Capturing network data by design
Alan Walter
Principal Consultant
Spatialinfo Inc
1515 Arapahoe Street
Tower 1, Suite 1450
Denver CO 80202, USA
Ph: 303 534 4895
Fax: 303 534 4896
E-mail: alan.walter@spatialinfo.com
Introduction
Utilities, Telcos, Municipalities and of recent times campus and building managers, have a unique set
of requirements when it comes to maintaining detailed records of their asset inventory. Specifically in
addition to the normal requirements of existence count and value, the actual disposition and utilization
of each asset is also recorded.
History - Post-job recording
The historical approach to Automated Mapping/Facilities Management "AM/FM" was at best
fragmentary. The AM part of the equation consisted of paper based Asset registers, which performed
the "count" and "value" function, and paper based maps, which showed the disposition and utilization
of the assets. History suggests that even in the case of the most diligent organisations, these records
were notoriously out of date. The usage of a manual "Post-Job" recording process, guaranteed that
there was always a lag directly related to the drafting backlog. The outcomes of such a situation meant
that co-ordination was significantly more difficult, consequently, activities such as digging up the road
were often handled in a sub-optimal manner.
With the dawning of the computer age came the opportunity to rectify some of the problems of the
past, and to introduce some efficiencies to the process through the use of computer based graphics. The
first step was the introduction of Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) technology, which provided an
increased level of efficiency over the manual drafting approach. This allowed the backlog to be
reduced, but the paradigm was still a "Post-Job" recording process.
Contempory approach - Post-design recording
The next step introduced an increased level of sophistication to the process.
It introduced the concept of data modelling and opened the way for significantly more flexibility both
in the level of detail and possible presentation capabilities. This is largely the technology, which is in
place today. There is still a gap between the AM and the FM, this is due to the fact that spatial
database technology up until quite recently has only been available in proprietary non relational
database form. This has meant that for many organisations there has been at least some level of
disconnect between the Asset Database and the Maps showing the facility disposition and utilization.
Sometimes the disconnect has been total.
The latest advances in this class of technology have seen a movement towards the all- relational store
being commercial off-the-shelf RDBMS products, and the consequent integration of the AM and FM
parts of the data management equation. The other major advance introduced with the data modelling
approach was the concept of temporal data, with the requirement for Long Transaction support in the
application. This allowed utility organisations to capture details of proposed network changes and to
publish them before they actually take place, so called "Post- Design" recording. This dramatically
improved many of the co-ordination issues of the past, as it was now possible to see the future plans
for the network at the time when new work is being planned and so optimize the use of resources
associated with implementing network change.
In summary the situation as it exists today is as follows:
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AM/FM data held in a common RDBMS
-
Records of installed plant available almost immediately after job completion
-
Data recorded before the event (ie immediately after design completed), showing proposed future
work
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Future overlapping proposals can be stacked showing interdependencies
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Ability to generate a Bill of Materials and effort estimates for design projects.
