Efficiency Archives – INTUS Smartcities

In Data, Digital Communities, Efficiency, Uncategorized

Legacy Data Integration

Using geographic information is vital to understanding how a city operates. As of now, GIS is used to help cities around the world make better decisions in regards to maintenance and planning. However, many municipalities have either not digitally integrated their existing maps and/or not fully taking advantage of what GIS has to offer. With a lack of digital integration, municipalities are left with old or obsolete legacy data that can be difficult to access, provides little to no insight on how to maintain assets and plan for the future, and can actually cause serious safety concerns for communities. With the help of INTUS Smartcities, municipalities can get back on track and make use of these old data investments to better understand the geography of the communities serve. By understanding geography and a city’s relationship to location, municipalities are better equipped to make informed decisions about how we plan projects and maintain infrastructure within each community.

“Municipalities need a way to integrate data so that it can be analyzed as a whole and leveraged to make critical infrastructure decisions..”

What is GIS?

A geographic information system (GIS) integrates data for capturing, managing, analyzing, and displaying all forms of geographically referenced information. GIS allows users to visualize data in many ways that reveal relationships, patterns, and trends. These relationships help organizations like municipalities answer questions and solve problems in regards to planning and maintaining infrastructure.

Why GIS Integration?

All municipalities have new and legacy data stored in a variety of formats in many locations. Municipalities need a way to integrate data so that it can be analyzed as a whole and leveraged to make critical infrastructure decisions. Not only is this important to make decisions, but as asset networks become increasingly complicated, GIS becomes a vital tool to ensure safety for communities. For example, city workers could unknowingly cut an electrical line thus causing fires and power outages. Because municipalities have neglected digital integration, assets, projects and communities are at serious risk. However, thanks to its versatility, GIS can help municipalities avoid these issues. By using its spatial component, GIS can highlight locations of infrastructure damage while also providing location services and route optimizations for field crews and Emergency responders. This saves tremendous time and money when it comes to infrastructure maintenance.

The INTUS Smartcities & GDIC Advantage

INTUS Smartcities & GDIC has the ability to preserve old data investments by integrating them into our proprietary GIS system. By utilizing our data translators, we are able to provide an array of legacy data migration and data conversion services, including data interoperability. Whether it is a paper map or an old CAD drawing, we will convert it into a digital format with quick turn-around. Our translators are designed to preserve accuracy, precision and attribution throughout the conversion process.

Data Integration

GDIC offers many types of mapping services in a wide variety of sectors including: Municipal Governments (Rural & Urban), Parks and Recreation, Agricultural, Utilities and Private Industry. Based on specifications, we can create different types of base maps.

Data Conversion

GDIC specializes in complex GIS file translations between digital spatial formats. If you have existing data in unusual or obsolete formats, you can preserve these data investments with accuracy and precision.

Data Collection

GDIC provides utility GPS mapping services and data collection services for Municipal planning and underground utilities (water, sewers, gas, etc.). GDIC Provides GPS mapping services of variable accuracy up to 1cm.

Data Hosting

GDIC can help host large amounts of data with our online server partnerships, alleviating the burden off of small municipalities.

Benefits of GIS Integration

Other than full digital representation, there are many benefits to choosing INTUS Smartcities for data/GIS integration

Increased Asset Data Integrity

Increased End-User Productivity

Lower Asset Data Maintenance Costs

Whatever your integration needs are, GDIC will ensure a smooth translation process, making sure each piece of data is handled with the utmost care and security. Thanks to our years of experience and cutting-edge software, we are able to complete data translations in a fraction of the time it takes our competitors. All data is then made accessible in an easy to format that has cross platform compatibility. At INTUS Smartcities, we believe that data integration into Web-GIS is the first, and perhaps the most important, step in empowering city planners to make smarter decisions for the years to come.

In Data, Efficiency, Environment, ER & Public, Uncategorized

“Phosphorus” Infrastructure Management System

“An integrated turn-key solution including: multi-use geospatial sensor management system, integration of remote sensors into a GIS based platform, and wide usability.”

“Phosphorus”, a sophisticated urban utility network management & monitoring system, provides real-time performance monitoring of various municipal assets/networks. Through GIS-based multi-sensor connectivity, this system has wide usability. Using GIS data, maps, and ‘as-builts’ collected through the different INTUS Smartcities’ services, functional elements of “Phosphorus” can be enabled, such as alert triggers and incident highlighting on GIS for emergencies.

Usability with:

Municipal Infrastructure (Street Lights, Sewer, Traffic Lights, Water etc.)
Utilities Network Infrastructure (Water, gas, Electricity etc.)
Oil and Gas (Pipeline Leak Detection)
Mining
Forestry
Road and Communication

In Efficiency, Safety, Uncategorized

“Infra-Eng” Subsurface Utility Engineering & Permitting

“The Infra-Eng, or Infrastructure Engineering, method of subsurface utility locating and permit-generation- takes a mere two months versus the industry standard of one entire year.”

Infrastructure Pre-Engineering Service (InfraEng) is a full suite of Pre-Engineering services for Engineering companies in infrastructure, construction and Oil & Gas industries. This is more upscaled and integrated subsurface utility engineering (SUE) than the conventional SUE services. It starts with private locates, 3D geomatical and geophysical mapping, GIS enabled CADD and finally the Municipal Permit. The service provides accurate surface and depth GIS Data and Analysis which ranges from facilities and buildings, water and sewage, electricity, roads and railways, telecommunications and gas lines.

Infra-Eng combines the following in one pass:

Bringing engineering directly to the field
Integrating city maps as locating, mapping, surveying, and hydrovacing are completed

Infrastructure Engineering, or “Infra-Eng”, is the expedited process of subsurface utility engineering.

Subsurface Utility Engineering (known as SUE), is the collection of data in the form of ‘drawings’ to represent what is located subsurface in an area and is necessary to submit in order to acquire permits from a municipality (typically for utility installations). Normally, subsurface utility engineering focuses on gathering the data of four separate components- utility locating, mapping, surveying, and hydrovacing. Each of these components requires its own separate crew and then, data is passed along to an engineer before it can be submitted for a permit.

The data and ‘drawings’ required for a permit need to be updated from the original drawing (which is called an ‘as-planned’) every time something in the area is changed, or certain environmental elements/vital infrastructure are found . Each change to the original ‘as-planned’ is called an ‘as-built’. As can be imagined, this entire process is costly and timely. The typical time it takes to receive a permit with this current process is roughly a year.

Infra-Eng will be applied by INTUS Smartcities as a solution to the long and inefficient process of subsurface utility locating and acquisition of permits. With that know-how and crews, INTUS Smartcities can complete the entire process of subsurface utility engineering in one pass, bringing the engineering directly to the field, integrating city maps as locating, mapping, surveying, and hydrovacing are completed (instead of passing the data along to an engineer).

In Data, Efficiency, Uncategorized

“INTUSLINK” ORP System

“INTUSLINK and Archway work hand-in-hand to advance construction and asset development & management.”

INTUSLINK is an Operations Resources Planning (ORP) system for asset development, construction and asset management. The system facilitates real-time field reporting tools including online progress reports on partial completion of projects, as well as supports the integration of elements such as repair records and associated maintenance costs.

INTUSLINK has multiple build-in modules such as:

Inventory Mobile Asset Management
Field Crew Scheduling
Performance & Cost Tracking
Network Asset Management Permitting
And more, all visually accessible via an advanced AR environment

INTUSLINK provides state-of-the-art progress reporting.

“INTUSlink” allows for online partial completion and progress reports for each project and enables management to efficiently monitor productivity, budget & timelines at all times through the construction & asset development layer. Work progress can be displayed on a GIS or AR environment while automated notifications can be activated for each task or group of tasks. Labor and other associated cost figures and percentages are available and can be shared with management to allow for an effective cost control.

In Digital Communities, Efficiency, ER & Public, Safety, Uncategorized

“Archway” Augmented Reality (Patent Pending)

“Archway will reform building construction, maintenance, and repairs, as well as revolutionize emergency response.”

Archway (Patent Pending) is a cutting-edge system that allows users the ability to dynamically view each element of a structure. This technology has applications in building construction, building maintenance, as well as emergency response. It functions with two cases of structures: existing and new structure construction.

Augmented reality (AR) can dramatically change the way building construction, maintenance, and repairs are carried out, and emergency response is dramatically improved through infrastructure management. By mapping out what is behind each wall in a building, data can be integrated into applications for a number of uses.

Archway is comprised of a three-layer process:

1. Asset Development & Construction

2. Asset Maintenance & Repairs

3. Emergency Response with Augmented Reality (AR)

In layer 1, Asset Development & Construction, CAD Design files can provide the base for new project construction management. All building elements are imported into another system, called “INTUSLINK”, and itemized. “INTUSLINK” is the Operations Resource Planning (ORP) system which provides all work order functionality, partial completion project monitoring, cost management and inventory controls. The final deliverable of this layer is a 3D structure model.

In layer 2, Asset Management & Repairs, existing structures can be integrated into the Archway system by means of 3D laser scanner technology. Once a 3D model is created of a structure, all schematics of the building are integrated into the system. This includes: underground utilities, above ground utilities (in walls, etc.), doors, windows, and other important structural elements.

In layer 3, Emergency Response with Augmented Reality, all emergency related health & safety processes, evacuation pathways, exits and equipment operational manuals are included as assets in the final product. Upon completion of the project, a “24×7″ emergency response phone application, using AR tools can be downloaded by all structure/building employees and anyone visiting the structure. This application can be used to guide and assist anyone inside in case of emergency as well as emergency response crews.

Archway provides four key features:

Online Data Integrity & Security
Optimized Data Presentation
Additional Data Access
Data Organization

Online Data Integrity & Security: Data is presented in interactive 3D environment, and only authorized users can view and edit data. Data is properly organized to maintain its integrity.

Optimized Data Presentation: Data is presented as layers, and each layer has its own presentation features which are customizable by member administrators. The layer presentation can be customized with respect to zoom level (i.e. different colour schemes for different zooms) and the amount of data downloaded is optimized for the field of view.

Additional Data Access: Authorized users can view and update the additional information of a particular object.

Data Organization: Data is properly organized in a hierarchy, composed of 1. Data Sets > 2. Layers > 3. Objects. Every member can control the layers, data in layers, data sets and layers in data sets.