Data - Yours, Mine, ours
Ted MacKinnon
Manager, Geographic Applications BC Hydro, 6911 Southpoint Drive Burnaby, British Columbia, V3N 4X8, Canada The Company BC Hydro is the third largest electric utility in Canada. It has 1.5 million customers served over a geographically dispersed area with 17,000 km of transmission lines and 55,000 km of distribution lines. It is a Crown Corporation, meaning that it has one shareholder, the Province of British Columbia. It requires a large amount of information to operate a company of this size and a large portion of this is spatial information. Geospatial information is relevant to more than 85?40of a utility's business operations. We need to know where our assets are in relation to our customers. We need proper information to operate and maintain the electrical system. The same spatial requirement exists to operate the business processes effectively. It is important to know where money is being spent in relation to where revenue is derived. GIS Information at BC Hydro Spatial Data Many forms of spatial data exist within the company. The initial geographic information was produced in project drawings to construct the plant in the field. These drawings met the needs of construction, but operation, maintenance, planning and design required a view of these records woven together. In earlier times these records were provided by manual mapping systems and later by Computer Assisted Drafting (CAD) systems. There are varying degrees of sophistication in these systems. In BC Hydro we have CAD systems, a digital Photogrammetry system and an Automated Mapping/Facilities Management (AM/FM) system. The Photogrammetry system is used primarily for mapping transmission line corridors, reservoirs, and associated lands. AM/FM is used for the distribution system. CAD is used to replace manual drafting that remained in standards, construction, operations and maintenance. AM/FM The AM/FM system for distribution is a mainframe based system (Geographic Facilities Information System - GFIS) with PC workstations accessing it across a province-wide network. The electrical distribution system from the substation to the customer meter is modeled in the database. The main applications utilizing this data are:
The electrical distribution model includes all distribution equipment downstream of the substation feeder breaker. It includes the underground (UG) feeder cable and associated ductbank and manholes; the overhead (OH) primary and secondary conductor (single and three phase) along with the supporting poles, anchors and guys, the UG primary and secondary system and the associated civil structures - transformation and services for both OH and UG switches, fuses and other operating devices. Other information, such as street lights, and special customers have been added as and where needs dictated. The land model shows the basic planimetric and cadastral information. It also has an intelligent street centreline network that allows for location by street intersection. The database is stored in UTM coordinates and made up of three levels -- electrical, land, and polygon. Interfaces Since many other corporate information systems were mainframe-based, interfacing the AM/FM system to some of these was achievable and effective. The initial interface was to the Pole Management System database used in the management of the Joint Use contract between BC Hydro and BC Telephone for the shared ownership of poles. The interface provided the ability to create plots from the AM/FM system and eliminated the need to produce and maintain manual pole maps. It also assisted the pole maintenance program by allowing a geographical rendering to complement the historical data contained in the database. An interface is being established now between the AM/FM system and the Customer Information System (CIS) to link all the customers to the electric distribution system. This information is required initially for the Outage Management System and will eventually be used in engineering analysis, marketing and customer service initiatives. An application was developed to assist the preparation of construction orders for the plant installation in the field. The Distribution Construction Design System (DCDS) utilizes the geographic database as the source of the construction and permit drawings. The graphical files produced by this process are used to update the database at the completion of construction. There is a Work Management System (previously developed and operating on the mainframe) that links job tracking, a design and estimating system based upon compatible units, the material reservation system, an automated approval system, and the financial system that distributes the costs and automatically audits and closes jobs. DCDS is linked to WMS to automate the graphical component to the design work and utilize the tracking system to automatically load the construction files to the geographic database when the work is completed in the field. Power System Simulator / Utilities (PSS/U) is an engineering analysis tool that uses an extract of information from the GFIS database as input for the analysis carried out on the PC workstations. Similar extracts are used to provide geographic background to some maintenance processes on notebook computers in the field. Plot files are extracted with plots produced and used for operating, maintenance and planning records. Distribution Data Collection The Conversion Proiect In the early years, development was done in "pilot" projects. The company then committed to enter data for the whole distribution system into a geographic database. This was carried out over a two year period using in-house staff plus two conversion vendors with 50 staff each. The applications currently in use were developed as conversion was taking place so that benefits could be realized as soon as the data was available. Post Conversion The database is updated primarily through the efforts of the distribution design staff using DCDS. The work done in the field not using DCDS (i.e., use of CAD instead) is input to the database by GIS operators using the as-built construction drawings as source documents. Distribution Data Quality During Conversion The conversion forced the development of standards and adherence to these standards, editing of data entry and creation of quality assurance (QA) processes on receipt of data. One could not have the luxury of using many different ways (due to area or personal preference) of handling the information. The volume of data and the speed with which it was received mandated that processes be put in place to automatically QA the data. Production Maintenance The QA software used during conversion was enhanced as the system went into production mode. Area based QA routines are run on the data that was added to the database each night. Once a week circuit based QA is run upon all the circuits that had work done on them throughout the week. Armlication Use The use of new applications on the data is the final quality assurance check and the most important one from the user perspective. Every new application that is developed stresses the data in a manner in which it may not have been used before. It is important test out these new applications in a very regimented fashion with sufficient user involvement. Distribution Data Currency Driven bv Applications The types of applications that run on the data determine how current the database needs to be. If the needs are for high level planning, perhaps quarterly updating is sufficient. If it is for records only, monthly updates may be enough. If the database is used for design work or operating the electrical system, then that portion of it must be up to date at the end of each day. Short Comings of the Present System The decisions that were made as the system developed were justified, at the time, and allowed us to move forward. As we examine our present-day needs we see that this now falls short of meeting our requirements.
The Enterprise GIS There is an Enterprise GIS initiative in progress at BC Hydro. As GIS is an enabling technology, it will work to assist with the Business Process Improvement (re-engineering) changes taking place in the company as we move to a process based organization. The focus of the Enterprise GIS project will be on the following: Standards Standards will be improved to meet the needs of the whole company. A large part of this improvement will be the communication of these standards to those involved in creating or acquiring geospatial data, both inside and outside of the company. Without these standards in place, effective data transfer among the interested parties will not be possible. Data Model With the increase in the number of users of geographic information, there is a need for a robust data model that will satisfy all user application requirements. Much more effort will have to go into our land data model than in the past. A data model which will not support all user application needs will bring about the downfall of any system. Legacy Data Since its inception the company has been collecting data on its operations. Some of it is readily accessible but some of it is hard to find and use. The goal is to maintain the accessible data and to enable the difficult data to be used more effectively. To throw out all the data and start again is not an option. Existing interfaces must be maintained and new ones established to allow wider access to as much business relevant information as possible. Migration The GFIS data presently in use is well integrated and doing the job for which it was initially intended. This is an example of the data that must be preserved. This data (land and electric facilities) must be effortlessly migrated to EGIS with no loss of value or application functionality. All of the existing interfaces must be re-established. It is anticipated that this migration will take no longer than two years (with most of the time being required for hardware rollout and training). Enterprise Landbase As soon as the standards and data model are confirmed, work can begin on the Enterprise Landbase (ELB). This landbase will have the spatial accuracy required and will incorporate the Photogrammetry system data and the information assembled for the LapMap system (landbase, property information, and transmission structures, etc.). The final Enterprise Landbase will be a 3-D landbase that satisfies the data needs of transmission, generation, and related lands plus continues to support the requirements of the electrical distribution system. This common landbase is the core of the enterprise project. It must be done properly to achieve the anticipated benefits. The benefits derived are based on the increased ability to exchange data. Conversion The conversion process will take five years. Although there is a distribution landbase throughout the whole BC Hydro distribution service area, there is only about a 10% overlap with the 17000 km of transmission lines. The property ownership information will need to be geocoded to the ELB. The final ELB will include all areas covered by distribution, transmission, and generation plant which is about 15% of the 854,000 sq. km. of the province. As the ELB is completed for a given area, the distribution facilities will be spatially adjusted to that base and the ELB will then replace the existing distribution Iandbase. Data Sharing OutPut Information There is a need to supply information to those outside the company. Customers, developers, engineering firms, contractors, other utilities, cities, towns, municipalities and government agencies - all request spatial information on our plant or rights-of-way. There are requests from regulatory bodies for similar information - for approvals or permits for BC Hydro to do work. Public relations needs to supply geographic information to the public to explain business impacts or power restoration during storms. Producing and supplying geographic information for these needs is a costly process when done on an ad hoc basis. Any hardcopy that is produced is out of date the minute the ink is dry. There are a lot of costs associated with the production, transfer, tracking, and storage of such information. Electronic transfer of information can drastically reduce to time and cost of this task, if proper standards are in place. This requires lots of hard workup front with external parties but will be paid back many times over in the long term. Source Information Just as we supply geographic information to a great number of groups we also receive information from them and others. Requests for service come in that require extension of plant to serve customers. If the proper standards are in place we can utilize digital information from them without having to duplicate their efforts for our needs. Data sharing with other utilities during the design process is best done electronically. Requests for permits-to-construct are quicker and more effective if done electronically. The technology is here to allow this to be done if there are sufficient data standards in place. Conclusion Organizations recognize the need for being able to utilize spatial data to make them a more competitive. There are obstacles to overcome to achieve this. Gathering, checking and storing data is expensive and there is a desire to keep this information locally to protect it. The business rules say that if you have spent money to acquire something then it has value and it should only be parted with in exchange for large sums of money. This often causes others to go their own way, and spend large sums of money to collect data to their own (different) standards. With this approach the ability to work together becomes much more difficult, so these protectionist short-comings must be overcome. We must always keep our focus on the goal of being able to share as much information as we can. This will help to keep the total cost down in the larger scheme of things and benefit society at large. We can all profit when we get closer to the point where we can say "the data is not yours, not mine, but ours"! | ||
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