TWINGEO: ARTICLE
21STCENTURY CITIES: BUILDINGINFRASTRUCTURE101 Jeff Thurston, GIS Expert Infrastructure is a common need today. We often think about smart or digital cities in the context of large cities with many inhabitants and lots of activity associated with big cities. However, small places need infrastructure too. Factor in the fact that not all political boundaries end at the local line, but also extend services to provincial, regional and national governments and it suddenly becomes clear - infrastructure is a clear boundary violator, by necessity. The notion that we can see smart places only within smaller geographic spaces is simply wrong. Not only that, but legislation pertaining to building information management, construction practices, product applications and people safety and construction often transcends small and big places as well. There are bottlenecks where GIS and BIM are intended to be used.
The technologies have long surpassed the boundary lines, but the politics and administration of GIS and BIM have been held back from achieving their highest order of use and effect. We often used to call this vertical barriers or stovepiping. Earliest GIS and BIM applications were deeply entrenched in localized areas, in the worst cases those holding the data ruled the project and did not venture out into the wider world too far for fear of loss of control. Fortunately this has changed a lot - and not for the most 10
logical reasons one might think. Contrary to the notion that people would identify these localized GIS and BIM sharing obstacles and choose to share, other factors can be seen that drive the change. These include: 1) The shift to Cloud-based software and applications has resulted in an ‘ease of use’ that stumbles across boundaries and provides everyone with a glimpse of what can be used. There are far fewer data stores held tightly, and computation applications are optimized to build and connect data. This in turn has led to more integrated thinking, and shared project development has become much more robust and arguably more resilient. 2) Mobility has truly generated a connection between field and office applications. Suddenly a person at 60 degrees latitude can share data and connect with high level data systems with another person at 10 degrees latitude - no problem. Mobile data tends to shift and arc around people obstacles, supporting the team and wider network. 3) It can be argued that early infrastructure projects using BIM and GIS got too involved comparing one technology against the other. Those kind of arguments standing on the earlier desktop platform approach strangled the life out of creative thinkers and doers, those seeking to chase trends and new approaches and often referred to as project leaders innovation changers. Fact is, the infrastructure of today is not only built upon GIS and BIM, but man other technological changes and innovations. The goal today is to incorporate them, seeking to identify where and how they might be used and if they bring greater performance and efficiency. These are a few of the reasons
