As part of the geospatial engineering team’s on-going involvement in the ITRC project, researcher David Alderson was accompanied by newly-recruited Computing Science PhD student Mr Razgar Ebrahimy to attend a workshop kindly organised by Margot Weijnen, at TU Delft entitled “Modelling change and adaptation in infrastructure systems: state-of-the-art modelling and simulation approaches”. The workshop aimed to bring together researchers and academics from the Next Generation Infrastructures (NGI) team at TU Delft, representatives from across work streams 1 and 2 from ITRC (), and also welcomed the visit of Research Director of the SMART Infrastructure Facility at the University of Wollongong, Australia, Professor Pascal Perez, with the aim of sharing experiences, projects and outputs of each research team to help further build and maintain the research links and community developing between these three groups.

The morning session of the workshop consisted of a series of short presentations, each delivered by a representative of one of the afore-mentioned groups, with a view to then discussing some of the topics and concepts raised during the post-presentation discussion session. Initially we heard from Professor Paulien Herder about how research in to the current and possible future states of infrastructure systems should be considered as a combination of understanding both the traditional physical, technical components thought of when infrastructure comes to mind e.g. power stations, roads, water treatment works, but also the social actors that operate, maintain, build and ultimately consume services offered by infrastructure. Many studies of infrastructure systems tend to focus on the technical aspects of the systems, which are clearly of paramount importance to being able to deliver the levels of service society has become to expect when interfacing with infrastructure, but perhaps do not consider enough the impacts that “people” have on the performance and evolution of infrastructure over time.

The audience subsequently heard from Pascal Perez about the great work being undertaken at the University of Wollongong, Australia as part of the SMART Infrastructure Research Facility. A key aspect of the outcomes from Pascal’s presentation, was again the need to think about how the social actors play a role in the infrastructure “complex” system. This was of particular focus when thinking about the economic benefits of infrastructure service provision, and the conundrum as to whether it is society that drives the economic growth/decline in the first instance leading to either increased/decreased demand for infrastructure services, or whether economic growth/decline leads to changes in societal make-up and thus acts as the stimulus or suppressant for infrastructure demand and supply. The “chicken-and-egg” discussion point of whether it is the economy driving society or vice versa was of particular interest to Professor Peter Tyler (ITRC), Ed Oughton (ITRC) and Robert Carlsson (ITRC) who are interested in understanding the interactions between infrastructure and the economy, whether at a national, or regional level.

From a more technical perspective, the audience learnt about the excellent work being undertaken at SMART with respect to their development of a regional, SMART Infrastructure Dashboard, helping to enable infrastructure decision makers gain access to a plethora of infrastructure-related information via a tablet/mobile-compatible interface. The technical components, but also the design process through which this dashboard has been developed is of particular interest to work stream 1, 2 and 4, as it is the intention that something equivalent be prototyped and developed to potentially enable UK-based policy makers and planners, as well as scientists and researchers, to ability to access outputs from the various capacity and demand modelling activities from work stream 1, as well as looking at the possible infrastructure failures as part of work stream 2.

A mixture of further presentations by Pieter Bots, Igor Mayer and Igor Nikolic focussed more on the ways in which infrastructure systems and complex systems can be modelled and evaluated. In particular Pieter, thankfully, raised the point of ensuring that modelling, and the subsequent dissemination of results of those models, be tailored to suit the problem or challenge to be solved, but also tailored to the audience to which the results are being presented. A “one-size-fits-all” approach to dissemination is not an appropriate solution as the types of questions to be asked of complex systems by different audiences, may require different tools, techniques and visualisations suited to each audience. This ideal fits well with the approaches being thought about within ITRC, where tools developed will need to be adjusted to suit the needs of those using them. For example a three tier approach could be conceived to determine the functionality of any interface to infrastructure modelling data, whereby the highest tier offers access to information to a wider audience but allows decreasing levels of functionality and therefore reduces the complexity of questions that can be asked, against the lowest tier offering potentially more analytical capabilities but to, for example, only researchers within the relevant fields.

However, Dr Mayer’s presentation and discussion focussed on the potential application of gaming, or correctly termed, “serious gaming” to help evaluate the interactions between the social and technical aspects of the complex infrastructure system. For further information on some of the evaluation work, and other projects undertaken by Dr Mayer and his team, can be found here. It was particularly interesting to here how this approach allows the individual stakeholder to actually be immersed in the model or environment itself, and how their interaction or reaction to particular events or shocks can be evaluated as examples of how user’s interact with complex infrastructure systems outside the test environment. Dr Mayer raised a point heard previously when considering the use of games to evaluate socio-technical systems and that is to ensure that the appropriate level of abstraction from reality is applied such that a user does not become too disconnected from reality and as such does not interact in a manner as close to mimicking interaction with the “real” system as possible. This abstraction is important at both the functional level in terms of what functions any model is representing, but also in terms of the physical representation of real world features in a computer environment, whether that is in terms of selecting appropriate temporal and spatial scales across which to model a system. One drawback however, highlighted as part of the discussion sessions during the course of the day, was that the use of serious gaming to evaluate interaction can really only be performed a handful of times due to the restrictions of having to utilise people heavily in the evaluation process, and so this can make it difficult, to repeat evaluation activities.

Dr Nikolic helped to conceptualise the problem of complex adaptive system modelling, giving a great overview of what is really happening when a modeller models something. Dr Nikolic stated that any model, or any system is effectively a three-step abstraction from reality, with the level of complexity found within each of the following steps, increasing from left to right:

Computer Model <- Modeller’s Conceptualisation <- Stakeholder Understanding <- Reality

This was an interesting point to raise, and highlighted the necessity to include as many relevant stakeholders in the modelling design process to help capture as much of reality from different perspectives as possible. However, the audience agreed that stakeholder interaction and engagement, especially when thinking about the multiple actors involved in modelling complex infrastructure systems, can be one of the most challenging aspects of the modelling process.

Further during the post-lunch session of the workshop we heard about some great research efforts being undertaken in TU Delft to help develop tools and methods that can help in the modelling of complex systems. For example, Dr Gerard Dijkema, delivered a fantastic presentation on behalf of PhD student Chris Davis and others on the Enipedia database developed at TU Delft. The database contains relevant information on power generation facilities worldwide, gleaned by marrying together different linked open data sources available across the web. Clearly something of this nature is not only interesting in terms of a pure inventory of information, but is also of interest as a repository of information for energy-sector modelling purposes. The Wikipedia-style nature of the database, allows online users to edit information, as well as review different visualisations, plots, charts, maps, graphs of energy-sector information. These types of tools are now being used within TU Delft to help in further research work, and underlines the importance of trying to use consistent data sources for these areas of modelling activity.

Overall the workshop was a fantastic opportunity to see some of the research being undertaken within the Next Generation Infrastructure group at TU Delft, and subsequently further enhance potential collaboration opportunities between that group, UK ITRC and SMART, Australia. Many thanks to Margot Weijnen and her team for the invitation! It is likely that a similar workshop will be organised and hosted within the UK, for some time in 2014 to help continue building the links between the NGI, ITRC and SMART infrastructure research teams.

A member of the Geospatial Engineering team at Newcastle, David Alderson, recently attended a GovNet series conference in London, entitled “Open Source, Open Standards”. This was held at the America Square Conference Centre, and more information about the conference can be found here.

The conference delegates were largely comprised of various government agencies including the Department for Transport, Office of National Statistics, representation from emergency services, Department for Work and Pensions, Department for Education, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) as well as representation from many local councils from around the UK. From within these various organisations the delegates were largely found to be based within some part of their specific IT operations.

Keeping in mind the public sector background of a significant number of the delegates in attendance at the conference, many of the exhibitors were offering open source solutions to various IT-related challenges including content management, telecommunications, secure mobile offsite collaborative working, data storage amongst others. Some of the major players in the open source world were also exhibiting their products, and post-purchase services including redhat, and MySQL (Oracle), whilst there were also stands from (amongst others):

• Digium
• AirWatch UK
• WunderRoot
• Sirius Corporation

The conference overall was a fantastic opportunity for public sector employees, to gain further insight in to how open source solutions can offer alternatives to proprietary software, that are often found within government department and agencies as a result of a legacy of long-term IT contracts and vendor lock-in. The general feeling amongst those presenting was that open source offers IT managers, and those involved in the procurement process of IT within the public sector, fantastic competition to the proprietary software providers meaning that the options available are greatly increased and improved. However Tariq Rashid, Open Source Policy Lead, HM Government and a speaker at the conference was keen to stress that open source is not being “favoured” over proprietary solutions, and that both operate on a level playing field. The take home message for delegates seemed to be more related to understanding what open source can offer by dispelling fears and myths about it’s use or misuse, whilst intimating that the choice of open source vs proprietary should be more related to the problem to be solved, and that a mixture could be the best solution. 

A number of keynote presentations were delivered during the conference, and further information can be found at the conference website, including hopefully the presentation slides themselves. Of particular interest to geospatial people was the presentation delivered in the afternoon by Executive Head of Technology at the Met Office, Graham Mallin. He introduced some excellent work that has been undertaken at the Met Office with collaborations from other national meteorological services from France, South Korea and Australia, nearly all put together using open source products including the ever-popular Python products, Numpy, Scipy, Matplotlib, as well as GeoNetwork and PostgreSQL. A Space Weather interface was also briefly demonstrated during Graham’s presentation highlighting how open source is completely capable of handling all types of data and IT-related challenges.

Further information on the OpenWIS project can be found at the Met Office website.

Some other interesting talks were given by Mark Taylor, CEO of Sirius Corporation which operates as the UK’s leading Open Source services provider. Mark gave some interesting examples of how aspects of IT infrastructure within different organisations or government departments with which Sirius has worked with, were swapped or migrated to open source alternatives. The general take home message there seemed to be that caution is sensible and making the right choice for your problem is key, and that finally taking bite-size steps to replacing components is more sensible than wholesale change.

Upon reflection many of the speakers and exhibitors did a great job of promoting the use and exploration of open source alternatives at all levels of spatial and non-spatial software stacks but ultimately that the process of technology selection, deployment and maintenance is not that different to when considering purchasing licensed-based proprietary software.

Some interesting links:

http://scitools.org.uk/iris/docs/latest/index.html – IRIS tool

http://www.slideshare.net/zaiziltd/graham-mallin-head-of-it-infrastructure-at-the-met-office-presentation-at-the-open-gov-summit-2012 – OpenWIS explained by Graham Mallin, Executive Head of Technology, Met Office

A number of the Geospatial Engineering team attended GISRUK 2013 (Geographical Information Science Research UK)  http://liverpool.gisruk.org/ held at the University of Liverpool April 2^nd ~ 5^th.  Neil Harris presented a poster showing his work on the real-time air quality sensors and the NUIDAP architecture (Ncl Uni Integrated Data Access Platform) for transport and air quality modelling.  Javier Urquizo (Phd student in Architecture with Phil James and Carlos Calderon) presented  a paper his work on spatial urban energy models.

The short talks and lively atmosphere with a mix of young researchers and a digestive base of more mature academics and researchers provided a great platform for seeing the breadth and depth of GI research in the UK.  This year there were some interesting technology observations with R and PostGIS providing the underpinning to many analyses and research.   There were a also some great talks on visualisation (not a subject I normally warm to) including some great visualisations by keynote Jason Dykes (links can be found here: http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/gicentre/t/wordpress/jsndyks/gisruk-2013/).    GISRUK 2014 returns to Glasgow.  For those that remember the last time – bring on the beige food and the ceilidh dancing (or maybe not..).

Nice summary of some of the talks here: http://gogeo.blogs.edina.ac.uk/2013/04/09/gisruk-2013-liverpool/  Thanks to Addy Pope at EDINA.

From the 18-22 February 2013 the Adaptation Training School (COST Action TU-0902) was held in Bilbao, Spain. The main objective of the training school was to generate basic knowledge for adaptation management in beginner cities. It also aimed to provide an opportunity to identify key policy needs to overcome difficulties for adaptation implementation at local level, helping scientific agents to scope and align their research with those needs.

Each day was split into to three main sections; firstly a group of presentations in the morning, with secondly a practical exercise in the afternoon (outlined before).

On the Monday sessions were led by Efrén Feliu, and some of his colleagues from Tecnalia in which an overview of the week’s timetable, as well as to an introduction to vulnerability assessment. Tuesday consisted of presentation & a practical exercise from Astrid Westerlind Wigström on the Adaptation Management cycle. In addition Birgit Georgi discussed policies, initiatives, tools and upcoming EU Adaptation Strategy. Wednesday Juergen Kropp introduced uncertainty management and Alistair Ford discussing integrated assessment of urban sustainability, including a practical exercise.  Thursday Johannes Flacke outlined co-benefits and trade- and Peter Bosch provided information and a practical on integrating adaptation in land use and urban planning. Friday’s presentations were: green Infrastructures and ecosystem services role in adaptation measures (Kari Oinonen); regeneration of Bilbao; Urban metabolism and industrial ecology (Rolf Bohne); and Economics of adaptation (Graham Floater).

Finally a discussion focusing on both; the key take home messages from the day’s work, and how the scientific community can aid local authorities in initiating such programs. These discussions had familiar themes, such as: practitioners being unaware of the tools that exist; language differences; a lack of expertise to produce maps, etc., required for decision making purposes; a “gap” between scientists and local authorities.

Various ideas to counter these issues were also discussed, with the idea of knowledge mapping of tools and research seen as an important step to allow for beginner cities to start on the road of climate change adaptation, as well as the age old need for science to be presented in a useful form for those who are to apply it. A further suggestion was to address a funding gap which may exist been when a research project is completed and the dissemination of methods to local authorities. It was proposed that funding applications in the future could be adapted to include the resources to allow academics to spend time with practitioners at the end of a project to increase the likelihood of ideas to be implemented.

The training school, in my opinion, was an initial success as it brought representatives of sixteen European cities together (with four early career researchers) to discuss how cities could begin to adapt to climate change. Although, if it is to be seen as a long term success these cities must assimilate what they have learnt and implement it within planning and policy to allow for adaptation to take place.

Shaun Brown