AN INTEGRATED APPROACH FOR POLLUTION MONITORING: SMART ACQUIREMENT AND SMART INFORMATION

Air quality is a factor of primary importance for the quality of life. The increase of the pollutants percentage in the air can cause serious problems to the human and environmental health. For this reason it is essential to monitor its values to prevent the consequences of an excessive concentration, to reduce the pollution production or to avoid the contact with major pollutant concentration through the available tools. Some recently developed tools for the monitoring and sharing of the data in an effective system permit to manage the information in a smart way, in order to improve the knowledge of the problem and, consequently, to take preventing measures in favour of the urban air quality and human health. In this paper, the authors describe an innovative solution that implements geomatics sensors (GNSS) and pollutant measurement sensors to develop a low cost sensor for the acquisition of pollutants dynamic data using a mobile platform based on bicycles. The acquired data can be analysed to evaluate the local distribution of pollutant density and shared through web platforms that use standard protocols for an effective smart use

URBAN DATA COLLECTION USING A BIKE MOBILE SYSTEM WITH A FOSS ARCHITECTURE

European community is working to improve the quality of the life in each European country, in particular to increase the quality air condition and safety in each city. The quality air is daily monitored, using several ground station, which do not consider the variation of the quality during the day, evaluating only the average level. In this case, it could be interesting to have a “smart” system to acquire distributed data in continuous, even involving the citizens. On the other hand, to improve the safety level in urban area along cycle lane, road and pedestrian path, exist a lot of algorithms for visibility and safety analysis; the crucial aspect is the 3D model considered as “input” in these algorithms, which always needs to be updated. A bike has been instrumented with two digital camera as Raspberry PI-cam. Image acquisition has been realized with a dedicated python tool, which has been implemented in the Raspberry PI system. Images have been georeferenced using a u-blox 8T, connected to Raspberry system. GNSS data has been acquired using a specific tool developed in Python, which was based on RTKLIB library. Time synchronization has been obtained with GNSS receiver. Additionally, a portable laser scanner, an air quality system and a small Inertial platform have been installed and connected with the Raspberry system. The system has been implemented and tested to acquire data (image and air quality parameter) in a district in Turin. Also a 3D model of the investigated site has been carried. In this contribute, the assembling of the system is described, in particular the dataset acquired and the results carried out will be described. different low cost sensors, in particular digital camera and laser scanner to collect easily geospatial data in urban area

Quality of spatial information for municipal infrastructure management

Management of municipal infrastructure involves many processes such as planning, construction, operation, and maintenance of various assets. Municipal infrastructure management systems require gathering and combining a large amount of data from different sources. These data consist of spatial and non-spatial data for describing the process information about each facility. In recent years, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are widely used in municipal infrastructure management to spatially locate the elements of roads, sewers and water networks. However, the data used in these systems are collected from different sources using different methods with little information about the quality of the data. Problems regarding spatial data quality can affect all fields that use geographic data. Furthermore, the aging of municipal infrastructure assets combined with limited maintenance budgets presents unprecedented challenges to municipalities and public work agencies. A new integrated Municipal Infrastructure Management System (MIMS) is required to perform better quality performance for optimizing maintenance, repair and replacement activities. In this research, first a literature review is conducted about the existing MIMS software solutions, various spatial technologies are introduced, and data standards and quality concepts are discussed. Then, a new framework for MIMS spatial data quality assurance process is proposed. This framework is developed to cover all aspects of data quality and several practical methods for achieving spatial data quality assurance. One case study with four implementations is used to demonstrate the applications of the proposed approach

Proceedings. 9th 3DGeoInfo Conference 2014, [11-13 November 2014, Dubai]

It is known that, scientific disciplines such as geology, geophysics, and reservoir exploration intrinsically use 3D geo-information in their models and simulations. However, 3D geo-information is also urgently needed in many traditional 2D planning areas such as civil engineering, city and infrastructure modeling, architecture, environmental planning etc. Altogether, 3DGeoInfo is an emerging technology that will greatly influence the market within the next few decades. The 9th International 3DGeoInfo Conference aims at bringing together international state-of-the-art researchers and practitioners facilitating the dialogue on emerging topics in the field of 3D geo-information. The conference in Dubai offers an interdisciplinary forum of sub- and above-surface 3D geo-information researchers and practitioners dealing with data acquisition, modeling, management, maintenance, visualization, and analysis of 3D geo-information

Remote Collaborative BIM-based Mixed Reality Approach for Supporting Facilities Management Field Tasks

Facilities Management (FM) day-to-day tasks require suitable methods to facilitate work orders and improve performance by better collaboration between the office and the field. Building Information Modeling (BIM) provides opportunities to support collaboration and to improve the efficiency of Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMSs) by sharing building information between different applications/users throughout the lifecycle of the facility. However, manual retrieval of building element information can be challenging and time consuming for field workers during FM operations. Mixed Reality (MR) is a visualization technique that can be used to improve the visual perception of the facility by superimposing 3D virtual objects and textual information on top of the view of real-world building objects. The objectives of this research are: (1) investigating an automated method to capture and record task-related data (e.g., defects) with respect to a georeferenced BIM model and share them directly with the remote office based on the field worker point of view in mobile situations; (2) investigating the potential of using MR, BIM, and sensory data for FM tasks to provide improved visualization and perception that satisfy the needs of the facility manager at the office and the field workers with less visual and mental disturbance; and (3) developing an effective method for interactive visual collaboration to improve FM field tasks. This research discusses the development of a collaborative BIM-based MR approach to support facilities field tasks. The research framework integrates multisource facilities information, BIM models, and hybrid tracking in an MR-based setting to retrieve information based on time (e.g., inspection schedule) and the location of the field worker, visualize inspection and maintenance operations, and support remote collaboration and visual communication between the field worker and the manager at the office. The field worker uses an Augmented Reality (AR) application installed on his/her tablet. The manager at the office uses an Immersive Augmented Virtuality (IAV) application installed on a desktop computer. Based on the field worker location, as well as the inspection or maintenance schedule, the field worker is assigned work orders and instructions from the office. Other sensory data (e.g., infrared thermography) can provide additional layers of information by augmenting the actual view of the field worker and supporting him/her in making effective decisions about existing and potential problems while communicating with the office in an Interactive Virtual Collaboration (IVC) mode. The contributions of this research are (1) developing a MR framework for facilities management which has a field AR module and an office IAV module. These modules can be used independently or combined using remote IVC, (2) developing visualization methods for MR including the virtual hatch and multilayer views to enhance visual depth and context perception, (3) developing methods for AR and IAV modeling including BIM-based data integration and customization suitable for each MR method, and (4) enhancing indoor tracking for AR FM systems by developing a hybrid tracking method. To investigate the applicability of the research method, a prototype system called Collaborative BIM-based Markerless Mixed Reality Facility Management System (CBIM3R-FMS) is developed and tested in a case study. The usability testing and validation show that the proposed methods have high potential to improve FM field tasks

Urban Informatics

This open access book is the first to systematically introduce the principles of urban informatics and its application to every aspect of the city that involves its functioning, control, management, and future planning. It introduces new models and tools being developed to understand and implement these technologies that enable cities to function more efficiently – to become ‘smart’ and ‘sustainable’. The smart city has quickly emerged as computers have become ever smaller to the point where they can be embedded into the very fabric of the city, as well as being central to new ways in which the population can communicate and act. When cities are wired in this way, they have the potential to become sentient and responsive, generating massive streams of ‘big’ data in real time as well as providing immense opportunities for extracting new forms of urban data through crowdsourcing. This book offers a comprehensive review of the methods that form the core of urban informatics from various kinds of urban remote sensing to new approaches to machine learning and statistical modelling. It provides a detailed technical introduction to the wide array of tools information scientists need to develop the key urban analytics that are fundamental to learning about the smart city, and it outlines ways in which these tools can be used to inform design and policy so that cities can become more efficient with a greater concern for environment and equity

Urban Informatics

This open access book is the first to systematically introduce the principles of urban informatics and its application to every aspect of the city that involves its functioning, control, management, and future planning. It introduces new models and tools being developed to understand and implement these technologies that enable cities to function more efficiently – to become ‘smart’ and ‘sustainable’. The smart city has quickly emerged as computers have become ever smaller to the point where they can be embedded into the very fabric of the city, as well as being central to new ways in which the population can communicate and act. When cities are wired in this way, they have the potential to become sentient and responsive, generating massive streams of ‘big’ data in real time as well as providing immense opportunities for extracting new forms of urban data through crowdsourcing. This book offers a comprehensive review of the methods that form the core of urban informatics from various kinds of urban remote sensing to new approaches to machine learning and statistical modelling. It provides a detailed technical introduction to the wide array of tools information scientists need to develop the key urban analytics that are fundamental to learning about the smart city, and it outlines ways in which these tools can be used to inform design and policy so that cities can become more efficient with a greater concern for environment and equity

Urban Informatics

This open access book is the first to systematically introduce the principles of urban informatics and its application to every aspect of the city that involves its functioning, control, management, and future planning. It introduces new models and tools being developed to understand and implement these technologies that enable cities to function more efficiently – to become ‘smart’ and ‘sustainable’. The smart city has quickly emerged as computers have become ever smaller to the point where they can be embedded into the very fabric of the city, as well as being central to new ways in which the population can communicate and act. When cities are wired in this way, they have the potential to become sentient and responsive, generating massive streams of ‘big’ data in real time as well as providing immense opportunities for extracting new forms of urban data through crowdsourcing. This book offers a comprehensive review of the methods that form the core of urban informatics from various kinds of urban remote sensing to new approaches to machine learning and statistical modelling. It provides a detailed technical introduction to the wide array of tools information scientists need to develop the key urban analytics that are fundamental to learning about the smart city, and it outlines ways in which these tools can be used to inform design and policy so that cities can become more efficient with a greater concern for environment and equity

Management and Visualisation of Non-linear History of Polygonal 3D Models

The research presented in this thesis concerns the problems of maintenance and revision control of large-scale three dimensional (3D) models over the Internet. As the models grow in size and the authoring tools grow in complexity, standard approaches to collaborative asset development become impractical. The prevalent paradigm of sharing files on a file system poses serious risks with regards, but not limited to, ensuring consistency and concurrency of multi-user 3D editing. Although modifications might be tracked manually using naming conventions or automatically in a version control system (VCS), understanding the provenance of a large 3D dataset is hard due to revision metadata not being associated with the underlying scene structures. Some tools and protocols enable seamless synchronisation of file and directory changes in remote locations. However, the existing web-based technologies are not yet fully exploiting the modern design patters for access to and management of alternative shared resources online. Therefore, four distinct but highly interconnected conceptual tools are explored. The first is the organisation of 3D assets within recent document-oriented No Structured Query Language (NoSQL) databases. These "schemaless" databases, unlike their relational counterparts, do not represent data in rigid table structures. Instead, they rely on polymorphic documents composed of key-value pairs that are much better suited to the diverse nature of 3D assets. Hence, a domain-specific non-linear revision control system 3D Repo is built around a NoSQL database to enable asynchronous editing similar to traditional VCSs. The second concept is that of visual 3D differencing and merging. The accompanying 3D Diff tool supports interactive conflict resolution at the level of scene graph nodes that are de facto the delta changes stored in the repository. The third is the utilisation of HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) for the purposes of 3D data management. The XML3DRepo daemon application exposes the contents of the repository and the version control logic in a Representational State Transfer (REST) style of architecture. At the same time, it manifests the effects of various 3D encoding strategies on the file sizes and download times in modern web browsers. The fourth and final concept is the reverse-engineering of an editing history. Even if the models are being version controlled, the extracted provenance is limited to additions, deletions and modifications. The 3D Timeline tool, therefore, implies a plausible history of common modelling operations such as duplications, transformations, etc. Given a collection of 3D models, it estimates a part-based correspondence and visualises it in a temporal flow. The prototype tools developed as part of the research were evaluated in pilot user studies that suggest they are usable by the end users and well suited to their respective tasks. Together, the results constitute a novel framework that demonstrates the feasibility of a domain-specific 3D version control