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Improving Pipeline Information Sharing

May 8, 2014 - in Column, Energy, Maintenance, Pipelines

On September 9, 2010, a section of natural gas pipeline in San Bruno, California, exploded leading to significant property damage and the death of 9 people.  The cause of the explosion was ultimately traced to defective welds and a decision to increase the…

Wearable Computing and the Internet of Things

September 11, 2013 - in Column, Sensors

It is hard to go anywhere now and not see individuals or whole crowds of people staring at their “device”. I was walking past an outdoor café the…

Does the term GIS mean anything at all?

August 1, 2013 - in Column, Modeling

I have recently been reading a series of national and state GIS articles and user needs documents, all of which talk about the need for a National GIS…

Open Data Means Registries

March 4, 2013 - in Column

The municipal world has been buzzing with the concepts of Open Data. Many regions and municipalities have declared their support for the idea, and a Global Open Data Day was declared on February 22, 2013. Organizations have formed and principles declared (see…

The “Social Network” of Machines

December 6, 2012 - in Column

The past decade has clearly been the era of social networks, with revolutionary impact on nearly everything, from social behaviour to mapping and response to emergency events. Associated with the rise of Facebook, Twitter and the other dominant social network…

The "Social Network" of Machines

December 6, 2012 - in Column

The past decade has clearly been the era of social networks, with revolutionary impact on nearly everything, from social behaviour to mapping and response to emergency events. Associated with the rise of Facebook, Twitter and the other dominant social network…

Examining the Concept of Informed Infrastructure

October 18, 2012 - in Column

While later columns will most often look at the details, I thought this first column should be devoted to the variety of concepts that might be attributed to Informed Infrastructure. Clearly it goes beyond the site’s byline of “Extending design to include…