Latest Contributions by GuusKlaas

Recently recovered from a disk-crash, and I found that my carefully configured UI-configuration in ArcGIS Pro (1.4) (panels/anchors/windowed/etc...) was completely gone. Although a lot of it is easy to resolve... it prevented me from continuing. My organisation (naturally) doesn't use roaming profiles for technical staff, the result being I lost productivity. It would be a blessing if the named user already used for licensing reasons has an ability to store window/panel preferences; either that; or the ability to store it per project (though when combining that with GIT that could go horrible...), that way, whenever I go to a new machine, or my drive crashes again, all I had to do is sign in, and my carefully configured UI would be back the way it was! ... View more

How The Netherlands blew up €68mln And we used €12 worth of hardware, InfluxDB & ArcGIS to track it Summary Every New Years' eve masses of fireworks are lit in The Netherlands. I'd like to take this opportunity to explore how masses of cheaply produced IoT sensors can not only greatly enhance measurement quality and sample size, but how easy it is to integrate these in an ArcGIS for Enterprise environment. Techniques used: Javascript, Webappbuilder, Portal, Geoevent Server, Geoevent Server SDK + Java, InfluxDB, C#. Abstract No doubt over the past year everyone’s been buzzing with “IoT” and it’s real-world applications. How everything’s going to be better (or worse) because of it, and how it’s going to solve many socio-economic issues. As at any tech consulting/integration firm, a lot of Ordina clients often close down during winter recess, which gave me time to approach our innovation unit who, amongst my own unit, are working on IoT. This year though, we had a business case. We wanted to “enhance” the Dutch Governments’ initiative on crowdsourced fine particle/air quality measurements. Especially during new years’ eve this is a huge deal: €68mln worth of fireworks get blown into the air each year, which is subject of a lot of national and local debate. Measurements like these are already being taken using highly specialized equipment for many years (also around roads), however we wanted to optimize and make this cheaper. Using a Shinyei PPD42 particle sensor (€8) and a ESP8266 WiFi/SOC module (€4) we managed to build a surprisingly precise low-power sensor. We distributed 30 of these to Ordina colleagues, and asked them to hang these around their houses. Using the same sensor, but with a LoRA module rather than WiFi (LoRA = an IoT platform with nationwide coverage in The Netherlands; on the old UHF frequencies; stand-alone long range sensors can last for half a year on a battery), we even managed to place a few “in the wild” being fed with a battery. Due to customer constraints a free and open source time-series database was used; InfluxDB. Time Series databases specialize in real-time monitoring (near-analog levels of accuracy) of data and measurements, with time being the defining factor. In order to connect to ArcGIS, Geoevent processor 10.5 was used to integrate all data with GIS. The result was a live viewer which also was able to show historical data with a highly versatile data model. It was viewed during new years’ eve by many Ordina Employees (one even tracked his own sensor through GIS on a Nintendo 3DS even…), and the results (how GIS strengthened this solution) were shared with said government agency – who hadn’t considered using GIS in the past. The 32 sensors tracked now could just as easily have been 3200 sensors! Best thing? Everything from data to GIS was built by one man in a single week. IoT & GIS: Very Powerful, yet not a big deal. As for the results: the €68mln worth of fireworks were causing up to 40 times more fine particles in the air than regular. Which is only 4 times as much than the surprisingly trackable morning rush hour in some parts of the country. This session shows the steps taken, how InfluxDB works, how we integrated it in ArcGIS with Geoevent Processor, and how the final viewer was built, and why IoT is so easy and cheap to implement. ... View more

Sim-CI started as an innovation breeding ground from one of The Netherlands’ biggest utilities network operators: Alliander, who are responsible for 5,7 million end-user connections, 88.000km of electricity cable, and 43.000km of gas pipes. With their focus being the middle- and low-voltage energy grid, they are the biggest in The Netherlands. One of the big challenges of the 21 st century for The Netherlands comes from an increased population count, and a change in the way the energy network is being used. Electricity grids have to deal with a changed use due to heat pumps, EV’s, and traditionally ‘downstream’ connections that suddenly became ‘upstream’ connections due to the overwhelming popularity of solar power. Not only is the grid more heavily used, the wear and tear is much different, which means that assets that had a 50 year lifetime now might have a much shorter lifetime. The same goes for the gas network; with the advent of bio-gas and farms also producing combustible gas from animal by-products, the transport medium is being used in an entirely different way. Individually, every owner of critical infrastructure is well aware of all these factors, but rarely are they aware of each other. Only recently the city of Apeldoorn was without gas for a long time due to a ruptured water mains, which caused mud to flow into the gas network. Cleaning and repairs were not only an inconvenience, but also: pricey,  dangerous, and most probably: preventable. Sim-Ci aims to design resilient critical infrastructures, and to simulate and as such: prevent costly incidents to happen. Critical infrastructures such as gas, water, electricity, telecoms, and cyber all interact with each other, causing an N-quadratic amount of dependencies, and potential: cascade effects. What happens if the cooling water for a power plant fails? GIS is a huge aspect of this mission. Challenges such as getting the data from all infrastructures, addressing the sensitivity in a secure; trusted zone; providing data for simulations; enriching data with public data such as bottom survey; addressing integration in highly scalable scientific models make this not just a GIS challenge, but a massive integration challenge as well. Utilising GIS the platform can be built scalable, provide data on-demand for virtually every simulation application; and assist in visualising these simulations; and even: whole newly designed cities with a resilient infrastructure. This presentation highlights some of the reasons why Sim-Ci exists, and how GIS and the data within are the backbone for a much larger platform. The attendees will leave with the challenge to think of the implications of working with so many stakeholders, security considerations, and hopefully: motivation to consider their own contribution to a sustainable, resilient and safer environment. The ArcGIS platform is used extensively at Sim-Ci; not just as visualisation, but also as platform to host various interfaces on to connect different types of simulation applications. ... View more