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Towards the Integration of Geospatial Information & Technology into an OSS Environment
Joe Astroth, Ph.D.
Executive Vice President
Autodesk, GIS Solutions Division
Joe Astroth, Ph.D.
Executive Vice President
Autodesk, GIS Solutions Division
Competition and deregulation continue to churn the utility environment worldwide. Business headlines regarding mergers and acquisitions, rate changes and the ability to purchase bulk power over the Web have become commonplace in the electric utility industryover the past 18 to 24 months. With the recent announcement that Thames Water, plc, the world’s third largest water company, will purchase E’town Corp, a water utility in the eastern U.S. for $948 million, increased competition is even unsettling the usually quiet water utility industry.
In the face of this ever-increasing competitive environment, the role of an effective, reliable, large-scale operations support system (OSS) for the enterprise has never been more important, it’s worth recalling that most systems currently in place developed piece-by- piece, over time. These efforts often took place in fits and starts – instead of as the coherent, well-designed and integrated systems we have available today.
The Initial Push Towards AM/FM/GIS Technologies
Quite often the impetus to implementing automated mapping (AM), facilities management (FM) or geographic information system (GIS) technology at a utility focused on the creation and maintenance of engineering drawings, maps and associated records. In effect the organization’s large collection of paper maps, work orders, asset information and job logs were being scanned, digitized or by other means converted into an AM/FM/GIS digital database. A more efficient workflow and lower record maintenance costs were the emphases of these early systems. They also were commonly CAD-centric in their orientation.
At many installations decision-makers rapidly became aware that this automated, computer-based record keeping was just part of the AM/FM/GIS value proposition. The real value in a GIS system is not in the engineering maps and records area, it's in all the other applications throughout the enterprise which could employ geospatial information as part of their own activities.
Some utilities could see changes looming on their business horizon and they began to look ahead at how the enterprise could cut operating costs and improve efficiencies. These “performance enhancement initiatives,” as they were sometimes called, often started out focusing on technology improvements to speed up existing processes and procedures through automation.
Over time it became more evident that technology alone was not the ultimate solution to the looming operating expenses squeeze. First, the enterprise’s business processes themselves needed to be streamlined and where necessary, redesigned. Step one was to figure out what needed to be accomplished from a workflow standpoint, and only then could you answer the question of how to best get that done. Technology then becomes a set of enabling tools to facilitate getting work done. As a result, the original vision of an AM/FM/GIS system as an electronic bank of maps and records was shaped over time to a series of process improvement tools enabling more efficient workflow.
One path that some enterprises pursued at that time was to search for one monolithic, completely integrated work order/records management system. As long as business processes were being re-engineered, the argument went, they might as well all be hooked together into one comprehensive system. While this seemed like a viable solution, it was a plan fraught with difficulty and many projects design to create such monolithic systems collapsed under their ever increasing -- and therefore unachievable -- scope.
Other organizations realized no one comprehensive system could be created to meet all the work flow or operational needs of the enterprise. No one system could be created to do all the work, or handle all of the business transactions – and this became more true as the size of the enterprise increased. No one sub-system could be allowed to “stop working” while the perfect system was designed and implemented or the organization would grind to a halt. This means that ultimately a number of legacy systems remained in place, and were carried into the future.
Over time the AM/FM/GIS system began to be integrated with a lot of other corporate systems, but not necessarily with all of them at the same time. For example, the AM/FM/GIS system might retrieve its customer data from the customer information system. At the same time an outage management system, not connected to the GIS system would also get the same data from the customer information system.
The approach of never attempting to create and employ a large system seems to have been the one that many utilities followed effectively. This approach took existing applications and legacy systems from throughout the organization and integrated them together into an enterprise-wide information network.
In the middle 1990’s this began to change.
Integrating Geospatial Information & Technology into the Enterprise Workflow Leads to a More Effective OSS
When we talk about enterprise GIS we sometimes make the mistake of focusing on large organizations. While they are often quite large, a more important characteristic of the enterprise is its set of interconnected business processes and information needs which cross a number of departments and functional areas. So one key characteristic about the enterprise is not really its size, but the increasingly interconnected way the various parts of the organization operate.
A second important requirement of integrating geospatial information and technology into the enterprise is the need for longevity of data within its scheme of operations. The enterprise can not be dependent on any individual “owning” data or its meaning; the data types, formats, must be long-lived and independent of any individual operator, employee or department scheme.
As the modern enterprise moves forward, its geospatial information technology must be integrated into its workflow; the technology becomes most valuable if it is there to solve a business problem that crosses more than one department. “islands of automation,” that often existed in the past, no longer provide sufficient ROI by themselves. In addition, utility executives are calling for access to real-time information from their systems. In a survey conducted recently among 200 utilities in North America, we found that between 42% and 53% of decision makers in the electric, water and gas industries felt that access to real time information on their systems was “Essential” for running the businesses effectively. Only about 15% of decision-makers in these utilities thought access to real-time information was “Not Important.”
The example of the need to respond to a customer service request provides a good example (see Figure 1). Once the Customer contact is entered into the CIS (Customer Information System), that system in turn interacts with several others, including the work management system, the SCADA system, and any incident reporting system.
Figure 1. Integrated Processes and Departments
The effective integration of GIS in the enterprise business workflow allows us to take advantage of several other important developments in the GIS industry as a whole. First, the increasing use of intelligent objects in data and network models allows the user to code much more information about what those objects are, how they should behave alone and when connected to other system elements. This object intelligence can then be passed to other parts of the system that can use it to increasing advantage.
The more widespread employment of intelligent objects in the database is matched by an increased use of sophisticated business rules to operate on the data objects themselves. The business rules add a second layer of intelligence to the enterprise use of these intelligent objects, reducing design time and providing increased consistency by the engineers utilizing the database. (See Figures 2 and 3 for example.)
Figure 2. Increasing the Value of GIS Data through Intelligent Objects
The second significant enhancement of the late 1990’s is our ability to leverage the use of sophisticated commercial databases for the storage and retrieval of geospatial information. By utilizing this approach, we can ensure data integrity and effective distribution throughout the enterprise. Now we can “outsource” system administration “concerns” such as fail-overs and hot backups, multi-platform and gateway support to key business technology partners. This allows the geospatial information technology vendors to focus on what they do best, and leaves the database management processes and activities to commercial RDBMS companies.
The enterprise GIS of today avoids one significant historical pitfall. Attempts to create enterprise workflow models in the early 1990’s were often too ambitious in their scope – they tried to produce very large monolithic systems connecting all the individual process together. They tried to integrate the entire process from start to finish rather than integrate various parts of the enterprise with each other as the work was being accomplished. This proved to be not only too challenging, but established a goal which could more than likely never actually be achieved, as the subsystems themselves become more refined and effective, and sometimes even disappear over time.
Figure 3. Business Rules Increase the Intelligence in the Database
In addition, business rules that dealt with conflicts generated by concurrent use of the same portions of the database were difficult to program into very large workflow models. We learned over time, that far more important than building all subsystems into the GIS was the ability of any sub-process module to quickly and effectively communicate with other parts of the enterprise. This was especially important in those cases where concurrent access to the database were an essential part of daily business and where concurrent user conflicts were likely to be generated during the course of normal business. The workflow modules in today’s systems provide communication tools when those conflicts arise (see Figure 4).
Figure 4. Concurrent User Conflicts Will Occur; They Must Not Stop the Workflow.
Key Ingredients to Successfully “Geospatially Enabling” an OSS Environment
A number of key ingredients need to come together to allow the effective integration of geospatial information and technology into an OSS environment. Perhaps the most important of these is the ability of the solution to scale. This criterion is one of the greatest challenges facing the designers of operational support systems. Scalability is the measure of system’s power to add users without adversely affecting performance of any one user. It’s more than a large system – an effective implementation results in an operational system of well-integrated sub-processes or modules which continues to perform well even as increasing numbers of heavy users are added to the system.
An effective integration today relies upon other key elements as well. These, as we have seen, include tool sets that are
Finally there are the data requirements of the field crews. To best meet their customer’s needs, the enterprise needs to be able to provide quick turn around for customer inquiries and requests. Often field staff is hampered in their effort to respond quickly in the field by their need to go back to the office to obtain the facility data they require. All enterprises need tools that allow them to view and edit their data in the field so they can respond to the needs of their customers more quickly.
We have come a long towards “geospatially enabling” an OSS environment in a utility. From somewhat humble beginnings as a CAD-based automation of map creation and maintenance, geospatial information is bringing enhanced value throughout a utility’s workflow, putting the power of the enterprise into the hands of the staff where they do their work – whether at the office or in the field.
In the face of this ever-increasing competitive environment, the role of an effective, reliable, large-scale operations support system (OSS) for the enterprise has never been more important, it’s worth recalling that most systems currently in place developed piece-by- piece, over time. These efforts often took place in fits and starts – instead of as the coherent, well-designed and integrated systems we have available today.
The Initial Push Towards AM/FM/GIS Technologies
Quite often the impetus to implementing automated mapping (AM), facilities management (FM) or geographic information system (GIS) technology at a utility focused on the creation and maintenance of engineering drawings, maps and associated records. In effect the organization’s large collection of paper maps, work orders, asset information and job logs were being scanned, digitized or by other means converted into an AM/FM/GIS digital database. A more efficient workflow and lower record maintenance costs were the emphases of these early systems. They also were commonly CAD-centric in their orientation.
At many installations decision-makers rapidly became aware that this automated, computer-based record keeping was just part of the AM/FM/GIS value proposition. The real value in a GIS system is not in the engineering maps and records area, it's in all the other applications throughout the enterprise which could employ geospatial information as part of their own activities.
Some utilities could see changes looming on their business horizon and they began to look ahead at how the enterprise could cut operating costs and improve efficiencies. These “performance enhancement initiatives,” as they were sometimes called, often started out focusing on technology improvements to speed up existing processes and procedures through automation.
Over time it became more evident that technology alone was not the ultimate solution to the looming operating expenses squeeze. First, the enterprise’s business processes themselves needed to be streamlined and where necessary, redesigned. Step one was to figure out what needed to be accomplished from a workflow standpoint, and only then could you answer the question of how to best get that done. Technology then becomes a set of enabling tools to facilitate getting work done. As a result, the original vision of an AM/FM/GIS system as an electronic bank of maps and records was shaped over time to a series of process improvement tools enabling more efficient workflow.
One path that some enterprises pursued at that time was to search for one monolithic, completely integrated work order/records management system. As long as business processes were being re-engineered, the argument went, they might as well all be hooked together into one comprehensive system. While this seemed like a viable solution, it was a plan fraught with difficulty and many projects design to create such monolithic systems collapsed under their ever increasing -- and therefore unachievable -- scope.
Other organizations realized no one comprehensive system could be created to meet all the work flow or operational needs of the enterprise. No one system could be created to do all the work, or handle all of the business transactions – and this became more true as the size of the enterprise increased. No one sub-system could be allowed to “stop working” while the perfect system was designed and implemented or the organization would grind to a halt. This means that ultimately a number of legacy systems remained in place, and were carried into the future.
Over time the AM/FM/GIS system began to be integrated with a lot of other corporate systems, but not necessarily with all of them at the same time. For example, the AM/FM/GIS system might retrieve its customer data from the customer information system. At the same time an outage management system, not connected to the GIS system would also get the same data from the customer information system.
The approach of never attempting to create and employ a large system seems to have been the one that many utilities followed effectively. This approach took existing applications and legacy systems from throughout the organization and integrated them together into an enterprise-wide information network.
In the middle 1990’s this began to change.
Integrating Geospatial Information & Technology into the Enterprise Workflow Leads to a More Effective OSS
When we talk about enterprise GIS we sometimes make the mistake of focusing on large organizations. While they are often quite large, a more important characteristic of the enterprise is its set of interconnected business processes and information needs which cross a number of departments and functional areas. So one key characteristic about the enterprise is not really its size, but the increasingly interconnected way the various parts of the organization operate.
A second important requirement of integrating geospatial information and technology into the enterprise is the need for longevity of data within its scheme of operations. The enterprise can not be dependent on any individual “owning” data or its meaning; the data types, formats, must be long-lived and independent of any individual operator, employee or department scheme.
As the modern enterprise moves forward, its geospatial information technology must be integrated into its workflow; the technology becomes most valuable if it is there to solve a business problem that crosses more than one department. “islands of automation,” that often existed in the past, no longer provide sufficient ROI by themselves. In addition, utility executives are calling for access to real-time information from their systems. In a survey conducted recently among 200 utilities in North America, we found that between 42% and 53% of decision makers in the electric, water and gas industries felt that access to real time information on their systems was “Essential” for running the businesses effectively. Only about 15% of decision-makers in these utilities thought access to real-time information was “Not Important.”
The example of the need to respond to a customer service request provides a good example (see Figure 1). Once the Customer contact is entered into the CIS (Customer Information System), that system in turn interacts with several others, including the work management system, the SCADA system, and any incident reporting system.
Figure 1. Integrated Processes and Departments
The effective integration of GIS in the enterprise business workflow allows us to take advantage of several other important developments in the GIS industry as a whole. First, the increasing use of intelligent objects in data and network models allows the user to code much more information about what those objects are, how they should behave alone and when connected to other system elements. This object intelligence can then be passed to other parts of the system that can use it to increasing advantage.
The more widespread employment of intelligent objects in the database is matched by an increased use of sophisticated business rules to operate on the data objects themselves. The business rules add a second layer of intelligence to the enterprise use of these intelligent objects, reducing design time and providing increased consistency by the engineers utilizing the database. (See Figures 2 and 3 for example.)
Figure 2. Increasing the Value of GIS Data through Intelligent Objects
The second significant enhancement of the late 1990’s is our ability to leverage the use of sophisticated commercial databases for the storage and retrieval of geospatial information. By utilizing this approach, we can ensure data integrity and effective distribution throughout the enterprise. Now we can “outsource” system administration “concerns” such as fail-overs and hot backups, multi-platform and gateway support to key business technology partners. This allows the geospatial information technology vendors to focus on what they do best, and leaves the database management processes and activities to commercial RDBMS companies.
The enterprise GIS of today avoids one significant historical pitfall. Attempts to create enterprise workflow models in the early 1990’s were often too ambitious in their scope – they tried to produce very large monolithic systems connecting all the individual process together. They tried to integrate the entire process from start to finish rather than integrate various parts of the enterprise with each other as the work was being accomplished. This proved to be not only too challenging, but established a goal which could more than likely never actually be achieved, as the subsystems themselves become more refined and effective, and sometimes even disappear over time.
Figure 3. Business Rules Increase the Intelligence in the Database
In addition, business rules that dealt with conflicts generated by concurrent use of the same portions of the database were difficult to program into very large workflow models. We learned over time, that far more important than building all subsystems into the GIS was the ability of any sub-process module to quickly and effectively communicate with other parts of the enterprise. This was especially important in those cases where concurrent access to the database were an essential part of daily business and where concurrent user conflicts were likely to be generated during the course of normal business. The workflow modules in today’s systems provide communication tools when those conflicts arise (see Figure 4).
Figure 4. Concurrent User Conflicts Will Occur; They Must Not Stop the Workflow.
Key Ingredients to Successfully “Geospatially Enabling” an OSS Environment
A number of key ingredients need to come together to allow the effective integration of geospatial information and technology into an OSS environment. Perhaps the most important of these is the ability of the solution to scale. This criterion is one of the greatest challenges facing the designers of operational support systems. Scalability is the measure of system’s power to add users without adversely affecting performance of any one user. It’s more than a large system – an effective implementation results in an operational system of well-integrated sub-processes or modules which continues to perform well even as increasing numbers of heavy users are added to the system.
An effective integration today relies upon other key elements as well. These, as we have seen, include tool sets that are
- Comprehensive -- designed to perform a wide variety of functions, including work design, map creation, facility data maintenance, outage management and others. These are often summarized as a CAD front-end tool, an extended RDBMS and analytical GIS tools.
- Integrated – proven to work together. Planning and engineering tools require a connectivity database, as do outage management systems. No utility wants to maintain two versions of the connectivity model to support two different functions. As discussed above, the facility data needs to be maintained in one place and then be made available to any user or application that requires it.
- Flexible – every enterprise is at a different point in their implementation of facility data tools and applications. Each has different requirements; as a result the tool set needs to be flexible enough to meet a wide range of requirements.
- Open – the system needs to be built on an open platform with industry standard database and development tools. This is key for the integration of the geospatial information into other parts of the enterprise system. Of course, an industry standards based system will be easier to staff as employees and contractors with the requisite knowledge will be easier to find. The enterprise won’t have to support a staff needed to master proprietary languages and other non-marketable skills.
- Scalable – this is the measure of system’s power to add users without adversely affecting performance of any one user. It’s more than “just” a large system – it is an operational system of well-integrated sub-processes or modules which continues to perform well even as increasing numbers of heavy users are added to the system.
- Accessible company-wide – because facility data touches so many parts of the enterprise, it needs to be accessible to staff in all areas of the organization, including those at remote sites.
Finally there are the data requirements of the field crews. To best meet their customer’s needs, the enterprise needs to be able to provide quick turn around for customer inquiries and requests. Often field staff is hampered in their effort to respond quickly in the field by their need to go back to the office to obtain the facility data they require. All enterprises need tools that allow them to view and edit their data in the field so they can respond to the needs of their customers more quickly.
We have come a long towards “geospatially enabling” an OSS environment in a utility. From somewhat humble beginnings as a CAD-based automation of map creation and maintenance, geospatial information is bringing enhanced value throughout a utility’s workflow, putting the power of the enterprise into the hands of the staff where they do their work – whether at the office or in the field.