Telephone Exchange Information And
Planning Systems (TEIPS)
The customised package TEIPS has been developed
using the Arc/Info’s macro language (AML) for the GIS related operations and
Visual C++ for developing the user’s interface. The idea for developing the
front end in Visual C++ is its reusability even if the GIS is replaced by other
GIS. The software design follows a modular approach. The customized package has
a set of five major modules (figure 3) that perform a variety of functions like
spatial and non-spatial database organization, editing of spatial features,
generating network and routes and querying of associated information. While
designing the above modules care has been taken not to mention terminology like
points, line and polygon coverage. The telephone personnel will interact without
getting to know the underlaying GIS jargons. The modules are as
follows.
Create/Edit
This module is the very first module a
user has to interact. This module allows for creation of spatial and non-spatial
data. The users are allowed to:
- create master map, locality map, road map, pillar location map, primary
cable map using a digitizer or a mouse or keyboard
- edit an already existing map.
- import a map that has been created elsewhere in Arc/Info format.
- import a scanned map
- cleaning and building of coverages also happen in this module.
- creation of non-spatial table
- altering the structure of non -spatial table
- deleting a table.
- importing of non-spatial table from dbase format.
- cleaning and creation of topology of the coverages
Network
The Network module provides all functionality
pertaining to creation and maintainability of networks that includes bifurcating
routes also. The following are the functionality provided :
- create a network for the entire map features
- update the network of an existing network. This is useful if any updating
has been done after the network was created.
- create bifurcating routes
- delete a network/route
Information
Generation/Presentation
This module answers most of the queriesthat the
personnel of telecom department would like to ask and generate information on.
At the outset as the cursor is moved over locations of different telephone
exchanges a pop-up window gives details of telephone exchange like the number of
levels, no of pillars, primary cables, geographical area, no of subscribes etc.
The other functionality include:
- Active date
: This pertains to the pillar status in the telephone
exchange. The pillar status is updated once in a quarter. The pillar status
gives details like the total tags available in the pillar, the working tags,
waiting tags, utilized tags, percentage filled tags etc. The pillar status is
displayed based on the active date selected by the user.
- Show
: This menu queries details related to the network or route based
information like generating :
- route based on a telephone number
of the subscriber. Graphic display
depicting the route from the telephone exchange to the associated pillar is
shown on the terminal. Other information like the subscriber’s name, Address,
the associated pillar number and the corresponding address in MDF is shown in a
text window. Radio buttons are also provided if the user wants to find out the
direction from the telephone exchange to the corresponding pillar location and
for viewing the pillar boundary layout scanned map.
- Route based on a pillar number
. Similar to the above case a graphic
display depicting the route from the telephone exchange to queried pillar is
shown. The detail given in text window is the utilization status of the pillar
for the queried date. Radio button is given for directions of the route from
telephone exchange to the pillar.
- Route based on LI number
. Graphic display depicting the route of
specified lead-in cables and associated pillar/pillars are depicted as shown as
figure 4. This gives information as to how many pillars are attached to a pair
of LI from the telephone exchange to the associated pillar.
- Route based on interactive pointing
. Graphic display depicting the route
between two or more points specified interactively is shown. This gives an idea
to the telecom staff of the extensions they would like to do and how much of new
cable would have to be laid to either divert the existing telephones to a new
pillar or to give new connections to the subscribers in waiting.
- Save
: saves the graphic display for printing.
- Report
: Reports on subscriber and joints and ducts information for
various LIs could be printed.
- Print
: The saved graphic display will be printed in HPGL or plot files
Help: This menu guides a user
to operate the customized package and provides all the instructions at every
step.
Future development
This system is more of an information
retrieval system as of today. An attempt to include the planning models will be
made in future. Also as of today this is a single user system for which one
requires the core Arc/Info system which is a expensive affair. It is being
considered to workout some kind of client server kind of architecture where the
investment on the client side will be much less so that only at the head office
a full fledge GIS system will be required whereas the client side can still work
with limited GIS functionality.
Conclusion
The conceptual
framework has been worked out, implemented and is being demonstrated for this
pilot area. On completion and acceptability of the approach and implementation,
the same philosophy could be applied to other telephone exchanges under the
Ahmedabad Telephone Exchange jurisdiction. This is a general case and in fact
could be adopted to any telephone exchanges were the cabling is
terrestrial.
Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank Shri
A.K.S. Gopalan, Director SAC for giving us an opportunity to work on this
project. We are grateful Shri A.R. Dasgupta, Deputy Director, SIIPA, SAC and
Shri Ashok Kumar, Principal GM, Ahmedabad Telecom during 1996 to have suggested
to take up this project for GIS application. We also thank Shri S.R.Agrawal
G.M.(West), Ahmedabad Telecom District and his staff to keep the interest alive.
We are highly indebted to Ahmedabad Telecom District to provide us the required
data and give us understanding of the working of the telecom machinery. This
project would not have seen the present day progress without the efforts of
Vasana Telephone Exchange staff Mrs. Sarla R. Sheth, Mr. N. M. Momin, Shri
W.V.Christian and Shri S.D.Parmar in preparation of the data and data entry. We
sincerely thank Shri R.K. Goel and Shri S.K. Pathan to extend their valued
suggestions during the project reviews. We thank all our colleagues at SAC and
the personnel from DOT who have taken so much pains every time to look at the
software package and give their precious feed back.