10_30 Infrastructure Broadcast (Green Buildings, Bridge Construction and More)

Hello, and welcome to this Infrastructure-themed GeoSpatial Stream. I’m your host, Todd Danielson, and today’s Lead Sponsor is Trimble Geospatial Division.

Today’s Top Story is Green Buildings. Turner Construction Company released its sixth Green Market Barometer, a survey of more than 300 executives involved in building design and construction.

According to the study, occupant wellbeing and water efficiency are rising in importance, and energy efficiency remains the highest-ranked benefit of green buildings.

Michael Deane, Turner’s chief sustainability officer, noted the following: “While building owners continue to incorporate green features in buildings to reduce operating costs, we see more organizations paying closer attention to the positive impacts of green buildings on indoor environmental quality, and employee satisfaction and productivity. We are also seeing, both in our own work and from the results of the survey, increased attention to maintaining essential building operations in the face of extreme weather events.”

That was today’s Top Story. I’ll be back with more news after this brief message.

U.S. government officials recently dedicated the Englewood Flyover project in Chicago. As part of the High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program, it will eliminate one of the nation’s largest rail chokepoints, allowing 80 Metra trains per weekday to travel above a mainline of freight and Amtrak trains.

Three University of Texas at Arlington students won a $10,000 dollar prize in the NTx Apps Challenge for this smart traffic-light network.

And here’s a time-lapse video showing the rapid replacement of the Barton Corner Bridge in Rhode Island. Using accelerated bridge construction, the state built two halves of the bridge on adjacent land and then moved them into place in less than half the time previously required.

In industry headlines, New Brunswick Power won an Award of Excellence from Esri Canada for leveraging its GIS to provide more-effective communication to the public as well as internal staff during power outages.

The city of Coconut Creek, Fla., which describes itself as the “Butterfly Capital of the World,” chose InfoWater from Innovyze to support its enterprisewide geospatial water-distribution network modeling and management needs.

Maptek released Vulcan 9.1, which delivers improvements to its modeling and mine-planning product, such as upgrades to Pit Optimiser, Borehole Geophysics and Stratigraphic Modeling tools.

And Autodesk released its BIM 360 Layout app for iOS, adding a model-verification step for contractors.

For today’s Final Thought, I’m breaking out the Vegas glasses again!

Next week I’ll be at the Trimble Dimensions event at The Mirage in Las Vegas. It only happens every two years, and I’ve never been to Dimensions before, so I’m really looking forward to it. And I’ll be in Vegas while it’s been snowing where I live, so that’s nice.

Look for a recap of the event in a future broadcast. I might even record directly from Las Vegas, so I better bring my glasses.

That’s it for this broadcast, but if you’d like to receive alerts when new GeoSpatial Stream videos are released, or sign up for additional V1 Media newsletters, please visit this Web site and register: geospatialstream.com/subscribe

I’m Todd Danielson, and this … was your GeoSpatial Stream.