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HomeMy WebLinkAboutZylient-Proposal_SLO2104-001 (2) Anna Lang Ofstad, PhD Founder, Chief Research Engineer 244 Shelter Valley Dr Kalispell, MT 59901 (406) 201-1223 anna@zylient.com Mr Daniel Clancy Procurement Officer Department of Finance City of San Luis Obispo 990 Palm Street San Luis Obispo, CA, 93401 Telephone Number: 805-781-7510 E-mail Address: dclancy@slocity.org May 12, 2021 Dear Mr Daniel Clancy, It is my pleasure to submit a bid in response to Solicitation 2104-001, “Proposals for Consultant Services for BETTER BUILDINGS SLO - Needs Assessment.” Zylient works with all levels of government to improve community resiliency, from strategic policy planning to evaluation of the built environment. We are focused on closing the gap between technology and the needs of planners, decision makers, and emergency managers. We have spent the last 3 years working to automate the collection of detailed building inventories using street level and aerial/satellite imagery. We utilize advanced image processing and artificial intelligence to extract and aggregate existing conditions across a community of any size. Our data repository can be integrated with other data platforms, such as energy metering, to collate and prioritize building assessments. My training is in earthquake engineering with postdoctoral work in remote sensing. I serve on FEMA’s National Advisory Council and several professional committees for resiliency of the built environment. I’m also a proud Mustang! While our approach to this proposal is unique, we believe we are uniquely positioned to provide the foundational data needed to meet SLO’s goal of a carbon neutral community by 2035. Sincerely, Anna Lang Ofstad, PhD Enhanced Building Inventory Collection 2 Enhanced Building Inventory Collection Proposal for Consultant Services for BETTER BUILDINGS SLO - Needs Assessment Solicitation #2104-001 Approach to the Work Communities across the United States struggle to implement their planning strategies in the absence of robust information about their existing built environments. Building inventory data are fundamental to assessing energy consumption, disaster risk, housing needs, and transportation and urban planning. Acquiring these data is the critical first step and essential background as decision-makers strive to understand existing conditions, vulnerabilities, and needs in their communities. Given today’s technological capabilities, acquisition of individual building features is not only possible, but directly facilitates outreach, targeted policy development and retrofit implementation to support and realize community-based objectives. The current gap is largely technological. Collecting building inventory data has historically required significant manual data collection by experts on the ground. These methods are fundamentally not scalable. Even when inventories are collected, the data are difficult to digest, not maintained, and lack integration across departments. A fundamental lack of standardization in data architecture, design, or plan prohibits the preservation and utility of the information to help communities assess and respond to local and widespread risks. We are proposing a comprehensive building inventory collection method implemented across San Luis Obispo to bridge this gap, and not limited to select neighborhoods or representative buildings. Such an inventory will serve as a resource for SLO to achieve energy goals. The building features we foresee needed to support energy objectives include:  Building usage/occupancy (residential, commercial)  Building materials (siding, roofing)  Building geometry (elevation, square footage, stories)  Structural (structural system, construction era)  Vulnerabilities or mitigation status (construction era) To obtain these data, we proposed to (1) build upon existing inventory data provided by the City and County and energy utilities, 2) build custom AI-network to collect building characteristics and architectural features from street level and aerial/satellite imagery needed to better capture energy efficiency, and 3) create a data repository of standardized, high resolution building inventory data to support subsequent project phases, including prioritization of buildings for retrofit. Project Overview Communities need to automate the collection and aggregation of individual building characteristics in large urban areas using the latest advancements in remote sensing, image processing, and artificial intelligence. We will develop an integrated web-based platform to access, map, and work with these data, facilitating decision support for community-level actions. This platform will provide a tool to Our method to obtain and explore high resolution building inventories offers municipal planners and disaster reduction officials the first comprehensive tool to collect, aggregate, assess, visualize, communicate, and manage building inventories in their communities. Enhanced Building Inventory Collection 3 extract, identify, assess, aggregate, and present robust building inventory data on an accessible platform designed to inform decision making for disaster resilience and community planning. 1. Technical Objective: Combine legacy and novel inventory data of every building in San Luis Obispo with a known address, subject to available imagery. 2. Policy Objective: Support policy development and energy retrofit efforts with a partner organization with expertise in community energy benchmarking. 3. Dissemination and Technical Transfer Objective: Develop an intuitive platform to explore and access building inventory data and community metrics. Approach to Building Inventory Collection We will establish a framework approach for inventory collection, aggregation, and decision support. The purpose of our approach is not simply to execute new technologies to extract building features, but is also focused on the communication of inventory data to directly facilitate disaster resilience efforts of officials. Overview of our processes: ingest list of every address, obtain street level imagery and apply proprietary image detection and cropping, ingest in map-based platform for data query. Aim 1 - Develop Inventory To define the platform specifications and methods based on the needs of end users, we will identify inventory data already available and define the gaps in what is required to meet their energy goals. These data will be aggregated in a custom inventory, built around taxonomy and ontology developed specifically to support integration of both legacy and novel building features. This data architecture will eventually serve as the basis for the web platform, including mapping and analysis tools. Enhanced Building Inventory Collection 4 Workflow  Work with a pilot community to identify existing inventory and community planning datasets and define information requirements to meet their resilience goals and risk analysis needs.  Interview community officials to define decision support requirements, including understanding of shortcomings with the existing data resources.  Define ontology to describe inventory characteristics and relationships between different inventory features.  Ontology will be developed with the goal of supporting inventory evaluation and examination, allowing the integration of both quantitative and qualitative building elements.  Develop a list of metadata to categorize and describe inventory and applied framework.  Design a data architecture that supports the development and maintenance of the inventory, and the mapping and analysis platform drawn from those data. Outcomes • Short report describing key functions and features of the platform, based on requirements defined by the community. • Documentation describing platform architecture, data dictionary, and corresponding databases for inventory. Aim 2 - Detect New Inventory Features with Remote Sensing and AI Subprocesses Execute advanced remote sensing and AI subprocesses to extract and integrate novel inventory data into the developed data framework. Workflow • Collect Google Street View images of buildings and apply existing Convolutional Neural Network technique to classify building use (e.g., residential, multi-family, commercial). • Build AI network to identify building features of interest. • Aggregate and assign existing and new inventory characteristics to individual buildings across an urban region. • Ensure preservation of geo-located building data in the final data architecture. Outcomes • Short report documenting the method and describing the application, including defining criteria for validation and validation results. • Visualizations of application results for key test communities. Aim 3 Build Custom Web-Based Data Access and Mapping Applications Design an interactive dashboard to access the building inventory for the pilot community, including the ability to search, filter, and download the data. The dashboard will include key decision support tools, including open-source mapping applications to support exploration of the data to drive community-level integration of the data into hazard and risk analysis, community planning, and the overlay of policy and zoning information. Object detection of Google Street View image with URM building. Enhanced Building Inventory Collection 5 Workflow • Design an interactive, user-friendly interface and mapping platform that provides intuitive access to the building inventory and key decision support. Outcomes • Designs for the web-based inventory and short report defining technical requirements and recommended specifications for future site build. • Web-based building inventory platform, live online, in prototype. Enhanced Building Inventory Collection 6 Proposal Submittal Forms The undersigned declares that she or he has carefully examined this RFP, is thoroughly familiar with its contents; is authorized to represent the proposing firm; and agrees to perform the specified work for the following cost quoted in full: Description Cost Task 1 Firm Name and Address Zylient, Inc 244 Shelter Valley Dr Kalispell, MT 59901 Contact: Anna Lang Ofstad, Founder/CEO Phone: (510) 908-3890 Signature of Authorized Representative Date: 5/12/2021 References Number of years engaged in providing the services included within the scope of the specifications under the present business name: 3 years . Describe fully the last three contracts performed by your firm that demonstrate your ability to provide the services included with the scope of the specifications. Attach additional pages if required. The City reserves the right to contact each of the references listed for additional information regarding your firm's qualifications. Reference #1 Agency Name Degenkolb Engineers Contact Name Daniel Zepeda, SE Telephone & Email 213.596.5000 ext.5014 dzepeda@degenkolb.com Enhanced Building Inventory Collection 7 Street Address 300 South Grand Avenue, Suite 3850 City, State, Zip Code Los Angeles, CA 90071-3121 Description of services provided including contract amount, when provided and project outcome Provide subcontracting support for seismic inventory of the City of Torrance (45000 buildings), including zoomed and cropped street-level images and custom AI network development for identification of seismically vulnerable building types. Contract amount: $50,000 - $80,000, Outcome: ongoing Reference #2 Agency Name Greenbelt Alliance Contact Name Sarah Cardona Telephone & Email (415) 543-6771 ext 301 scardona@greenbelt.org Street Address 312 Sutter Street, Suite 402 City, State, Zip Code San Francisco, CA 94108 Description of services provided including contract amount, when provided and project outcome Support Resilience Hotspots initiative to identify relevant metrics and data sources for the prioritization of resilience and sustainability objectives for the San Francisco Bay Area. Contract amount: pro bono Outcome: ongoing Reference #3 Agency Name Talus Analytics Contact Name Ellie Graeden, PhD/CEO Enhanced Building Inventory Collection 8 Telephone & Email 541-207-7318 egraeden@talusanalytics.com Street Address City, State, Zip Code Boulder, CO Description of services provided including contract amount, when provided and project outcome Joint development of an economic decision-making support tool for all-level government for municipal projects, consisting of a building inventory repository with value-added data analytics. Grant seeking: $250k-1+m Outcome: ongoing Current Contracts: 1. City of Torrance Contract #B2020-09 "Preparation of a seismic retrofit ordinance and to complete a survey to identify potentially seismically vulnerable buildings." Subcontracting support to Degenkolb Engineers - ongoing 2. Montana Department of Emergency Services DMA2020-0026 Hazardous Material Planning PI/Prime contractor – completed 3. Virginia Department of Emergency Services IFLOWS Assessment, Diagnosis and Strategic Design PI/pass-through to ASG (prime) - completed Statement of Past Contract Disqualifications The proposer shall state whether it or any of its officers or employees who have a proprietary interest in it, has ever been disqualified, removed, or otherwise prevented from bidding on, or completing a federal, state, or local government project because of the violation of law, a safety regulation, or for any other reason, including but not limited to financial difficulties, project delays, or disputes regarding work or product quality, and if so to explain the circumstances. Do you have any disqualification as described in the above paragraph to declare? NO Executed on 5/12/2021 at ___Kalispell, Montana________________________ under penalty of perjury of the laws of the State of California, that the foregoing is true and correct. Enhanced Building Inventory Collection 9 __ ____________________ Signature of Authorized Proposer Representative Enhanced Building Inventory Collection 10 Insurance Documents