GIS for Smart Cities

Cover Story

Global View

Geospatial Technology and the

Future of the City

Case Study

Singapore’s Sustainable Development of

Jurong Lake District

Smart

Energy

Smart

Building

Smart

Working

Big Data

Smart

Care

Smart

Society

Smart

Home

IOT

Smart

Transport

FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION, NOT FOR SALE

January - March, 2015 Vol. 9 Issue 1

Smart

Utilities

Build Smart Cities

Design urban layouts in 3D for analysis and review

Model 3D environments for entertainment and simulation

Quickly create 3D models using real-world 2D GIS data

Create High-Quality 3D Content

with Esri CityEngine

esri.com/cityengine

Agendra Kumar

The pace of urbanization is speeding up in India with an expectation of better

facilities and living conditions. Last year Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD)

initiated the much laudable national programme for urban India – ‘Smart Cities’,

to match the pace of urbanization and further drive economic development. The

focus is on building green ﬁeld cities as well rebuilding or retroﬁtting existing

cities to be smart, future ready and sustainable. The government is already in the

process of deﬁning detailed guidelines and approach for the selection of cities and

execution plans from operational perspective.

Weather it is a green-ﬁeld smart city or an upgrade of an existing city into a smart

city, we are all aware of the relevance of Geographic Information System (GIS)

and its role right from the planning stage. Location is a common denominator

in every aspect of a smart city and hence a location platform i.e. a GIS based

technology platform has to form its backbone from the very beginning including

for ICT planning and deployment. A centralized information system based on GIS

provides an IT framework which integrates every aspect of a smart city – starting

from conceptualization, planning and development to maintenance.

Smart planning, transparency in governance, smart energy, smart infrastructure,

smart buildings, smart security, public safety, smart trafﬁc management, smart waste

disposal and smart service delivery mechanisms are some of the key components

of any smart city. GIS integrates all aspects of city planning and management

providing a common operating picture to all. As smart city involves multiple

stakeholders, the integration, coordination and synergistic functioning of different

participants of the smart city ecosystem is the key for the project to be successful.

In this issue, we explore the role of GIS in the smart city ecosystem. We present

to you a collection of articles, global references and case studies which we think

would be useful for everyone including city administrators, planners, utilities and

IT solution providers in exploring the new approach of GIS based urban planning

through Geodesign.

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

PRESIDENT’S DESK

Content

03 PRESIDENT’S DESK

05 NEWS

- Rajendra S Pawar, Chairman, NIIT Group gets lifetime achievement award for

promoting GIS in India

- Esri India launches ‘Geodesign’ tool for planning smart cities

- Esri launches ArcGIS Open Data website

- Why Singapore is moving to 3D maps for urban planning

- ArcGIS 10.3 now certiﬁed OGC compliant

- ARC Advisory Group report highlights Esri as leader in global GIS market

09 PRODUCT REVIEW

- Three things about ArcGIS 10.3 that will change how you use GIS

- Esri CityEngine

- GeoEvent Processor

13 COVER STORY

- GIS for Smart Cities

16 GLOBAL VIEW

- Geospatial technology and the Future of the City

- What does it take to build a smart community

20 INDIA VIEW

- Smart Cities as envisioned by MoUD

- Planners vision for Smart Cities in India

24 CASE STUDY

- 3D Modeling shows off Elevated Rail System Landscape

- Singapore’s sustainable development of Jurong Lake District

30 TECHNICAL ARTICLE

- Semantically enriched vision of Smart City

- ‘Sensors’ for Smart ‘Cities’

36 EVENT COVERAGE

- Esri India User Conference focuses on ‘Geo-Enabling Digital India’

39 TIPS & TRICKS

- Rethinking GIS for Local Government

40 GIS TRIVIA

- CityEngine FAQ

 Mr. Rajendra S Pawar,

Chairman, NIIT Group

being awarded the Lifetime

Achievement Award by Mr. R S

Sharma, Secretary, DeitY

Mr. Rajendra S Pawar, Chairman, NIIT Group gets lifetime

achievement award for promoting GIS in India

Mr Rajendra S Pawar, Chairman & Co-Founder, NIIT Group, has been honoured

with Lifetime Achievement Award by Geospatial Media, for his decades of service

and leadership in helping GIS and associated technologies grow in India since the

late 80s.

Mr Rajendra S Pawar on receiving the award said, “I am humbled and honoured

to receive this award. It gives me great pleasure to see our efforts of driving GIS

proliferation in India over the last 28 years receive leading industry recognition.

Servicing the largest number of users, NIIT has seen GIS evolve into an all-pervasive

technology that is helping organizations make informed decisions. Being a part of

this journey, has indeed, been a very enjoyable experience.”

“I am conﬁdent that the momentum and the capability created by us will be

fundamental in meeting the Government’s vision of Digital India and in creating

Smart Cities,” added Mr Pawar.

Mr Pawar has played a pioneering role in building GIS-focused products and

services in partnership with the leading global player Esri Inc, USA. NIIT has

developed an extensive range of offerings for the industry. These now constitute

the core of several mission critical projects in disaster management, infrastructure,

power, telecom, natural resources, and urbanization. Going forward, GIS is

expected to play a key role in laying the foundation for Smart Cities in India.

Congratulating Mr Pawar on receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award, Mr Jack

Dangermond, Founder and President of Esri said, “We have been extremely

fortunate to have a very strategic partner - NIIT Technologies in India led by Mr

Rajendra S Pawar. GIS industry in India has grown multi-fold in the last 3 decades;

I strongly believe, it is Mr Pawar’s vision, commitment and focus that have played

an instrumental role in shaping the GIS Industry. Congratulations to Mr Pawar on

being conferred with the Life Time Achievement Award by Geospatial Media. I am

happy for this apt recognition and acknowledgement of his service to the industry.

With his vision, I am sure GIS industry would leap to newer heights in the years to

come”.

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

NEWS

Esri India launches Geodesign tool for

planning smart cities

ArcIndia News Vol. 9 esriindia.com

NEWS

Esri India has introduced Geodesign,

a key framework for conceptualizing

and planning for Smart Cities and

associated tools.

Geodesign provides a design

framework and supporting

technology for professionals to

leverage geographic information,

resulting in designs that more closely

follow natural systems. These tools

include GeoPlanner, CityEngine, and

GeoEvent Processor. GeoPlanner,

a specialized application for land

based planning, allows to design

and plan in a collaborative online

environment that integrates data

and powerful spatial analysis tools.

GeoPlanner brings the power of

ArcGIS Online and a Geodesign

workﬂow to land-based planning

activities with a JavaScript-based

web application. It allows users

to create, analyze, and report on

alternative planning scenarios in

support of better, more informed

decision making. CityEngine is a

3D design tool with visualization

technology to improve urban

planning, architecture, and design. It

is used to visualise the relationships

of projects, assess their feasibility,

and plan their implementation.

GeoEvent Processor captures feeds

from multiple sources for real time

processing and transform GIS

application into frontline decision

application.

Arvind Thakur, Chairman, Esri

India said, “Location is a common

denominator in every aspect of

Smart City development thus

creating a strong need for integrating

GIS in its planning. An integrated

approach will result in sustainability

and increased beneﬁts for citizens

residing in Smart Cities”.

In India, GIFT City and Lavasa are

using Esri tools for urban planning,

infrastructure planning, construction

monitoring and management. Esri

software has been in use in India

by various parts of a city system like

utilities – Electric, Water and Gas;

city planning departments; land

management; roads & highways;

security & safety. Esri India has vast

experience in implementing GIS for

various city operations like Municipal

Corporation of Greater Mumbai,

Orange City Water, Nagpur and

Commissionerate of Municipal

Administration, Chennai.

Esri launches ArcGIS

Open Data website

Esri announced the launch of a new

site aimed to help citizens discover

organizations sharing open data

around the world and provide

direct access to thousands of open

government datasets. Citizens can

search, download, ﬁlter, and visualize

this data through their web browser

or mobile device.

Andrew Turner, CTO of Esri’s DC R&D

Center said “We are excited about

the large number of organizations

currently sharing open data and

believe we have a great opportunity

to boost global support for open

data and open knowledge. As more

of the 380,000 organizations we

work with across the globe begin

to contribute open data, we will be

able to help foster innovation by

connecting the millions of datasets

created by government agencies

and shared through ArcGIS Open

Data.”

Since July 2014, more than 1,200

organizations from all levels of

government, including the National

Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

(NGA), and the cities of Raleigh,

North Carolina; Tampa, Florida;

Charlotte, North Carolina; and

Muroran, Japan, have used Esri’s

ArcGIS Open Data to conﬁgure

custom open data sites to serve

local citizens and businesses. Now

the public can search across all

these sites to ﬁnd authoritative data

by location and topic.

Any organization can make its

data available through ArcGIS

Open Data, and people can now

discover this data by visiting

opendata.arcgis.com.

Why Singapore is moving to 3D

maps for urban planning

Singapore has limited land, but its skyline is

constantly changing. The city’s urban planning

agency has found that 2D maps and physical

models are not able to keep up with such a complex

environment, its Chief Information Ofﬁcer, Peter

Quek said.

The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) is now

using 3D mapping to get a more realistic view of the

city and simulate future scenarios, so agencies can

plan their services better.

Planners can run new types of analyses in 3D, Quek

said. For example, a planner can see how a building

casts shadows on its surroundings. This can be used

to decide where best to plant trees to mitigate heat

in the area.

Planners can also run 3D simulations to understand

how a future development may impact its

surroundings and create scenarios to optimise this.

For instance, Singapore runs micro-climatic studies

to understand how a development can improve

wind ﬂows around buildings and reduce heat for

pedestrians, Quek said.

URA is working with GIS company, Esri, to use

3D techniques to plan its newest regional centre,

Jurong Lake District. In addition, it uses 3D to

generate scenarios for long-term planning - 50

years or more in the future - using economic and

social parameters, he said.

URA is working with other agencies and the industry

for real estate developers to submit 3D models so

that URA can integrate these with its own platform

and ensure that they meet design guidelines and

urban plans, Quek added.

There are challenges that the agency is dealing with

in using such a detailed system. Image gathering

is one issue. Although advanced techniques like

satellite imagery and remote sensing with laser are

useful for gathering data on terrain, more intensive

modelling techniques have to be used for creating

high quality models of the buildings. “For planning

we want a very realistic view. For that kind of an

experience, we need to do a lot of ground survey

and take photographs, so we need to have a team

of highly trained people to do that,” Quek said.

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

NEWS

 Shadow Analysis: Visulation of building casting shadow on

it surrounding

 ArcGIS Open Data Website

Another challenge is the software

and sufﬁcient computing power

required to quickly crunch through

all the images for real time analysis.

The system needs high quality

images of the city and it needs to

instantaneously respond to planners

making changes in the system, he

said.

However, the beneﬁts of using 3D

mapping are “tremendous”, Quek

believes. In the past, it was not

possible to generate many scenarios

for future planning, he said. “Using

physical models, you generate two

to three scenarios and stop there,”

he said. “But with a [3D] model in

place, you can generate many times

the possibilities and optimise the

plan.”

The data that is gathered is not just

used once, he added. “You can use

it subsequently and can even share

with other agencies so they beneﬁt

from the whole system.”

The authority plans to complete

detailed 3D models of 50 per cent

of Singapore’s urban areas by end of

2015, and complete the entire model

in two to three years, said Quek.

While governments have been using

digital 2D maps to plan services for

a number of years now, perhaps it is

time to consider if an investment in

3D maps could bring higher returns.

ArcGIS 10.3 Now

Certiﬁed OGC

Compliant

As part of Esri’s ongoing support

of GIS interoperability, the latest

ArcGIS 10.3 release is now certiﬁed

as Open Geospatial Consortium,

Inc. (OGC), compliant.

This certiﬁcation from OGC reafﬁrms

Esri’s continued commitment to

standards-based interoperability.

Through its support for OGC

speciﬁcations, ArcGIS users can

access data and services from many

different sources, regardless of the

technology used by those sources.

In addition, users can share their

content with others, including non-

Esri users, thus contributing to

the larger goals of the open data

movement.

“Our goal is to help our users be

successful, and Esri sees technical

interoperability as a key driver to

successful implementations,” said

Dr. Satish Sankaran, Esri product

manager for interoperability and

member of the OGC Architecture

Board.

The OGC leads the development

of geospatial interoperability

standards. Esri is a long-standing,

active OGC participant, helping GIS

users to seamlessly work together.

Esri’s ﬁrst OGC compliancy

certiﬁcates were granted in 1999,

and many more Esri ArcGIS platform

products have met OGC compliancy

since then.

ARC Advisory Group

Report Highlights Esri

as Leader in Global

GIS Market

ARC Advisory Group reports that

Esri has a 43 percent share in the

geographic information system

(GIS) market, compared to just an

11 percent share from the second-

largest supplier. ARC Advisory

Group published its ﬁndings in an

October market study and forecast

through 2018.

“Esri is, without a doubt, the

dominant player in the GIS market,”

the Geographic Information System

Global Market Research Study

authors stated.

The Esri business model relies

on a constantly improving core

GIS on which more than 2,000

partners develop Esri industry-

speciﬁc solutions. In electricity

transportation and distribution,

Esri’s partner-driven solution model,

which combines Esri and Schneider

Electric software, amounts to a total

market share of 29 percent.

“Our success in the utility sector

stems from Esri’s platform

technology, which makes it easy for

companies to share, communicate,

and collaborate on location

information throughout their

businesses,” Esri utilities solutions

manager Bill Meehan said. “Partner

solutions, such as those Schneider

Electric provide, add additional

capability to an already powerful

platform.”

Esri’s core GIS is used by more

than two-thirds of Fortune 500

companies. The company’s

technology helps businesses save

money and make stronger decisions

by adding a location strategy to

operations. Esri’s ArcGIS platform

has grown during the past 45 years

to include cloud, mobile, server,

dashboard, and ﬁrewall components

in addition to its powerful desktop

applications.

Partner solutions, such as Schneider

Electric’s ArcFM, target utility-

speciﬁc issues (e.g., regulatory

compliance, critical-infrastructure

management). Key partners include

Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, Dell,

HP, Citrix, and Lenovo.

Esri-with its partners-plays a leading

role in more than 10 industries:

electric power transmission and

distribution (with partner Schneider

Electric), engineering and business

services, government, public health

and safety, health care, natural

resources, oil and gas reﬁning, retail,

telecommunications, transportation

and logistics, and water/wastewater.

ArcIndia News Vol. 9 esriindia.com

NEWS

ArcGIS Pro, Portal for ArcGIS and Easy Web Apps come

together in ArcGIS 10.3 to transform the way your

organization uses GIS to do its work.

ArcGIS Pro

This brand-new app is included with ArcGIS for Desktop. It

enhances desktop GIS and makes GIS easy for new users.

With its 64-bit architecture and new display engine, this

multithreaded app provides much faster geoprocessing

than ArcMap. You can design and edit in 2D and 3D. You

can work with multiple displays and multiple layouts. With

ArcGIS Pro you can easily make your maps accessible

across the entire platform by publishing them to ArcGIS

Online or Portal for ArcGIS.

Three things about ArcGIS 10.3

that will change how you use GIS

 Web AppBuilder gives you a way to create web applications in ArcGIS from scratch without writing a single line of code

 One of the out-of-the-box conﬁgurable web apps,

Summary Viewer, is a dashboard that summarizes the

numeric attributes of features in a speciﬁc operational layer

of the map extent

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

PRODUCT REVIEW

Portal for ArcGIS

Portal for ArcGIS is a front end to ArcGIS for Server

that expands the use of maps and GIS throughout your

organization. People can ﬁnd, use, create, and share

maps and GIS apps built on top of ArcGIS for Server.

This makes mapping and spatial analysis more accessible

even for people who may not be very familiar with GIS.

Portal for ArcGIS includes a powerful suite of mobile and

desktop apps, such as Collector for ArcGIS, Operations

Dashboard for ArcGIS (both the desktop version and the

cool new web version), Esri Maps for Ofﬁce, and Explorer

for ArcGIS. These apps provide you with a great way to

boost productivity.

Portal for ArcGIS works with ArcGIS Pro, allowing you to

publish and manage the maps you create with ArcGIS Pro.

From an enterprise perspective, Portal for ArcGIS provides organizations with a well-deﬁned process and the tools to manage

maps and perform spatial analysis. Portal for ArcGIS allows organizations to effectively create, store, secure, and manage

information products and access geographic tools in a central location. At ArcGIS 10.3, customers with ArcGIS for Server

Standard and Advanced licenses get Portal for ArcGIS at no additional cost.

Easy Web Apps

ArcGIS 10.3 gives two easy ways to create web apps. You get out-of-the-box conﬁgurable web apps that use templates,

and you get Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS. ArcGIS 10.3 includes an incredibly powerful collection of tools for creating

web mapping applications. The Web Application Templates include the Summary Viewer, a dashboard that summarizes

the numeric attributes of features in a speciﬁc operational layer of the map extent, and Local Perspective, which

highlights features from a web map based on a location or address you select. Web Application Templates deliver great

experiences for users performing everyday tasks. These templates can be easily conﬁgured so you can create web apps

quickly using just these out-of-the-box tools.

Web AppBuilder is yet another way to create web applications in ArcGIS. Using Web AppBuilder, you can conﬁgure

applications that include both out- of-the-box and custom widgets and themes. You control which tools are added to your

app without writing a single line of code. Web AppBuilder includes advanced tools for geoprocessing so you can

take advantage of the most advanced spatial analysis capabilities in ArcGIS for Server. Your apps will not only work on

desktop browsers but also in browsers running on tablets and smartphones so you can easily share your work with the

rest of the ArcGIS community.

Developers can take advantage of the Web AppBuilder extensibile framework by downloading and installing Web

AppBuilder (Developer Edition) on a local machine. Organizations with web development skills can use the Developer

Edition to further reﬁne capabilities and the look and feel of their web applications.

A New Foundation for Your Work

Used together, ArcGIS Pro, Portal for ArcGIS, and Web AppBuilder create a new foundation for the ArcGIS platform

that allows you to extend the reach of Web GIS throughout your organization whether you are running it on your own

infrastructure, online hosted by Esri, or some combination of the two.

 Portal for ArcGIS is a front end to ArcGIS for Server

that expands the use of maps and GIS throughout your

organization

ArcIndia News Vol. 9 esriindia.com

PRODUCT REVIEW

Esri CityEngine

Esri CityEngine is a stand-alone software product

that provides professional users in architecture, urban

planning, entertainment, simulation, GIS, and general 3D

content production with a unique conceptual design and

modeling solution for the efﬁcient creation of 3D cities

and buildings.

The Esri CityEngine is based on the procedural runtime,

which is the underlying engine that supports two

geoprocessing tools in ArcGIS 10.x and drives procedural

symbology in the release of ArcGIS Professional. The

CityEngine SDK allows a 3rd party to develop any

required additional changes in import and export formats

to extend CityEngine. Moreover, you can integrate the

procedural runtime in your own client applications taking

full advantage of the procedural core without running

CityEngine or ArcGIS.

The software can be used either in isolation or as part of

existing workﬂows, and it is an essential tool for anyone

working with 3D urban environments, both real and

imagined.

CityEngine allows you to efﬁciently create 3D urban

landscapes using your existing GIS data, as well as do

conceptual Geodesign in 3D. CityEngine relies on

three ingredients: feature geometry, feature attributes,

and procedural rules. The detail information about

geometry, attributes and procedural rules helps in the

generation of 3D content. CityEngine supports many

GIS tasks, including mapping, data compilation, analysis,

geodatabase management, and geographic information

sharing.

The followings are the important features of CityEngine:

Transform 2D GIS Data into Smart 3D City Models

Esri CityEngine improves urban planning, architecture, and design. One can use its 3D visualization power to see the

relationships of projects, assess their feasibility, and plan their implementation. CityEngine can help you make quality

decisions that beneﬁt your community for decades.

Build Flexible Scenarios Faster

This feature compares and analyze

building proposals from every angle

and helps one to see how they ﬁt

into your city’s overall vision for the

future. It saves you time and money.

Create Realistic Context

This feature is used to visualize

where a proposed building blocks

the view, casts shadows, and

reﬂects heat. By making the virtual

3D visualization as real as possible

in the design phase, one can avoid

costly mistakes in the building

phase.

Share Your Urban Plan

This feature can help in publishing

3D model online. Others can

interact with it, understand the

urban plan, and participate in

improving their community.

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

PRODUCT REVIEW

GeoEvent Processor

GeoEvent Processor is a new ArcGIS Server extension. It

gives users the ability to connect to real-time data streams

from a wide variety of sensors, perform continuous

processing and analysis of those data streams, and send

relevant information to users or other systems.

Making Real-Time Information Available

GeoEvent Processor for Server delivers the ﬂexibility to

incorporate virtually any source of real-time data into a

GIS. It contains ready-to-use input connectors for the

most common data stream sources, including built-in GPS

connectors for Sierra Wireless and Trimble, and speciﬁc

data streams for air trafﬁc control, vessel positions, and

others. GeoEvent Processor also provides an extensibility

framework for creating custom connectors. Connectors

can be conﬁgured to work over common transport

protocols, such as UDP, TCP, and XMPP, and tap into

vehicle telematics used by CompassCom, networkﬂeet,

and many others.

GeoEvent Processor is designed to process and ﬁlter

events in real time. This means that it can be set up to

receive large amounts of data and extract from it just

the information that is relevant to users. For example,

GeoEvent Processor can be conﬁgured to receive real-

time weather and pollution measurements from a network

of sensors and trigger alarms when speciﬁc pollution or

wind thresholds are met. Or it can be used to detect and

highlight vehicles that are speeding, stopped for a long

period of time, or moving away from a predeﬁned route.

GeoEvent Processor provides a simple visual environment

for conﬁguring and processing data streams. It allows

users to easily remove noise and ﬁlter the data into the

most important and actionable information.

GeoEvent Processor provides the capability to share real-

time information with users and other systems. Examples

include sending an e-mail or instant message to a person

when a particular alarm is triggered and writing incidents

to a log ﬁle or sending messages to an enterprise

messaging system.

A New Paradigm for Geofencing

A geofence is a virtual perimeter for a real-world

geographic area. In the case of GeoEvent Processor, the

GIS server is detecting and using geofences to alert the

user or an authority when the device approaches, enters,

and leaves the geofenced area. GeoEvent Processor

provides the ability to use any map feature as a geofence.

This means that geofences can be deﬁned using

jurisdictional areas, such as a city boundary, or an area

deﬁned through analysis, such as a high-crime area, an

area determined by speciﬁed drive time, or a hand-drawn

polygon. For example, an operations center may want to

monitor vehicle assets as they approach, pass through,

and leave hazardous areas deﬁned by spatial conditions,

such as ﬂooding or suspicious behavior. These GIS-based

geofences will help end users deliver more accurate, real-

time assessments of live events.

GeoEvent Processor is sure to be a game changer in

many industries, including ﬂeet and asset management,

telematics, defense and intelligence operations,

public works, public health, forestry, mining, water and

petroleum management, public safety and emergency

management, transportation, and utilities.

ArcIndia News Vol. 9 esriindia.com

PRODUCT REVIEW

GIS – A platform for Smart Cities

A centralized information system based on GIS

provides an IT framework for maintaining and

deploying data and applications throughout every

aspect of the city development life cycle.

Acquire: Find the right sites for city development,

view legal boundaries, arrive at right valuation of

your existing / new sites

Planning & Design: Identify deﬁciencies and

determine optimal solutions. Integrate GIS with

most design tools, including Computer Aided

Design (CAD), Building Information Modeling (BIM)

bringing greater analytics and cost-estimation

capabilities to your infrastructure design process

Construct: Integrate project and ﬁnancial

management software with GIS to better manage

projects. GIS can provide a single point of entry for

all construction-related documents and ﬁles

Sell: Understand where and how to market city

developments, attract buyers and tenants, and

improve retention rates. Analyze demographics

and market conditions to provide a more accurate

picture of a property’s suitability to needs

Maintain: Easily manage disparate assets. Integrate

your asset inventory with inspection history and

work order management to maintain your critical

investments in a cost-effective manner.

As urban areas are getting more crowded and falling

increasingly short on future development potential,

development of new self-sustaining cities are emerging

as an alternate solution to these problems. Technology

is at the heart of these new self-sustaining cities enabling

automation and real-time integrated city monitoring and

management through a network of sensors, cameras,

wireless devices and data centers. Also referred to

as smart cities, these new self-sustaining cities are a

developed urban area that creates sustainable economic

development and high quality of life by excelling in

multiple key areas like economy, environment, energy

efﬁciency, mobility, governance, people and living

conditions.

Smart cities, on one hand present a substantial growth

opportunity in the coming years while on the other

offers various challenges as well. Smart city projects are

rather complex with residential and commercial spaces

supported by an infrastructure backbone for power,

roads, water, drainage and sewage i.e. a virtual living

and breathing city. A critical success factor is a need for

a common technology platform to enable integration,

coordination and synergistic functioning of different

participants of the smart city ecosystem.

A centralized information system based on GIS

(Geographical Information System) provides an IT

framework which integrates not only every stakeholder

but also every aspect of smart cityprocesses – starting

from conceptualization, planning, and development to

maintenance.

GIS for

Smart Cities

 3D visualization by space classiﬁcation

Acquire

Planning

& Design

Construct Sell Maintain

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

COVER STORY

GIS Applications for Smart Cities

Site Selection & Land Acquisition: GIS can combine and integrate different types of information to

help making better decisions and also provides high quality visualization tools that can improve the

understanding and enhance decision making capability w.r.t to site identiﬁcation, valuation and ﬁnally

selection. By analyzing location data – proximity to road network, fertility of soil, land use, soil bearing

capacity, ground water depth, and vulnerability to disasters such as ﬂoods, earthquakes - the real

estate organizations can arrive at the right property valuation. By analyzing, mapping, and modeling

the merits of one site or location over another can be evaluated. In addition, this can also be used for

arriving at appropriate market linked compensation to owners based on valuation parameters and in

rehabilitation and resettlement planning

Environmental / Legal Compliance: GIS makes meeting regulatory requirements less time consuming

and easier to accomplish by providing a common platform for communication with regulators and

public. The existing data can be directly connected to a compliance workﬂow ensuring adherence.

Also, GIS-based graphical outputs can help in quickly generate reports that clearly demonstrate how

compliance requirements and building bye-laws are being met.

Planning, Design & Visualization: Geodesign will be the key framework for conceptualizing and

planning for smart cities; it will assist at every stage from project conceptualising to site-analysis, design

speciﬁcations, stakeholder participation and collaboration, design creation, simulation and evaluation.

GIS enables planners to integrate a variety of data from multiple sources like road, sewerage and

drinking water and to perform spatial analyses and planning. Utilities can manage and map the location

of millions of miles of overhead and underground circuits.

By integrating imagery, elevation, and environmental information with the CAD / BIM environment,

engineers can continue working with familiar software while gaining access to important GIS data.

Design ﬁles can be brought into a GIS and linked to ﬁnancial software for better labor and materials

and total project cost estimation. With these types of capabilities, GIS is an essential componentof the

engineering information systems of the future.

A 3D geographic information system can be used to create a realistic simulation of a project,

environment, or critical situation.

GIS can help increase a facility’s sustainability by reducing energy and water use, ﬁnding better waste

disposal, and decreasing a building’s carbon footprint. By managing information both inside and outside

buildings down to the asset level, GIS can help in for example differentiating the environmental impact

 Calculate the solar energy potential of building rooftops

ArcIndia News Vol. 9 esriindia.com

COVER STORY

of development, planning and evaluating neighborhood patterns and design, estimate the “walkability”

for LEED-ND projects based data on streets, pedestrian routes, bicycle routes, transit accessibility, building

entrances, and a variety of other factors.

Construction & Project Management: GIS, integrated with project management and ﬁnancial

softwareprovides a comprehensive view of projects and their current status and helps in tracking

performance. GIS helps organize all relevant project information, from soil data, and geotechnical studies

to planning, environmental studies, engineering drawings, project maps, inventory and asset control.

Sales & Marketing: With GIS, city developers can win over prospective businesses by creating informative

sales tools and marketing reports that highlight the economic potential of a new location or future

development. For residents, GIS helps in presenting a visual representation of all the information affecting

the desirability and value of a property giving them a far more accurate picture of a property’s suitability to

their needs.

Facility Management (FM): A GIS-based information system provides a powerful foundation for better

facility management by generating integrated information that helps make better allocation decisions. GIS

can integrate with and extend the current facilities management system. By importing and aggregating

into a GIS the geometries and tabular data of the multiple BIM and/or CAD ﬁles required to accurately

represent the built environment, the efﬁciencies and power of BIM can be leveraged, extended, and

connected in geographic space to other relevant site, neighborhood, municipal, and regional data.

Operations & Reporting: GIS can track and analyze assets over space and time and provide insight through

visualization of information via maps and easy-to-understand reports. It supports creating an operations

view that include maps, lists, charts, gauges, and more based on live geographic data deﬁned in a web

map or web service. Multiple operation views can be deﬁned to meet the needs of stakeholders focusing

on different aspects of the operation. With this ability to integrate disparate information sources into a

common operational picture of all facilities, GIS provides greater power to control township operations and

positively impact bottom line.

Conclusion

GIS can be used throughout the life cycle of a smart city – from site selection, design and construction

to use and maintenance. GIS is an ideal technology that has the ability to scale across any expanse,

from the individual asset within a building to a virtually global context tying all aspects of a Smart

City planning and development.

 GIS-Based Line of Sight (LOS) / Shadow Analysis to determine desirability of a proposed design

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

COVER STORY

Geospatial Technology and the

Future of the City

Over the past four decades, GIS

technology has systematically

impacted local government by

improving basic record keeping and

data management as well as automating

a wide variety of geospatially-related

workﬂows including mapping. Most

of these improvements have been

in departmental systems focused on

speciﬁc mission areas.

We are now entering a period in which

geospatial (and other) data about cities

is growing enormously. This data is

increasingly being directed to address

the growing challenges facing cities

today. Managers and policy people are

searching for approaches that better

leverage this digital data to improve

decision making and government

management. Finally, there is strong

interest in making government data

openly available to the public and

businesses in the belief that this can

stimulate innovation and provide

more government transparency. As

a result, GIS is being more widely

recognized as a powerful platform for

local governments to achieve these

goals. Its ability to manage, integrates,

analyze, and visualize very large and

complex data is making it an essential

platform for creating the sustainable

cities of the future.

GIS systems have traditionally been

based on database-centric approaches

that generate information products,

such as maps, reports, or views, from

centralized DBMSs (Geodatabase).

While there are some exceptions such

as Geneva, Switzerland, these GISs

have been largely implemented as

departmental systems.

Over the last decade, due largely to

the emergence of faster computing

and networks, the vision of distributed

enterprise systems created by

integrating departmental systems

began emerging. This vision leveraged

services-oriented architecture for

dynamically combining data from

multiple distributed databases.

As a result, we have seen the

development of applications that

can access, join, overlay, and view

distributed data as if it was supplied by

a single DBMS or geodatabase. This

capability has eliminated the need to

normalize and physically integrate data

into a single centralized system. This

distributed, federated architecture

has dramatically accelerated with

the maturing and acceptance of web

standards as a backbone for enterprise

architecture.

A New Web GIS Pattern

Today patterns of distributed data

mashups (both tabular and map) are

increasingly being implemented in

cities. This is helping unify and integrate

information from many sources across

the enterprise and beyond. This new

work pattern is facilitated by the web

and web services. While not replacing

the need for good traditional

database design, it creates a much

more agile framework for developing

and deploying GIS apps. It is actually

helping realize the data integration

vision of enterprise GIS.

To make this type of dynamic database

integration work in a tabular database

world requires common keys among

and between distributed datasets so

that data can be easily integrated.

Common to most local government

data and services is some form of

georeferencing or location. This

georeferenced data can be x,y

coordinates, an address, a place

name, or geographic area such as

ZIP Code or administrative area. GIS

provides the tools that interrelate this

data via spatial joins. This capability

is increasingly being recognized as

ArcIndia News Vol. 9 esriindia.com

GLOBAL VIEW

playing a major role in integrating of

all types of data across the enterprise.

The other key building block enabling

this new architecture is the exposing of

data as services using protocols such as

REST. These services are increasingly

used to support a whole new world

of GIS application development

that supports operational workﬂows,

analytics, decision support, and citizen

engagement.

More real-time data about cities is

becoming available. Massive networks

of stationary and mobile devices that

measure and track everything that

moves or changes are being created.

This includes trafﬁc, utility usage,

environment, and smart building

data, which are exposed as services.

Over time crowd sourcing will also

be integrated as an information

source enabling citizens as well

as city employees to report their

observations and interpretations.

Finally, service-enabling operational

data (data maintained in enterprise

systems) will mean that data can be

easily connected and dynamically

integrated.

Serverizing all local government

data will transform GIS and make it

more easily deployed to make cities

smarter. This framework allows GIS

professionals to easily mash up data

and create apps that traditionally

required far more resources. As a

result, processes that involve tasking

and resource allocation-such as

dispatching repair crews, responding

to emergencies, and deploying law

enforcement-will become more

rational and reliable.

GIS already provides many tools to

do this and will increasingly be used

to turn local government data into

actionable information that cities can

use to improve services and the quality

of life for their citizens.

The Future City

Future cities will be much smarter.

Everything will be measured in real

time and in ﬁne detail through the

deployment of sophisticated arrays

of sensors. GIS will play a major part

in integrating mountains of real-time

data so it can be understood and acted

on. It will improve applications that

range from managing environmental

quality and the built environment to

land-use and transportation planning.

The result will be better decisions,

more efﬁciency, and improved

communication.

Cities will increasingly make their

information available as open

geospatial services (maps). These

maps will help tell stories about the

state of those cities and the policies

they have taken. All transactions and

changes will be illustrated virtually,

resulting in citizens who are both more

informed and engaged. They will

visit city hall more frequently-virtually

instead of physically-and most local

government transactions will be done

on the web.

Longer Term

As cities enable their information,

people everywhere will be able to

openly compare cities. Technically, this

is already possible. It is being done

by the Urban Observatory, which is

an early prototype of what will come.

We are also seeing exciting work done

by organizations such as The Trust for

Public Lands, which is providing new

scoring measures that compare cities

based on differences in the amount

of open space and parks. This type of

GIS-based scoring system will evolve

into a framework for scoring everything

in cities. My vision and hope is that

GIS professionals will facilitate this

process and provide an integrated,

transparent, and comprehensive

science-based framework that will

help evolve our urban settlements into

smarter and more sustainable cities of

the future.

Jack Dangermond

Esri President

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

GLOBAL VIEW

The term smart city has been gaining quite a bit

of attention lately. Known by many names - livable

communities, sustainable cities, resilient cities, and

even smart nation or subsets like safe cities, healthy

communities, and coastal resilience - the objectives are

fairly similar, that is, to build a government that is more

responsive, productive, efﬁcient, transparent, and more

engaging with its citizens.

At Esri, we have opted to embrace two terms: smart

communities and resilient communities. Building smart

communities reﬂects national, state, regional, and local

governments’ desire to improve quality of life. Building

resilient communities relates to assisting governments

in preparing for and recovering from man-made and

natural disasters such as hurricanes, ﬂoods, earthquakes,

economic collapse, or climate change.

There are a lot of “smart approaches” out there claiming

to meet the needs of building a next-generation smart

community. However, most approaches seek to only

support large metropolitan areas or are focused on a

single problem. After years of working in partnership with

thousands of governments around the world and asking

how we can really help, a clear path has emerged.

This approach will support governments regardless

of size or geography. It delivers solutions that cover

more disciplines across a government as a means of

strengthening the entire government operations. Think

of government as a platform. At its core, building

smart communities involves working side by side with

governments and professional trade associations to truly

understand government needs.

There are four steps in creating a successful strategy to

support smart communities:

Start with a world-

class GIS platform

The primary reason governments the world over have

embraced GIS is that location is the most common

denominator looked at when addressing a problem.

The solution needs to serve GIS professionals, the

professional that simply uses GIS, ﬁeld-workers, decision

makers, and citizens. It also needs to support the ﬁve

major government workﬂows: collecting data, analyzing

and performing what-if scenarios against the information,

improving operational awareness, improving ﬁeld

operations, and enabling civic engagement.

Develop a location

strategy that allows

governments to

prioritize the GIS

applications they

need.

What Does It Take to

Build a Smart

Community?

By Chris Thomas, Esri Government

Industry Manager

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Chris Thomas is the global manager for government activities at Esri. He has worked in and with

government agencies worldwide for over 22 years. He is viewed as a pioneer and thought leader

in the adaptation of technology by government and citizens alike.

This needs assessment indicates a government’s

readiness to incorporate new solutions and at what rate.

The government can begin with analyzing the entire

organization’s issues department by department or it can

tackle a single department, such as law enforcement or

health, to meet goals of more limited scope such as smart

infrastructure, smart buildings, healthy communities, or

safe cities.

Deliver real

solutions that

serve government

priorities.

Governments know that their biggest challenges are

often improving infrastructure, efﬁciency and productivity,

and local economic conditions as well delivering green

solutions. They hear regularly from or are polling

businesses and citizens on what their priorities are. They

do not always have the quickest answer as to how to

solve these issues.

We have found that working side by side with governments

and asking What apps do you wish technology companies

would build? results in the development and delivery of

apps that successfully meet their needs. These apps are

honed by working directly with governments on design

and testing. Once completed and tested, the solutions

are extended back to governments at no charge. These

apps can be deployed immediately and tailored over

time.

Develop strong

relationships with

business partners.

Partners can deliver sophisticated solutions for permitting,

crime analysis, asset management, and climate analysis,

for example, that are built on top of a strong GIS platform.

They can extend customized solutions that scale with a

state, municipal, or regional government over time.

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

GLOBAL VIEW

Pillars of a Smart City

Smart city is envisaged to have four

pillars, its Social Infrastructure, Physical

Infrastructure, Institutional Infrastructure

(including Governance) and Economic

Infrastructure. The centre of attention for

each of these pillars is the citizen. In other

words a Smart City works towards ensuring

the best for its entire people, regardless of

social status, age, income levels, gender,

etc.

Social Infrastructure relate to those that

work towards developing the human and

social capital, such as the educational,

healthcare, entertainment, etc systems.

Physical Infrastructure refers to its stock

of physical infrastructure such as the urban

mobility system, the housing stock, the

energy system, the water supply system,

sewerage system, sanitation facilities,

solid waste management system, drainage

system, etc. which are all integrated

through the use of technology.

Institutional Infrastructure refers to the

activities that relate to the planning and

management systems in a city. Cities needs

high quality governance, with a strong

local say in decision making, is critical for

Smart Cities. Typically, the principle to be

followed is “Governance by Incentives

rather than Governance by Enforcement”.

Quality of life

Employment

Investment

Opportunities

Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) in order to meet the

requirement of growing urban space prepared a ‘Draft Concept

Note on Smart City Scheme” last year. According to the document

Smart Cities are those which have smart (intelligent) physical, social,

institutional and economic infrastructure. It is expected that such a

Smart City will generate options for a common man to pursue his/

her livelihood and interests meaningfully. In this context :

Competitiveness refers to a city’s ability to create employment

opportunities, attract investments and people. The ease of being

able to do business and the quality of life it offers determines its

competitiveness.

Sustainability includes social sustainability, environmental

sustainability and ﬁnancial sustainability.

Quality of Life includes safety and security, inclusiveness,

entertainment, ease of seeking and obtaining public services,

cost efﬁcient healthcare, quality education, and opportunities for

participation in governance.

Environment & Social Sustainability

Competitiveness

Smart Cities

Smart Cities as

Envisioned by MoUD

(Excerpts from the Concept Note on Smart City Scheme, December 2014)

ArcIndia News Vol. 9 esriindia.com

INDIA VIEW

Source: Concept Note on Smart City Scheme

Pillars of Smart City

Physical

Infrastructure

Economic

Infrastructure

Power

Water Supply

Solid Waste Management

Sewerage

Multimodal Transport

Cyber Connection

Connectivity (Roads, Airports, Railways)

Housing

Disaster

Institutional

Infrastructure

Speedy Service Delivery

Enforcement

Security

Taxation

Institutional Finance/Banking

Transparency and Accountability

Skill Development

Environmental Sustainability

People's participation in decision

ICT based Service delivery

Citizen Advisory Committee

Social

Infrastructure

Education

Healthcare

Entertainment (Parks & Greens, Music,

Culture and Heritage, Sports, Tourist spots)

Inclusive Planning (SC/ST,

Backward Incentives)?

Building Homes

GDP Contribution

Job Creation

Livelihood Activities

Market Growth

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

INDIA VIEW

Quality of

Life

Economic Infrastructure : For a smart city is to attract

investments and to create the appropriate economic

infrastructure for employment opportunities, it has to ﬁrst

identify its core competence, comparative advantages and

analyse its potential for generating economic activities.

Once that is done, the gaps in required economic

infrastructure can be determined. This would generally

comprise of incubation centres, skill development

centres, industrial parks and export processing zones, IT /

BT parks, trade centers, service centres, ﬁnancial centers

and services, logistics hubs, warehousing and freight

terminals, mentoring and counseling services.

Instruments facilitating

development of a Smart City

Use of Clean Technologies: There is a need to

promote the use of clean technologies that harness

renewable materials and energy sources and have

a lower smaller environmental footprint. In smart

cities buildings, transport and infrastructure should

be energy efﬁcient and environmentally favorable.

Use of ICT: The extensive use of ICT is a must and

only this can ensure information exchange and

quick communication. Most services will need to

be ICT enabled. An extensive use of ICT enabled

services will need a sound communications

backbone.

Participation of the Private Sector: Public-private

partnership (PPP) allows Government to tap on to

the private sector’s capacity to innovate. Greater

involvement of the private sector in the delivery

of services is another instrument as it enables

higher levels of efﬁciency (this should be the prime

motive for using the private sector rather than just

tapping ﬁnancial resources). It is proposed to take

advantage of this capability in a structured manner.

Citizen participation: Citizen Consultation and

a transparent system by which citizens can rate

different services is yet another instrument for

improving performance. Making these ratings

openly available for public scrutiny creates a

powerful incentive for improved performance and

a disincentive for poor performance.

Smart Governance: Urban Local Bodies (ULBs)

would need to make effective use of ICTs in

public administration to connect and coordinate

between various departments. This combined

with organizational change and new skills would

improve public services and strengthen support to

public. This will mean the ability to seek and obtain

services in real time through online systems and

with rigorous service level agreements with the

service providers.

Financial Architecture for Smart Cities

It is suggested that cities which desire to participate in

the smart city programme have to prepare a ﬁnancing

plan along with their smart city development plan and

detailed project reports. Strategies for enhancing the

resource pool available to cities include the following:

• User charges for utilities to reﬂect O&M and capital

investment costs

• Land value based taxation:

• Sale or leveraging the land available with the

ULBs / parastatal

• Betterment levy/ Higher Floor Space Index (FSI)

or Floor Area Ratio (FAR) to take advantage of

the increase in property prices on land serviced

by new infrastructure such as roads, water etc.

by imposing a surcharge on stamp duty on sales

transaction, FSI, FAR, property taxes etc.

• More accounting transparency (double entry,

accrual based accounting, balance sheets) to

capture unencumbered cash resources.

Government would assist all identiﬁed smart cities to

develop City Development Plans based on ICT, GIS and

spatial mapping. The selected cities will have to strive

towards attaining speciﬁed benchmarks in a range of

services such as transport, spatial planning, water supply,

sewerage sanitation, solid waste management, storm

water drainage, electricity, telephone connections,

Wi-Fi connectivity, health care facilities, education and

ﬁre ﬁghting. The draft document highlights the need to

have digitized spatial and GIS maps of property and all

services such as power, water supply and sewerage.

Reference: www.goo.gl/J9uSvy

ArcIndia News Vol. 9 esriindia.com

INDIA VIEW

The vision of the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD)

is “to facilitate creation of economically vibrant, inclusive,

efﬁcient and sustainable urban habitats”. Its mission is to

“promote cities as engines of economic growth through

improvement in the quality of urban life by facilitating

creation of quality urban infrastructure, with assured

service levels and efﬁcient governance”.

The Town and Country Planning Organisation (TCPO) is

the technical wing of the MoUD. It plays an important role

in formulating policies, programmes and strategies for

urban development in the country. TCPO also monitors

speciﬁc plan schemes of MoUD in growing community

productively and managing the growth.

The Town Planners are responsibly working on the

Town’s future. The effective and creative planning

of major projects will beneﬁt residents by providing

them environmental protection along with economic

development.

The planner has a role in evaluating issues in achieving

responsible for regulating the subdivision of land through

the use of local subdivision regulations, effective decision

making using tools such as GIS.

MoUD has announced development programmes for

pilgrimage centres and heritage cities. This development

program is for 500 cities under ‘Amrit’, basically Urban

Infrastructure strengthening program beside 100 cities to

be developed as smart cities. It will ensure the India’s ﬁrst

systematic attempt for urban renewal to create ﬁnancially

robust and sustainable local bodies. The Government of

India programme will encourage all states in developing

18 critical functions of the urban local bodies under the

constitutional amendment.

A smart city demands an understanding of public

purposes and public interests to deﬁne a better and

planned city which supports creation of livelihoods, and

enhancement of economic growth. The India’s economic

growth also depends on harnessing renewable natural

resources. The central, state and local level government

ofﬁcials should work with infrastructure developers in

public and private space along with the thought leaders

in framing the policy, regulatory incentives, and effective

compliance mechanisms to make changes in Indian

infrastructure market.

The town planner plays a role in formulating a plan and

they should appraise from time to time the progress of

the plan. They should proactively make recommendation

on policy and measures to balance the utilization of

the country’s resources. The priorities deﬁne the stages

in which the propose of the plan should come out for

allocating resources for the completion of project

which indicate the factors for economic development,

and determine the conditions of the current social and

political situation.

The TCPO is responsible for framing its recommendations

consultation with the Ministries of the Central and State

Government to implement decisions rests with the

Central and the State Governments.

The TCPO is suggesting to work on GIS based spatial

planning which is one of the important pre requisites

for smart city in Indian context and should consider the

crucial aspects like preparation of comprehensive city

spatial plans using ‘State of Art’ technologies such as

GIS. It will envisage efﬁcient allocation of land resources

polycentric city plan with mixed land use integration of

land use and transportation.

Planners Vision

for Smart Cities

in India

R. Srinivas

Town and Country Planning

Organisation, India

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

INDIA VIEW

3D Modeling Shows Off

Elevated Rail System Landscape

Honolulu Uses Geodesign to build case for Rail corridor

Highlights

• Three core models were needed for the rail corridor geodesign process-

walkability, urban growth, and densiﬁcation.

• Esri CityEngine was used to improve the model by creating 3D geometry

and applying textures.

• Through imaging and 3D software, holograms provided unique views for

stakeholders and the public.

 The City of Honolulu, shown here in

CityEngine, shows the elevation levels of the

downtown corridor, as well as the proposed

transit-oriented development, giving citizens

and planners a dynamic view of potential

changes to the city

eing on island time conveys the aura that everything is as peaceful

and slow traveling as an islander in paradise. In Honolulu, the

islanders can boast they do travel slowly through their paradise, but

maybe not so peacefully on their roadways, since Honolulu has claimed

the top spot as the worst US city for trafﬁc. Compounding the problem,

citizens have moved to suburban areas in search of affordable housing,

creating urban sprawl, which increases trafﬁc demand when traveling

to urban centers for work.

For Honolulu, the effects of urban sprawl go beyond increased trafﬁc

demand and have negative impacts, such as environmental pollution,

natural habitat reduction, loss of agricultural land, and even decline

in human health and well-being. In an effort to help alleviate some of

the trafﬁc pressure on its roadways, the City and County of Honolulu

have approved and begun construction of an elevated rail system

connecting East Kapolei to Ala Moana Center. Not only will the

new railway change the way citizens and tourists will travel through

Honolulu, but the planning and development surrounding the rail

corridor will be redeﬁned through what is known as transit-oriented

development (TOD).

Planners look to TOD as a common solution to accommodate future

population growth, control urban sprawl, and decrease trafﬁc demands

on communities through the use of dense, mixed-use housing placed

near transit. This creates mass-transit and walkable access to retail

and amenities. This paradigm shift to TOD planned communities with

medium- to high-rise development and a new feature in the landscape,

the elevated rail system, can and has been met with opposition by

some community members. Part of the

planners’ role is to persuade the citizens

of the beneﬁts of TOD for their community

through a collaborative planning process

where they share information and ideas

about the development. The planners must

tell the story of the future of the community

from both sides of the coin. To do so,

planners and consultants are using more

sophisticated visualization tools, which can

be very effective at shifting the attitudes

about new and different development in

this island paradise.

To tell the story of TOD, the City and

County of Honolulu turned to GIS as

a primary tool within the process. The

city GIS department embraced and

applied the concept of geodesign-that

is, incorporating geographic knowledge

into design-to more effectively analyze,

compare, and visualize different scenarios

of TOD for the key communities affected

by the new development. To build the case

for TOD, the GIS team needed to support

the planners’ goals to share with the

public who would have safe access to rail;

how changes to the zoning would visually

ArcIndia News Vol. 9 esriindia.com

CASE STUDY

redeﬁne their community; and how the TOD would positively affect the

community and region, preventing future urban sprawl.

The team identiﬁed three core models that would be needed for the

TOD geodesign process: walkability, urban growth, and densiﬁcation

models. As with any new GIS project undertaking, the GIS department

ﬁrst determined data resources needed to support the analysis and

whether these datasets were available or needed to be developed.

Most of the core data, such as roads, zoning, and buildings, was

available in the rich geodatabase that Honolulu has been developing

for years. Since visualization is a key component of geodesign and

a powerful tool for persuasive planning support, a 3D model of the

physical environment would be needed for the transit corridor.

Honolulu had a good start to the city model with 3D geometries for

the downtown area, including key landmark buildings with textures.

However, the model was not complete and needed to be enhanced

in areas, since more than 3,000 buildings were without textures and

some were mere footprints. The team used Esri CityEngine to improve

the model by creating 3D geometry and applying textures based on a

custom set of rules. Honolulu wanted to simulate the true look and feel

of the city and accomplished this by collecting photos of real facades

that were used to create a custom set of textures. These textures were

applied based on the rules, instantly painting the remaining buildings.

Rules were further applied to create 3D geometries by converting

simple building footprints into complex structures with textures. The

last component was the addition of the proposed evaluated rail, which

was added from the existing engineering drawings, completing the 3D

urban model of Honolulu.

The next step in the geodesign process was to analyze the effectiveness

of a TOD and create alternative scenarios used by the planners to

convey the beneﬁts of TOD for a given community and the region.

Utilizing the ArcGIS 3D Analyst and ArcGIS Spatial Analyst extensions

and ModelBuilder, the GIS team developed reusable walkability,

urban growth, and densiﬁcation models in which data was run against

changing variables to create different scenarios. A key factor of TOD

is to provide the acceptable and safe walking or biking distance to a

transit stop. The walkability model used Spatial Analyst geoprocessing

tools to determine the travel distance from residences or work to a

transit station.

From this analysis, stakeholders or citizens

could determine the viability of transit for

their use. Since the acceptance of TOD in a

community must be more convincing than

just ridership, the planners must convince

members of the public that TOD will beneﬁt

Honolulu’s future whether they utilize the

rail or not. The GIS team supported the

planners by creating scenarios based on

the projected future with TOD and without.

The TOD plans for each station were run

against the urban growth and densiﬁcation

models using Spatial Analyst and 3D

Analyst to perform the analysis.

Using CityEngine, the rules for creating

3D geometries and texture were applied

to the resultant analysis, and new models

were generated representing proposed

build-out of the future with TOD. The 3D

model showed urban growth concentration

around stations with low- to medium-

density buildings and ample undeveloped

land. The same models were run against

the existing zoning with no TOD, resulting

in a sea of houses, showing a stark

comparison of Honolulu’s landscape in

the future as urban sprawl. An incentive of

geodesign for planners is to equip them

with analytic outcomes that could be used

to persuade the stakeholders and public

that TOD will have a positive impact on

the community. Honolulu approached

the community engagement with unique

visualization technologies, which included

3D holograms and simple web views of

TOD scenarios. The GIS team worked with

Zebra Imaging, a leading 3D visualization

company and Esri Partner (Austin, Texas),

to create visually captivating, true 3D views

of the analysis in 3D holographic images.

Through Zebra Imaging software, ArcGIS

3D Analyst, and Esri CityEngine, the

holograms were sourced directly from the

exports of 3D GIS data models representing

TOD and rendered to capture thousands

of unique 3D views. The 3D views of the

GIS were used to create a holographic

grating that is recorded on ﬁlm with lasers.

When illuminated with an appropriate

light source, what looks to be a ﬂat piece

of plastic reveals a 3D, full-parallax, color

image reﬂected above the ﬁlm’s surface.

 Preparing

this model

for hologram

printing and

display is as

simple as adding

textures, saving

the project,

and loading

the model into

ArcGIS for use

with the Zebra

Imaging plug-in

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

CASE STUDY

Highlights

• With ArcGIS, the development team models, visualizes, compares, and communicates the advantages of alternative scenarios

• ArcGIS helped organize and address the complex sustainability needs of a large-scale redevelopment project in Jurong Lake District.

• A GIS evaluation tool works at multiple scales to address cumulative impact.

Skyline of Singapore’s business district

Singapore’s

Sustainable

Development

of Jurong Lake

District

he Republic of Singapore is a city-state composed

of 63 islands off the southern tip of the Malay

Peninsula. It is highly urbanized, with approximately 5.1

million people (as of 2010) living in an area that covers

approximately 270 square miles. By comparison, the City

of San Diego has a population of 1.3 million people living

in an area of 340 square miles. Singapore has ﬁnite space,

limited water supplies, and no natural resources. Nearly

everything in Singapore is imported, whether it is for

personal consumption, manufacturing, or construction.

The government of Singapore has made sustainable

development, the use of renewable energy, and the

efﬁcient use of resources primary considerations in all

future planning efforts.

Every 10 years, Singapore reevaluates its long-term land-

use strategies to ensure there is sufﬁcient land to meet

anticipated population and economic growth needs

without damaging the environment. Given the high

population density and amount of existing urbanization,

a strategy of developing and rejuvenating existing

buildings is encouraged.

In the 2008 Draft Master Plan for Singapore, the

Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) heralded the

Jurong Lake District (JLD) as an ideal place for such

redevelopment, referring to it as “a unique lakeside

destination for business and leisure.” To help with this

complex planning effort, URA would use GIS to model,

visualize, and communicate the advantages of alternative

scenarios.

JLD comprises two distinct but complementary precincts

totaling 360 hectares: a commercial hub at Jurong

Gateway and a vibrant world-class leisure destination at

Lakeside. The 70-hectare Jurong Gateway is planned to

be the largest commercial area outside the city center.

As outlined in Singapore’s Blueprint for Sustainable

Development, unveiled by the Inter-Ministerial Committee

on Sustainable Development, JLD will be developed as

one of Singapore’s new sustainable high-density districts.

Overall, the aim is to formulate a holistic framework to

guide the planning, design, and development of Jurong

Lake District, one that considers the environment, the

economy, and society concurrently during the decision-

making process.

URA proactively included aspects of the sustainability

blueprint in the JLD planning efforts, such as the

incorporation of landscaped open space and pedestrian

park connectors, to heighten the sense of greenery

and closeness to nature and increase accessibility to

ArcIndia News Vol. 9 esriindia.com

CASE STUDY

existing transit, public facilities, and venues. Land sale

requirements were also put in place to encourage

developers to achieve higher Green Mark ratings

(Platinum and GoldPlus) for new buildings.

Additional initiatives promote “sky rise” greenery—the

addition of elevated parks, gardens, and green roofs on

rooftops and skyways; the protection and enhancement

of biodiversity; the reduction of resource use through

building rehabilitation; and the increase of water

catchment and treatment using natural systems whenever

possible.

But how were these visionary goals going to be

evaluated and translated into reality given the myriad

of stakeholders, assortment of variables, and budgetary

constraints?

To assist with this ambitious plan, URA enlisted the help

of Esri Partner AECOM (headquartered in Los Angeles,

California), which proposed the use of a geodesign

framework using ArcGIS to help organize and address

the complex sustainability needs for such a large-scale

project as JLD.

The Sustainable Systems Integration Model

AECOM’s Sustainable Systems Integration Model (SSIM)

is a key component of the team’s sustainability planning

process, providing a platform for rationally evaluating,

balancing, and costing a wide variety of sustainability

strategies to determine the combination best suited to

the economic, social, and business objectives of a given

project. The model places ecological enhancement and

service components side by side with energy, water,

mobility, green building, and sociocultural strategies so

that a truly integrated, balanced sustainability program

can be measured and conceived. The result is a whole-

system economic and GIS evaluation tool developed to

work at multiple scales.

The model consists of many steps and techniques that

allow users to select the themes and variables most

beﬁtting a given project’s needs. The framework tracks

a set of indicators including total energy use, water

demand, waste produced, vehicle miles traveled, and

total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that can be

modeled to show the impact of a single building, block of

buildings, or entire community. Various energy or water

conservation strategies can be recombined and modeled

to show the immediate carbon or water footprint, as well

as initial development costs or ongoing maintenance and

management costs of a given scheme for any point in the

future.

Stage I—Urban Form and Master Planning

Urban form—the physical layout and design of a city,

including land use and circulation patterns—has the

largest impact on a city’s energy use and GHG emissions.

Stage I of developing a master plan seeks to identify

the best mix of urban form, land-use density, and

transportation network to achieve the highest trip capture

and reduction in carbon emissions at the lowest cost.

An example of the positive

and negative effects of three

alternative plans, the last

focusing on Singapore’s Mass

Rapid Transit (MRT) 

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

CASE STUDY

The process started out with a visioning workshop at

which all stakeholders and subject experts were brought

together to help deﬁne and prioritize issues, metrics,

and target goals. In this case, the stakeholders were the

Building Construction Authority, Land Transport Authority,

National Parks Board, National Water Agency, and URA,

among others. Participants were encouraged to address

problems beyond their ﬁeld of expertise. The end result

of this dynamic interaction and the sharing of views

and perspectives across disciplines was an increased

understanding among stakeholders of the complexity

of key issues, enabling them to reach agreement on

priorities.

To create a relatively accurate frame of reference, the team

established deﬁnitions for business as usual (BaU) and

baseline, to which the aspirational targets and all future

scenarios could be compared to help the team understand

improvements in performance, as well as associated

costs (evaluation models). For JLD, BaU was deﬁned as

the original master plan in place for Jurong Gateway and

Lakeside assuming conventional construction practices.

The baseline was deﬁned as the original master plan,

combined with the existing sustainable development

initiatives already implemented by URA, such as Green

Mark certiﬁcation, the proposed pedestrian network, and

the greenery replacement program.

Once the BaU and baseline models were created,

alternative master plans (change models) were “sketched”

by participants using customized templates or palettes of

predetermined land uses, building types, transportation

modes, community facilities, and other amenities to help

facilitate this process. Sketching was enabled through the

standard ArcGIS 10 editing template functionality.

The model’s GIS mapping and geoprocessing tools,

developed as an ArcGIS for Desktop add-in using

ArcObjects, were used to model accessibility to certain

plan features, including land-use spatial allocation,

internal and external connectivity, and access to key

services and transit. A unique addition to the JLD project

was the creation of tools to measure the accessibility of

vertical components, such as elevated parks, skyways,

and trams. These evaluation models, characteristic of a

geodesign process, quickly evaluated design decisions,

allowing participants to see the impact just by running

the tools.

Stage II - Infrastructure or Primary Systems Evaluation

and Modeling

After a preferred master plan framework was selected,

a more intensive evaluation of sustainability practices

and measures took place, focusing more at a detailed

infrastructure level of analysis. By tweaking certain

measures—for example, selecting certain building

materials or switching to low-ﬂow faucets—additional

improvements can be made in water consumption, energy

consumption, or cost. This step seeks to answer three

core questions for each theme: What energy reduction

targets should be evaluated? Which combination of

project design features are required to achieve each

target? Which combination of project design features will

achieve the reduction targets in the most cost-effective

manner?

Just like in the evaluation of urban form in stage I, stage

II requires the identiﬁcation of a BaU and baseline for

each system (the former being the minimum level of

performance allowed by building and zoning codes,

while the latter represents the level of performance

required by URA in the existing plan). The primary

difference between these two was in the amount of open

ArcIndia News Vol. 9 esriindia.com

CASE STUDY

space and green building requirements in the Gateway

district. Three additional levels of performance (termed

good, better, best), which had been earlier identiﬁed

in the Sustainability Framework Matrix, were the basis

for assembling “packages” of measures that would

theoretically achieve each of the respective targets for

each system. These packages were then modeled to test

whether they in fact achieved the targets.

After identiﬁcation of the packages of measures to be

utilized in closing the gap between the aspirational

targets and the current BaU case, each package of

strategies underwent a cost estimating step and a cost-

beneﬁt analysis.

Stage III - Master Program Optimization

The goal of SSIM stage III is to combine the effects of

multiple systems and strategies to create integrated

sustainability programs across the entire project site for

each of the alternative master plan scenarios reﬁned in

stage I. The Gameboard tool of SSIM facilitates this goal

by allowing the selection of a performance package for

each major system and simultaneously reporting various

performance and cost indicators resulting from the

package selections.

Gameboard is used to optimize the overall master

sustainability program. In this context, optimization is the

process of selecting unique combinations of sustainability

choices that result in achieving the aspirational targets

set out in stage I using a set of predetermined cost

thresholds. The optimization process is assisted by a logic

engine that solves for the set of constraints stipulated by

the thresholds.

Conclusion

In the end, Singapore deﬁned and evaluated three to

ﬁve master sustainability framework programs. The

variation between the programs included multiple

combinations of good/better/best scenarios on all the

systems. SSIM allowed URA to examine the theoretical

10-year life cycle analysis comparing net present value

for each model run.

The savings from energy and water efﬁciency are

expected to offset the investments in other sectors,

such as parks, open space, public transportation,

potable water infrastructure, and even social programs.

The reﬁned sustainability framework matrix serves as

the master checklist for achieving a holistic sustainability

program for JLD. It is a living document that will be

amended as time goes on and as adjustments need to

be made in targets, due to changes in either technology,

demographics, costs, or priorities.

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

CASE STUDY

Semantically Enriched Vision

of Smart City

Anuj Tiwari & Dr. Kamal Jain, IIT Roorkee

Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India

Debates to achieve a sustainable and harmonious tomorrow

have been increasingly inﬂuenced by discussions of smart

cities. Researchers argue collaborative information and

communication technology with different level of social

participation of residents is a fuel for quality of life that reduces

the environmental impact of urbanization. In similar fashion,

policymakers emphasize on high technological solutions

to offer new ways of operating, learning, living, working

and travelling, and apply smart, innovate and combined

strategies to fuel economical development. Government’s

vision places the people at the heart of the smart city concept,

and they focus on achieving a smart governance framework,

connected by innovative technologies that enable citizens to

experience all public services with ease and low cost, fuelling

economic development to stimulate a high quality life for all.

India is drawing on the development of smart cities at

the global level. Since the arrival of new government in

India, a new technical term, a modern buzz word “Smart

City” is increasingly used by public authorities and private

developers to address the urbanization and sustainability

solutions. Vision of ‘Digital India’, has a plan to build 100

smart cities across the country.

There is much debate on the ways to approach objectives of

smart city but regardless the disparity of views, technology is

the common denominator.

ICT or ubiquitous computing paradigm is the central nervous

system of smart cities. Smart city solutions relies on the widely

distributed smart devices to monitor the urban environment

in real time, to react in time, to establish automated control,

to collect information for intelligent decision making, and to

facilitate various services and improve the quality of urban

living. The distributed network of intelligent sensor nodes,

as well as the data centers/clouds where the sensor data are

stored and shared, constructs the main body of smart city

infrastructure.

Wireless sensor networks develop the foundation for

Smart Cities, adopting a spatially distributed network of

autonomous intelligent sensors to measure a variety of

physical or environmental parameters, such as pressure,

noise, temperature, sound, ambient light levels, and toxic

gas concentration, for efﬁcient urban management. This

monitoring capability can be effectively used in the emerging

ArcIndia News Vol. 9 esriindia.com

TECHNICAL ARTICLE

initiatives of smart city. Every second, massive amounts of

heterogeneous data are being produced by these sensors

that bring the challenge to develop a common platform to

share unambiguous meaning of collected data. This aim can

be achieved by the concept of Semantic Sensor Network

(SSN). SSN enables sharing and reusability of sensor data

from various sensors in a meaningful way and endures system

to process sensor data in heterogeneous environment.

In 1998 father of web, Berners-Lee coined back the term

semantics to achieve the vision “Lead the Web to its

full potential”. He described semantics as a common

framework technology to enhance visibility of knowledge

and enable automated processing for machines and

humans alike. Semantic Web extends the description of

contents and services over web in a machine process able

and understandable format and let humans and machines

to work in an integrated environment through semantic

interoperability of the knowledge. At the bottom level,

for sensor and sensor network applications, there are no

ubiquitous standards. The backbone of the sensor service

infrastructure and the API to sensors is provided by OGC

standards as part of its Sensor Web Enablement (SWE)

program viz SensorML and Observation & Measurement

(O&M). While the OGC SWE standards provide description

and access to data and metadata for sensors, they do

not provide facilities for abstraction, categorization, and

reasoning offered by semantic technologies. World Wide

Web consortium (W3C) is another authority responsible for

Semantic Web standards for sensor networks. To facilitate

this process, linguistic techniques, such as extensible markup

language (XML), resource description framework (RDF) and

web ontology language (OWL) have been developed as

standard formats for the sharing and integration of data and

knowledge as explicit metadata and logical reasoning. The

availability of tools and reasoning systems has contributed

to the increasingly widespread use of semantics, and this

technology is growing and started applying in various

application domains as biology, medicine, geography,

geology, agriculture and defense. Applications of semantics

are particularly prevalent in the life sciences where it has

been used by the developers of several large biomedical

ontologies, including the SNOMED, GO and BioPAX

ontologies, the Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA) and

the National Cancer Institute thesaurus. These ontologies are

the result of collaborative efforts across different community

commonly aimed at facilitating online knowledge sharing

and exchange.

World Wide Web consortium initiated a dedicated Semantic

Sensor Networks Incubator group (the SSN-XG), which ran

from March 2009 to September 2010, worked on an OWL

ontology to describe the capabilities and properties of

sensors, the act of sensing and the resulting observations.

The SSN ontology was developed by group consensus over

a period of some eleven months. The SSN ontology, available

at http://purl.oclc.org/NET/ssnx/ssn, describes sensors, the

accuracy and capabilities of such sensors, observations and

methods used for sensing.

Sensors are nowadays part of our everyday life. In the

vision of smart city, SSN is visualized as the key solution

for heterogeneous sensors which enables semantic sensor

information annotation for real time systematic measurement

and handling of environmental dynamics to achieve essential

solutions or services. Semantic Sensor Network technologies

provide a mechanism for better communication among

these sensors. Advantages of SSN are as follows:

• Semantic sensor information annotation enables smart

decision making with real time heterogeneous sensor

measurements.

• SSN can be used as a common platform for knowledge

sharing across the boundaries of proprieties data format

provide a sound foundation for innovative solutions.

• SSN ﬁll the gap between human process able and

machine understandable information which develop

a strong platform for human and machines to achieve

better tomorrow for mankind.

In smart cities data being produced by sensors is

enormous and there is a strong need to time these

data streams and build applications and services

to take smart decision by performing analysis of

these data streams in real-time.

Reference : www.goo.gl/OzPIyW

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

TECHNICAL ARTICLE

The trend of urbanization is growing word wide. According to United Nations,

Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2014)*, more

than 6.3B people, 60% of the population will be living in cities by 2050. With

more population shifting to urban areas, cities across the globe are dealing

with tight budgets and aging infrastructure.

The cities of the future needs to be safer, more sustainable, efﬁcient,

comfortable, Interactive and ‘smart’.

In smart cities, a network of sensors, cameras, wireless devices, data centres

form the key infrastructure, which allows civic authorities to provide essential

services in a faster and more efﬁcient manner. Smart cities are also far more

environmentally friendly as they use sustainable materials for building facilities

and reduce energy consumption. Efﬁcient use of technology helps create an

efﬁcient transport management system, improve healthcare facilities and

develop a robust communication network to connect all businesses, people

and beyond the relationships between central and sub-national levels of

governments.

There will be an urban environment that is permanently communicating with

the citizens and capable of managing public services in real time to improve

their quality of life through trafﬁc management, garbage collection, waste

disposal, irrigation systems, assisted parking, alerting the local authority

when an incident occurs and allowing the government to stay in touch with

the people.

What it takes to make a city ‘SMART’?

A smart city capable of becoming both environmentally sustainable and

attractive to citizens and businesses requires a new kind of intelligent

infrastructure — an innovative and open platform based on smart sensor

networks that can help forward-looking cities more predictably integrate a

complex suite of services cost-effectively, at pace and at scale. While many

smart city technologies including smart electricity grids, smart meters and

real-time transportation information are already in pilot programmes. Some

of the major components of the Smart city are as follows:

Use of Sensor Technology - A smart city can create an efﬁcient and smart

services delivery platform for public and municipal workers by installing

sensors in the city and to create platforms that allow the share of information

and give it for proper use to the public, city managers, businesses and

professionals. The platform can have common data warehouse where

different sensor system store their information.

‘Sensors’ for

Smart ‘Cities’

One of the aspects of smart

cities is the optimal use of

available resources. Sensors

can help make optimal use of

resources with connectivity

to tell us when and where

to save. These sensors can

control, detect and manage

the unnecessary use and

make certain adjustments as

per the need.

Water Management

At present, the major cities

waste up to 50% of water

due to pipe leakages. With

sensors ﬁtted on each pipes,

water leaks can be easily

detected and corrected

before any heavy loss.

Besides this, the irrigation

systems in public parks

can automatically turn off

whenever rain is detected to

save water.

Energy Management

Sensors have also enabled

the concept of “Advanced

Metering Infrastructure

(AMI)” underpinning energy

management in cities. Cities

are considering use of

“Smart Meters” embedded

with Phase Measurement

Unit (PMU) sensors and

communication module

which facilitates a two-way

communication between the

consumer and the supplier.

For utility service providers,

it helps check meter status

prior to sending a repair

crew in response to a

customer call. These checks

prevent needless ﬁeld

ArcIndia News Vol. 9 esriindia.com

TECHNICAL ARTICLE

crew dispatch to customer

sites. For consumers, it can

provide the real-time energy

usage detail in a way which

a user can understand quite

easily. Based upon this

data, users can change the

preferences and make more

informed decisions about

their usage without waiting

for their energy bill at the

end of month.

Smart Streetlights

In cities street lights remain

ON even when there’s

no activity in the area

(sometime in daylight too!).

Additionally, it becomes

very difﬁcult for authorities

to detect any fault and theft

of street lights. With sensors,

lights can go dim when

they aren’t needed and

authorities can get a text

message almost instantly

whenever there is a fault or

tampering in street lights.

Waste Management

With sensors ﬁtted in the

garbage bins, the municipal

authorities can be notiﬁed

when they are close to

being full. The Netherlands

became the ﬁrst ever to

produce “Intelligent Bins”

that report to the ofﬁcials via

text messages whenever the

bins are either full or if there

is any damage.

World Urbanization Prospects:

The 2014 Revision, Highlights (ST/

ESA/SER.A/352)

Remote control network - An integrated control network with common data

transmission infrastructure monitors all the municipal and supply networks

of the service companies involved in the project. The goal is to manage

and ﬁnd out about the ordinary consumption, incidents and eventualities in

these networks, all of this independently from the municipal services. All the

networks have alert devices and monitor consumptions, ﬂows, intrusions,

etc., making it possible to act in the event of leaks.

The service network should include supply network, drainage network,

rainwater network, public lighting, pneumatic waste collection, climatology,

electrical energy and internal home comfort.

The city (Project) should able to provide publicity subsidised homes in a short

period of time.

Information & Communication Technology (ICT) - ICT improves the way

cities function and communication ﬂow increases the sustainability of cities

as it gives people the appropriate information to make well informed

decisions. ICT manages cities in a more participative way and facilitates active

participation of individuals and local communities as well as provides efﬁcient

feedback system and improves internal and external interaction. It creates an

urban commons for cities collaborations around the world.

Smart Mobility - It is important to ensure availability of open public data for its

analysis and onward distribution to its users for the use by colleagues, friends

and public at large for smooth mobility. Further, provisions of alternatives

such as multimodal approach and professional working at a smarter place

result in the comfortable and easy work environment. Sharing of available

resources as well as parking solutions in the city ensures use of resources

in a smarter way. This also results into overall improved quality of life. Car

running on green gas adds to sustainability and eco-friendly environment

which cities should ensure.

Global Initiatives

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second largest city and host to Summer Olympics

2016 is a tangible example of what a smart city in future would be like. During

the Olympics, millions of tourist would visit this city from across the globe.

The logistics of moving so many people around in a few short weeks, while

still running the daily operations of a city of such size, would be daunting for

any government.

Located in a building that looks like a glass cube, the Centro de Operacoes

is a high-tech control room for the entire city, packed with computers, giant

screens and hundreds of workers who can monitor everything from water

levels in streets after a rainstorm to developing trafﬁc jams.

The goal is to make decisions in real time as events or emergencies occur,

mitigating their impact on the daily lives of Rio’s residents while making sure

the city’s budget is used as effectively and efﬁciently as possible.

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

TECHNICAL ARTICLE

Centro de Operacoes, Control Room, Janeiro

Santander, the Spanish city is embedded with more than 12,000 sensors that

measure everything from the amount of trash in containers, to the number

of parking spaces available, to the size of crowds. Besides helping the

government operate as efﬁciently as possible, it’s changing the way Europe

thinks about cities.

Since 2010, 12,500 sensors have been placed in and around the city’s

downtown district. In addition, sensors on vehicles such as police cars

and taxicabs measure air pollution levels and trafﬁc conditions. The data

from these sensors ﬂows to banks of computers that analyze the real-time

information and give city ofﬁcials the kind of big picture that allows them to

adjust the amount of energy they use, the number of trash pickups needed

in a given week and how much water to sprinkle on the lawns of city parks.

At the same time, the city is opening up its data so that programmers can

create apps that help citizens ﬁnd bus arrival times or let tourists ﬁnd out who

is performing at concert halls simply by pointing their mobile phones at a bus

stop or building.

ArcIndia News Vol. 9 esriindia.com

TECHNICAL ARTICLE

Transport Management

(Smart Parking)

Trafﬁc can be reduced

with sensors that detect

where the nearest available

parking slot is. Motorists

get timely information via

text messages so they can

locate a free parking slot

quickly, saving time and fuel.

A similar project is being

carried out at San Francisco

called SFPark - where

parking spaces have been

installed in 8200 on-street

places. This concept would

be replicated in several

other states in coming days.

Map Like a Pro!

ArcGIS 10.3 is a major release that will help you discover,

make, use, and share maps from any device, anywhere, at

any time.

ArcGIS 10.3 includes new apps and enhancements that

continue to revolutionize the science of geography and

GIS and enable users to more readily share their work

throughout their organizations. Here are some of the

highlights:

ArcGIS Pro - Your New ArcGIS for Desktop App

ArcGIS Pro reinvents desktop GIS. This brand new 64-bit

desktop app lets you render and process your data faster

than ever. With ArcGIS Pro, you can design and edit in

2D and 3D, work with multiple displays and layouts, and

publish maps directly to ArcGIS Online.

More Tools for ArcMap

At 10.3, ArcMap is better than ever with improvements

like new analysis and automation tools, info graphics

capabilities, and tools for managing your data more

efﬁciently. You can even run any version of ArcMap side by

side with ArcGIS Pro.

Get Your Work into the Hands of More People with Web

GIS

Since the 10.2 release, ArcGIS for Desktop comes with

an ArcGIS Online account that lets you share your

work throughout your organization. Ready-to-use apps

including Explorer for ArcGIS, Open Data, and Esri Maps

for Ofﬁce make your maps available to anyone on any

device.

Want ArcGIS 10.3?

ArcGIS 10.3 is available to all customers current on

maintenance. If you need to get back on maintenance or

need to have a technical discussion to understand more

about ArcGIS 10.3, contact Esri India at

[email protected].

“ArcGIS 10.3 and ArcGIS Pro

Modernize GIS for Organizations

and Enterprises”

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

TECHNICAL ARTICLE

Real-time Pollution

Management

Sensors mounted on poles

can monitor the Ambient

Air Quality (AAQ) of cities.

Citizens can monitor the

pollution concentration in

each street of the city or they

can get automatic alarms

when the pollution level

rises beyond a certain level.

The announcement of the ‘Digital India’ initiative by the

Government is an important step in reforming governance

through the use of information technology. The strategic

plan aims to transform India into a digitally empowered

society and knowledge economy. GIS, in fact, will play an

important role in the roll-out of the Digital India vision.

Various ministries and departments are being encouraged

to use GIS technology in their programs for planning,

implementing and monitoring the execution.

Recognizing this, the theme of the 15th edition of Esri

India’s User Conference was ‘Geo-Enabling Digital India’.

The conference held on December 9-11, 2014 in Delhi,

focused on how GIS would play a signiﬁcant role in full-

service orientation and become a core component in the

digital infrastructure, enabling the process of governance,

planning, and nation building.

Various thought leaders, eminent speakers and technology

experts from the GIS industry shared their knowledge and

experiences with GIS and talked about how the technology

could be leveraged for geo-enabling digital India.

The conference was kicked off by Mr Agendra Kumar,

President, Esri India. He set the context for the conference

by providing insights on how GIS could support the Digital

India initiative.

Dr. Vandana Sharma, Advisor (Remote Sensing and GIS

Division), National Informatics Centre (NIC) gave a talk

on the ‘GIS Platform for Digital India’. She spoke about

NIC’s efforts towards creating a platform for creating

and integrating GIS applications. Dr. Aruna Srivastava,

Consultant, National Institute of Malaria Research (NIMR)

presented her view on ‘GIS in Decision support of Vector

Borne Disease control in India’. She provided real life

Mr Lawrie Jordan, Director of Imagery,

Esri Inc., shared insights on technology

evolution and Esri’s technology vision,

stating how GIS is changing the way

people think and act and how it would

play a key role in shaping the future of

our country.

Mr R. Chandrasekhar, President,

NASSCOM, emphasizing on the

mainstream adoption of GIS and

Mobility said “We are standing at a

particularly interesting juncture in the

history of our country, more particularly

in terms of the adoption of technology

in our day-to-day lives. Mobile

has enabled easy accessibility of

geographically relevant information”.

Mr Rajendra Pawar, Chairman, NIIT,

presented a keynote on the theme.

“The only place where information

becomes real is on the ground and

GIS is a technology where information

touches the ground”, he said. He gave

the simple analogy of water tanks,

pipes and taps to show how citizens

would be impacted by Digital India.

ArcIndia News Vol. 9 esriindia.com

EVENT COVERAGE

Esri India User Conference focuses on ‘Geo-Enabling Digital India’

examples of the application of GIS in the health sector and

its use in the control of diseases like Malaria, Dengue and

Chikungunya.

In addition, NASSCOM President, R Chandrasekhar

presented Esri India’s prestigious Special Achievement

in GIS (SAG) awards and the Making a Difference award

at the event. The SAG awards recognizes users who had

applied geospatial technology innovatively to address the

needs of their industries and communities and deﬁned

GIS best practices. The award was presented to Forest

Survey of India (FSI), the Geographical Survey of India (GSI)

and Central Ground Water Board (CGWB). The ‘Making

a Difference award’ went to National Dairy Development

Board (NDDB) acknowledging the efforts of NDDB in

revolutionizing the dairy planning process across India that

brought together all stakeholders up to village level.

As a part of Lightening Talks sessions, users presented their

unique applications developed using Esri technology. Mr.

Manoj Arora, VP-Flight Operations of Jet Airways talked

about how GIS is helping the airline in ﬂight height & path

planning and operations. Mr. Sheshadri T., IT Head, Bruhat

Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), shared how the

ArcGIS software based system had helped the company

improve governance and service efﬁciency and how the

Mr. Agendra Kumar

President, Esri India

Mr. Srinivas Garimella

Microsoft

Mr. NSN Murthy

PwC

Mr. Rakesh Raina

Esri India

Dr. Prashant Pradhan

IBM

Com. Avanish Dureha

SAP

Exhibition Experience Zone

Mr. Anand Singh Bahl

Economic Advisor, MoUD, GOI

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

EVENT COVERAGE

Esri India User Conference focuses on ‘Geo-Enabling Digital India’

automated workforce and GIS reporting with detailed

dashboards had facilitated more informed decision making.

Mr. M.L. Srivastav, Deputy Inspector General of Forests,

Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) provided

glimpses of various GIS-based applications being used for

the real time monitoring of forest ﬁres, building a national

forest inventory, etc.

One of the key highlights of the conference was a dedicated

track on 'GIS and Smart Cities' hosted in collaboration

with Institute of Town Planners, India. The key objective

of the track was to reinforce the use of GIS in the end-

to-end smart city planning and management. The track

featured eminent speakers such as Dr. Najammuuddin,

Secretary General, Institute of Town Planners, India (ITPI),

Mr. Anand Singh Bahl, Economic Advisor, Ministry of Urban

Development, Mr. Shishir Rai, Assistant VP, Planning, GIFT

City, Mr. Kapil Chaudhery, Director, Spatial Decisions, Prof

Chetan Vaidya and Dr. G S Rao including many others. The

track concluded with a key message that GIS will provide

a central IT framework which integrates every aspect

of a smart city – from conceptualization, planning and

development to maintenance.

The conference concluded with a panel discussion on

the theme “Geo-Enabling Digital India”, moderated by

Mr. Rakesh Raina, Sr. Vice President– India Business, Esri

India. The panelists included Mr. S K Sinha, Director, TNP

& A&N GDC, Survey of India, Dr. (Mrs). Manosi Lahiri, M

L Infomap, Dr. P. S. Acharya, CEO, National Spatial Data

Infrastructure (NSDI), Mr. A K Gosain, Professor, Dept. of

Civil Engineering, IIT Delhi. They discussed on “how to

ensure that GIS becomes integral part of every government

project, what are possible challenges, what will be industry

participation in digital India.”

The panelists acknowledged and highlighted that GIS

would be an integral part and backbone of the Digital India

initiative.

The conference also included a Developer Summit, Systems

and Design Strategy seminar, technical expo and paper

and poster presentations. There was a buzzing exhibition

ﬂoor where Esri India and various other companies like

HERE, HP, Trimble and Cybertech displayed their offerings.

In addition, users from across India presented papers

and posters and participated in the contests that were

organized over the three days of the conference.

Delegates at Esri India User Conference 2014

ArcIndia News Vol. 9 esriindia.com

EVENT COVERAGE

Rethinking GIS for

Local Government

For cities and countries, implementing

GIS just got easier

overnments have demonstrated the power of GIS

technology for many years, and now even more value

has been added to help public-sector agencies extend their

reach with ArcGIS

for Local Government. ArcGIS for Local

Government consists of a set of tools, application templates,

and resources that are helping government agencies

rethink how they extend GIS. Part of a solution initiative

at Esri, these maps, applications, workﬂows, and other

resources are available today to be customized and used

for numerous departmental functions. Local agencies can

now implement applications that enhance their existing GIS

immediately and more easily than ever. Many are seizing this

opportunity to create more efﬁcient government, improve

workﬂows, increase citizen engagement, and generate

productivity gains. More than 60 maps and applications are

available, and more are on the way. There are customizable

applications for service requests from citizens, public

comment on land use, emergency management, property

taxes, and numerous other local government activities.

Conﬁgurable application templates are discipline speciﬁc

for areas such as land records, public safety, water utilities,

public works, elections, general government, and planning

and development. Base maps—ready-to-use maps loaded

with content give local governments a solid foundation on

which they can build their own maps. Imagery and road

data, demographics, topographic information, and other

features, are also available and the list of tools continues

to grow.

Ready to Go

ArcGIS for Local Government is a ready-to-go set of

practices and resources that enable local governments

to fully utilize GIS quickly and easily—potentially saving

months of development work for cash-and time-strapped

agencies. The maps and applications are organized

as a set of modules that can be downloaded and

conﬁgured individually. They can be localized and

customized, and they come with ongoing support and

development from Esri. And everything’s built on the

Local Government Information Model—GIS datasets,

web services, and maps that work across numerous

departments, making collaboration and sharing easy.

ArcGIS for Local Government is focused on customer

success, helping to provide better services to Esri

customers and the public. It aligns perfectly with ﬁve

key areas of government activity: data creation,

planning and analysis, ﬁeld mobility, operational

awareness, and citizen engagement. The application

templates, resources, and tools available also integrate

with ArcGISSM Online, a popular mapping platform

that enables the sharing of maps, applications, and

geospatial data.

In addition to creating ArcGIS for Local Government,

Esri offers several ways to implement these tools and

resources. Organizations can customize the applications

themselves, of course; or, they can also get assistance

from a valuable network of experts, Esri partners and

consultants, and Esri Professional Services.

However it’s extended, ArcGIS for Local Government

will make an immediate impact—and it couldn’t be

easier.

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

TIPS & TRICKS

CityEngine FAQ

1 How to install City Engine quickly on system?

The installation of Esri City Engine is a multistep process:

• Install ArcGIS 10.2.2 License Manager (if it doesn’t already exist for your use) to use the

concurrent-use version. For more information, see about the license manager. If you intend to use

Esri City Engine as a single use version only, you do not need to install and use ArcGIS License

Manager.

• Install Esri City Engine 2014.1 using the Esri City Engine 2014.1 setup.

• Complete the City Engine Administrator wizard to specify your product type, assign a license

manager (if using a concurrent-use license), or authorize your software (if using a single-use

license).

Once installed, you can change your product level or switch between Concurrent Use and Single Use

versions without uninstalling or performing any additional installation actions.

Esri City Engine 2014 and 2014.1 Concurrent Use require ArcGIS 10.2.2 License Manager be installed

to support this product. The ArcGIS 10.2.2 License Manager setup package is designed to detect and

upgrade an existing installation of the ArcGIS 10.1 (including SP1), 10.2 or 10.2.1 License Manager.

Existing authorized licenses and conﬁguration information (including Service.txt and ARCGIS.opt

ﬁles, if applicable) are retained in the upgrade. For more information on installation upgrades, new

installations, or installations over versions earlier than ArcGIS 10.1 License Manager, see the ArcGIS

License Manager Reference guide. The License Manager Reference Guide is installed with ArcGIS

10.2.2 License Manager.

2. What is new in Esri City Engine 2014 & 2014.1?

Esri City Engine 2014.1 can be used on the same machine as Esri City Engine 2012/2013/2014.

Existing Esri City Engine 2012/2013/2014 authorization numbers will work with Esri City Engine

2014.1.Esri City Engine 2014 and 2014.1 for Single Use: If Esri City Engine 2014 or 2014.1 will be

installed on a different machine than where Esri City Engine 2012/2013 is currently installed, and you

wish to use the existing Esri City Engine 2012/2013 authorization for Esri City Engine 2014 or 2014.1,

the Esri City Engine 2012/2013 product must ﬁrst be deauthorized before authorizing the Esri City

Engine 2014 or 2014.1 installation.

3. How much RAM does City Engine typically need?

City Engine requires approximately 1 GB free memory for startup. Additionally, a small 3D scene with

a few hundred low-resolution buildings requires 0.5 to 1 GB RAM (depending on the graphics card

memory). In case your operating system uses another 1 GB RAM, you would therefore need at least

2 to 3 GB. Therefore, we recommend you use a 64-bit operating system with 6 GB RAM. With such a

system, you can work with larger 3D scenes and have other applications running in the background

without difﬁculty.

4. How can I ﬁx the error my computer has OpenGL 1.x?

Make sure your graphics card is OpenGL 2.x minimum capable and that your drivers are up-to-date to

run the OpenGL 2.x standard. If your graphics card is not OpenGL 2.x capable, you will need to buy a

new graphics card to run City Engine.

5. Where can I download the latest OpenGL drivers?

OpenGL drivers are usually installed together with the rest of the graphics drivers and support

software (such as DirectX), but may be out of date. It is highly recommended to download the latest

drivers from NVIDIA, AMD/ATI, or Intel found on the manufacturer’s home page.

ArcIndia News Vol. 9 esriindia.com

GIS TRIVIA

6. Does City Engine run on virtual machines?

No, since OpenGL rendering cannot be emulated, City Engine requires physical graphics card

hardware.

7. Does City Engine run on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux?

City Engine runs on all three major operating systems. Native 64-bit and 32-bit versions are available

for Windows (8/7/Vista/XP).A native 64-bit version is available for Linux and Mac OS X with Intel

processors (no City Engine support for 32-bit or PowerPC Macs).

8. What are the requirements for my Linux distribution?

City Engine runs on all major Linux distributions as long as the following requirements are fulﬁlled: >=

glibc6 / version 2.6

2.2.1 of the GTK+ widget toolkit and associated libraries (GLib, Pango)

9. What 3D model export capabilities are available at City Engine Basic license levels?

In City Engine Basic, the 3D model export ability is limited to basic 3D ﬁle formats only. A model can be

exported as AutoDesk 3DS, Wavefront OBJ, and E-On Software Vue formats only.

10. How much RAM does City Engine need for working with large scenes?

We recommend at least 6 GB of RAM.

11. How do I calculate the average slope of a curved street or sidewalk shape?

The CGA example below can help with calculating the average slope of a curved street or sidewalk

shape. CGA stands for Computer Generated Architecture, a scripting language speciﬁc to Esri City

Engine and used to generate 3D content. See the link to the ‘Basics of Rule-based Modeling’ in the

Related Information section below.

approxCurvedSlope = asin (scope.sy / geometry.du(0,unitSpace) )

Street -->

alignScopeToAxes(y) print ( approxCurvedSlope )

12. Can I calculate the approximate average slope of a (non-planar) shape?

Yes, by using the following example. Please note that this is CGA sample code and may not apply in

all situations. See the link to the ‘Basics of Rule-based Modeling’ in the Related Information section

below.

slopeFunction = atan ( sqrt ( scope.sy / scope.sz) )

Lot -->

alignScopeToAxes(y)

print ( slopeFunction )

13. How do I place street furniture like lamp poles or trees?

Elements can be placed on streets or sidewalks by using CGA code. See the link to the ‘Basics of

Rule-based Modeling’ in the Related Information section below.The best strategy is to duplicate the

start shape (street or sidewalk) for each type of object that is to be placed.

Example code:

Sidewalk -->

SidewalkShape. # Original shape

PutTrees # Duplicate of the shape for placing trees

esriindia.com Vol. 9 ArcIndia News

GIS TRIVIA

The actual placement is then done in a new rule by splitting the shapes using the split(u or v)

directions. The precise placement is usually done by ﬁrst splitting strips of the shape (in the short

dimension), then splitting those strips into small repetitive parts (in the long dimension), and ﬁnally

replacing each of the resulting shapes with the actual assets, for example, trees.

The following code example shows how to place vertical poles along a sidewalk:

Sidewalk -->

SidewalkGeometry.

SidewalkObjects # shape duplicated!

# idea : we cut off small strips of the original shape sideways and along the length of the sidewalk.

# on the remaining shape ‘dots’ (small rectangular shapes), we insert a post.

attr placementWidth = 0.05

attr streetDist = 0.2

attr objectDist = 5

attr objectSize = 0.1

attr objectHeigt = 2

SidewalkObjects -->

# split sideways the sidewalk shape

split(v,unitSpace,0) { streetDist : NIL | placementWidth : PlacementStrip | ~1 : NIL }

PlacementStrip -->

# split along the sidewalk shape

split(u,unitSpace,0) {objectDist: NIL | placementWidth : PlacementPoint }*

PlacementPoint -->

alignScopeToGeometry(yUp, 0) # align the shape to the current point shape, thus the street direction!

#r(0,90,0) # toggle 90 degree rotation, e.g. for lamp poles

s(objectSize*2, objectHeigt, objectSize)

i(“builtin:cube”)

center(xz)

14. What is OSM data and how do I import it?

OSM data is free (vector) map data, provided by the Web site OpenStreetMap.org. It contains

street maps and footprint shapes that can be used in Esri CityEngine. Depending on the region,

some datasets are more complete than others. The data is provided in a browser window that lets

the user choose a speciﬁc region on the globe to export. Data may be exported to an ‘.osm’ ﬁle

(OpenStreetMap XML Data). Additionally, the corresponding map image ﬁle can be exported, as well

as embeddable HTML code.

On Mac OS, these ﬁles may need to be renamed from ‘.xml’ to ‘.osm’ after downloading.

Once the data is downloaded, the user can copy-paste the ﬁles to the project’s data folder. From

there, the ﬁles are ready to import into the scene.

OSM data is georeferenced, thus if imported into a new scene, the dataset may not directly be

visible, because it was placed in its true position, far away from the Cartesian origin. In this case,

pressing the ‘f’ key frames the scene contents in the camera view.

ArcIndia News Vol. 9 esriindia.com

GIS TRIVIA

Senior Tech Support Executive

Experience : 3-7 years

Qualiﬁcation : Graduate / Post Graduate

Requirement : 1 (Against each location)

Location : Hyderabad / Gurgaon

Skill Set : Developer skill set with

knowledge of ArcGIS

Server and API on .Net

and Python technologies

Should be willing to

undertake training

and minimum travel as

required

Additional : Should have

development knowledge

on ArcGIS Engine,

development on Java /

Windows

Desired Skill : Knowledge of GIS

technologies

Senior Business Executive Sales

Experience : 7-12 years

Qualiﬁcation : Graduate / Post Graduate

Requirement : 1 (Against each location)

Location : Raipur, Ranchi,

Chandigarh & Nagpur

Primary Skill : Must have exposure to

"Government" sales

(State Government)

Should be from IT - S/W,

H/W, GIS Industry

Drive sales targets and

should understand the

entire sales cycle

Desired Skill : Selling of Autodesk /

Bentley Software's

Exposure to GIS Industry

Senior Database Engineer/Database Analyst

Experience : 3-8 years

Qualiﬁcation : Graduate / Post Graduate

Requirement : 1

Location : Gurgaon

Primary Skill : Good knowledge on Administration of Oracle Enterprise Server

Good knowledge on Administration of ArcGIS Server

Plus point if worked on ArcFM Server also

Should have experience in publishing and managing data nad

data services

Good knowledge on Spatial data and formats of Esri

Good communication skills

Team Lead - Photogrammetry

Experience : 6-10 years

Qualiﬁcation : Graduate / Post-Graduate in GIS,

Geology, Preferable BE/B.Tech/Misc.

in GIS

Requirement : 1

Location : Gurgaon

Primary Skill : Must have a through understanding of

Sociest Photogrammetry Software Ver.

5.3 onwards

Sound understanding and knowledge

of AT, DTM and Orthophoto creation

Esri India (NIIT GIS Ltd.)

Plot No. 223-224, 3rd Floor,

Udyog Vihar, Phase-1, Gurgaon

Haryana - 122 002 (INDIA)

Email : [email protected]