Using mobile technology for on-site facilities monitoring
Application Development
In 1996, Colonial Gas contracted Sewall to develop the software that would automate the task of
recording leak detection survey data. The project was originally conceived as a straightforward
assembly of database files and digital mapping onto portable field computers, with data access
and management provided by specialized off-the-shelf viewing software. Sewall anticipated that
the primary development effort, and most of the cost, would be spent customizing the viewing
software and/or the data so that they would work well together. After examining the available
options, Sewall and Colonial decided to create instead a custom system from scratch, employing
Internet technology in a single computer environment. Using Microsoft's Internet ExplorerTM
and Personal Web Server--both available free with Windows 95--Sewall developed a Web site to
be run on a single-computer components were combined The application resides in part on two computers: a
HammerheadTM pen-based computer used in the field to locate services and collect data, and the central ofllce computer,
intranet. Basic HTML, scripting, and third-party ActiveX to create the final product.
Figure 1. Functional Block Diagram of Walking SurvqY Application
which hosts Colonial's Oracle database (see Figure 1). The Data Manager, the field computer portion, provides the
user an interface to control the input of survey data and the viewing of the maps which reside on the computer's hard
disk drive (see Figure 2). Using Microsoft's Internet Explorer as a host shell and operating from within this browser application, the Data
Manager is launched at the site. A third-party ActiveX component module developed by Pangaea CAD Solutions is included as a browser plug-in
to enable viewing of map files in their native format (i.e., MicroStation .dgn).
Figure 2. Mapped Location
The File Manager, the central office portion of the application provides tools for querying Colonial's survey database, downloading and uploading data, updating files, and reporting.
A self-contained application, the File Manager operates on a WindowsNVM network. Through the File Manager interface
(Figure 3), Colonial's survey team is able download data on specific services to the field computer following a query of the
interim survey database. Maps are updated via a locally licensed copy of MicroStation.
To allow the user to select the service being surveyed, a hierarchical tree control is implemented as shown in Figure 4. The top level of the tree
contains the towns; the next level contains street names within the parent town, and the bottom level contains address numbers,
on the parent street, of services not yet surveyed. When the user selects a street node, a query for the addresses belonging to that
street is submitted to the server. Because tens of thousands of addresses are often stored in the field computer's database,
populating the tree at the start of the application is usually too time consuming. This method thus saves a significant amount of
processing time and keeps the collection of nodes maintained in memory to a reasonable number.
Figure 3. File Manager Interface
To allow the user to select the
service being surveyed, a
hierarchical tree control is
implemented as shown in Figure 4. The top level of the tree
contains the towns; the next level contains street names within
the parent town, and the bottom level contains address numbers,
on the parent street, of services not yet surveyed. When the user
selects a street node, a query for the addresses belonging to that
street is submitted to the server. Because tens of thousands of
addresses are often stored in the field computer's database,
populating the tree at the start of the application is usually too
time consuming. This method thus saves a significant amount of
processing time and keeps the collection of nodes maintained in
memory to a reasonable number.
Figure 4. Hierarchical Tree ControI for Address Selection
