“HAL ... What Have You Been Doing ... HAL?” The Geospatial Odyssey of two utilities from Detroit

In 1968, one year before man was to first set foot on the Moon, Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Space Odyssey was released. The movie focused on the past, present and future of mankind. The past was the famous ape introduction and the monolith, which was used as a symbol of what man, from an evolutionist’ point of view, could and would accomplish. Fast forwarding to 2001 and the present, a crew is assigned to a mission to Jupiter. We are introduced to the HAL 9000 on-board super computer that is chocked full of artificial intelligence. HAL during the journey reads the lips of two of the crew and proceeds to “take over operations for the sake of the mission”. Dave Bowman, one of the remaining crew soon identifies HAL as a threat to his life and all others who have not fallen as victims to HAL’s takeover, decommissions HAL. The interpretation of the rest of the movie and the ending with the future Star Child is up to all those who wish to do so. Many people to this day are still confused about all the symbols injected into the story.

The title of this paper “HAL … What Have You Been Doing … HAL?” provides a link to the movie as well as the theme of GITA’s Conference XXIV, A Geospatial Odyssey. Computer technology has evolved since 1969. All of us who used the technology in 1969 can attest to the fact that the days of the punch card, with the exception of the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election, have been replaced with some truly remarkable automated tools. The main focus of this paper is to provide a framework by which the reader can gain an understanding of two utilities respective geospatial journeys – one electric and one gas. The hardware, software, conversion, maintenance and applications used at the start of these projects show how far the industry has come. This is not just a historical perspective but a paper of the present and the future.

The two neighboring utilities from Detroit, DTE Energy and MCN Energy Group, are close to completing a merger and with it has created opportunities to learn from one another while establishing synergistic benefits for our combined customers, employees and shareholders. Note: the actual merger, at the time of this paper, was not complete. While this may be true, most mergers have the challenges of different corporate cultures, strategies, systems to be kept or scraped, problems to be solved, etc. AM/FM/GIS’s are no different. The emotions involved in deciding which system prevails between two different ones are enormous and should not be underestimated. In the middle section of this paper this will be expounded. Later in the paper you will find an exploration into future applications as Detroit Edison and MichCon take a geospatial journey, now together as one.

The Past
From the start of their geospatial journey in 1969 of a Service Request to a Pilot that began in 1975, Detroit Edison’s GenIsyS (formally known as the Automated Mapping System or AMS) has gone through four migrations to today’s HAL – like technology. MichCon’s geospatial journey to MARS (Mapping & Automated Recordkeeping System) started in 1984 and has provided two major migrations in technology. Much was learned by MichCon when using Detroit Edison as a model to build from. In fact, MichCon acquired its’ initial digital landbase for the Detroit Service Area (Southeast Michigan) from Detroit Edison.

Reviewing the history of these two AM/FM/GIS pioneers and their projects from both the electric and gas business sides is summarized below.