TwinGeo Magazine - Y1-E1

Re-defining the

Geo-Engineering Concept CASE STUDY: BENTLEY SYSTEMS Collaborative BIM workflows help lower cost of the Zhengzhou-Xixia Expressway project CASE STUDY: AUTODESK It´s the end of BIM as you know it Are you ready for connected BIM?

In Conversation with

PATRICK MAÏORE, Founder, e-cassini

Trends of Land administration, Cadastre 2014 - 2034 vision

E D I TO R I A L

WELCOME TO TWINGEO MAGAZINE We are witnessing a special moment of innovation and technological boom of the Geospatial industry that goes from the capture of a simple point in the field to the operation of a whole set of infrastructures connected to a geographical context; not all physical, not all palpable, but all become increasingly integrated assets.

The software, hardware and services solutions that the companies are developing are trying to satisfy the expectation of an increasingly multidisciplinary user. Historical careers such as topography, architecture or cartography, rather than losing their purity are being transformed by the market demand that requires mixed skills; such that it is difficult to differentiate in a continuous process where one ends and where the other begins. Many products that resulted from lot of hard work, such as photogrammetry, have now been reduced to simple inputs that are developed with less rigor but greater efficiency to satisfy the real business; consequently, it obliges the redesign of the workflows that aim to reduce time, lower cost and greater traceability.

With great satisfaction we are launching this edition of the TwinGeo magazine, with a special tribute to this stage in which we live and which we are calling Geo-Engineering.

It seems it was yesterday that with nostalgia I said goodbye to an Intergraph VAX; to learn new acronyms such as kml, dwg, dgn, shp, gml ... that fulfilled their role in consolidating methods for digital information. Many of those standards came under pressure from the free software community; with great geospatial achievements and still outstanding debts in the CADBIM field; today those acronyms seem to be insufficient, giving way to new concepts such as IoT, BIM-hubs, 5G, Blockchain, 4iR, where the user’s freedom to develop their potential is changing the optics of the proprietary software industry.

It has been difficult for us to select case studies for this edition, such as when we go to a technology fair where we only have one hour to choose what to see. Between the thrill of submerging within a HoloLens and the common sense of Land Management solutions based on LADM, the examples of Bentley Systems, AutoDesk and Plex.Earth of this edition are clear examples of a fourth industrial revolution that is also coming without warning.

We will surely be witnessing the closing of an era focused on information management from the perspective of institutions and companies, where the added value of real-time interaction will focus on the management of the operation, with the user as a non-passive actor.

But there would be time for more. Meanwhile, enjoy this edition.

Golgi Alvarez Editor in Chief

editor@twingeo.com

T h e Te a m Editor-in-Chief Golgi Alvarez

editor@twingeo.com

Consulting Editor Shimonti Paul

indiaoperations@twingeo.com

Spanish Journalist Laura Garcia

editor@geoingenieria.org

Graphic Designer Adams Kazeem

datasoftsolution500@gmail.com

Published by: ZatocaConnect Bogota, Colombia Phone: +57 312 279 6581 E-mail: info@zatoca.com Disclaimer TwinGeo does not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed in the magazine. All views expressed in this issue are those of the contributors. TwinGeo is not responsible for any loss to anyone due to the information provided. TwinGeo aims to create awareness about everything Geo-engineering in an unbiased way. We do not claim to be experts, so feel free to correct us if something needs correction.

CONTENTS Page (6-15)

NEWS • • • • • • • •

Autodesk announces Revit, Infraworks And Civil 3D 2020 Esri acquires indoo.rs Bentley Systems invests in Digital Water Works Kadaster and KU Leuven to assist with development of NSDI in Saint Lucia New laser tracker line from Hexagon makes targetless 3D scanning possible Microsoft HoloLens 2: A new vision for computing A new scanning robotic solution for vertical construction from Topcon Trimble solutions become a part of Colorado State University curricula

COVER STORY

Page (16-27)

RE-DEFINING THE GEO-ENGINEERING CONCEPT Processes are getting largely integrated. This new spectrum of processes, which goes from capturing the information needed for a project in a geospatial environment to putting it into operation for the purposes for which it was conceptualized, needs a new name and we dare to call it ‘GEO-ENGINEERING.’

INTERVIEW

Page (28-31)

IN CONVERSATION WITH PATRICK MAÏORE, FOUNDER, E-CASSINI e-CASSINI is a new web platform in Saas mode that is allowing users to dynamically interconnect LIDAR data, aerial photos, simplified maps and photos. The precision and accuracy offered is significant.

Let’s explore more about the platform through an interaction with PATRICK MAÏORE, FOUNDER, e-CASSINI.

CASE STUDY

Page (32-33)

BENTLEY SYSTEMS: THE ZHENGZHOU-XIXIA EXPRESSWAY

PROJECT Bentley Systems enabled The Expressway team to develop highly accurate models. The team used Bentley’s civil applications to include subgrade roads, bridges, tunnels, and culverts within one model and ensure collaboration across all disciplines in highway design. Read the case study to know in detail how Bentley Systems facilitated the Project for higher accuracy and efficiency.

ARTICLE

Page (34-47)

TRENDS OF LAND ADMINISTRATION CADASTRE 2014 - 2034 VISION Proposing how land administration could be in 2034 doesn’t seem like an easy idea, if we see how many changes have happened in the last 20 years. However, the exercise is a second attempt at what was already done 20 years before by Cadastre 2014. Explore more in the article.

ARTICLE

Page (48-52)

PLEX.EARTH: TAKING THE GUESSWORK OUT OF CIVIL DESIGN Numerous studies estimate the average cost of rework on civil engineering projects to be higher than 5%, occasionally exceeding 15% and some report about project re-working surpassing 30%. In this article, learn how Plex.Earth can help you avoid re-working and achieve higher efficiency in your work.

ARTICLE

Page (53-55)

CIVIL SITE DESIGN’S SATELLITE TO SURFACE FEATURE IS AMAZINGLY ACCURATE Read this article to discover how Civil Site Design’s Satellite to Surface functionality can help you get highly accurate elevation data. Data that is more accurate than both LIDAR and survey data.

AUTODESK CASE STUDY IT’S THE END OF BIM AS YOU KNOW IT—ARE YOU READY FOR CONNECTED BIM? The evolution of BIM is a necessity to address the increasing challenges facing the construction industry. The answer lies in ‘Connected BIM’: BIM + the power of the cloud. Autodesk strikes the right chord through this engaging article.

Page (56-59)

TWINGEO

NEWS AUTODESK ANNOUNCES REVIT, INFRAWORKS AND CIVIL 3D 2020 On April 10, 2019, Autodesk announced the release of Revit, InfraWorks, and Civil 3D 2020.

Revit 2020 With Revit 2020, users will be able to create more accurate, detailed documentation that more closely represents design intent, connect data and enable smoother collaboration and project delivery.

It will help in decreasing time spent on rote tasks and will contribute towards producing high-quality work.

Civil 3D 2020 Civil 3D 2020 delivers further improvements to performance and scalability, enhancing BIM design and production efficiencies for larger, more complex projects.

The latest release is packed with new features like the Dynamo for Civil 3D, which will streamline repetitive tasks and help the user get more out of their model.

InfraWorks 2020 With InfraWorks 2020, Autodesk continues its commitment to the integration of BIM and GIS. Its partnership with Esri has allowed it to leverage the immense quantities of GIS data that were already available both publicly and on internal storage with a streamlined approach that avoids many of the past translations that needed to occur.

This release adds the ability to save back edited data from InfraWorks to the Esri data stores.

NEWS

Esri acquires indoo.rs and announces ArcGIS Indoors Release

O

n February 28, 2019, Esri, the global leader in location intelligence, announced the acquisition of indoo.rs, GmbH a world-leading provider of Indoor Positioning System (IPS) technology. The indoo.rs software will become part of Esri’s ArcGIS Indoors, a new mapping product that enables interactive indoor mapping of corporate facilities, retail and commercial locations, airports, and more.

The acquisition will also provide users of Esri’s ArcGIS platform with imbedded IPS location services to support indoor mapping and analysis. The indoo.rs headquarters will also serve as a new Esri R&D center based in Vienna, Austria focused on cutting-edge IPS capability. “indoo.rs is a leading provider of IPS software and services, working with organizations across the globe such as international hub airports, major

rail stations, and corporate headquarters, and I am excited to welcome the company to the Esri family,” said Brian Cross, Esri director of professional services. “indoo.rs’ technology, experience, and leadership in the IPS field will be of tremendous benefit to our customers who want to bring the power of GIS to indoor spaces.”

“Becoming an integral part of Esri’s product catalog allows us to continue the provision of our services at the highest professional level,” said Bernd Gruber, co-founder of indoo.rs.

“We have seen the IPS market skyrocketing over the last few years,” said Rainer Wolfsberger, CEO of indoo.rs, “and our enterprise customers showed a high demand for deep integration of IPS technology to release the benefits of such a solution at all levels of their organization.”

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NEWS

Bentley Systems invests in Digital Water Works for superior wastewater infrastructure solutions

B

entley Systems has announced a strategic investment in Digital Water Works, a global innovator of digital twin solutions for smart wet infrastructure.

This association will help the firms to expand their leadership in bringing superior infrastructure digital twin solutions to municipal and investor-owned water and wastewater utilities worldwide.

Digital Water Works is known for helping water and wastewater utilities deploy a scalable, flexible, and holistic digital twin geospatial infrastructure platform.

Under the agreement, the firm aims to implement its own integrating applications around commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software

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such as Bentley Systems’ OpenFlows and iTwin offerings. Bentley Systems will license directly to Digital Water Works’ customers. It will also be entitled to appoint two directors to the Digital Water Works board.

On the occasion, Paul F. Boulos, Founder & CEO, Digital Water Works said, “We’re pleased and honored to receive this strategic investment from Bentley.

The infrastructure digital twin product suite would be rolled out in phases during the next five to ten months, and next month, we will launch an early adopter program for progressive water and wastewater utilities and engineering firms who want to help with the product design plans and then be-

ta-test the software.”

Greg Bentley, CEO, Bentley Systems shared, “Bentley Systems’ investment in Digital Water Works signifies our recognition that a specialist ‘digital integrator’ entity will play an indispensable role in helping infrastructure owners to take full advantage of digital twins’ potential. Given his track record towards digital advancement for the world’s wet infrastructure utilities already, there could be no one more effective than Dr. Paul Boulos in leading their engineers and engineering firms, through Digital Water Works, to realize the unlimited opportunities now opened up by digital twins.”

NEWS

Kadaster and KU Leuven to assist with the development of the NSDI in Saint Lucia

E

ven after lot of efforts, within the public sector, the wider use of geospatial information in daily governance, public policy and decision-making processes has remained limited. In an effort to assist the development of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) in Saint Lucia, the Department of Physical Planning (DPP) of Government of Saint Lucia has formulated a project. As part of this project, Kadaster and KU Leuven (University in Belgium) are to assist with the development of a sustainable NSDI in Saint Lucia. The project is receiving funds from the International Development

Association and the Strategic Climate Fund. It is part of the Disaster Vulnerability Reduction programme of the Government.

As a step towards strengthening the NSDI in Saint Lucia, Kadaster and KU Leuven conducted an NSDI readiness assessment in January.

As part of the assessment, key staff members of DPP and other stakeholders in Saint Lucia were asked to score different aspects of the NSDI on Open Data, Standardisation, Metadata, Geoportal, Legislation, Leadership, Human resources, Accessibility, Finance, amongst others. The assessment pro-

vided a good indication of how ready the stakeholders are to use the NSDI in their daily work processes.

The aim of the project is to analyse underlying reasons of the hampered usage and acceptance of the existing facilities and geospatial data. By investigating the legal, financial, institutional and technical conditions of the NSDI of Saint Lucia, the team will give recommendations for improvement.

In the months to come, the project team will review the current situation, provide recommendations and develop a strategy for change.

Developing the NSDI in

SAINT LUCIA 9

TWINGEO

NEWS A new laser tracker line from Hexagon that makes targetless 3D scanning possible

T

he Leica Absolute Tracker ATS600, from Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division is a new product that can accurately locate a point in 3D space with metrology-grade accuracy without the need for a reflector at the point of measurement.

Based on the established Wave-Form Digitiser technology behind some highend surveying tools, the ATS600 is powered by the first ever Scanning Absolute Distance Meter, a metrology-grade iteration of this technical principle that can locate a point to within 300 microns from up to 60 metres away.

By measuring a series of such points across a user-definable measurement area, the ATS600 can quickly produce a measurement grid defining the target measurement surface. The density of that point-grid is also customisable, putting the operator in complete control of the balance between process speed and the level of detail that will feed into your metrology software.

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With the Leica Absolute Tracker ATS600, objects that previously required significant time investments to digitise, or which were even beyond the realistic possibility of efficient measurement, can be quickly brought into the world of 3D analysis by a single operator. With the world’s first ‘direct scanning laser tracker’, productive quality control is primed to expand into entirely new areas of production, powered by a fundamental shift in the way we think about 3D measurement.

The ATS600 also delivers many of the features familiar from the rest of our Absolute Tracker product range, including reflector measurement at up to 80 metres distance, with full PowerLock capability. Combining reflector measurement and direct scanning capabilities delivers impressive all-round performance for large-scale measurement tasks, with scanning quickly describing surfaces and individual reflector readings used for alignment and defining features.

TWINGEO

NEWS

MICROSOFT HOLOLENS 2: A NEW VISION FOR COMPUTING

M

ixed reality on HoloLens 2 combines an untethered device with apps and solutions that help people across the organization to learn, communicate, and collaborate more effectively. It’s the culmination of breakthroughs in hardware design, artificial intelligence (AI), and mixed reality development from Microsoft. HoloLens 2 offers the most comfortable and immersive mixed reality experience available, with industry-leading solutions that deliver value in minutes.

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THE ENVIABLE FEATURES Immersive: With HoloLens 2, one can see more holograms at once through the greatly increased field of view. Text and intricate details on 3D images can be read more easily and comfortably with industry-leading resolution.

Ergonomic: You can wear HoloLens 2 for a longer time-period and more comfortably with a dial-in fit system designed for extended use. And keep your glasses on—the headset slides right over them. When it’s time to switch tasks, flip the visor up

to step out of mixed reality.

Instinctual: Touch, grasp, and move holograms in ways that feel natural—they respond a lot like real objects. Log in to HoloLens 2 instantly and securely using just your eyes with Windows Hello. And voice commands work even in noisy industrial environments through smart microphones and natural language speech processing.

Untethered: The HoloLens 2 headset is a self-contained computer with Wi-Fi connectivity, which means that everything you need goes with you while you work.

NEWS

BENTLEY SYSTEMS & HOLOLENS 2

B

entley Systems joined Microsoft to launch HoloLens 2 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. As Microsoft’s mixed reality partner representing the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, Bentley showed how the SYNCHRO XR, its app for immersively visualizing 4D construction digital twins for HoloLens 2, enables users to interact collaboratively with digital construction models aligned with physical space, using intuitive gestures to plan, visualize, and experience construction sequencing.

Project digital twin data is visualized with the HoloLens 2 via Bentley’s connected data environment, powered by Microsoft Azure. With the mixed reality solution, construction managers, project schedulers, owner operators, and other project stakeholders can gain insights through immersive visualization into planned work, construction progress, potential site risks, and safety requirements. Additionally, users can interact with the model together and collaboratively experience 4D objects in space and time, as opposed to traditional interaction with a 2D screen depicting 3D objects.

nect for HoloLens utilizes mixed-reality technology to take the business’ 3D content off the screen into the real-world, providing project stakeholders with enhanced 3D design review, coordination, collaboration, and project management processes.

Trimble Connect provides precise alignment of holographic data on the job site, enabling workers to review their models overlaid in the context of the physical environment. With two-way communication to the Trimble Connect cloud, users always have the most up-to-date data on their site, literally.

TRIMBLE CONNECT FOR HOLOLENS

T

rimble Connect harnesses the power of HoloLens to enhance site productivity. Trimble Con13

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NEWS

A NEW SCANNING ROBOTIC SOLUTION FOR VERTICAL CONSTRUCTION FROM TOPCON

W

ith an intent to offer a powerful instrument for single-operator layout and scan on a single set up, Topcon Positioning Group introduces a new generation of scanning robotic total stations — the GTL-1000. It is a compact scanner integrated with a fully featured robotic total station. Being combined with ClearEdge3D Verity, the instrument offers a new standard of construction verification workflows. It enables faster scanning.

The robotic solution is designed to build upon proven prism tracking and accuracy that allows operators to

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confidently layout points in challenging construction environments. It enables operators to initiate a scan with the press of a single button.

According to Ray Kerwin, Director, Global Product Planning, Topcon Positioning Systems, with this systems, operators can conduct a full-dome 360-degree scan in just a few minutes.

“The seamless integration of the GTL-1000 and Verity creates a complete package that is perfect for construction verification using 3D modeling techniques,” he says.

Nick Salmons, Principal Laser Scanning Surveyor, Balfour Beatty, says, “The new Topcon robotic scanning solution will increase productivity on site by accelerating the construction process and identifying design challenges more efficiently than traditional methods.

This new tool will significantly benefit the industry as a whole; reducing cost and program duration, for both clients and contractors alike.”

The GTL-1000 also includes on-board MAGNET® Field software designed to offer real-time field-to-office connectivity, and TSshield® for investment protection and maintenance.

NEWS

TRIMBLE SOLUTIONS BECOME A PART OF COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY CURRICULA

T

rimble recently awarded an in-kind gift to the Department of Construction Management at Colorado State University (CSU). Recognized as ‘Technologies by Trimble,’ the gift will enable the University to expand its leadership in training and research for 3D building design, construction management, digital fabrication, civil infrastructure etc.

As the hardware and software solutions get integrated into the curricula, the Department of Construction Management’s labs will include Trimble laser scanning, Trimble Field Link and Rapid Positioning Systems, UAS and surveying systems, and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers.

The donated software include RealWorks scanning software, Trimble Business Center, Vico Office Suite, Tekla Structures, Sefaira Architecture and SketchUp Pro, alongside MEP-specific software. Trimble also plans to donate the accompanying hardware, including laser scanning equipment, Field Link and Rapid Positioning Systems, UAS and surveying systems and GNSS receivers.

Jon Elliott, Assistant Department Head and Undergraduate Program Coordinator, Department of Construction Management, CSU, shared on the occasion, “Through

numerous pieces of Trimble hardware and software applications, students gain important exposure to cutting edge technologies in surveying, virtual design and construction (VDC)-based estimating, site logistics, 3D modeling, building energy performance analysis, laser scanning, photogrammetry, and so on. Beyond the applications, Trimble’s dedicated employees provide outstanding educational opportunities through software demonstration and training. Through this exciting collaboration, Trimble is making significant contributions to our goal of preparing construction management students for a technologically advanced and dynamic construction industry.”

Roz Buick, Vice President, Trimble said, “Collaborating with CSU’s Department of Construction Management has been exciting. Trimble’s portfolio is highly relevant for students at the university. It will be rewarding to see the next generation of architecture, engineering, construction and building operations professionals experience the breadth and depth of our construction lifecycle solutions. We also look forward to supporting and learning from these new professionals as they experience and apply our solutions to real-world applications in their curricula.”

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COVER STORY

RE-DEFINING THE

GEO-ENGINEERING CONCEPT

WITH THIS EDITION WE WELCOME THE TERM

BY GOLGI ALVAREZ 16

GEO-ENGINEERING

W

e live a special moment in the confluence of disciplines that for years have been segmented. Topography, architectural design, technical drawing, structural design, planning, construction, marketing. Today, surprisingly, we have integrated flows between these disciplines that, beyond data management technology, share processes. Such that it is difficult to identify where one’s task ends and the others begins; where the delivery of information ends, when the version of a model dies and when the project will be finished.

Geo-engineering: we need a new term.

I

f we were to baptize this spectrum of processes, which goes from capturing the information needed for a project in a geospatial environment to putting it into operation for the purposes for which it was conceptualized, we will dare to call it Geo-engineering. Although this term has been in other contexts associated with specific earth sciences, we are certainly not in times of respecting conventionalisms; even more if we take into account that geolocation has become an intrinsic ingredient of all businesses, and that BIM’s vision of levels makes us think that the scope of Architecture, Engi-

COVER STORY neering and Construction (AEC) would be short if we consider the limit of its next step, which is Operations.

Thinking about a broader scope requires taking into account the current impact of the digitalization of processes, which goes beyond the construction of infrastructures and expands towards businesses that don’t always have a physical representation, which aren’t only linked in sequential interoperability of data but in the parallel and iterative integration of processes.

The scope of the Geo-engineering concept

F

or a long time, projects have been seeing themselves in their different stages as intermediate ends.

Today, we live a moment where, on the one hand, information is the currency of exchange from its capture to the point of disposition; but also the efficient operation complements this context to convert this data provision into an asset capable of generating greater efficiency and portfolios in response to market needs.

We speak therefore of the chain composed of the main milestones that add value to the actions of the human being in a macroprocess that beyond being a matter of engineers, is a subject of businesspeople.

If we are going to talk about processes, we will therefore have to talk about the value chain, about simplification PROCESS APPROACH - the pattern that since -a long time ago- is changing what we do. according to the end user, about innovation and the search for efficiency in order to make the investments profitable.

Processes based on Information Management.

M

uch of the initial effort of the eighties, with the advent of computerization, was to have good control over information. On the one hand, the aim was to reduce the use of physical formats and the application of computational benefits to complex calculations; hence, the CAD at the beginning doesn’t necessarily change the processes but rather leads them to a digital control; keep doing almost the same, containing the same information, taking advantage that now the media can be reused. The offset command replaces the parallel rule, the ortho-snap, the 90-degree square, the circle the compass, the trim the precise erasing template and so consecutively we made that jump that wasn’t really easy or minuscule, just thinking 17

TWINGEO

COVER STORY about the advantage of the layer that in the past would imply tracing the constructive plane to work the structural or hydrosanitary plans.

But the time came when the CAD fulfilled its purpose in both dimensions; it became exhausting especially for cross sections, facades and pseudo-dimensional displays; 3D modeling came before we called it BIM, simplifying these routines and changing much of what we did in 2D CAD. The leader software providers for the AEC industry were mutating their functionalities accordingly with these

major milestones, which have to do with the hardware capabilities and the adoption by the users. Until there came a time when this information management was insufficient, beyond exporting formats, interconnecting master data and a referential integration that was affected by that historical trend of working based on departmentalization. ... Of course, the 3D management at the time ended in static renders that came with some patience because of the limited resources of the hardware and the lack of colors available.

g En ineering 18

COVER STORY

A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY

A

lthough in the field of industrial engineering the search for efficiency has much more history, the technological adoption of Operation Management in the AEC context was late and based on conjunctures; aspect that today is difficult to dimension unless we have been involved in those moments. Many initiatives came from the seventies, taking force in the eighties with the arrival of the personal computer, added to the computer-aided design of potential databases, raster images, internal LAN networks and the possible to integrate related disciplines. Here vertical solutions appear like puzzle pieces such as topography, architectural design, structural design, estimation of budgets, inventory control, planning of construction; all with the technological limitations that were not enough for an efficient integration. Additionally, the standards were almost non-existent, the solution providers suffered from petty storage formats and, of course, some resistance to change by the industry since the adoption costs were difficult to sell in an equivalent relation with the efficiency and cost effectiveness.

Going from this primitive stage of sharing information required new elements. Perhaps the most important milestone was the maturity of the Internet, which, beyond giving us the possibility of sending emails and browsing static web pages, opened the door to collaboration.

Communities interacting in the era of web 2.0 pressed for standardization, ironically, this came from open source initiatives that right now no longer sound irreverent and are rather seen with new eyes by the private industry. The SIG discipline was one of the best examples, coming against all odds in many moments to overcome the proprietary software; debt that to date hasn’t been able to be accompanied in the CAD-BIM industry. Things had to fall by their weight before the maturity of thought and undoubtedly the changes in the B2B business market in the fuel of a globalization based on connectivity.

Yesterday we closed our eyes and today we wake up seeing that trends such as geolocation have become intrinsic and therefore not only changes in the digitization industry, but an inevitable transformation of the design and manufacturing market.

PROCESSES BASED ON THE OPERATION MANAGEMENT The process approach leads us to break the segmentation paradigms of disciplines in the style of the departmentalization of separate offices. The topography teams came to have deployment and digitization capabilities, the drafters went from being simple line plotters to object modelers; architects and engineers came to dominate the geospatial industry that provided more data, thanks to geolocation. This changed the focus of small file information delivery to processes where the modeling objects are just the nodes of a file that is fed between disciplines like topography, civil engineering, architecture, industrial engineering, marketing and geomatics.

Modeling. Thinking about models wasn’t easy, but it happened. Today it’s not difficult to understand that a land parcel, a bridge, a building, an industrial plant or in rail are the same. An object, which is born, grows, produces results and which will one day die.

BIM is the best long-term concept the Geo-engineering industry has had.

Perhaps its biggest contribution to the standardization route as been a balance between the unbridled inventiveness of the private sector in the technological field and the demand for solutions that the user requires from private and government companies to offer better services or produce better results with the resources offered by the industry. The conceptualization of the BIM, although it has been seen in a limited way by many in its application to physical infrastructures, certainly has a greater scope when we imagine the BIM hubs conceived in the higher levels, where the integration of real life processes include disciplines such as planning, health, security, among others.

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COVER STORY

THE VALUE CHAIN

- FROM THE INFORMATION TO THE OPERATION

T

oday, solutions don’t focus on responding to a specific discipline.

Punctual tools for tasks such as modeling a topographic surface or elaborating budgets have a reduced appeal if they cannot be integrated to previous, subsequent or parallel workflows. This is the reason that moves leading companies in the industry to provide solutions that comprehensively solve the need in its full spectrum, in a value chain difficult to segment.

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This chain is composed of phases that gradually fulfill complementary purposes, breaking the linear sequence and promoting parallelism towards efficiency in time, cost and traceability; unavoidable elements of the current quality models.

The Geo-engineering concept proposes a sequence of phases, from the conception of the business model until it enters into production of the expected results.

In these different phases,

the priorities for managing the information gradually diminish until the management of the operation; and to the extent that innovation implements new tools, it’s possible to simplify steps that no longer add value. As an example: The printing of plans ceases to be important from the moment they can be visualized in a practical tool, such as a tablet or a Hololens.

The identification of the associated land plots in quadrant map logic no longer adds value to models that won’t be printed at scale, that will be constantly changing and that requires a

COVER STORY nomenclature not associated with non-physical attributes such as urban / rural condition or spatial belonging to an administrative region.

In this integrated flow, it’s when the user identifies the value of being able to use its surveying equipment not only to capture field data, but also to model before reaching the office, recognizing that it’s a simple input that will be associated with a design that must be redesigned for its construction. It no longer adds value to the site where the field result is stored, as long as it’s available when needed and as soon there’s a control of versions; with which the xyz

coordinate captured in the field is just an element of a cloud of points that stopped being a product and became an input, of another input, of a final product increasingly visible in the chain. That’s why elevation contour plan are no longer printed, because they don’t add value to the devaluation of the product to input the model of conceptual volumes of a building, which is another input of the architectural model, which will have a structural model, a electromechanical model, and a construction planning model. Everything, like some digital twins that will end in an operating model of the already built building; what the client and its inves-

tors initially expected from its conceptualization.

The chain contribution can be found in the added value over the initial conceptual model, in the different phases, from the capture, modeling, design, construction and finally, the management of the final assets.

Phases that aren’t necessarily linear, and where the AEC industry (Architecture Engineering, Construction) requires a linkage between the modeling of physical objects, such as land and infrastructures, with non-physical elements, such as people, business and day to day relationships of registration, governance, layout and transfer of real-world goods.

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT + OPERATION MANAGEMENT.

REINVENTING PROCESSES IS INEVITABLE

T

he level of maturity and convergence between the Construction Information Modeling (BIM) with the Production Life Cycle (PLM), envisage a new scenario, which has been called Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).

Today there are plenty of initiatives shooting terms that we must learn every day, consequence of the increasingly close BIM + PLM event.

These terms include the In-

ternet of Things (IoT), Smart Cities, Digital Twins, 5G, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), to name a few. It’s questionable how many of these elements will disappear as clichés, thinking in a real perspective of what we can expect and putting aside the temporal wave in the post-apocalyptic films that also give sketches of how great they could be... and according to Hollywood, almost always catastrophic.

IoT - 4iR - 5G - Smart Cities - Digital Twin iA - VR - Blockchain.

The new terms result of the BIM + PLM convergence 21

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COVER STORY

GEO-ENGINEERING.

A CONCEPT BASED ON INTEGRATED TERRITORIAL CONTEXT MANAGEMENT PROCESSES.

T

he infographic of the immediate pages presents a global vision of the spectrum that for now has not had a specific term, which from our point of view we are calling Geo-Engineering. This one among others has been used as a temporary hashtag in events of leading companies in the industry, but as our introduction says, it hasn’t come to receive a proper name.

This infographic tries to show something that sincerely is not easy to translate, let alone interpret. If we consider the priorities of different industries that are transversal throughout the cycle, although with different evaluation criteria. In this way, we can identify that, although modeling is a general concept, we could consider that its adoption has gone through the following conceptual sequence:

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-Geospatial Adoption -CAD Massification -3D Modeling -BIM Conceptualization -Digital Twins Recycling -Smart City Integration.

COVER STORY From a perspective of scope of modeling, we see the expectation of users to approach reality in a gradual manner, at least in promises as follows: 1D - The management of files in digital formats, 2D - The adoption of digital designs to replace the printed layout, 3D - The three-dimensional model and its global geolocation, 4D - Historical versioning in a controlled manner over time, 5D - The incursion of the economic aspect into the resulting cost of unitary elements, 6D - Managing the life cycle of modeled objects, integrated into the operations of their context in real time.

Undoubtedly in the previous conceptualization there are different visions, especially because the application of the mode is cumulative and not exclusive. Planted vision is just a way of interpreting the optics of the benefits that we have seen the users to the extent that we have adopted the technological developments in the industry; Tis being Civil Engineering, Architecture, Industrial Engineering, Cadastre, Cartography ... or the accumulation of all these in an integrated process.

Finally, the infographic shows the contribution that the disciplines have been led to the standardization and adoption of the digital world in the daily routines of the human being.

GIS - CAD - BIM - Digital Twin Smart Cities

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n a way, these terms gave priority to innovation efforts led by people, companies, governments and above all academics that led to what we now see with fully mature disciplines such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the contribution that represented Computer Aided Design (CAD), currently evolving into BIM though, with challenges for the adoption of standards but with a clearly time line in the 5 levels of maturity (BIM levels).

Some trends in the Geo-engineering spectrum are currently being pressed to position the Digital Twins and Smart Cities concepts; the first one more as a dynamic to streamline digitization under a logic operating standards adoption; the second as an ideal scenario of application. Smart Cities extends the vision to many disciplines that could be integrated into a vision of how human activity should be in the ecological context, managing aspects such as water, energy, waste, food, mobility, culture, livability, infrastructure and economy.

The impact on solution providers is crucial, in the case of the AEC industry, software, 25

TWINGEO

COVER STORY hardware and service providers must go to a user market that expects much more than painted maps and colorful renders. The battle is around among giants like Hexagon, Trimble with similar models of markets acquired in recent years; AutoDesk + Esri in search of a magic key that integrates its large segments of users, Bentley with its disruptive scheme that includes complementary alliances with Siemens, Microsoft and Topcon.

On this occasion the rules of the game are different; it’s not launching solutions for surveyors, civil engineers or architects. Current users expect integral solutions, focused on the processes and not on the information files; with more freedom of customized adaptations, with reusable apps along the flow, cloud interoperable and above all in the same model that supports the integration of different projects.

Undoubtedly, we live in a great moment.

The new generations won’t have the privilege to see the birth and close a cycle in this spectrum of Geo-engineering. They won’t know how exciting it was to run AutoCAD on an 80-286 single task, the patience of waiting for the layers of an architectural drawing to appear, with the desperation of not being able to execute our Lotus 123 system where we carried the unit cost budget on a Black screen with bright orange letters.

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They won’t know the adrenaline of seeing for the first time the cadastral map match on a binary raster in a Microstation, running on an Intergraph VAX.

Definitely, no, they will not.

They will not be surprised to see many more things. Testing one of the first prototypes of the Hololens in Amsterdam a few years ago, brought me part of that feeling of my first meeting with the CAD platforms. Surely we ignore the scope of this fourth industrial revolution, of which until now we can see some of the ideas, that may seem innovative for us, but that really are primitive before what will involve adapting to a new environment where the ability to unlearn will be more valuable than academic degrees and of experience.

What’s certain is that it will arrive earlier

COVER STORY

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INTERVIEW

TWINGEO MAGAZINE

IN CONVERSATION WITH PATRICK MAÏORE, FOUNDER, E-CASSINI

BY SHIMONTI PAUL

Please define ‘e-CASSINI’ for us. e-CASSINI is a web platform in Saas mode that allows the user to dynamically interconnect LIDAR data, aerial photos (captured through satellite, airplane, drone, etc.), simplified maps (openstreetmap, googlemap, etc.) and photos (simple, 180°, 360°).

On the basis of this information, LIDAR data is used to draw all types of plans (street plan, interior plan, façades, street profiles, topographical plan, etc.) and to provide any type of information. The structuring of the data is either done in e-CASSINI or imported from an existing database.

Tools available on the platform can speed up production of plans, editing, calculation of volumes, etc. Varied features make it possible to transform

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photos into a “.las” file and thus transform photos and video acquisitions into point clouds (drone coverage, work trenching, etc.) e-CASSINI integrates management of the rights of the users, be it for accessing the data or the functionalities of the application.

The pooling of data is now a reality and the economies of scale are very important for all players in the sector. e-CASSINI makes it possible to create a unique repository of precision, accessible to any user of geographical and/or topographic information.

e-CASSINI makes it possible to create a unique repository of precision, accessible to any user of geographical and/or topographic information.

INTERVIEW What led to the design of e-CASSINI? What is the story behind? e-CASSINI was born of a double requirement: • Exploit the potential of Cloud • Free the users from traditional software unsuitable for exploitation of LIDAR data and provide a powerful innovative solution, based on a disruptive business model.

What makes e-CASSINI unique?

The design of e-CASSINI is unique: • In its management of access rights • In its data management • In its capacity to integrate external developments

How do you think the use of LIDAR Surveying has evolved over the years?

LIDAR Surveying is today known to the main users, but too often from the technological point of view and insufficiently from the point of view of quality, precision and accuracy.

Still a lot of challenge occurs in terms of accuracy and completeness. The more accurately spaces are de-

scribed, the greater will be the number of users and the business model will become more virtuous.

To what extent are organizations receptive to this innovation?

Private companies are more receptive because their approach is different. There is still a long way to go, especially towards local communities.

What challenges do you encounter in convincing people to use the technique?

The primary challenge is to overcome the obstacles born out of a disruptive solution: ignorance, the absence of projections on uses, the fear of a new environment, the fear of losing power, the anxiety of being hacked, the need to reorganize, the pressure of certain lobbies, etc.

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TWINGEO: INTERVIEW Which import and export formats is your solution interoperable?

All types of format without limitation.

Which third-party hardware and software are compatible with your solutions?

All types of hardware and software without limitation.

What has been your best use case so far?

Network management.

The concept of Backpack Rent is an interesting one.

PleSe tell us more about it.

The concept of Backpack Rent is born from the desire to popularize the use of LIDAR in the daily topography. Investments in mobile mapping are expensive and reserved for companies able to invest such sums.

That’s why e-CASSINI has built a rental offer open to everyone, which I believe is unique. It is possible to rent by the week, the month, several months, etc. e-CASSINI provides training for the acquisition, calculation and exploitation of data. Using the Backpack Rent concept, everyone can get into the air of LIDAR SURVEYING, without any expensive investment, and immediately start measuring profits.

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Given the recent disaster with Notre Dame Cathedral, how do you think LiDAR mapping helps?

The person who raised LIDAR at Notre Dame Cathedral should be at the PANTHEON of Humanity.

What are the future e-CASSINI projects?

We are currently working on the integration of external software solutions which will either speed up the process of exploiting LIDAR data or improve their performance through the use of LIDAR data.

We are also developing a BIM/IFC interface. Our thoughts are on the integration of AI and Machine Learning as well.

Your message to LiDAR enthusiasts.

Join us. e-CASSINI has created a network of partners and distributors in France which

is expanding every day. This allows for a daily feedback from our users, their expectations, their perception of the market and its evolutions.

In early 2020, e-CASSINI aims to duplicate this network by country, whenever partners will be identified. We will be present for the first time at INTERGEO in September 2019.

INTERVIEW

Geofumadas.com + Twingeo.com

160,000

visitors monthly

40% Spanish 60% Other languages +27,500

+19,000 31

TWINGEO

CASE STUDY: BENTLEY SYSTEMS COLLABORATIVE BIM WORKFLOWS HELP LOWER COST OF THE ZHENGZHOU-XIXIA EXPRESSWAY PROJECT

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he CNY 10.5 billion Yaoshan-Luanchuan section of the Zhengzhou-Xixia Expressway is 78.8-kilometers long and is a bi-directional and four-lane expressway, which includes 88 bridges, four interchanges, two interoperability hubs, and two super-long tunnels. The bridge and tunnel ratio is 59.8 percent of

Zhengzhou-Xixia Expressway project.. The project is critical for developing an efficient transportation network to support the region’s economic development strategy and promote social economic development.

The expressway project team faced a variety of challenges to ensure the accurate de-

Proposed bridge design in existing environment.

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sign of the model and used Bentley’s civil applications to include subgrade roads, bridges, tunnels, and culverts within one model and ensure collaboration across all disciplines in highway design. OpenRoads was used to build a 3D model defining the cross sections of roads and importing data related to horizontal and vertical sections. The project team also used the model for bidding. OpenBridge Modeler was used to build parametric models for bridges with higher efficiency than past work processes. ProStructures was used for models for steel bars in bridges and to detect collisions and errors in design, decreasing the number of errors in con-

INTERVIEW

BIM methodologies help improve efficiencies in the lifecycle of the project.

struction drawings by 1,350.

OpenRoads and MicroStation were used to streamline section drawings of tunnels, set up stations for different tunnel sections, and automatically generate tunnel models. The team developed plug-ins for automatic coding of components, increasing coding efficiency by 90 percent compared to traditional methods. LumenRT was used to produce 3D animation and videos for visualization deliverables.

The model was also used to integrate PDF documents and design drawings; and iModels were imported into Navigator to communicate information to construction sites.

The team also addressed how to combine a GISbased, BIM project management platform with

construction management and meet the owner’s requirements for BIM model accuracy, model separation, and member information coding. Using these innovative applications, the project team reduced design errors and changes, provided design feedback, and improved quality optimization of the drawings by 97 percent. In addition, BIM methodologies helped to improve efficiencies in the lifecycle of the project and provide reference for future projects.

Reducing the usual design and construction errors resulted in lower construction costs and increased economic efficiency.

Guiting Zhang, director of research and development center for engineering BIM-applied technology, said, “Bentley’s infrastruc-

ture products helped us take important steps toward realizing BIM practices for this highway project. In terms of roads, bridges, and tunnels, we improved the drawing quality, reduced construction drawing errors by over 1,350 items and human costs by CNY 200,000, raised modeling efficiency by 50 percent, and created substantial benefits for the owner organization through multiple deliverables. The BIM project management platform combines codes with components, carries multistage data, and controls and manages project construction quality. At the same time, this platform offers a complete database for the later-period operation and management and will bring positive economic benefits to this region.”

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TWINGEO: ARTICLE

TRENDS OF LAND ADMINISTRATION

CADASTRE 2014 - 2034 VISION

BY GOLGI ALVAREZ

P

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roposing how land administration could be in 2034 doesn’t seem like an easy idea, if we see how many changes have happened in the last 20 years. However, the exercise is a second attempt at what was already done 20 years before by Cadastre 2014. Paying little attention to these statements may have cost someone, some institution or even a whole nation.

exist or if that resource is used to promote collaborative mapping among students and we’re dedicated only to normative actions, and updating of unavoidable basic inputs such as a consistent land model and satellite images, updated more frequently.

It sounds profane to think that in 2034 the Cadastre will be elaborated and updated by voluntary citizens. But that’s how the cartography update sounded before we knew OpenStreet Map, which is questioning whether a cartographic institute should

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A vision of Cadastre - 20 years in future

adastral conceptual changes are usually more complex, since their uses are stricter than the mapping of other scales. Its connection to the legal, fiscal, economic aspects creates an interdependence,

ARTICLE not only in terms of information but also in processes. However, just as cartography could be dying in its best period of glory, as technology becomes democratized and real-time information demands are created, the rigor of the precision, the signature of the professional and the flow of the methodology go into the risk of not filling the requirement of an irreversible demand. As an example, let’s review how many of the encyclopedias we’ve recently purchased to our children have been really used for their schoolwork; or how many students stay nowadays in the school library to finish their work; In spite of the academic questioning that exists with Wikipedia, its usability, collaborative updates and compatibility with the Google search engine is sending whole libraries to the museums.

Another aspect to consider in the subject of Cadastre is the fact that contextual conditions between countries aren’t equal in terms of priority. For European countries

that already have 100% coverage of their land base at the national level and a standardized civil service career, modeling in three and four dimensions is urgent. However, in countries whose 2D coverage is still incomplete, the complete assumption is outdated and, above all, political changes may lead to the dismissal of a whole team of experienced “professionals”, who could lose their professionalism when carrying information on hard drives and – as an even more serious note – even form part of a fire at the mayor’s office to erase traces of corruption.

A vision of Cadastre - 20 years in the future is not intended to be a bet based on cabals or approaches against what already exists.

Rather it’s an exercise grounded in the common sense of good practices already in use and the trends from which experts detect irreversible routes. But we must not rule out that the proposed trends could lead to the adoption of shortcuts; like the case of many contexts in Africa where the citizens without

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TWINGEO: ARTICLE even having wireline telephones jumped to the next generation mobile telephony.

That’s why models such as fit-for-purpose Cadastre are being included in disruptive evangelism discourses in this matter; by the existing demand of millions of properties that must be titled and the acceptance of a citizen in a mountain that prefers a title with a “more or less precise” measure but where there are agreed boundaries with its neighbors; Instead of having nothing and waiting for another politician to offer something palpable.

A declaration to 20 years in the hands of a “crazy visionary” can make conceptualize a National System of Property Management, open to public consultation, with concepts of rights, restrictions and responsibilities before they come to be considered as a standard; -this madman- with normative advocacy capabilities and some tyranny is capable of erasing conventional methods if they don’t guarantee efficiency in time, costs, traceability and transparency. When the defenders of conventional methods have the opportunity to react, it will have converted formal disposition (certificate of tradition and freedom) into a current account of real property, such as the access that banks now offer, and will be thinking of getting the transaction intermediaries out of the way, through an Ali-express traceability window in real time.

But well, while you identify one of those crazy people in your country, I return to what was said in the first paragraph of this article, that the declarations of Cadastre 2034 are a second exercise of what Cadastre 2014 was, which I want to start talking about.

Before Cadastre 2014

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he Cadastre is relatively new, compared to the Property Registry, which is based on codes that have been consol-

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idated for many centuries on a basis of registry principles that transcend real, movable, commercial or intellectual property. The homologation of Cadastral purposes arrived late with changes of contextualized paradigms to the meaning of the land for the human being: conquests, wars, tributes, industrialization, computerization; additionally, economic evolution waves have brought information management techniques and improvements of the operation in a sensation that came to us as puzzle pieces.

Infographics summarize the great paradigms of Cadastre, in different times: Paradigm of the appraisal and taxes over lands, with a priority of the land as wealth in inheritance of feudalism. It’s not surprising that this approach has lasted so long in Latin America, considering that even after the independence of these countries of Spain, the economic model continued to be the adaptation of feudalism that existed with the colonization. In the infographic, this is the first piece of the puzzle, the tax cadaster as a basic application.

Paradigm of the land market, with an evolution of comfort as the meaning of the land.

This came with the industrial revolution between 1800 and 1950.

Many of the classical foundations of the land continue based on this paradigm of the land market, hence the contributing piece at that time was the legal cadaster, as a complementary application to the fiscal aspect.

ARTICLE Paradigm of land administration, seeing land as a resource. This arose with the new vision of postwar reconstruction, just when many public institutions had interesting renovations, including Cadastre and Registry. These were important years for the Book-based registry, moving to media such as microfilm and, in the case of Cadastre, the influence of international resources supported the modernization of cadastral techniques, especially with national security interests associated with the Cold War. As a result, the economic Cadastre piece modernize valuation mechanisms ranging from simplified models, in Anglo-Saxon contexts, to complexes based on replacement cost and depreciation curves that persist to this day in many Latin American countries.

Paradigm of sustainable development, with land as a limited common resource.

This was born with the information revolution, at the beginning of the 80s, with the possibility of digital tools replacing traditional maps, assuming consultations and interrelation with other interested cadastral information. Similarly, the interest in an integration between Cadastre and Registry beyond the collaboration and exchange of data, the simplification towards the citizen through the integration of processes. This last went from perversions that had to be collected all in sheets of ÂŤBorgesÂť sheet size to ideas of putting a cable between Cadastre and Registry so that they were connected. Understanding that multifinity is in the integrality of the value chain of the land administration and not in the capture phase has been painful to this day; to the detriment of the citizen that what he expects is better services

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TWINGEO: ARTICLE Of Cadastre 2014

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n this last context, Cadastre 2014 was born.

In the mid-nineties, the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) made one of its best bets to revitalize its role, supporting the initiative that raised how the Cadastre should be within the next 20 years. This led to consider the best practices and trends that were being applied worldwide, for land administration; with a projection of how the Cadastre could be in 2014.

From this appeared a document of philosophical foundation that for many today might seem too obvious, however we talked about 1994, time when the initiative began, and which was published in 1998. For the year 1994, Windows

95 was just a promise, we used Windows 3.11 for groups, AutoCAD R13 with that window simulation that we didn’t like a lot because our habits of the dark screen of the R12, Microstation SE on a classic Clipper Ustation running on exuberant but expensive Intergraph equipment; free software was a fallacy of nerds and the Internet worked from so-called portals such as Yahoo, Lykos, Excite and Altavista, which had to be accessed from an Internet café or with a modem connected to the wired telephone.

To avoid the risk of creating unreasonable proposals, the exercise had to be based on the best existing practices and with visionary approaches to where the cadastral issue would evolve in terms of processes, tools, scope and linkage of factors linked to the territory.

THE 6 DECLARATIONS OF

CADASTRE 2014 1. Complete situation of the territory, including public rigthts and restrictions

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his approach led to the conventional Cadastre ceasing to only see a specific part of realty, under a biased logic as only to register the formality or to be prioritized over the fiscal. This implies that the Cadastre centers its role on “the facts”, with the photo of how things are in the territory, seeking to keep up-to-date information on formality and informality. Additionally,

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the concept of completeness, so that spatial objects that are between the boundaries of properties, such as streets, river beds, beaches, etc. and so they can be modeled on the same logic as a property on a continuous reality, avoiding that, in the future, properties continue to request re-measurements that enter areas of public use.

Another scope of this statement is the linking of other-parcel data, which affects the domain, use, occupation or disposition of the properties. It implies that a spatial data infrastructure that provides services with

ARTICLE data such as protected areas, risk areas, land use plans, etc., includes rules so that spatial relationships with the properties are reflected as affectations that are visible in formal or material exposure at the time that an official must qualify an act or contract, or grant a license. In the ISO-19152 standard, this declaration simplifies the relationships of the interested parties on the reality of the territory in the two second relationships of the acronym RRR (Rights, Restrictions, Responsibilities) and these “other-parcels� data are called legal land objects.

If this information comes from the missionary systems of Cadastre, Registry, Regularization or Registry of Special Regime, each one can dedicate itself to optimizing its missionary reason and the citizen or user of a procedure can trust that this data is the last truth. From the Legal Reality a similar display could exist of the real folio logic with variants such as encumbrances, mortgages or links to other registers such as Mercantile, Intellectual, Movable rights and similarly, when consulting on the administrative reality, territorial objects would be seen, having also interested parties in the affectation caused to the property of interest. At the level of governmental institutions this complete data should be visible without restrictions, if policies focused on transactional efficiency and rupture of feuds between public institutions are approved, and the immediate actors to the citizen as the notary, municipality, urban curator or surveyor.

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TWINGEO: ARTICLE 2. No separation between maps and records

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his statement is more than obvious, although for 1994 it was only a dream, considering that the best known attempts saw a CAD attached to a hyperlink, with a record of the spatial data, and among the worst, the shapefile, where master fields could not be created for many-to-many relationships, such as parcel with multiple owners or owners with multiple parcels; consequently, the name of the owner had to be repeated in as many records as it would appear in the territory... without going into details of the implicit limitations existing with the 16-bit software of the time.

Undoubtedly this statement marked interesting patterns on the geospatial theme applied to land administration. Although it’s worth remembering that the initial idea was to refer to “no separation between Cadastre data and Property Registry data” and not only “map - cadastral record”.

This also gives weight to the interoperability and standardization of geographic data coming from other legislations that as “legal land objects” affect the use, domain or

occupation of the properties; arriving at the classic logic of databases that expose services to spatial data infrastructures with policies and interoperability rules between models. Perhaps a winning theme in this was the maturity of OGC standards pushed by free software and reluctantly accepted by proprietary software.

3. Modelling will replace cadastral maps

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he best exercise of this was materialized in the ISO-19152 standard, in order to consider the simplicity of the relations (RRR) between the classes that constitute the physical reality (People, topography), the modeled reality (Administrative unit, spatial unit) and sources of information recording (Source).

It sounds easy to say, and the graphic under seems to be simple. Although taking that to an ISO for its implementation made it more complex than what was expected in the initial need. The first effort called Core Cadastre Domain Model (CCDM), which was later called LADM, ended up becoming an ISO in 2012.

LADM_COL first version - Supported by Swissphoto Land Modernization Project in Colombia 40

ARTICLE “And in case someone thinks that an ISO could be unnecessary, those of us who read Cadastre 2014 in those first years know that a semantic regulation was necessary - and still continues to be a challenge-. The first readings generated confusions from the headlines and terms, especially for those who can’t handle semantics and who prefer to question rather than contextualize writing a glossary.

ISO-19152 seeks to standardize the semantics of the “domain”. Although it suffers from a practical document that bases its philosophy and orients its implementation; considering that UML models aren’t easy to sell to decision makers who expect results for the citizen.

Here it’s convenient to clarify that correlation and difference between LADM and ISO19152.

“The LADM is born from a worldwide vision, about practices and trends 20 years in the future in the Land Administration. The LADM is in a certain way a philosophy.”

“The ISO 19152 standard results from a worldwide socialization, to standardize the semantics of the Land Administration.

The ISO is a standard to apply the LADM philosophy.”

On this issue, there is a need to write an approach of adoption and not only to UML models over technological perspective for articles and presentations at events. A greater effort would be interesting on the results of the adoption at the level of processes, systematization of experiences and good practices that facilitate the sale to the decision makers. For that case, there are examples

such as Honduras, which adopted almost entirely the LADM philosophy, in its SURESINAP system, and without having embedded it in public policy, for the simple fact of being based on the CCDM since 2005, it has been allowed an interesting continuity, in spite of the instability that this country has experienced during the last 15 years; or Nicaragua, that without directly showing the implementation of the standard, all its SIICAR inference engine almost implies the compliance with the second level of the standard.

4. The Cadastre in physical formats will be a thing of the past

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ecause of this modeling and the re-thinking of physical formats, proposals arise that impact on aspects such as the cadastral nomenclature. In ancient times cadastral keys were sequences of up to 30 digits, where geographical identifiers and administrative characteristics were mixed; while it was romantic for users within the institution, for the end user they were cumbersome and unhelpful if most of those digits were a zero. As an example, these nomenclatures included whether the property was rural; if the property happened to be considered urban, its identity changed, because the composite number wasn’t the same. Much of that logic came from the handling of physical formats, since we remember that initially the urban-rural concept was associated with the printing sizes of the final maps, that for populated areas, it was necessary to have 1:1,000 scales, while for rural areas, these scales were 1:5,000 or 1:10,000.

Thinking in digital formats leads to break with these schemes, thinking about what adds value to the citizen, who needs an easy number to maintain, so the modernization of a property must continue to maintain its identity, even if its municipality changes,

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TWINGEO: ARTICLE even if its formal-informal situation changes, even if its urban-rural characterization changes. It doesn’t mean that these fields are no longer necessary, but they should be in attribution tables, which can be changed at any time, without changing the identity of the object, unless, of course, the change indicates a modification of its geometry.

This also leads to more efficient identification methods, such as those used in passport systems and vehicle license plates (as an example). A 30-digit number would be romantic; we could have there the color of the car, the number of doors it has, the number of wheels, the brand, and possibly even the number of times its owner has had sex in the back seat; but the plate is small and uses few digits; a traffic cop has a standard memory, plus has to remember the license plate even if the vehicle is going at high speed, and then it must be immutable in time while it’s the same object. From there arise methods that can convert a base 10 number to a code of combinations of those 10 numbers, with the 26 letters of the alphabet (base 36).

An example of a base 10 to base 36 conversion is: 0311000226, that would mean 555TB6. It means that with just 6 digits it could support up to ten billion unique properties, keeping the same size (6 digits). Automation allows this conversion and create relationships between old numbers; for the citizen, the code is a short chain, but internally, this could mask characteristics, or simply be a consecutive number at a national level. To test how this works, I suggest this link.” http://www.unitconversion.org/numbers/ base-10-to-base-36-conversion.html

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5. Joint work between private and public companies

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his trend has had a great impact on public-private partnership models, seeking to transfer to the private sector those aspects that aren’t sustainable businesses for public institutions. In previous years, the Cadastre made the complete field surveying job, with brigades of people hired by the institution; currently, it’s not easy to outsource this operation. In the same way, the digitalization and extract of the data from physical records, allowing the sector to perform those jobs that are “temporary”, avoids the investment in equipment that becomes obsolete over time.

However, it’s a challenge on which there is much to systematize, depending on the graduality and the risks. Transferring a front-office to the bank seems very easy and almost mandatory but handing over the information requires another type of guarantee, not only in terms of security, but also in legal and administrative responsibility.

6. The Cadastre Investment will be recoverable

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his article can’t include more, but we hope to mention it in the next edition.

But basically, this principle is since the capture, the migration of information from physics to digital or the construction of a large system is done only once. If done well, then any subsequent update operation should not require loans from international organizations but should be in a matrix of reinvestment of resources, generated from the innovation of new products and services.

ARTICLE

DECLARATIONS OF

CADASTRE 2034

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or 2014, an assessment was made of how the journey was, advances and new findings to consider what would come in the next 20 years.

In this review, they considered the milestones that have been impacted by the information revolution on the Cadastre, as an example, the bases and infrastructures of spatial data, the intrinsic geolocation

of society, as well as the visions that have given new interest to the Cadastre, as the Land Administration, the Terrestrial Governance and what could be expected for the future thinking about the simplification fit-for-purpose.

Thus, 6 new statements and 6 questions arise. Like Cadastre 2014, it’s an interpretation based on the context of what is already 43

TWINGEO: ARTICLE happening. Some countries that have overcome elementary gaps will adopt some of these trends, because their stability and demand is already requiring something more in their market; this will radiate in others that could save a shortcut of conventionalism. Others, because they have basic needs, will keep trying to fill the debt of the Cadastre 2014 declarations.

1. Accurate measurements The subject is so old, that Borges collects it from a source that dates from 1658: In that empire, the art of cartography achieved such perfection, that the map of a single province occupied an entire city, and the map of the empire, an entire province. Over time, these unconscionable maps weren’t satisfactory, and the cartographer’s colleges raised a map of the empire, which had the size of the empire and coincided with it.

Less addicted to the study of cartography, the next generations understood that this dilated map was useless and not without impiety they gave it to the inclemencies of the sun and the winters.

In the deserts of the west there are crumbling map ruins, inhabited by animals and by beggars; throughout the country there is no other relic of the geographical disciplines.

It has always been a concern, especially in contexts where it’s forgotten that it’s more important to have all the territory with a controlled attribute, than to have a single piece of high precision. With the current technological possibilities, this statement states that this topic will be of general interest in the next 20 years; especially where the coverage of the territory 44

has already been completed and only the improvement of the accuracy is the matter of interest.

In the non-measured lands, we will see the other trend: fit-for-purpose.

It’s also a matter of “humanization for the urgency of the Cadastral-Registry Records serving a great need in the world.” That’s why the question: Is the Conventional Cadastre ready to meet the cost, time and traceability of the need for 70% of the population that lacks property rights? And we don’t mean to recognize the territory in 50 years, but in record time, with a maximum of 8 years; although for this we must break the paradigms of the current flow of the cadastral - registry process, focusing on what adds value to the chain of Land Administration.

We refer therefore to the existing global need to register people who don’t have an identification recognized by an official system, properties that haven’t been registered and the relation of rights that these people exercise over the land. This is not to mention that in the registry there is a terrible outdated information. Getting to solve this problem in the next 8 years means rethinking disruptive methods that allow the reduction of time, costs and greater participation of the population

2. Object orientation for Rights, Restrictions and Responsibilities This is an evolution of what was already proposed in the Cadastre 2014, with the variant that, instead of being only spatial relationships between legal land objects, they could be objects with their own extended models. An example ad-

ARTICLE vanced in time is the Special Regime Register, which some countries already have; this, beyond being a relationship between layers, leads to the application of registration techniques for these objects, guaranteeing their history, legitimacy, request of the interested party and disposition when used in the qualification.

So that it happens to be modeled for what it is; a property more of public right, but with the particularity that overlaps on many private properties, having an antecedent, which is the law that constituted it, an owner, which is the institution that operates it, effective date for its spatial geometry (three-dimensional) and that can only be modified by a transaction.

3. 3D management ability This is totally obvious. So far, three-dimensional models have been largely representative of alphanumeric form. It’s possible to arrive at an apartment knowing its property code, the constructive stage, the tower number, the levels and the apartment number.

The trend of Digital Twins and Smart Cities is leading to 3D modeling of software functionalities to manage assets (Indoors Cadastre). Beyond that representation, Cadastre 2034 says that they can be managed; which means that registration techniques will be applied so that their updating is not only touching and deleting, but so that they are well associated with their life cycle changes; they are born, their geometry is captured, they are modeled, they enter into operation with the daily processes of the human being, suffer mutations and even die.

This 3D management capacity will involve the adoption of new methods to capture information, taking advantage of existing

techniques such as point clouds, but with functionalities to facilitate the identification of simplified objects with infrastructure models and digital terrain models.

4. Real time updating As for the actors involved in the administration of the land, parallel sequential information flows will be necessary. For example, the bank should be able to enter a mortgage without a notary as an intermediary; especially because it’s just a citizen who authorizes the lien on the property. By far, an old-fashioned government can place a registrar that will internally click a button, accepting the registration, until it gets tired of asking for licenses because its finger hurts, so the performance will finally be delegated to an entity empowered in the bank. The same logic is applicable to the other actors that now intervene in a transaction, such as the urban curator, the surveyor, the notary, the municipality, etc. While the actors are integrated, the update will be in real time and the competition will be for the best services.

And then, the Cadastre will be updated by the people, at the point where they make transactions.

This may sound crazy, but it already happens with banking. Before, the bank issued a bankbook and it was necessary to go to the bank to withdraw money, then use that money to buy and, if we had more, we could deposit it in the bank, or we could keep it under the bed. Today, we open a bank account, we receive a debit card and a password to manage everything online; you no longer make withdrawals at the bank, but at the cashier, your account is updated in real time when buying at any business, when you make transfers or even while traveling by taxi.

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TWINGEO: ARTICLE That’s where all trends go, in which the user can create an account in the National Property Registry and see its real state, being able to mortgage them, being able to sell them directly, being also able to manage permits and licenses... Just like modern banking works! “It would be like Uber”, which couldn’t be stopped by archaic officials, not even by notarial guilds. Everything based on the market needs; to the extent that processes are standardized, security is strengthened, and information is completed; Disruptive business models will be merged with citizen-based solutions as the top priority.

In this sense, processes that for now operate separately may converge, such as the real estate market (leases and sales) where B2B schemes such as Airbnb are ending the conventional model with a global reach self-managed by the end user; becoming unnecessary the real estate agent, the lawyer who makes the contract, the appraiser

who makes the study of economic capacity, the company that guarantees the insurance and especially the involved part of the state.

It will also happen that property registration systems will be unified to a registry of “goods available for sale”, this applies to situations such as movable assets (vehicles), intellectual goods, mercantile goods (companies, shares), under an equivalence of “marketable values”. For this, technologies such as Blockchain and artificial intelligence should take advantage of intelligent contracts, in the logic of a Digital Twin for an object of physical reality with its cryptocurrency equivalent, to the extent that security is guaranteed in a registry where the government no longer has intervention.

And then, the Cadastre-registry will be updated in real time as it already happens in other environments of everyday life.

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ARTICLE

5. Global and Interoperable Cadastre

1. Land taking. Will the Cadastre play a role in the registration of this information?

Just that. Standardization motivated by the market, with universal object identifier. And dumpling the 30-digit code that changes every time the property has a change.

2. Food security. Will there be interest in associating to the objects of the territory, their characteristics and relation with the human being on the use, access and availability of the right to food?

6. Ability to Manage Ecological Boundaries This implies the mapping of intangible objects, such as a nature reserve whose interest is international, a reserve of corals in the sea.

Questions of Probable Futures and Roles of the Cadastre With Cadastre 2034, issues of global interest are also raised, in which Cadastre could intervene, and if so, would mark new paradigms for the management of holistic information hubs in a global environment that is increasingly connected. These questions are:

3. Climate change. Will there be interest in the registration of rights with vulnerability dependencies associated with climate change?

4. Crowd Cadastre. What can and won’t be possible in a collaborative Cadastre?

5. Green Cadastre. Right on ecological borders?

6. Global Cadastre. What infrastructure will be needed for a global Cadastre?

FIG 2019 - Hanoi Cadastre fit-for-purpose is like Uber.

Surveyors must get involved, because it will happen with or without us.

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TWINGEO: ARTICLE

PLEX.EARTH: TAKING THE GUESSWORK OUT OF CIVIL DESIGN

BY LAMBROS KALIAKATSOS AND LAURA GARCIA

I

f you are reading this article, odds are you’re a civil engineer, land surveyor, architect, or a designer, and it’s also a good bet that you’ve been spending quite a lot of your time redoing some work.

Don’t feel bad; “Rework” has been a plague for all engineering projects, all around the globe, from the very beginning of civilization!

Numerous studies estimate the average cost of rework on civil engineering projects to be higher than 5%, occasionally exceed-

ing 15% and some report about project reworking surpassing 30%.

As a civil engineer I was the CAD manager and responsible for the design of the general layout on many sanitary landfill projects.

Rework was some kind of a habit, since customers, contractors or other stakeholders were asking for changes regularly. It was just the regular routine. But one project forever changed the way I was seeing my job, and my tolerance of rework: A construction site had been installed and the first drillings started when we realized that the terrain in the northwestern part was substantially different than what we had in mind and designed for. Not surprisingly it was a steep area covered with dense vegetation and difficult to approach. I’m pretty confident the survey we had received for that part was the result of guesswork, which meant that our work was also a product of fantasy.

There was no option: we had to redesign based on the actual terrain, which affected almost the entire facility. We wasted four months, but the numbers still shocked us: in a $6 million project, redesigning had cost us more than $600,000. More than 10%. Wasted.

The area of the landfill site where the topographic data was out of reality. Redesigning cost us more than $600,000 (10% of the total budget), and 4 months of delay. I keep this image as a reminder!

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ARTICLE Looking back to all the previous projects, it was clear: The rework cost was related to the stage it was initiated. The later the stage, closer to the construction, the bigger the cost.

Everything was boiling down to the same problem; we didn’t have the complete view of our project areas, so we lacked understanding of the ground conditions and environmental features affecting our design decisions.

That’s when I started developing some “simple” tools to connect AutoCAD with Google Earth, which for some time was our secret competitive advantage.

Google Earth helps you look at the big picture, and we realized this toolset really could help other engineers out there, across the world. So we bundled those tools into a product, and in early 2009 published them under the name Plex.Earth.

Should a Service “Help” or “Let”?

Plex.Earth was certainly a problem-solver, but what was the original problem? To connect AutoCAD with Google Earth? No, that was rather the solution. The problem was to help designers understand their project’s environment and ground conditions, taking the guesswork out of the design decision-making. Note the word “help” rather than “let” and the difference is substantial.

I am an engineer and I know exactly the risks designers take in each decision they make.

The feelings when they hear that their work doesn’t match with reality and they’re asked to change it. Or when the deadline is coming, and they know if they could have started even a single day earlier it would have made all the difference.

Plex.Earth should help rather than let engineers do their job, so it was decided very early on that it should always be a “Service” rather than “Software”. That meant super-fast support, and always up to date with both AutoCAD and Google Earth changes, with equally up to date help materials, and it’s also why back in early 2009 Plex.Earth was the first “Softwareas-a-Service” (SaaS) and cloud-based product in the CAD industry.

Our average Customer Support reply time is 2.34 hours, with 78% of them replied in less than an hour. Zendesk shows other software companies’ average at 14.80 hours, so we know we’re way ahead of the curve! In fact, we were so serious about support that we went through the full process to be certified EN ISO 9001:2015 for our Quality Management System for the scope “Sales and Technical Support of Software Applications”.

What About Drones?

According to the HeliGuy Insider Blog “the use of UAVs on job sites grew by a whopping 240% in 2018 alone”. So, why Plex.Earth when you can send a drone over your project area?

Well that same article shows how Dronebased surveys are faster than Ground-based surveys, yet if you use drones you would still have a significant delay. Not to talk about the cost of acquisition and training, and as any drone hobbyist will tell you, almost everywhere is now a “no drone zone”, even for licensed professionals. Even where and when drones can be used it still means traveling to the site, plus applying and waiting for permits, then waiting for both daylight and suitable weather as they cannot fly when windy or wet. After all that, you still have to process the images and align them in AutoCAD or similar.

Of course, if you only use a Ground-based survey you will have to wait 2-3 weeks, and not for the same type of data.

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TWINGEO: ARTICLE

What if you could have the whole world in your hands?

Let’s take a closer look at where you really need the most help…

Most of the decisions in civil engineering projects (and the most important among them) are actually made much earlier than final design and construction. Surveys of our clients confirm it’s all in the conceptual and preliminary stages, because that’s when you seek for the best solution, make decisions and agree with your customer and all other involved parties.

Drones and ground surveys do have their place but the early stages are exactly where they fail to give a solution, because they’re far too slow. They’re also restricted, compared to just scrolling a few miles around the area in Google Earth for a look around!

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Ten years after its initial release, Plex.Earth is on its 4th generation and our vision still remains the same: to eliminate the need for engineers to get on-site for the conceptual planning and preliminary design of their projects. If you have the whole Earth in your hands, you don’t mind time and the cost of checking ALL alternatives and scenarios, because effectively it takes no time and there is no cost!

You can see Plex.Earth 4 in action here: https://youtu.be/Et81TBm_XpQ

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In less than 5 minutes, you can be designing with the complete 3D terrain view of your project area from Google Earth, right into AutoCAD.

Our promise is to give designers the complete view of their project area, in the best quality. Wherever in the world, precisely the moment they need it, following 2 simple rules.

Rule 1: You must have the most accurate, up-to-date view of your project area How many times did you wish you could have the current view of your project area?

Regardless of the problems of lining it up in AutoCAD, in most cases, Google Earth imagery is at least 1 year old, Bing Maps even

older, etc.

In short: Does the world change faster than the maps you have?

That’s why a few months ago we partnered with Bird.i, in order to give you the most upto-date view of your project area available.

With Timeviews™, the new functionality of Plex.Earth which is currently in beta, you get satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe and Airbus, as little as 10 days old!

For example, remember the Brumadinho dam in Brazil, which was collapsed on January 25th, 2019?

Less than a week later we could deliver the exact view of the Brumadinho dam area, before and after. To the left the image from 18th January 2019, seven days before, and to the right of 29th January, four days after the collapse.

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TWINGEO: ARTICLE Rule 2: Tools should do the work for you – Not you for them.

Plex.Earth already works perfectly with AutoCAD and it’s adjusted to support special features of verticals, such as Civil 3D, Architecture etc. We also believe in bridging the frustrating gap between different software!

An example is our partnering with Virtuosolar; helping solar park designers make their

calculations and analyses with the right terrain model, in a few clicks. Recently we announced our partnership with Transoft, making sure the thousands of AutoTURN users make their vehicle simulation with a complete understanding of their project areas. Furthermore, taking advantage of the real-world visualization power of Google Earth, they prove their solution, impressing their clients and other parties, and so winning (more) contracts.

Plex.Earth helps engineers make their vehicle simulation with AutoTURN having the real-world view (left) and showcase their proposal from within Google Earth to the local authorities (right)

You can see a clear benefit for the designers. Having a seamless designing experience, designers can concentrate on their job, rather than trying to make programs

work together. That’s why our strategy is to create a great designing experience, by partnering with more and more developers of the tools used by designers daily. This

PARTNER WITH US? From fulfilling my own small team’s need to see our project areas, to literally changing the viewpoint of thousands of engineers across the globe, Plex.

Earth satellite and aerial imaging for AutoCAD has continued to evolve.

We have never “rested on our laurels” and will continue to nurture and grow this service, including partnering with other companies that share our vision. If you think your company could be part of this, please do contact us at https://www.plexearth.com.

The website also offers a fully-functional free trial, with no watermarks or limitations, ready to use to your real-world projects!

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ARTICLE

Civil Site Design’s Satellite to Surface Feature is Amazingly Accurate!

By J. Lance Maidlow, President, Chasmtech

G

oogle Earth provides access to its elevation data with a free Google Elevation API key. Civil Site Design takes advantage of this feature with its new Satellite to Surface functionality. This feature allows you to select an area and the distance between grid points. It returns a contoured surface integrated with the Civil Site Design software and an aerial image.

I was curious about the accuracy of the data provided by Google. There were two potential use cases I had in mind: • Conceptual/preliminary design for new subdivisions • Accessing basin topography for flood plain analysis with HEC RAS 2 For evaluation purposes, I selected two sites:

• Site 1 was a heavily treed subdivision in Dunedin Florida. For this site, I had originally downloaded and processed over 2 million LIDAR points from the NOAA website.

• Site 2 was a proposed commercial subdivision in Lake County Florida where we had topographic survey data on a 100 foot grid as well as detailed surveys of existing infrastructure.

The satellite to surface feature generated surfaces for the two test areas in less than 10 minutes each. The surfaces generated from the Google elevation data were amazingly accurate when compared to both LIDAR and survey data.

It would, however, be extremely useful if Google were to provide the source and date of its elevation data.

Existing Subdivision Site A comparison of the 5’ contours from the LIDAR (Green) and Google data (white) is presented below.

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TWINGEO: ARTICLE The results are very similar, however, the original LIDAR points were 8.5 feet too low when compared to a known lake level. This adjustment was added to the LIDAR data in Civil Site Design before the LIDAR contours were created.

A detailed comparison of the surface data from the two data sources is presented below.

The 1/2, 1/3 and 2/3 average heights are virtually identical. The weighted average height is 3 feet higher for the LIDAR data. This is attributed to denser points in open areas compared to treed areas. The satellite data was generated on a consistent 20’ grid.

A visual inspection of the Satellite data below also compared very favorably to actual ground conditions.

In this particular case, a nod had to be given to the Google elevation in terms of raw accuracy and the general shape of the contours in relation to existing roads and house locations. conditions.

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Commercial Subdivision Site In the commercial subdivision example below the yellow contours were generated from the 20’ grid satellite data; red contours from the 100’ grid survey data.

Local knowledge is, however, important as the elevation data is not date stamped. A depression was filled in and a stockpile was created after the Google elevation data was collected. Similarly, a retention pond was constructed in the north east part of the site after the elevation data was collected.

The source of Google elevation data varies widely based on location. You can learn more about Google elevation data here – although it very much remains a mystery.

Although this analysis is not scientific, it does indicate that Google Elevation data should be considered for cost effective conceptual design for subdivisions and to generate a basin surface that can be used for flood analysis with applications like HEC RAS 2.

Source: https://chasmtech.com/civil-site-design-satellite-to-surface-feature-is-amazingly-accurate/

Author: Lance Maidlow M. Eng. P. Eng. President ChasmTech LLC Lance’s experience spans 30 years with firms including Autodesk (Local Government Industry Manager), Open Spatial USA (Director), Kanotech Information Systems (President) and Associated Engineering (Dept Head Water Resources).

He has consistently demonstrated the ability to identify emerging technology such as BricsCAD, Civil Site Design and Stringer Topo which clearly meet the needs of CAD users, civil designer’s surveyors and architects.

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ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE TWINGEO: ARTICLE

It’s the End of BIM as You Know It— Are You Ready for Connected BIM?

BY NICOLAS MANGON, Vice President, AEC, Business Strategy and Marketing, Autodesk

It’s oddly fitting that sensors, some of the cheapest technologies on the market, are poised to completely redefine construction, one of the world’s largest industries.

Sensors are rather simple. They attach to something and gauge temperature, humidity, light, motion, or whatever else you might want measured. Similarly, GPS technology is one-note, in that it only tells you where something is located.

But when you combine these two technologies with 3D modeling in the cloud, you no longer have mere raw data. There’s now a real-time connection between a physical construction site and its digital twin in the cloud—unlocking an infinite number of opportunities for efficiency and project management.

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Those three things will dramatically change construction practices by ushering in connected BIM: Building Information Modeling (BIM) plus the power of the cloud. The evolution of BIM is a necessity to address the increasing challenges facing the construction industry.

ARTICLE

CONSTRUCTION DISRUPTION According to McKinsey & Company, “The construction industry is ripe for disruption,” and I couldn’t agree more. First and foremost, construction is a massive industry. It represents 6 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) and employs about 200 million people.

ductivity is in dire need of improvement.

Last year, McKinsey & Company reported that large infrastructure construction projects “typically take 20 percent longer to finish than scheduled and are up to 80 percent over budget.”

Its biggest challenge is that the world’s population is growing and moving to cities. Today, 3.5 billion people live in cities—by 2050, just 30 years from now, cities will need to accommodate another 2.5 billion. To address that need would mean building almost 1,000 buildings every day for the next 30 years.

Unfortunately, construction is one of the least-prepared industries to address this challenge. It has barely digitized at all: The McKinsey report places construction only slightly ahead of agriculture and hunting, as only 1.2 percent of its revenue goes toward advancing technology.

Some governments are mandating BIM technology to streamline and modernize construction processes. For example, as of 2016, Level 2 BIM is mandatory for all public projects in the UK. But professional architects, engineers, and contractors weren’t waiting around for regulation before adopting BIM. That’s because construction pro-

Two threads are emerging: One, BIM is going to continue to be standardized. And two, many industry leaders who are currently ahead of the technology curve will work hard to stay out in front. Even if you look at the United States, where there has been no government mandate, contractors are making significant investments in BIM. According to a 2014 SmartMarket Report about BIM in construction, contractors reported that they expected to see their BIM-related work increase by 50 percent within two years.

CLOUD COLLABORATION AND COORDINATION The real benefits of connected BIM in the future will be clear once people glimpse how cloud and mobile technologies enable a completely new era of collaboration. Today, construction sites still use a lot of paper to communicate. Beyond the obvious inefficiencies and huge costs, the real problem is that the moment the drawings are printed, they are already outdated.

By using mobile technologies to manage drawings on construction sites—tracking and updating information continually in real time—an inherent trust develops as far as who on the team did the what, when, why, and how. Everything is tracked directly in the cloud for the entire project life cycle.

Connected BIM also helps manage risk on construction projects while enabling greater

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TWINGEO: ARTICLE efficiency and higher quality. It allows you to capture a ton of data and analyze it to optimize future projects.

For example, you could collect data that uncovers project delays when electricians and plumbers are involved on projects. But if you unpack the reasons for those delays, you might realize that a plumbing delay was caused by materials not being delivered on time or by ordering the wrong materials.

Or it could be that the work was done per-

ARTICLE

fectly and on time, but it was finished before someone else needed to punch holes in the walls where the plumber had already finished working. And that would mean bringing the plumber back in to redo that work. A “plumbing delay” could encompass so many other factors, but with the data, you can figure out how to better schedule plumbing and electrical work so they are called in at the right time—keeping future projects on schedule.

JUST ADD VR AND IOT

Another perk of connected BIM is that digital collaboration opens the door to virtual reality (VR), which seems like some out-there feature until you see its practical applications. Think about how process decisions and changes are currently handled via email. Now imagine you could explain what needed to be changed at a site to a construction worker in a virtual-reality environment. You and the worker could be in the same 3D environment—a fully immer58

sive experience—seeing the same things instead of explaining what needs to be done or reading it in an email. I think these kinds of immersive VR experiences, once experienced, will quickly become the default way to communicate.

But the Internet of Things (IoT) is the technology that will truly redefine and recontextualize BIM. IoT unlocks the performance potential of construction sites. Today, there can

ARTICLE be people, machines, and materials located onsite or offsite, but it’s hard to know how these things connect and whether they are efficient.

Positioning, Pillar Technologies, and Human Condition—are using sensors to capture information and show how people behave on a construction site.

Yet once construction sites are equipped with all kinds of sensors, it will be possible to understand where people spend their time, how machines are used, and if the materials have been delivered or installed. All this information will be captured and aggregated on a dashboard in the cloud. The Big Data can then be analyzed to start identifying trends about what’s working—or not working.

Human Condition understands how people carry loads or climb ladders, and it can analyze if they are maintaining proper form for these actions. Using data, it can actually predict if workers will be injured in the future, based on whether they bend too much or the wrong way too many times. And, again, if you do that across tens of thousands of construction workers in the world, it will be possible to prevent injuries from happening in the first place.

Once this technology is used on one, 10, hundreds, or thousands of projects, it will be clearer to stakeholders why some projects go well and others don’t. But if you expand it beyond that, it gets even more interesting.

A bunch of companies—such as Redpoint

When you see how this connectivity impacts every facet of a construction site—improving the efficiency, safety, and cost—it’s not even a question of whether the industry will move in this direction, only how quickly.

This article originally appeared on Autodesk’s Redshift, a site dedicated to inspiring designers, engineers, builders, and makers.

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