Batty consumerization of geospatial

The consumerization of geospatial

Peter Batty Ubisense

@pmbatty

• Brief background on our customers

• Consumerization

• Simplicity

• Field applications, online and offline

OVERVIEW

Photo by whalt - http://flic.kr/p/7D7rd

Physical Network Inventory 4.1 Product Description

© 2007 General Electric Company All rights reserved Page 15 of 65

groupings built by the system administrators. This ensures that end users only see the sets of equipment relevant to their work, both speeding up data entry and ensuring that the correct equipment is used for network designs.

The population of this catalogue is the first task that must be completed before a Physical Network Inventory installation can be rolled out to end users. To assist in populating the catalogue individual and/or groups of specifications can be imported and exported.

3.3 Strand And Structure

Physical Network Inventory provides support for both overhead and underground strand and structure. Data model entities and tools are provided to allow for the documentation, design and management of a wide variety of ‘holes and poles’.

Favourites can be used to very quickly and accurately design new network. This maybe using a standard combination of entities, for example a combination of trenches and manholes used for a particular customer connection, or individual entities. The relevant network equipment can also be inserted during the same operation greatly increasing end user productivity.

All network entities that are related to a structure, for example splices housed inside underground structures such as manholes or pole-mounted splices are related to the structure and can be accessed from the ‘owning’ structure, making it simple to interrogate the network from the supporting structures.

3.3.1 Underground structures

The following entities can be represented in the underground network:

Underground routes represent the location of the trench, bore or plough which contains (or will contain) the ducting and\or cables of the network. Information about the dimensions of the trench, i.e. depth and width of reinstatement layers, the type of backfill material used and surface material can all be recorded if desired.

Conduits model the structures within the trench. Conduits are used to protect the cables within the trench and to make it easier to add new cables without the need to dig. Conduits are not needed to associate cable to an underground route - as in a plough route where cable is directly buried for example. Conduits may be ‘nested’ to model sub-conduit network constructions. There are no limitations on the number of levels of nesting that can be modelled. Conduits are also used to model micro-tubes as used in blown fibre deployments. Below is a picture of a trench as conduits are being installed and on the right is the cross-sectional view of this trench within the application.

Figure 11: Conduits in an Underground Route or trench

Underground utility boxes are the structures that provide access to the underground network of ducts and conduits, examples of underground utility boxes include manholes, vaults or hand holes. Standard configurations of underground utility boxes can be created and saved for re-use. A typical manhole can be seen below and to its right the butterfly diagram managed in the application. For more details see Figure 19.

For Internal GE Use Only

Customers: utilities and telcos

Photo by ☺ Lee J Haywood - http://flic.kr/p/7iX7f5

Physical Network Inventory 4.1 Product Description

© 2007 General Electric Company All rights reserved Page 20 of 65

Figure 20: Inserting new cable

Alternatively the cables may be placed directly onto the map base. Although this does not reflect reality this approach is common in cable TV networks and maybe very useful for operators who lease cables from other operators and, although they do not actually know the precise route of the cables, they do know the type and size, etc. of the cables which can then be recorded.

In order to view the internal structure of underground structures either on the main display or on hardcopy output it is possible to place a presentation object which will display the contents of a particular structure (or other configurable details such as connectivity).

3.3.2 Microconduit support

Delivering triple play services i.e. voice, video and data, requires ever increasing levels of bandwidth and to meet these bandwidth demands operators are deploying fibre deeper into their access networks. Fibre-To-The-something (FTTx) is the general name used to describe network infrastructure that enables triple play from the telecom provider to the connected home or business. Where the fibre is deployed directly to residential customers this is known as Fibre-To-The-Home (FTTH).

One FTTH deployment strategy uses microconduits, sometimes referred to as tubes or straws.

Figure 21: Microconduits

Trench route for new cable

Structures which new cable will be placed in

Single button press inserts new cable

Select conduit for new cable

Ordnance Survey Crown copyright. All rights reserved.

Microconduit

Direct Microconduit

Container

For Internal GE Use Only

Physical Network Inventory 4.1 Product Description

© 2007 General Electric Company All rights reserved Page 42 of 65

Additionally, all equipment records have a range of common attribute values, for example a status, various date

fields such as installed date, etc. These fields may be used ‘as is’, configured to hold specific information or

additional fields may be added using the standard tools available to system administrators.

Figure 42: Rack mounted equipment

6.3 RME Templates

The system offers the ability to store standard configurations of rack mounted equipment that can be placed

anywhere within the managed equipment housings. Once a rack, shelf, slot or card has been configured it, and

all of the entities contained within it, can be stored as a template. This allows for completed equipment models

to be stored for use elsewhere in the network. Generally customers build standard templates and users are

restricted to only to place these standard templates, which ensures consistent equipment design and limits

users to only those equipment configurations that have been purchased by the operator.

The template mechanism can also be used at the equipment housing level. This is ideal for creating templates

of standard layouts of points of presence (PoPs), wireless base stations or street cabinets, for example.

GE are able to supply the data required to create the specifications, templates and rules required to populate

Physical Network Inventory. The data is supplied in an electronic format that can be loaded and processed. All

relevant specifications, templates and rules are automatically created. This can provide considerable savings in

terms of time and effort required to source and enter the data into Physical Network Inventory.

6.4 Creating Rack Mounted Equipment

In order to actually place RME into the database users have two different choices, these are:

Via a wizard

The wizard provides complete flexibility to the user. The wizard maybe activated in a number of ways and

from a variety of places on the user interface. The wizard is context sensitive and depending upon from

Port

Card

Shelf

Mounting position

detail

For Internal GE Use Only

Smallworld

flic.kr/p/7rnNAD

flic.kr/p/7NEJzF

Pervasive and SimpleLocation is now

in consumer applications

Consumer led IT

“Consumerization of geospatial technologies will boost business-side expectations and inspire new utility applications,” !!“Shifting market dynamics will challenge incumbent utility GIS vendors' ability to satisfy business expectations, prompting utility CIOs to evaluate new GIS capabilities."!

From Gartner report “Consumerized Geography Will Change Your Utility GIS Strategy”, November 2012 http://www.gartner.com/id=2260419 !

We are building applications for

the 95%of people in an organization who are not GIS users

13

“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do”

TOPICS• Familiarity

• Panning and zooming

• Search (including queries)

• Minimal layers

• Focused applications

• Network links

• Rather than “trace”

FIELD APPLICATIONS ONLINE AND OFFLINE

GENERAL REQUIREMENTSLeverage modern tablets and smart phones (and support laptops too)!!Leverage wireless networks, but run offline too!!Common development environment across platforms

APPLICATION OVERVIEWThis presentation features screen shots that step through a demo of Ubisense

myWorld for damage assessment. The demo features two separate users:

Operations center user, with overview of situation, including data from all field users

Damage assessor with laptop in the field, capturing damage assessment data

Operations Center

Operations center overview map – currently all is quiet, no damage shown

Damage Assessor in Field

Currently online (wireless)

WiFi is on

Damage assessment user in the field, currently in online mode (with wireless connection)

Damage Assessor in Field

Create damage pointDamage assessor creates damage assessment point in the field

Damage Assessor in Field

Damage point is created in local database and displayed on map on laptop

Operations Center

Syncs to operations center within ~1 minute, damage point displayed and overview map updated

Damage Assessor in Field

Offline

WiFi is off

Back in the field, we are now in offline mode (wireless connection is lost). Google Map has disappeared here.

Damage Assessor in Field

Now we are displaying OpenStreetMap as an offline map instead of Google (which can’t be used offline)

Damage Assessor in Field

In offline mode, we can continue to display maps, select objects, and search for assets

Damage Assessor in Field

We can also continue to create damage points while in offline mode (which are stored locally)

Damage Assessor in Field

We have now created two more damage points offline

Operations Center

Back in the operations center, we still just see the single damage point at the moment

Damage Assessor in Field

Online

WiFi is on

Now the field laptop has a network connection again and is back online, so the damage data can sync

Operations Center

The data has synced and so we now see three damage points back in the operations center.

Operations Center

We can report on the damage points and get aggregate information

Field users can also use tablets like iPad or Android, which support taking photos.

Take a photo on the iPad

Operations Center

Operations Center also gets immediate visibility of photo (assuming user online) Photos can also be emailed in from any smart phone

OFFLINE REQUIREMENTS

• (Ideally) cross platform

• Android, iOS, Windows 7 and 8 (and web)

• Need ability to sync large datasets (gigabytes) for some situations

• In other situations may be able to use smaller datasets (for single job, like walking an electrical circuit)

DATABASE SYNC

• Sync of bulk GIS data

• Initially read only for short term applications

• Typically want to do nightly over non-cellular connection

• Time critical data like damage assessment

• Want to sync as soon as possible (two way)

• Needs to connect / disconnect / sync transparently

THREE ARCHITECTURES TRIED

PostGIS Mapfish

Offline storage

SpatiaLite JavaScript

Replication Caching

ARCHITECTURE 1 LAPTOP REPLICA

PostGIS Mapfish

Windows (or Linux or Mac) only !

Use identical software stack to main server !

Need custom replication - haven’t found PostgreSQL replication for sometimes disconnected model !

Pros: Simplest to implement Cons: Laptop only, heavyweight

REPLICA CONCEPT

Master database

Local database

Potentially multiple gigabytes (raster tiles)

Incremental update is important

Full or partial (spatial) replica

ARCHITECTURE 2 PHONEGAP REPLICA• Have our web application running offline

on Android and iOS

• Replaced PostGIS with SQLite - for geometry and attributes, and also tiles

• Wrote JavaScript wrappers to replace (basic) MapFish services offline

• Refactored code so small number of classes contain differences between online and offline - tile and database access

CAUTION WITH IOS

• Apple terms and conditions regarding approval and software distribution can be a major pain

• All code, and all changes, need to be reviewed by Apple - even for testing (this has tightened up recently, since they bought TestFlight)

• If you need custom apps for individual customers there is a separate Enterprise Developer Program or Volume Purchase Program, which each have their own complications

ARCHITECTURE 3 HTML5 OFFLINE

• Cache smaller amounts of data usingHTML5 offline capabilities

• More dynamic and easier to deploythan bulk replication

HTML5 OFFLINE CONCEPTS

• Cache manifest files (Appcache)

• Lists files cached offline

• Useful tool is manifestR

• Offline storage

• Various types

HTML5 manifest file

Static files (app)

Dynamic files (data)

OFFLINE STORAGE

http://www.html5rocks.com/en/features/storage

OFFLINE STORAGE LIMITS MOBILE

http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/offline/quota-research/

OFFLINE STORAGE LIMITS DESKTOP

http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/offline/quota-research/

LargeLocalStorage is a cool library which abstracts various types of local storage, and storage limits

CACHING TILES (1)

• Caching individual tiles using app cache

• Works reasonably for smallish areas, like an electric circuit - 1-2 minutes download. 800 tiles to level 18 for sample circuit

• App cache is all or nothing - any failure means whole cache doesn’t load

• No ability to manage / delete caches programmatically

• Can also cache individual tiles using local storage and programmatic download - more code but more control

CACHING TILES (2)

• As in other situations, copying individual tiles is very slow

• Not practical for larger downloads

• We have done some experimentation downloading mbTiles files and reading them in JavaScript using sql.js

• Worked pretty well in Chrome on laptop or high end Android, for file of 275Mb - had to overcome some memory issues / flakiness

• Didn’t work on iOS, hit 50Mb size limit (even on Chrome)

CACHING ATTRIBUTE DATA

• We have tried using geoJSON tiles and implemented select against those - worked fine, should scale to large areas

• Also tried just downloading a single geoJSON file for the whole area, works fine for smaller download areas

• Could consider using local storage database also

OTHER OPTIONS

Field Papers

EXTERNAL STORAGE

Maps on a USB stick Easy to provide full set of maps Some functions unavailable offline

AirStash Provides WiFi access to SD card - usable with more devices

OFFLINE SUMMARY• It will be great when we have universal wireless coverage!

• Today, offline is still harder than you would hope

• Large scale robust sync for enterprises is not rocket science, but a lot of detailed work to do well

• HTML5 caching has a lot of promise, is workable in some scenarios today, but still not quite fully baked

• Alternative options like Field Papers or external storage may make sense in some cases

Usability / simplicity

flic.kr/p/3guaAu

Keep it simple!

?Peter Batty!@pmbatty!

peter.batty@ubisense.net!about.me/peter.batty