BIG Data for Smarter Cities

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1 BIG Data for Smarter Cities Introduction "A Smart City is not a marketing campaign, a slick sales technique nor an amusing political catch phrase. It is a series of solutions to a serious and urgent situation the world faces today. Smart Cities are emerging as a civic action due to a perfect storm of the convergence of market conditions, technology innovation, social wants and government needs and the migration to urban environments that has accelerated on a global scale that dwarfs any previous mass movement of people in history." 1 Figure 1: New "Smart" University Complex of Ottawa Urban Strategies Inc. As we move towards smart cities and a digital revolution for our buildings and infrastructure, information will play an increasingly significant role. Smart cities utilize Information Technology (IT) infrastructure to reduce maintenance cost and save natural resources while provide better living environment for inhabitants. Various sectors - including traffic, healthcare - has been developing technologies for smarter cites;; yet the energy, water and waste-management sectors have major influence on our sustainable future;; therefore these sectors are at the forefront of such technology-development. This paper presents strategic information sources for smart buildings and also draws up the challenges we need to face when transforming vast amount of plain data to invaluable information source for smart cities. 1 Paul Doherty, President & CEO, The Digit Group, Inc., 1.

2 BIM, CIM and GIS Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of the built environment. BIM is a shared knowledge base for designing, collaborating, constructing and managing a building through its entire life-cycle. The OPEN BIM 2 initiative - using the buildingsmart Data Model 3 - makes it possible to collaborate on the very same building information using transparent, open workflows, allowing project members to participate regardless of the software tools they use. The next challenge of the AEC industry to integrate BIM at a much larger scale than single, individual buildings. Figure 2: The OPEN BIM Advantage GRAPHISOFT Civil Information Modeling (CIM) is BIM for Infrastructure and for Civil Works;; it is applied to create and maintain better Civil- Site- and Infrastructure design models. CIM refers to the application of BIM for Infrastructure design and maintenance. Municipalities, facility owners and public utility provides increasingly realize the benefits of information modelling and extend the application of BIM towards the civil works and urban utilities. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are designed to capture, manage, store, analyze and display all forms of geographically referenced information. GIS data represents real objects (such as roads, land use, elevation, trees, waterways, etc.), it is captured using raster images and vector-based mapping references. GIS data today is captured using satellites and point-clouds containing not only spatial (x, y, z) coordinates but also color (R, G, B) values. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) 4 is an international - non profit - organization committed to making quality open standards for the global geospatial community. These standards are made through a consensus process and are freely available for anyone to use to improve sharing of the world's geospatial data. BIM is an information-rich, model-centric process with the power to transform project delivery and add value across the lifecycle of infrastructure assets, first it was used during the planning phase of the building process. Throughout the years constructors, real-estate professionals, city planners, municipalities, public

3 infrastructure companies as well as facility managers started benefiting from the complex information provided by BIM, CIM and GIS. Figure 3: Scope of BIM, CIM and GIS Urban Strategies Inc. To be able to create the foundation for the convergence of building (BIM) and civil engineering design (CIM) and geospatial technology (GIS) it is crucially important do develop and maintain international standards. The very first collaboration session to provide "Multi-disciplinary interoperability standards for the convergence of BIM, 3D and geospatial" was held at the "ISO/TC 59 Plenary Week" in Toronto, Canada in November, 2014 (Geoff Zeiss) 5. The goal of this meeting was to create an open collaboration and communication platform for various existing standards used at various level of the urban context, such as OPEN BIM, OpenGIS 6, IndoorGML 7, CityGML 8, LandXML 9 and IFC 10. BIG Data for Smarter Cities Urbanization is a worldwide phenomenon. There is an increasing common trend for an energy paradigm shift towards utilizing renewable energy solutions that are less vulnerable in times of disaster and have smaller environmental impacts, as primary energy sources to support everyday living. Smart city technology is becoming an essential element in the development of the world's megacities establishing the ground for a sustainable future. According to the report 11 "Smart Cities Market - Worldwide Market Forecasts and Analysis ( )", published by Markets and Markets, the global smart cities market is forecasted to grow from $410 billion in 2014 to $1.1 trillion. This includes smart homes, intelligent building automation, energy management, smart health, smart education, smart water, smart transportation, smart security, and related services

4 BIM is the key to make cities smarter, yet it is crucially important to connect the individual information of buildings at a larger scale, using the existing geo-context to these individual building models. The life-cycle of a building, infrastructure or even of an urban tissue, are handled by several different teams. When using conventional data and collaboration workflows most of the information is lost. Using conventional design, coordination, maintenance and management workflows can not eliminate errors in the process and lead to losing time and money. BIM is able to brake down the convectional barriers and provide streamlined, errorfree collaboration workflow for all participants;; and therefore BIM provides invaluable benefits in the long term. Buildings are never isolated in the context of smart cities;; their integration is established via the city infrastructure, transport routes, public utilities, heating, cooling water, electricity networks, and so on. The individual building data, civil data and geo-spatial data - the "digital DNA" (also known as the "BIG Data") of a city - must be connected to a central city network, potentially using a vendor-independent and open data policy. Such collected individual data alone is not "smart" - it only represents the captured AEC data that a city already possesses;; yet it may become the digital DNA of a truly Smart City. Figure 4: Sudbury Digital Master Plan and Aerial Photo, Ontario Urban Strategies Inc. The accuracy, authentication, integration, management - as well as the ability for real-time analysis of the digital DNA of the city (that is the summary of the individual BIM, CIM and GIS data) is the real challenge. Yet it's also essential and critical to provide a solid ground for creating truly smart cities. Without proper digital DNA structure and management, the connectivity from the city s nervous system to the brain will be problematic, inhibiting performance and the evolution of the city to a Smart City. 4.

5 The Smart City Challenge Smart Cities identified technologies at the intersections of urbanization and digitalization 12. Information (BIM, CIM, GIS) is vital to the functions of cities and the role cities play in society, yet raw information alone will not make a city smart. Two essential component are also needed to create smarter cities: physical data infrastructure and most importantly a "brain" to analyze the BIG Data. The true great challenge is indeed - to successfully analyze the "BIG Data" and provide invaluable input for managing, controlling and monitoring smart cities. Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) firms already started to consider not only the individual building project but the building in its greater context for capturing even more value. Figure 5: Daylighting Analysis enabled by the BIG Data BuildingSmart The BIG Data of a city is already captured in various formats and processes;; Building Departments, Engineering Departments, Land Departments, Planning Departments, Tax Departments, Postal Services - all collect and manage vast amounts of data. In the context of smart cities, where virtually everything involves data, the significance of storage is immense. Information Technology (IT) lies at the heart of transforming the BIG Data of a city into a Smart City. To manage staggering amounts of structured and unstructured BIG Data it is essential to develop robust storage architecture to help all departments to organize data on the basis of sensitivity of information, importance and accessibility. 12 "The Future of Cities: Science, Planning and Policy", Alan Wilson, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London,

6 Realized Smarter Cities The city of Santander aims to be a prototype for "smart cities" across Europe. The "Smart Santander" 13 project is a city-scale experimental research facility installing 12,000 sensors and devices is a unique test-bed and knowledge base for developing Smart City applications to be able to to model, measure, optimize, control, and monitor complex interdependent systems of dense urban life. Figure 6: Smart City of Santander, Spain smartsantander.eu The "Smart Santander" project envisions the deployment of more than 20,000 sensors in four different cities, exploiting a wide variety of technologies and several use cases. In Santander, use cases have been implemented in relation to environmental monitoring and management as well as to citizen oriented services such as guidance to available parking spaces, tagging points of interest as well as receiving and reporting special events. Korea's "Ministry of Land, Transport, and Maritime Affairs" 14 developed the world s first u-city standard platform and is coordinating with OGC on standards. Korea has taken a step closer to the building of easy-to-implement, economical u- cities (Ubiquitous City or Smart City). The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs of Korea (MLTM) successfully finished developing u-eco ISMP (integrated service management platform), a key component for running u-city total management centers,. MLTM has launched u-city R&D projects at 2007 to secure key technologies and lead the development of competitive, leading technologies. A total of KRW trillion was invested into these projects. u-eco ISMP an outcome of these projects, is designed as a connecting hub to process, store, analyze and disseminate information collected from different systems installed within u-cities. In other words, u-eco ISMP keep tap on other individual u-service systems and work as a broker among these various u-service systems. 13 "Smart Cities at the Forefront of the Future Internet" José M. Hernández-Muñoz, Jesús Bernat Vercher, Luis Muñoz, José A. Galache, Mirko Presser, Luis A. Hernández Gómez and Jan Pettersson,

7 U- Eco ISMP gathers information on urban disasters, transportation, crime prevention and life and provides citizens and relevant institutions with monitoring contents. In addition, u- Eco ISMP enables the handing of multiple events simultaneously by integrating varied u- city services, thereby enhancing the efficiency of urban management. Besides, u- Eco ISMP facilitate data exchanges between u- city services and external systems to improve standardization and interconnectivity. Future of Smart Cities "Over the next decade, cities will continue to grow larger and more rapidly. At the same time, new technologies will unlock massive streams of data about cities and their residents."15 Figure 7: Smart City Master Plan of the University Complex of Ottawa Urban Strategies Inc. Cities are rapidly expanding information systems to meet the needs of residents: the urban living environment is designed, constructed and now can also be managed and maintained through the analysis of the BIG Data. Smarter roads can be built where traffic lights are coordinated with the amount of traffic; smarter water, energy production can be ensured by measuring the amount of such resources being consumed; smarter grids for electricity distribution can improve the resiliency of power networks. Additionally, smarter transportation, agriculture and services can be possible by backing every decision with data collection and analytics. 15 "Institute for the Future: The Future of Cities, Information, and Inclusion", 7.

8 The "embryonic science of cities" 16 requires information systems and predictive models that will aid our understanding and inform policy development and planning. Futuristic scenarios will become reality as integrated standards platforms enable cities' and citizens' information systems to flexibly create and use information in BIM, CIM and GIS. As the "Smart City Vision" becomes increasingly compelling for governments and businesses, broad participation and cooperation in standards organizations can contribute to a balanced progress that serves society and its citizens. Levente I. Filetóth Ph.D. Architect Department of Building Energetics and Services, Faculty of Architecture University of Technology and Economics of Budapest, 16 "Smart Cities at the Forefront of the Future Internet" José M. Hernández-Muñoz, Jesús Bernat Vercher, Luis Muñoz, José A. Galache, Mirko Presser, Luis A. Hernández Gómez and Jan Pettersson,