Posted by Bilal Karim, Lead Geoweb Analyst, MyHEAT
Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Bilal Karim, Lead Geoweb Analyst for MyHEAT, a commercial energy mapping product spun off the HEAT research project at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. See how other forward-thinking organizations are investing in mapping technology and transforming their business: Maps are Going Google.

If you get winter temperatures around -20°F, like we do in Calgary, keeping your house warm while saving energy — and reducing heating costs — is a high priority. As a former master’s degree candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of Calgary, I worked with Dr. Geoffrey J. Hay, who came up with the idea of quantifying and visualizing the waste heat escaping from homes, communities, and cities in an effort to improve urban energy efficiency. If residents could click on a map and see the inefficient areas of their homes, they could take steps to lock heat inside the house, where it belongs. And so the Heat Energy Assessment Technologies (HEAT) project was born.

Our research team brainstormed how to use detailed airborne thermal imagery to map the energy efficiency of Calgary homes. We developed a number of multi-scale maps and metrics, including “HEAT Scores” which we assign to houses and neighborhoods so residents can compare their homes’ energy efficiency to their neighbors’. To showcase these levels of detail, we implemented the Google Maps API. In particular, the Google Maps API allowed the maps to be user-friendly, included useful customization, and built on user’s prior knowledge, experience, and familiarity with the Google Maps products.
Here’s what we did:

  • We deployed custom styling using the Google Maps API to choose our own colors for the base map. The thermal maps already have many hues to indicate heat efficiency, from blue to orange to red, so we picked neutral shades of gray for the base maps to establish a visual balance.
  • We integrated code from the Google Maps Utility Library to display information to homeowners in three tabs. These tabs show residents (a) their home’s HEAT score, (b) a thermal image of the home showing “Hot Spots” where the most heat is escaping, and (c) estimated savings and reductions in greenhouse gases based on heating with different fuel types.
  • We also integrated the Google Maps Street View from the Google Maps API. The Street View images show a great amount of detail, linking our colored thermal images for each home, to allow residents to figure out where heat might be escaping – like through sliding-glass porch doors, windows, or from their roof.
  • Since we began this project, we used KML Layers to sub-divide the larger city and community maps into tiles, which helps our application load faster. However, these will soon be replaced by new additions to the Google Maps API such as GeoJSON for better performance.
  • We also invite HEAT users to upload information about their roofing materials so we could refine their HEAT scores and provide better information back into our energy models. So far, about 2,600 people have volunteered this data.
We’re currently showing 37,914 houses in 29 different communities, and plan to expand to nearly 300,000+ single-dwelling homes in Calgary. In the meantime, we’ve launched MyHEAT, a startup company that will offer commercial products to utilities and municipalities based on our HEAT project. These new products, aimed at utilities and municipalities, will also use the Google Maps API to help people stay warmer every winter.