Storm recovery data acquisition
William Lowder
Florida Power & Light
Jerry Cooley
Datria Systems, Inc.
7211 South Peoria Street, #260
Englewood, CO 80112
Storm recovery data acquisition
The Objective
Provide an acceptable means for storm
survey (easier than paper or menu based
systems)
Get the right answers faster. The right
answer means less wasted effort and crew
expense. The faster you get the answer the
sooner your customers can be back on line.
The Problem
The timeliness and quality of damage
estimates have a significant affect on outage
recovery times and costs.
Paper surveys require hours of subsequent data entry. Traditional menu-based surveys are difficult to use
in the field. Both provide very limited information due to the time constraints imposed by the emergency.
These limitations cause damages to be over-estimated costing millions in unnecessary manpower and
equipment imported from surrounding areas.
The sooner accurate information is known the sooner crews can be requested, assembled, transported,
staged and deployed.
Once deployed crews must relocate damages when accurate locations are unknown.
The Question
Would speech-enabled data collection capabilities allow surveyors capture vital information faster than
filling out paper forms or navigating menus? Can real-time DGPS allows surveyors to see where they are
and where they've been so they don't get lost and don't miss sections of data? Are post processing data
entry delays eliminated?
The Answer
The objective in the SRR is to determine as quickly and accurately as possible the types and locations of
facilities that are damaged.
Current method:
-
The SRR patrol person receives a paper map of the area he is to survey.
-
Next finding his patrol area can be a significant challenge. He may not be from the area, he may
not have any street signs to work from and devastation may have eliminated most landmarks.
After Andrew one FPL employee searched over two hours for his own house.
-
The patrolman then walks or drives the feeder making notes on the paper map of what needs to be
replaced or repaired. The notes are located on the map relative to their real world positions, but
specific damage locations do not get transferred when the data is transcribed at the control center.
-
Upon completing his patrol, he returns to the control center and turns in his paper notes. These
notes go into a stack of notes to be entered along with every other patrol person's. It may take up
to 24 hours before this data is available on line.
Proposed method:
-
The patrolman has an area map overlaid with his
feeder map loaded into his VoCarta unit
-
Using the interactive map and GPS, the patrolman
would drive to the area he needs to survey. He would know his
current position and the position of the feeder while driving to
the area. This will eliminate many problems caused by lack of
local area knowledge or missing street signs and landmarks.
-
The patrolman then walks or drives the feeder voicing
in the items that need to be replaced. VoCarta picks up a GPS
location for each of these items and automatically measures the
length of down feeder.
-
While the patrolman is returning to the control center,
VoCarta processes the data he has collected. At the control
center he checks the data and uploads it into the master
database. His data is available for immediate use.
