The Association of Geographical Information (AGI) conference and associated
exhibition is by far the largest event of its kind outside the United States
the AGI now boasts more than 1,000 members. The winning of the award for
best practical application of geographical information systems (GIS), is an
achievement that North West Water is justly proud of.
Looking more closely at some of the features of the systems at North West
Water, it is possible to see the benefits that integrated systems bring to
the business. For example the customer contact process relies on making a
large amount of information available to customer services representatives
when they need to answer specific queries from customers. Much of the
information is geographic in nature and maps are used to supplement their
local knowledge. Once a customer has been identified within the customer
contact system, a map of their local area can be displayed while the
customer is on the phone. This information needs to be displayed very
quickly to prevent the customer having to wait. Maps provide access to large
amounts of information such as current problems in the area, current work in
the area and planned interruptions to supply.
Of particular interest is the ability of the system to detect events. Since
every address has been located geographically, along with its relationship
to one of over 2,000 district meter areas (DMAs) the system is able to keep
track of the number of calls received from each DMA. When the system
determines that the number of calls is outside normal parameters it
automatically raises an alarm in the operational control centre for further
investigation. Operations controllers can view the precise location of the
call and any other calls from the area and along with telemetry information
and with a possible call to the field, determines the cause of the problem.
The results of the investigations are posted on an electronic bulletin board
that can be viewed by the staff in contact centre. The customer contact
staff are prompted to view the appropriate bulletin any time a further call
is received from a property within the DMA or its compliance zone. In this
way customers are kept fully informed of the problem and what actions are
being taken to resolve the problem. During the work scheduling process maps
can be accessed showing the work area. This enables the scheduler to view
work activity in the area and select work that is geographically close.
The 200 field inspectors now have a fully integrated mobile version of work
management and GIS on a laptop computer. Each morning a list of inspections
is downloaded to the laptop. The information provided includes details of
the reported problem and the location including map references. Each night
these laptops are downloaded directly into to main work management system
with the results of the inspection.
When it comes to planning interruptions to supply, the GIS is used to
identify the affected customers from boundaries provided from the inspectors
laptop and pass the results to the customer and work management
applications. When identifying affected customers the system recognises and
reports on customers that have been defined as sensitive as for example a
dialysis patient. This ensures that sensitive customers are given additional
warning of an interruption to supply.
Each night some 1500-work orders are printed at the depots for the gangs to
carry out work. Each work instruction now carries a mains record plot. The
process of producing the plots is totally automatic thanks to the integrated
GIS. Gangs are now better informed and have a useful map to mark up the
changes to the network.
The above is just a flavour of the benefits that North West Water is gaining
from its GIS, however things like network modelling, DMA design, new scheme
design and network optimisation are all areas where digital data plays a
significant roll in improved performance.
With the projects successful completion North West Water can now reflect on
the lessons learned. North West Water has been nothing less than a pioneer
in having demonstrated at sufficient scale the viability of GIS at the
enterprise level.
As a result of the utilities long term commitment, GIS can no longer seen as
a funny piece of technology that sits out on its own it has been embedded
in standard database technologies. With over 1000 users of digital data over
4 platforms the dream of GIS as a mechanism for the maintenance and
distribution of geographic data across the whole of the business has become
a reality.
© Faversham House Ltd 2023 edie news articles may be copied or forwarded for individual use only. No other reproduction or distribution is permitted without prior written consent.
Please login or Register to leave a comment.