Geospatial Technology Spearheads System Preparedness in Motown
By Mike Anderson and Roy Brandon
Geospatial technology has arrived, but the implications of its use are not yet fully understood. The geospatial approach can help managers solve problems in innovative ways by tapping into a company's rich data network, designed according to their business needs. By mapping the business environment, employees can apply their physical understanding of how the business operates in a logical and intuitive way.
Generally, data systems are designed and presented in an application-by-application approach, which reduces the use of information simply because it does not conform to human nature. Managers and other staff are expected to learn and stay proficient in multiple software packages. Most commonly, system use becomes limited to only repetitive and vital functions; most of the software system capability and benefits are accessed only marginally.
Today, managers can build a data network that matches their business objectives. Data can be tied directly to the assets being managed. Control system screens in every workstation in a water treatment facility can have the capability to access data directly attributed to the asset in view.
For example, an operator in a busy control room gets an alarm from the chlorine treatment facility. The operator points and clicks his mouse on the facility, finding one of four chlorinators is off-line. The operator clicks on the down chlorinator and a pop-up dialog box provides a menu. Part of the menu is a process for troubleshooting the chlorinator. After following the procedures the operator pinpoints the problem as a broken diaphragm and needs to write a work order. Returning to the drop down menu the operator clicks on work order and a screen, part of the computerized maintenance management system, is available with the problem code, asset number and other relevant data already entered making writing the work order a snap.
Once completed, the work order is automatically routed to maintenance for action. Now maintenance can review the same status of the chlorinator, get drawings, safety instructions, and material requirements for correcting the problem without travelling to the work site.
Does this seem like a distant technology? It's not. The following case study illustrates a real situation in which geospatial technology is used to monitor multiple sites within a large, complex water and wastewater utility in the Midwest.
Y2K preparations
Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) serves populations of more than 4 million with water and 3 million with wastewater. To prevent any service disruptions during the advent of the new millennium, the DWSD planned its offensive strategy along the industry standard outlined by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The department did not possess the resources necessary to perform the Y2K preparations, so it turned to Westin Engineering to perform Y2K preparations for its wastewater treatment plant and wastewater collection system.
Approaching 100 percent Y2K readiness in mid-December, DWSD and Westin embarked on the development and implementation of a GIS-enabled Y2K Electronic Messaging Board to display the status of its critical water and wastewater facilities. After a brief design session, an integrated GIS/RDBMS (relational database management system) client-server system was selected to provide the required functionality for the four Emergency Coordination Centers (ECC) and the main Emergency Operation Center (EOC). ArcView software from Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) provided the GIS or geographic information system component, and, Oracle the RDBMS. Due to time limitations, the principles of rapid application development (RAD) were employed in order to complete the system in time for Y2K. Development and implementation by the DWSD/Westin team took only two weeks.
Working from templates derived in the DWSD Y2K Communications and Coordination Plan, the team began developing the ECC input screens using PowerBuilder from Sybase Corporation. The input screens were individualized for system status input from the various ECCs and served as the data loaders for their related Oracle database tables. Operators derived the system status inputs from SCADA readings, other sensing equipment and field reporting.
The team determined that three levels of system status were necessary to monitor the system:
This decision system meant that trained operators had to accumulate many details about a site (i.e. power, communications, security, safety, etc.) and determine if any anomalies in readings warranted a yellow or red status. For example, a single pump off-line at a pumping station with multiple pumps may warrant a yellow status rather than red because the pumping station would remain in overall operation. Armed with this responsibility, trained operators completed the ECC input screens on laptop computers at regular intervals or when new system status information became available. The data from the ECC input screens was then automatically transferred from the laptop computers via the DWSD LAN/WAN to the server located at the EOC. From here, the water and wastewater system status information was transferred for display through the GIS.
Identifying Critical Sites
Design and development began on the GIS display of the critical sites and water and wastewater system status while work continued on the ECC input screens. An LCD projector display provided supervisory and management personnel at the operations center with a geographic view of the locations of the water and wastewater critical sites. The GIS water and wastewater Critical Site Status Maps allowed a rapid understanding of the status of individual sites, their physical relationships to one another, and thus the overall status of the DWSD systems.
The critical sites with corresponding primary water and sewer mains were digitized on a simplified base map of the DWSD service territory displaying country, state, city and township boundaries. Water and wastewater critical sites were placed in separate views within the GIS to simplify the displays and prevent confusion. A toggle button allowed the operators to switch between the Water and Wastewater Status Maps. Various symbol types distinguish the 59 critical sites.
Due to the need for a continuously updated, rapid display of the critical site status, a customized script was written in Avenue (ArcView's programming language) to connect to the Oracle database and perform a continuous loop query of its critical sites' tables every 30 seconds. The GIS then would redisplay the latest critical site status information on the electronic map. To enhance the speed of the redisplay, longitude/latitude (x,y) coordinates were added to the critical site records in the Oracle tables thus enabling the GIS to use this location information to refresh only the graphics layer containing the critical site symbols - not the background map. Redisplay speed was significantly increased using this methodology.
All the Y2K preparedness worked beyond expectations, DWSD experienced no "red" status conditions at its critical sites and only a few "yellow" status displays, which had no impact on system operations. The GIS Y2K Electronic Messaging Board allowed supervisors and managers to recognize any patterns to the warning displays and upstream/downstream system impacts.
Breaking the GIS Stereotype
Utilities have traditionally looked upon GIS as a monolithic information system requiring massive resources and time to implement. Systems of this nature are essential for utilities and offer a wide variety of long-term benefits; however, today's competitive business climate demands faster implementation of technology for more immediate benefits. The rapid development of the DWSD GIS Y2K Electronic Messaging Board demonstrates that sophisticated GIS applications involving different technologies can be developed and implemented rapidly. These can be used to address quickly the business and operations needs of a utility with the power of spatial display and analysis. And, RAD GIS can be developed in parallel with the more traditional, large-scale GIS implementations and designed to share information and complement one another.
Recognizing where and how to apply RAD GIS requires looking at problems with a spatial eye to see where the linking of data to locations can synthesize and organize information to provide solutions. These new spatial views provide the synergy to solve problems in innovative ways and empower users with new knowledge and skills to bring newfound value to the organization.
About the Authors:
Michael Anderson is a Senior GIS Consultant and Group Leader with Westin; Roy Brandon is Westin's Vice President, Maintenance Consulting. Both can be reached at Westin's Sacramento headquarters office at via e-mail ([email protected] for Michael Anderson, or [email protected] for Roy Brandon).