Delivering GIS to the field
Kurt A. Eggert
Wisconsin Gas Company, 626 E. Wisconsin Ave.
Milwaukee, WI 53202
Abstract
Since 1988, Wisconsin Gas has been dedicated to converting its paper based mapping
information into a GIS system. This conversion was completed in late 1995. The next step
has been to develop applications that utilize the GIS and allow access to the information
where it can be used best – In the field. The driving force behind the project of using mapping
information in the field came from the Marketing Area. As a result of a Marketing re-engineering
process the following vision resulted, “TOkeep marketing representatives in the
field provide mobile access to information which previously was only available in the
office. ” Some of the information that needed to be accessed was facility and land information
from the oi%ce based GIS system. To fulfill this vision, a PC-based field mapping application
was developed and implemented.
Introduction
Wisconsin Gas Company has over a half of a million customers spread across the state of
Wisconsin. Nearly, two-thirds of Wisconsin Gas customers are concentrated in the Southeast
area of the state encompassing the metro Milwaukee area. In the mid 1980’s Wisconsin Gas
began implementing an AM/FM GIS System. After a small pilot the Company purchased a
Mainframe based GIS system and began the process of land base and facility conversion. In
1993 the Mainframe GM vendor announced it would be discontinuing development and
support of the product. As result, Wisconsin Gas purchased a new object oriented Client
server based GIS in mid 1994 and began the conversion process from the old system to the
new. This decision to move to a new GIS system and platform proved to be a key reason why
a field based mapping system could be quickly and successfully implemented. By the end of
1995 both the data and application conversion from the old GIS system had been completed.
Also, by the end of 1995 the backlog for digitizing existing facility information for the entire
Wisconsin Gas service territory was completed.
Startup - Initial Project Requirements
The formal request from Marketing to access facility and land information from the field was
formalized in mid 1995. The timing of the request fit in well with the nearing completion of
the conversion to new GIS system. A small project team was formed in the Fall of 1995,
with a combination of staff from the Marketing area and the Systems area. The team
developed the following requirements for the project:
- Provide graphical map viewing access of facility and land information on field PCS,
- Allow the viewable mapping information to be queried to provided additional service pipe
information, customer information, and additional facility information.
November27, 1996
- The viewable map must be seamless --no map edges.
- The application must be windows based to leverage the use of existing large installed base
of laptop PCs.
- The application must integrate with the existing field based new service application
process.
- The application must provide some Redlining/Markup features.
- The facility and land information on each laptop would need to be updated quickly and
easily.
- The project had to be completed by the start the new construction season of 1996.
In addition to these fictional requirements for the application there was a very important
technical requirement. The price paid for having the luxury of the entire service territory
digitized is the large amount of disk space required to hold all the information. The disk space
used by Wisconsin Gas in the ofllce based GIS exceeds 5 gigabytes. Wisconsin Gas’s existing
installed base of laptop PC’s would continue to be used for the field based new service
application process along with the new mapping application. It was recognized that these
PC’s would require a hard drive upgrade; however, at the time the largest hard drive available
for the current laptops was a 1.2 gigabyte drive. Therefore, to be able to move our GIS data
to the field it would first have to be compressed.
Finding a Match
Considering the project requirements, the project team completed a preliminary investigation
of field based map viewing products by the end of 1995. As a result of this investigation it
was determined that most of the field mapping products could perform the basic map viewing
functions required, along with the ability to query attribute information. However, only one
field product addressed the problem of the large amount disk space required by graphical map
and attribute information. This product first pre-processed and compressed the graphical
mapping information as well as the attribute information pulled from the office based GIS.
The data is then loaded and displayed on a mobile PC. The products ability to read the
compressed data also provides an additional benefit -- speed, in screen draws of the map and
returning query results. Due to these benefits a contract was signed with the vendor at the
end of January 1996. The implementation date was moved back slightly to June. Essentially
this meant that in five months over 50 field employees from the Marketing area would be able
to view and query facility and land information for Wisconsin Gas’s entire service territory
from their current laptops.
Overcoming Obstacles
The Schedule
The five month time frame for the project was aggressive. During the contract negotiations
with the vendor the short time frame was questioned as being realistic. They had not worked
with a client using the GIS system Wisconsin Gas had installed. A custom translator would
have to be written in Wisconsin Gas’s GIS system to create the input graphical map and
attribute information that would be processed and compressed into their field mapping
product. Although, not having significant experience with developing applications on the
new GIS platform, the Wisconsin Gas Systems staff had begun to see the benefits of the its
723?underlying object oriented technology. For this reason, the systems staff was confident they
could write the translator in short period of time. The required translator was written, tested,
and in used in less than two weeks. That type of translator could not have been written so
quickly or worked as efficiently if Wisconsin Gas was still running its GIS under the old
Mainframe system. As mentioned in the Introduction, a key to the success of Wisconsin
Gas’s field mapping application is its current ofhce GIS system.
All the data was translated and compressed by mid May. Training occurred through the end
of May and early June. At the end of June, over 50 people from the Marketing area plus an
additional 30 people from the Construction area were using the field mapping application and
were able to view Wisconsin Gas’s entire service territory in the field.
