Using mobile technology for on-site facilities monitoring

Using mobile technology for on-site facilities monitoring

Brent Jones, PE, PLS
Vice President, Malcolm Fuller
Senior Programmer, AM/FM/GIS Services
James W. Sewall Company, 147 Center Street
Old Town, ME 04468

Terence Hickey
Manager of GIS, Colonial Gas Company
40 Market Street, Lowell, MA 01850

Background
Colonial Gas is a local distribution company (LDC) serving 153,000 customers in 24 cities and towns in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts and on Cape Cod. In 1992, Colonial Gas launched a corporate-wide initiative to automate its facilities data by converting ink-on-mylarbased maps into georeferenced digital files. To assist in the proposed implementation of an AM/FM/GIS system, Colonial Gas contracted James W. Sewall Company of Old Town, Maine, to provide aerial photography, photogrammetric mapping, and data conversion services. During the next 6 years, Sewall completed digitizing Colonial Gas's existing 1" = 400' map series, captured new aerial photography with GPS survey control, and compiled 1" = 40' base mapping of the utility's service area. The 1" = 400' maps allowed for the general placement of gas mains, valves, road edges, and main information text. The larger-scale 1" = 40' maps displayed landbase features in greater detail, such as building roof lines and street edges. Using as-built sketches and other construction documents as references, Colonial added gas facilities, including mains, services, valves, service account numbers, service descriptors, and service valves and dimensions to these facilities. Sewall then performed the data conversion.

Produced on a PC-based MicroStation CAD platform, this mapping system was designed for use by facilities maintenance and construction end users. Although limited by the lack of a database linked to the graphics, the maps formed the functional basis of many applications within the firm.

The Walkhw Survey
In 1994, Colonial Gas identified the need to streamline the procedures of the walking survey, an application still dependent upon the use of hard copy maps and paper reports. In compliance with U.S. Department of Transportation regulation CFR Title 49 ~192.723, Colonial Gas performs annual flame ionization surveys to detect gas leakage from services and fittings. Carrying a flame ionization unit (FIU) equipped with sensor nozzle, a company surveyor walks the course of the gas line, "sniffing" the ground for minute amounts of methane. An inspector, usually from a third-party contractor, records test results that are delivered to the main office for review. The regulation states that every service within an LDC'S franchise territory must be surveyed every five years if catholically protected and every three years if not. At this time approximately 85 percent of Colonial's franchise territories had been digitally compiled. Because the GIS system was not 100 percent complete, the utility had been surveying on a three-year cycle to meet or exceed this standard. Colonial will evaluate services on a five-year cycle in some of its towns after the GIS database is complete.

Within the company's two divisions, two separate methods of conducting these surveys evolved, both geographic in nature and dependent upon account information from Colonial's mainframe customer database. The two methods served the ultimate goal of recording histories and facilitating the repair of discovered leaks; however, inefficiencies existed both in the field and in the central office.

Insufficient or nonexistent information about the location of service lines in the field often required that the surveyor conduct an exhaustive sniffer sweep of the general area. What survey crews needed were accessible maps or as-built plans that clearly indicated the route of the service line. In addition, survey crews unloaded several hundred pages of paper reports for processing at the main office on a daily basis. Immediate access to data stored in digital form in a database would expedite report analysis, survey monitoring, tallying of services with detected leaks, and the development of repair crew work orders.

Genesis
At the time Colonial Gas launched its technology initiative, entitled Genesis, several new developments promised to speed the process of facilities data collection and management. The emergence of such capabilities as automated meter reading (AMR), AM/FM/GIS, distributed processing, and portable computers was critical to Colonial's decision to automate the walking survey.

AMR. The use of an automated meter reading system versus a meter reader who physically visited the site compelled Colonial to create a new method of checking the meter area and recording findings. More data needed to be captured at the time of the survey, requiring data fields that did not exist on the then-current survey forms.

AM/FM. The capability to display map views showing services in an area and their stated activity had promising potential for field use, Portable Computers. Mobile hardware was becoming more functional; and viewing software, more readily available. In addition, Colonial Gas intended to replace its Unisys Mapper mainframe by 1998 with a new system that would record and store survey data. This system needed to be sufficiently flexible to create an application using one set of data (i.e., Mapper Account Records) and to migrate the data to its eventual replacement. Flexible, Configurable Software. With the availability of more powerful software, Colonial Gas sought end-user friendly, map viewing, data entry, and retrieval tools that could collect data and then upload them to the Oracle database.

In summary, Colonial Gas decided to exploit new technologies to eliminate the inefficiencies in the walking survey. First, survey crews in the field would be equipped with small, pen-based computers with which to fill out their forms electronically. The computers would also store and display vicinity map data of the services under survey. Completed electronic forms could then be uploaded onto a database in the office, permitting office personnel to query and examine the results easily.

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

The vicinity graphical data are a depiction of the street address linked to the database in a" smart window." In the address selection process, the user can select an icon to display a map centered on the meter cell connected to the address. Tools are available to zoom and pan the area (see Figure 2).

The walking survey test results form consists of a number of multiple choice fields (Figure 5). The set of possible answers for most of the fields is small enough to allow use of radio button controls for the result selection. Other fields, for which the set of values is queried from the database, are represented as drop down menu controls, manipulated by mouse clicks. When all the fields in the survey form are filled in, a check box appears at the bottom for the user to affirm that the survey for that service has been completed. The user then submits the data in the completed survey to the database.

Fiigure 5. Walking Survey Form

System Implementation
The Walking Surveyor Assistant was implemented in early 1998. Training the walking survey crews to use the Internet user interface required only a few hours. The computer administrator, in effect an Internet server administrator, needed instruction in the maintenance of the application, however, and continued user support throughout the season.

Considering that the Walking Surveyor Assistant brought together several components of new Internet and mobile technology, few reported bugs could be traced back to the software. Only once was the application reported to" crash," which occurred when a user entered several hundred paper survey reports into the database in one sitting, a task the system was not designed to do.

One-Year Review
Colonial Gas used the Walking Surveyor Assistant successfully during the 1998 walking season and plans to continue its use in the future. After one full year, Colonial summarizes the results of its implementation and use as follows:

Automating the walking survey eliminated paper maps to locate facilities and reduced the amount of" sweeping" of a service area necessary to complete the survey. A paper recording of any leaks is still performed along with a paper sketch of its location.
Scheduling, data input, and reporting processes were streamlined. Even with these efficiencies, however, Colonial's rapid growth caused a decline in the percentages of services surveyed. Increasing the required items to be surveyed and reported changed the dynamics of scheduling the survey. The length of time required to perform the survey caused backups in planning other work for the year.
Use of the pen-based Hammerhead computer varied from expectations. According to the initial plan, the surveyor was to carry the computer during the survey, accessing data on the location of the service at a particular address. This capability would eliminate the surveyor's need to search for the meter and then guess at the location of the service. If no meter were present, the surveyor would run the FIU across the property to detect any possible leak. In fact, due to the bulkiness of carrying the FIU and the portable computer simultaneously, most surveyors lefl the computer in their vehicles. Data were then entered after surveying each street.
Without default results, data entry times took longer, which had both a negative and positive effect. On the negative side, it could be safely assumed that most results would be similar to all other services surveyed. It would thus be easier and faster for the surveyor to respond to the exceptions only. On the positive side, no entry was taken for granted; therefore, nothing was overlooked.
The increase in the number and quality of reports from this system has helped Colonial increase control of maintenance activities resulting from leak detection surveys. Due to the implementation of the Walking Surveyor Assistant, maintenance requests are more efficiently passed to the work management system and a stricter command has been placed on managing the survey.

In summary, the Walking Surveyor Assistant enabled Colonial Gas to perform customized data collection and map viewing tasks on mobile computers in the field. Since then Sewall has developed an advanced version of the application in Visual Basic that eliminates the use of the Internet browser and server. Colonial Gas is currently considering upgrading to this more robust product, which promises to reduce administrative overhead significantly.

A spinoff of the Visual Basic Walking Survey Assistant is Sewall's Service View. This readonly application will enable Colonial to use digital mapping in its fleet of service vehicles. Hosted on laptops rather than pen-based computers, Service View will help Colonial realize significant cost savings.

References
Department of Transportation (1 995). Pipeline Safety Regulations - Parts 190-199, p. 436. James W. Sewall Company (1 997). Walking Surveyor Assistant User's Guide.