Migrating to an enterprise GIS
Ted MacKinnon
BC Hydro 6911 Southpoint Drive, loth floor Bumaby, B.C. V3N 4X8
Robert Wong
Westech Information Systems Inc. 6911
Southpoint Drive, 10th floor Bumaby, B.C. V3N 4X8
Abstract
After spending over $30 million dollars on developing an AM/FM system for electric distribution, BC
Hydro is looking into expanding their mature production system to an Enterprise GIS. The new Enterprise
GIS would address corporate and different Strategic Business Units (SBU) business requirements. The
proposed system has to deal with different hardware/sofhvare platforms, as well as different land base,
spatial data standards and system interfaces. This paper presents the approach that BC Hydro followed to
migrate to an Enterprise GIS.
At time of writing, the Enterprise GIS Prototype is in the early development stage. A data translator has
been set up and data from a selected geographic area is being tested. The results to March, 1997 from the
Prototype Project will be presented at the AIWFM cofierence.
Background
British Columbia (B.C.) is the third largest province in Canada. It is located on the Pacific west coast,
north of Washington state. It covers a territory of 948,900 square kilometres. By comparison, this is 2.5
times as large as Japan or 4 times as large as Great Britain. In rough figures the area of B.C. consists of
60?4.forested lan~ 357. barren alpine tundra, snowfields and glaciers, 4% lakes, rivers and streams and
0.594.urban and farm land. B.C. has a population of 3.85 million.
BC Hydro is the 3rd largest electric utility in Canada. It is responsible for the generation, transmission and
distribution of electricity in B.C. It serves over 1.4 million customers in the province.
In the early 1980’s BC Hydro had a need for faster updates of their many paper map products. This led to
the exploration of various Computer Assisted Mapping systems. After examining several systems that
were available in the marketplace, IBM’s Geographic Facilities Information System (GFIS) was selected to
provide automatic mapping/facilities management of BC Hydro’s electric distribution system. The initial
prototype was one municipality (Bumaby) and it operated on a single workstation.
BC Hydro now has a mature production AIWFM system that supports data conversion, quality
assurance/quality control, mapping, facility planning, work order design and integration with their Pole
Management System, and Work Management System. The AM/FM system is used by more than 350
service pkumers/engineers/work order staff. There are over 250 workstations throughout the province
connected with 19.2 Kb and 56Kb lines, as well as 10 workstations connected to a T 1 Metropolitan Area
Network.
In 1995 BC Hydro was re-organized to better position itself for a de-regulated marketplace. This brought
Transmission and Distribution (T&D) together into one Business Unit increasing the need to have a
common GIS that would meet T&D needs, at least. The 51,500 km of distribution primary is in the GFIS
database but a GIS is needed to help manage the 18,000 km of transmission line right of way. The GFIS
land base was only entered for areas in which there was distribution plant and there is only about a 15%
overlap of land coverage between transmission and distribution lines. This will require considerably more
land coverage to include transmission.
The Survey and Photogammetry Department has had projects to prepare large scale mapping of the
provincial transmission line right of ways and this data also needs to be incorporated into the Enterprise
GIS.
Needs/Opportunities
Although the existing AM/FM system has the fimctionality to support the operational needs of electric
distribution, there are areas where improvements are needed. These include:
- Does Not Address Requirements of Other Business Units
There are many groups within BC Hydro that require a spatial component to the data they already
have, or they need access to the transrnission/distribution data. The current GFIS supports many
of the needs of electric distribution but does not support those of other Business Units. Although
there is a growing amount of transmissiorddistribution digital data, there is no support system that
provides user access or analysis capability for this information.
- Old Technology
The life cycle of the GFIS product line is coming to an end. It is no longer being enhanced and
product support by the vendor is expected to diminish in the fhture. BC Hydro must plan for the
eventuality of no GFIS product support.
- PerformancdOperating Cost
The GFIS system is costly to operate and maintain. The product has little built in fi.mctionality.
Large programming effort is required to modifi or extend system functionality. The system
response time to users is slow. Although part of the problem is due to communication line
capacity, the other factor is inefficient handling of retrievalhefresh data.
- Infl-”ble Data Model
The GFIS product has several major deficiencies, including the following:
- limited 3-D capabilities (Z coordinates can only be stored as an attribute).
- limited polygon definition, maintenance, and analysis capabilities.
- no distributed data base capabilities.
- data model changes often require modifications to application programs and require data
base conversions.
- all data components must be input through a spatial relationship.
Solution
Given that the vendor is not going to replace or significantly enhance the GFIS products, BC Hydro wanted
to protect their current investment by migrating the existing system functionality and data to a more
responsive, fictional and cost effective environment. In addition, BC Hydro wanted to take a more
enterprise approach to GIS. Instead of a replacement platform for their electric distribution system, the
requirement is for a platform that meets many internal business needs (e.g. Distribution, Transmission,
Properties, Environment, Aboriginal, Taxation, Power Supply, Customer Services, etc.) and enables easier
ties to external agencies.
An enterprise GIS study was commissioned by the office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) in 1994.
The study concluded that an enterprise-wide approach will be cost effective. The alternative is the ad hoc
growth of applications and data bases with minimal opportunities for cost-sharing, standardization, and
long-term business effectiveness.
