Publications

Geospatial Technologies to Improve Urban Energy Efficiency

Hay G.J., Kyle C., Hemachandran B., Chen G., Rahman M.M., Fung T.S., and Arvai J.L. 2011. "Geospatial Technologies to Improve Urban Energy Efficiency." Remote Sens. 3, no. 7: 1380-1405.

Abstract: The HEAT (Home Energy Assessment Technologies) pilot project is a FREE Geoweb mapping service, designed to empower the urban energy efficiency movement by allowing residents to visualize the amount and location of waste heat leaving their homes and communities as easily as clicking on their house in Google Maps. HEAT incorporates Geospatial solutions for residential waste heat monitoring using Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis (GEOBIA) and Canadian built Thermal Airborne Broadband Imager technology (TABI-320) to provide users with timely, in-depth, easy to use, location-specific waste-heat information; as well as opportunities to save their money and reduce their green-house-gas emissions. We first report on the HEAT Phase I pilot project which evaluates 368 residences in the Brentwood community of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and describe the development and implementation of interactive waste heat maps, energy use models, a Hot Spot tool able to view the 6+ hottest locations on each home and a new HEAT Score for inter-city waste heat comparisons. We then describe current challenges, lessons learned and new solutions as we begin Phase II and scale from 368 to 300,000+ homes with the newly developed TABI-1800. Specifically, we introduce a new object-based mosaicing strategy, an adaptation of Emissivity Modulation to correct for emissivity differences, a new Thermal Urban Road Normalization (TURN) technique to correct for scene-wide microclimatic variation. We also describe a new Carbon Score and opportunities to update city cadastral errors with automatically defined thermal house objects.

Keywords: urban energy efficiency; geospatial; TABI; GEOBIA; thermal imaging; waste heat; GeoWeb; Google Maps; hot spots; TURN; emissivity modulation; HEAT Score.

Collective Sensing: Integrating Geospatial Technologies to Understand Urban Systems - An Overview

Blaschke, T., Hay, G.J., Weng, Q., and Resch, B. 2011. Collective Sensing: Integrating Geospatial Technologies to Understand Urban Systems–An Overview. Remote Sens. 3, no. 8: 1743-1776.

Abstract: Cities are complex systems composed of numerous interacting components that evolve over multiple spatio-temporal scales. Consequently, no single data source is sufficient to satisfy the information needs required to map, monitor, model, and ultimately understand and manage our interaction within such urban systems. Remote sensing technology provides a key data source for mapping such environments, but is not sufficient for fully understanding them. In this article we provide a condensed urban perspective of critical geospatial technologies and techniques: (i) Remote Sensing; (ii) Geographic Information Systems; (iii) object-based image analysis; and (iv) sensor webs, and recommend a holistic integration of these technologies within the language of open geospatial consortium (OGC) standards in-order to more fully understand urban systems. We then discuss the potential of this integration and conclude that this extends the monitoring and mapping options beyond “hard infrastructure” by addressing “humans as sensors”, mobility and human-environment interactions, and future improvements to quality of life and of social infrastructures.

Keywords: urban remote sensing; collective sensing; in situ sensing; sensor web; human-environment interactions; future trends; smart city.

HEAT (Home Energy Assessment Technologies): Residential Waste Heat Monitoring, Google Maps and Airborne Thermal Imagery

Hay G.J., Hemachandran B., and Kyle C.D. 2010. HEAT (Home Energy Assessment Technologies): Residential Waste Heat Monitoring, Google Maps and Airborne Thermal Imagery. Alberta, Canada. GIM International. Issue 03, Vol 24, March, pp 13-15.

It is estimated that a quarter of the heat generated in our houses is lost through roofs. Replacement of the entire roof is too costly for most homeowners, who would prefer to carry out focused repair work. For this they need to know exactly where the roof is leaking. An in-situ thermal survey is expensive, and thus an unattractive option. Home Energy Assessment Technologies, or HEAT, represents software, hardware, data provision and a web-portal service that enables free-of charge, automatic assessment of domestic waste heat footprints by simply clicking on their house in Google Maps. The authors present the results of a pilot project in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.