USGIF GotGeoint BlogUSGIF promotes geospatial intelligence tradecraft and a stronger community of interest between government, industry, academia, professional organizations and individuals focused on the development and application of geospatial intelligence to address national security objectives.

February 15, 2015

According to the IEA's Energy Technology Perspectives 2014, global growth in electricity demand exceeds all other final energy carriers. Since the 1970s, electricity's share of total energy demand has grown from 9% to over 17%. It is expected to increase to 25% by 2050. Over this period demand is expected to remain flat in OECD countries with an average 16% demand growth, while in non-OECD countries growth is projected to reach 300%.

Between 1990 and 2011 overall electricity emissions increased by 75%. This reflected rising demand but little change in emissions intensity. In the future emissions intensity is expected to drop as a result of more renewable power generation and increasing efficiency of power generation technology.

In 2011, two-thirds of primary fuel in the global electricity mix was accounted for by fossil fuels. But double-digit growth rates for wind and solar PV electricity generation over the last several years have helped push the global share of renewables to 20% in 2011. Asia deployed more than half of global solar PV additions in 2013.

According to the IEA's projection through 2050, energy efficiency will account for 38% of cumulative emissions reductions, renewables will account for 30%, and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) will account for 14%.

Buildings are the largest consumers of energy worldwide and will continue to be a source of increasing energy demand in the future. Globally, the sector’s final energy consumption doubled between 1971 and 2010 reaching 2,794 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe). The main drivers are projected to be population increase and economic growth. Under current policies, the global energy demand of buildings is projected by the IEA to grow by an additional 838 Mtoe by 2035 over 2010.

However, increased electrification of buildings through the deployment of heat pumps is projected to significantly displace natural gas demand as well as to moderate electricity demand by buildings. According to the IEA projections, increased deployment of heat pump technology could avoid most of the growth in natural gas demand. It could also moderate the overall change in electricity demand for buildings since heat pumps can reduce electricity consumption by 30 to 40% according to the US Department of Energy. According to the IEA projections, in spite of global floor area increasing by more than 70%, energy demand in buildings could grow by just 11%, without changing the comfort levels of buildings or requiring households and businesses to reduce their purchases of appliances and electronics equipment.

September 26, 2013

I remember visiting a company in the business of digital aerial image acquisition, orthophotography, and stereo imagery. Using the stereo imagery they extracted 3D buildings and other objects to build 3D city models. To do this they used a traditional 3D approach, a semi-automated process that involved manually linking features in the stereo images. It required special 3D hardware and trained technicians. It was not for the untrained novice, especially because they were extracting tens of thousands of features.

At the PCI Geomatics Reseller Meeting in Ottawa I heard a very interesting presentation by Brad Grinstead, who is with IAVO Research and Scientific. IAVO-RS and PCI have developed a product that does not require special 3D hardware and which can be learned in a few minutes. 3D FeatureXtract is lightweight, designed to be used with low-cost PC hardware and no special stereo hardware requirements and by people with little or no training.
Basically is is comprised of two side-by-side mono viewers, sophisticated 2D drawing/editing tools for digitizing complex objects including complex roof and outline styles, It supports polygon extrusion onto a digital elevation model (DEM and texturing. Another big advantage is that all it requires is overlapping immagery, which is typically delivered from aerial overflights and is often available in satellite imagery. People who want to create 3D urban models and have access to municipal imagery vey likely already have the raw data that they need to create 3D models using 3D FeatureXtract.

The process involves tracing and digitizing a 2D object such as a roof in the left-hand mono view. The digitized object will be shown in the right-hand view but will not be aligned with the image of the object. You drag the polygon along the epipolar axis until it lines up with object in the image. At this point the 3d coordinates of the object such as the height and other dimensions of the object can be triangulated. The result is highly accurate 3D vectors for the object. You can then complete digitizing the 3D object, for example, by automatically extruding the object down to the DEM. Ypu can also add textures from the underlying imagery, rather than generic textures from libraries which is what many 3D applications do. The objects can be exported in several formats for import into applications such as Google Earth and 3D GIs.

The application is not just for buildings but can be used for power poles, street light standards, manhole covers, bridges, hydrological structures such as dams and levees, and forestry.

A specialized application of 3D FeatureXtract is to what is referred to as "true ortho". These are orthorectified images that have gone through an additional processing step to remove building lean which can obscure some features and incorrectly geolocate the rooves of buildings and other elevated objects. Correcting for lean requires a 3D model of the object that is being corrected and 3D FeattureXtract can be used to create these.

May 17, 2010

Late last year I acquired a Fujifilm Finepix Real 3D W1 camera which I think is unique in the world in incorporating two lenses and two CCDs in one camera that allows you to take two images at the same time with approximately the same separation between the lenses as between your eyes. The camera also has a viewer that uses a unique system to allow you to view 3D images with just the naked eye.

To view 3D stereoscopic imagery on other devices, you can use anaglyph glasses (red cyan), LCD shutter glasses, or other techniques. The stereoscopic images captured by the camera are combined in a relatively new file format .MPO. On a PC two examples of viewers that can read .MPO format 3D files and display them for either anaglyph or LCD shutter viewing are Nvidia's 3D Vision Photo Viewer and Stereoscopic Player.

I find anaglyph glasses painfully limiting from a visual quality perspective and decided to use Nvidia's 3D Vision shutter glasses. Nvidia 3D Vision requires a fast CPU, a 3D capable Nvidia graphics card, a 120 Hz or faster monitor, and Nvidia's IR emitter and shutter glasses. I built a computer with an AMD quad core CPU (Biostar MCP6PB M2+ motherboard and AMD Phenom X4 9650 quad core processor), an Nvidia GTS250 graphics card (ASUS ENGTS250), 4GB DDR2 DRAM, a 1 TB SATA hard drive, an ACER GD235HZ LCD monitor, the Nvidia 3D Vision Kit, and Windows 7 64-bit. This configuration generates a lot of heat so I added a cooler on the CPU, the ASUS graphics card includes its own fan, the power supply has a fan, and I have another fan to circulate air through the case. This configuration allows you to not only view 3D still imagery with the shutter glasses, but also 3D videos and movies using the Stereoscopic Player or Nvidia's 3D Vision Video Player.

I bought this camera before spending Christmas in Rome and so was able to take many stereoscopic pictures in Rome with the 3D camera (One of the tremendous advantages of Rome is that almost all museums, churches, and other sites allow cameras.) The 3D stereoscopic effect adds an immediacy that makes the images simply stunning. Looking at the 3D images with the shutter glasses, you feel you are in the room at the Vatican Museum looking at the Belvedere Torso or at the Museo Nazionale Romano in the Palazzo Massimo alla Terme looking at The Boxer. (You won't be able to see the 3D stereoscopic effect in the images I have attached here, they are just 2D JPEGs.) I highly recommend you give this camera a try. Together with shutter glasses it provides an entirely new visual experience.