi­ron­ments.

These are only a few exam­ples of some of the thoughts and lead­er­ship that is tak­ing place around the world that involves geospa­tial tech­nolo­gies for use in cli­mate related issues. There are many more.

COP15 is dis­cussing the mea­sure­ment and ver­i­fi­ca­tion of reduc­tions. That is new as com­pared to whether or not it is hap­pen­ing. It rep­re­sents a step in the evo­lu­tion of cli­mate change debates, one that is not wholly incom­pat­i­ble with sim­ply build­ing bet­ter infra­struc­ture that works for peo­ple, is cheaper to oper­ate and reduces energy consumption.

In the final analy­sis geospa­tial tools will play a role across the spec­trum of project devel­op­ment from plan­ning through to main­te­nance. Visu­al­i­sa­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge are also likely to grow. These tools are use­ful for sup­port­ing those needs as well.

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Jeff Thurston is edi­tor of V1 Mag­a­zine for EMEA and is based in Berlin.