Enabling Operational Risk Assessment by Delivering Single Version of the Truth (IAR) – GIS Foundation Project
Shahid Khan
Delivery Manager
Tata Consultancy Services
India
Shahid.khan@tcs.com
Abstract
With the growing complexity of operating and managing ever-expanding networks and related assets, utility companies have acknowledged Geography Information System (GIS) as a critical component of its IT infrastructure. Competition and ambition for the winning edge being a standard across all organizations worldwide, the utility companies are no exception to the rule. With stringent regulatory requirements for Water Utility companies, it is becoming mandatory for them to employ hydraulic modelling for risk assessment. Water utilities in UK are fined huge sums in the range of millions of pounds each year, since they are not able to fulfill their regulatory obligations. It has also become mandatory for utilities in the UK to adopt the new mapping background product from Ordnance Survey (OS). This product OSMM (OS Master Map) provides users with a much more detailed and interactive picture of the background maps. Such facts lead to conclude that a requirement of an enterprise solution with GIS at its heart is becoming essential for the utility companies.
Geographic Information System Foundation (GISF) is a strategic initiative from Thames Water, the largest water utility in UK, which provides a solution for some of the key challenges being faced by them. The aggressive timelines and technical complexities made GISF all the more challenging. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (TCS), however, successfully implemented one of UK’s largest ESRI (Environmental Science Research Institute) implementation in utility space in just 10 months. An Integrated Asset Repository (IAR), which consolidated 23 disparate databases, was created with migration of approximately 8 million assets. GISF has helped Thames Water to achieve its regulatory requirements from Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) and also implement the OSMM. GISF has been rolled out to a user base of more than 2500 consisting of View, Update/Edit, and Network Modeling users. GISF brings to Thames, a unique experience and marks the beginning of GIS centric databases as enterprise solutions for Utilities.
Introduction
GISF project is the largest ESRI GIS implementation project to be carried out in the UK. Meeting the aggressive timelines to implement the new ESRI products in a very short timeframe helped Thames Water get two years ahead of the competition. Thames Water now has more advanced GIS technology than any other water and sewage company, making it the industry leader in this area. The project will affect approximately 3000 employees across the company working in a variety of business areas including Clean and Waste Water Operations, Water Quality, Customer Services, Technical Information, Property, Engineering, Asset and VMR (Victoria Mains Replacement). The project will introduce advance software that will improve the client’s ability to capture, display, manage and analyse its geographically referenced information
Background
Thames Water is UK’s largest water company, with more than 13 million customers. It manages 20,000 miles of water mains, 100 water treatment works, 40,000 miles of sewers and 351 sewage treatment works. To enhance customer service and gain competitive advantage, Thames Water was planning significant investment in its clean and waste water networks – one of the biggest investment programmes on record in the utilities sector. To this end, Thames Water needed a single repository for all geo-referenced asset data across the company. This would provide a complete spatial representation of Thames Water’s network and property assets, acting as a single point of control across all business processes and systems.
For many years, Thames Water operated a complex GIS environment - 23 applications and databases from multiple vendors. The existing landscape was heavily dependent on the legacy systems built around DataMaster, the prime custodian of Thames Water network asset data – both Clean and Waste Water networks - and the OS Landline Data. GIS architecture connecting the legacy GIS systems with other applications was not aligned with the strategic integration principles adopted by Thames Water.
Some of the issues included the following:
Infrastructure costs: Incremental infrastructure costs made it too expensive to give most employees GIS access, making it difficult to access relevant information about network assets.
Bespoke Development Approach: Thames Water asset information was developed over a period of time with more and more functionalities getting added to the application. However this has resulted in a situation wherein every new requirement spawns a new system/sub-system.
Multiple Databases: Thames Water asset information was stored in multiple databases with varying support for vector and raster data.
Multiple Applications: The existing GIS landscape lacks a single GIS that would provide all the functionalities, which are being provided by multiple systems. This has resulted in a large number of sub-systems resulting in high maintenance costs.
Objectives
Business objectives
Meet DWI regulatory requirements on asset and risk.
Provide wider access to ESRI GIS applications for employees.
Reduce operational costs.
Provide a complete spatial representation of Thames Water’s network and property assets, acting as a single point of control across all business processes and systems.
Simplify IT support requirements and avoid using unsupported software.
Support future plans such as the integration with SAP based ERP systems.
Technical objectives
Design a flexible architecture capable of easy integration.
Consolidate 23 different systems to an Oracle Spatial Database providing a single repository.
Deploy the ESRI ArcGIS suite of products to rationalize the GIS application landscape using off-the-shelf products including ArcMap, ArcEditor, ArcGIS Server and MWHSoft Infowater.
Deploy a spatial repository capable of hosting OSMM and enabling the retirement of costly and unsupported OS Landline.
System Overview
The project will deliver solutions to address the following key areas of capability:
Web – Web-based View and Analysis system to access Thames Water’s geo-referenced assets across Thames Water Utility Ltd. and other authorised external parties.
Desktop - Only gateway to update the central database (IAR) and perform the various GIS analysis activities.
Tracing - Ability to trace the Clean and Waste Water Networks.
Network Modelling – Industry leading solution ‘Infowater’ to provide an enhanced capability to hydraulically assess the affect of disruptive activities on Thames Water’s network.
IAR – Consolidating data from 23 databases into a single Integrated Asset Repository (IAR).
Architecture
Solution provides a complete GIS solution using the product range of ESRI and Miner & Miner’s ArcFM. TCS had made use of the out-of-box features as well as customisation of the products. The Web-based viewer has been developed from scratch to provide a thin client to a large number of Thames Water users. Web and desktop applications directly interact with the single integrated asset repository using ESRI ArcGIS server. The diagram (figure 1) gives an architectural overview of the GISF project
Figure 1: Architectural Overview of the GISF Project
Web Application
An integrated Web-based mapping tool that allows the users to view and trace the location of Thames Water assets laid over the OSMM. It also provides Web-based mapping services for visualization, and spatial analysis. A majority of GIS users within the business will require this capability, which will be accessed via a 'Mapping' section of the Thames Water Portal. Web-based system had been developed using ESRI ArcGIS Server developer APIs with extension ArcFM Server.
Desktop Application
Desktop client provides the complete enterprise solution for editing, modeling, maintenance and management of Thames Water Clean Water and Waste Water asset information. This application will make use of the data stored in a customized version of ArcFM Clean Water and Waste Water data model in the IAR and a set of sophisticated tools to provide comprehensive enterprise asset data management. The application will allow certain designated users to maintain the IAR via additions, deletions and amendments. This functionality is provided by customisation of ESRI ArcEditor, and Miner & Miner ArcFM product suite, which will replace the edit capabilities of the current legacy GIS applications. It provides Centralized Editing accessed via Citrix. Users will include anyone who is currently using Datamaster and most employees that have permission to amend GIS information at present. The users will be from Technical
Information, Developer Services and Thames Water Property business areas. Contractors on the distributed editing will also receive an offline version of the Update capabilities.
Tracing
Tracing Application will allow specialist users to trace Thames Water’s Clean and Waste Networks. It will replace the existing Operational Support Tool. Users will include any employee who is required to trace the Thames Water network. The business areas that will require these capabilities include Clean Water Operations, Waste Water Operations, Clean and Waste Water Quality and Customer Centre.
Network Modelling
This module was designed to facilitate all aspects of network model construction, simulation, results presentation and map generation. Network Modelling will be a thick client and will be used to view, edit and perform hydraulic modelling of the Thames Water Clean Water assets for the modelling community. The modelling user community comprises of about 250 users. Clean Water Operations, Water Quality and the Network Analysis Group are among the business areas that will be receiving these capabilities.
Benefits to Client
Tangible benefits
By consolidating 23 GIS systems to a single platform based on off-the-shelf products, the software licensing, maintenance and support costs have been reduced. As a result, per-user costs have been reduced to a level where it has become practical for Thames Water to roll out GIS access to more than 2,500 users across the organisation – from senior management to call centre staff and field engineering teams. Employees can access the data they need much more easily, which improves productivity and promotes rapid customer service.
With a single asset repository for all network and boundary data, including external sources, such as environmental data; Thames Water now has access to a ‘single version of the truth’. This makes a significant difference to service quality. For example, the company can see at a glance if there are any environmental issues surrounding a proposed intervention on a certain asset. All the relevant factors are known before work begins, and any risks can be modelled, assessed and mitigated.
The practical difficulties of integrating Thames Water’s business-critical upcoming SAP solution with the previous GIS infrastructure would have been very challenging, so the new solution is viewed within Thames Water as a vital building block in its IT strategy.
Intangible benefits
Currency, completeness and the correctness of spatial data are fundamental to the success of any GIS implementation. TCS has successfully met the challenge of correctly and completely migrating the data into the new unified repository and also implemented a set of rules to ensure that the data quality is maintained on a continuous basis.
The system is accessible from any standard PC, or even from a mobile device – allowing field engineers and external contractors to view and edit the corporate GIS database whilst working remotely. This has reduced the update cycle of regular asset data changes. Consequently, when a customer calls to report a problem, contact centre staff can quickly view the local infrastructure, identify area-related incidents and ensure a rapid response. The result of this pervasive approach to GIS access is a faster response to network related incidents and reduced risk of service disruption or quality control issues, thereby delivering better service to customers.
Challenges Faced & Lessons Learnt
Due to the commitments that Thames Water had made to the regulators, and the scheduled withdrawal of Ordnance Survey’s Landline dataset, the project had a hard-stop deadline of September 2008. This meant that this project delivery had to be achieved in 10 months. The project was delivered within time and budget set by Thames Water. As a frame of reference, GIS implementations of this scale typically take much longer to implement.