26 GIS FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY This artist’s conception shows an aerial view of Masdar City as it will look when completed. Building an Oasis in the Desert Highlights „ Every facet of designing and building the city will be analyzed with ArcGIS. „ Asset management using ArcGIS means all systems can be visualized, maintained, and tracked efficiently. „ An enterprise geodatabase will be used throughout the city’s life cycle. Many of us are interested in decreasing our carbon footprint, whether one individual, one family, or one organization at a time. Imagine living in an entire city specifically designed to meet the ambitious goals of zero waste; sustainable living; and, ultimately, carbon neutrality. This is the vision of Masdar City, which is being designed and constructed in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), by Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s multifaceted initiative advancing the development, commercialization, and deployment of renewable and alternative energy technologies and solutions. Masdar, which means “the source” in Arabic, integrates the full technology life cycle—from research to commercial deployment. The Masdar company aims to create renewable energy solutions. Masdar City is a prime example of how GIS can be used to design our future. This shimmering oasis of 6 square kilometers, located 30 kilometers from Abu Dhabi city, is committed to sustainable living. To reach its carbon-neutral ambitions, Masdar City will use only renewable energy sources. A photovoltaic power plant will generate most of the electricity, while the city’s cooling will be provided via concentrated solar power. The zerowaste targets of Masdar City will be achieved through a combination of recycling, reuse, and some breakthrough waste-to-energy technologies. Landscaping within the city and crops grown outside will be irrigated with gray water and treated wastewater produced by the city’s water treatment plant. Through this innovative design, residents in Masdar City will consume far less energy. Peak demand at Masdar City is currently predicted to be only 200 megawatts instead of the 800 megawatts normally required by a conventional city of the same size and climate zone. Desalinated water consumption will drop from 20,000 cubic meters per day to only 8,000. And Masdar City will eliminate the need for millions of square meters of landfill. The first residents of Masdar City will be the students and faculty of the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MI). MI is a graduate-level university specializing in alternative energy and environmental technologies and is a collaboration between Masdar and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MI will ensure a ready supply of highly skilled graduates to meet the growing demand within the clean technology and sustainable energy sectors. Shifting from Oil to Renewable Energy UAE is a federation of seven emirates, or federal states, located in the southeast Arabian Peninsula. Abu Dhabi, the capital of UAE, has a rapidly growing economy, due largely to the emirate’s vast oil reserves: Abu Dhabi is estimated to hold approximately 9 percent of the world’s crude oil reserves. Despite its vast hydrocarbon resources, Abu Dhabi has adopted a progressive approach to its economic growth. The emirate is committed to diversifying its economy away from oil, ensuring the long-term development and prosperity of GIS Helps Ensure that Masdar City Meets Its Carbon-Neutral, Zero-Waste Goals the country. As a worldwide leader in the energy markets, the emirate believes it is well placed to invest its knowledge and financial resources in the world’s future energy markets—renewable energy. So in April 2006, the Abu Dhabi government established Masdar. Through its portfolio of projects that includes carbon monetization, clean technology investments, and renewable utilities projects—both in Abu Dhabi and abroad—the company is contributing to the global effort of mitigating climate change. In this way, Masdar plays a key role in the development of Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy sector, driving continual innovation and commercialization of clean and sustainable energy technologies. Masdar’s progress since its development has been significant. The company has established partnerships and large-scale renewable energy programs around the world. And as a further sign of Abu Dhabi’s advancement in the alternative energy space, UAE was recently successful in its bid to host the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Association, against strong European competition, in Masdar City. CH2M HILL, an Esri Business Partner and a leader in full-service engineering and consulting based in Colorado, was chosen as a leading partner for the Masdar City design/build project. CH2M HILL had used Esri technology on many projects in the past and knew ArcGIS was the solution necessary to manage and analyze information throughout the city’s life cycle. Lean, Green City Planning “GIS is imperative in managing the overall spatial information necessary for designing, building, and operating Masdar City,” says Derek Gliddon, GIS manager, Property Development Unit, Masdar. For the city to meet its challenging goals, CH2M HILL carefully considered the geography of the area: sun angles, wind patterns, street widths, and building density and height. The orientation of buildings on a diagonal grid to provide maximum natural shading was modeled in ArcGIS. To understand all the variables and communicate effectively during the project, the company used a geodatabase that enforces use of a single, shared coordinate system across the project. A common basemap was created to support planning, design, and construction of the city, with the foresight that the city would also be maintained and operated using the same data. “Building a city like this has never been done before. And GIS is proving to be an absolutely critical tool,” says Shannon McElvaney, information solutions consultant, CH2M HILL. Data layers contained in the geodatabase include information such as transportation, vegetation, drainage, structures, boundaries, elevation, biodiversity, buildings, and utilities, as well as terrain elevation, bathymetric data, and remotely sensed imagery. Information from tabular databases is incorporated into the map layers, as well as GPS coordinates and georeferenced photographs. All the construction-related information, including cost, schedule, and carbon tracking data, is tied together by location, making it more accurate and efficient to use. The resulting information is available companywide. ArcGIS Server was recently deployed and will enable the more than 100 organizations involved in developing Masdar City to access maps, data, and analytic services, thus reducing problems of multiple data versions in circulation. A sophisticated Web browser-based virtual city visualization and navigation tool uses master plan data from the geodatabase and links to the program scheduling software. This tool is used to visualize the construction of the city over time. Construction managers can navigate anywhere in the city; “play” the project timeline; and identify spatiotemporal clashes, accessibility problems, and other logistical issues. On a fast-paced, high-density development, these issues are very important. Information can be searched using spatial criteria and viewed on easily readable thematic maps. Using GIS to visualize the massive amounts of data makes communicating about the project easier. Optimized Facility Placement ArcGIS introduced the spatial analysis and modeling necessary for the most efficient placement of facilities at the city. Water and sewage treatment plants, recycling centers, a solar farm, geothermal wells, and plantations of various tree species were placed using traditional planning principles modeled with ArcGIS. Questions—Is there enough physical space available? How much are the buildings shading each other? How much space is needed between a facility and the residents?— are modeled and the best answer chosen through GIS. McElvaney cites a problem that was quickly resolved when line work from one building was off by 30 centimeters from the previous line work. Having access to all the data and visualizing it with GIS allowed catching the mistake: “A mistake like that could be very time and cost intensive Staff members at the City of Masdar use GIS to model building information throughout the life cycle of the project.