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
The past decade has clearly been the era of social networks, with revolutionary impact on nearly everything, from social behaviour to mapping and response…
Smarter Driving Key to Sustainable Transportation Planning
In the popular mind, smarter, greener, and more sustainable transportation is generally equated with mega-projects like high speed rail, light rail, long…
Achieving Model-Based Design for the Smart Grid
Smart Meters and SCADA Contribute a Big Data Perspective Smart meters and intelligent electronic devices provide granular data about the state of the utility network in near real-time. The availability of such data is in no small part what is making the smart…
Sewer Heat Recovery Provides Low-Cost Recycled Energy
In every urban area, heat that humans have generated to shower, wash clothes, cook, and so on flows underground — in the sewers, making them very warm. Today, sewers represent the largest source of heat leakage in buildings. Even toilet water, which is at…
Examining the Concept of Informed Infrastructure
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…
Game On – Why Your Tween is Poised to be the Next Geospatial Super User
Much has been written about converging threads in the geospatial arena over the past several years (6 articles in Safe’s blog alone!), whether it’s BIM and GIS, 3D and 2D, 2.5D and 2D, or even geospatial and music videos! But over the past couple of…
Sensor Data Helps Calibrate Water Models
Thomas M. Walski, Ph.D., P.E., D.WRE, F. ASCE, is Bentley Systems senior product manager for Water and Sewer Products. Walski has been intimately involved with the modeling of water networks for decades, and has worked with Bentley Systems to introduce seminal…
Sensor Sensibility: Deployment Strategies and Design Tradeoffs
Before we delve too far into the various applications of wireless sensor networks, it may be of some use to review the characteristics of such a system. While wireless sensor networks allow us to deploy and gather information in a variety of places that are…
A Tidal Shift in Water Network Management
Water consumption worldwide is on the steepest of hockey stick curves—since 1950, annual consumption has tripled, and in 2006 passed 4,300 km3… that’s about 30% of the available supply of renewable water. Water consumption is expanding considerably faster…
