The development of national standards for large-scale Geospatial Data: Utilities
The standards process
For standards to be adopted, it is imperative that they be useful and available. Part of ensuring
that this happens is to gain consensus from the broadest community of potential users.
During the development of the Utilities Standard, the FWG has (and is continuing to) seek input
and consult with potential users of this standard.7 Members of this working group, from both the
public and the private sector, have solicited direct feedback from the utilities industry and its
constituents. This included meetings with long-time industry practitioners, such as
Commonwealth Gas Company in Massachusetts; meetings with groups such as the Pennsylvania
Mapping and Geographic Information Consortium (PAMAGIC); and, meetings with utility
industry professional societies, such as AM/FM International.
The Utilities Project Team, under the guidance of the FWG developed the subject standard.
Much of the utilities system information contained in this standard was extracted from the Tri-Services
Spatial Data Standards (TSSDS). During the development process, the project team
examined the information and structure of the TSSDS and decided to use only the logical data
model (feature, attribute, domain information).
The project team decided that the physical data model contained in the TSSDS, which supports
specific implementations (i.e., generates feature schemas for a number of common relational
GIS/CADD systems), was inappropriate for an NSDI standard. Also, the Utilities Project Team
revised the initial feature, attribute, domain information from the TSSDS. For example, common
names were added to each of the attribute codes extracted from the TSSDS. Many of the
revisions made for this Utilities Standard will also be incorporated into the next version of the
TSSDS.
The Utilities Project Team had participants from Federal agencies, professional societies, and
local governments, and private industry. Specifically the following organizations were
significantly involved in the development of this standard: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers;
American Public Works Association; Environmental Protection Agency; and, Applied
Geographies, Inc. (AGI).
Applicability of the standard
The Utilities Standard is applicable for any system that captures or uses geospatial data about
utility systems. The utility system components addressed in this standard include: electrical
monitoring and control, electrical distribution, fuel distribution, industrial waste collection,
natural gas distribution, storm drainage collection, wastewater collection, water, and heating and
cooling.
The goal of the Utilities Standard is to support large-scale (> 1: 10,000), intracity applications for
utility systems, including life-cycle management. For example, this standard is applicable to the
natural gas distribution system for a multiple-building manufacturing complex, or to the
management/maintenance of a private/public water distribution system.
The Utilities Standard specifies the names, definitions and domains for utility system
components that can be geospatially depicted as feature types and their non-graphical attributes.
It is classified as a “Data Content Standard” in the FGDC Standards Reference Model.
Data content standards provide the semantic definitions for a set of real world spatial phenomena
of significance to a community, such as the utility industry.g Content standards may be
organized and presented in a specified logical data model, such as an entity-relationship model
using Integrated Definition (IDEF) techniques. IDEF is the name given to a family of over 30
graphical modeling techniques, including techniques used for describing business processes or
activities for reengineering a function. These techniques were used extensively on the TSSDS,
to validate the logic of the data model. This is another reason why they represented a solid
foundation for the FWG’s development of a Utilities Standard.
The scope of the standard currently does not include telecommunications and alarm systems. At
present this standard may not contain all the feature types necessary to model long distance
utilities networks that stretch over long distances and between cities, and is not intended to
describe utility systems located inside of buildings.
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