Implementation of a company wide GIS system
Geraldo Cezar Correa, Jose Carlos Kojicowski
Antonio Carlos Gomide
Companhia Paranaense de Energia (COPEL)
R. Jose Izidoro Biazeto, 158 . Bloco B . Mossungue
Zip 81200-240 . Curitiba . PR - Brazil
E-mail: geraldo@copel.com
Phone: (55) (41) 331-4515
Fax (55) (041) 331-4557
The company (COPEL)
Copel is a vertically integrated electric utility company with 19 power plants (3,306 MW
installed capacity), 6,352 km of transmission lines, 145,500 km of distribution lines and more
than 2,800,000 customers. For distribution administrative purposes, the Company is divided in
19 areas, each one with personnel to keep the electric network cadaster updated. Copel has
integrated information systems to support the main business functions. As an example, if a
customer calls in for a new service, the clerk can immediately determine if this connection to the
electric distribution network is possible, in terms of transformer load, voltage drop, etc,
considering this new estimated load.
The GIS project
In 1995 Copel started the development and implementation of a GIS in order to improve the
business processes, boost productivity and improve customer service.
The Guidelines
Considering the risks of this enterprise wide implementation, the following guidelines were
established:
- Utilization of the existing electric distribution network data.
Since 1974 Copel is capturing and maintaining a database with information about the
electric network (with UTM coordinates). Evidently this represents .an enormous
investment and had to be leveraged.
-
The new system would be client . server.
-
RISC Server
Unix would power the RISC systems because of robustness and reliability . some of the
systems were expected to run 24 hours, 7 days a week. -
Commercial RDBMS
Reliable, robust, with all the tools to manage backup and recovery -
4GL / RAD tools / SQL standard / .C. language extension
-
AM/FM / GIS functions
-
Integration of raster and vector in the same system
-
The system would work with a continuous database.
The Software solution
Through a RFP, Copel bought the hardware (3 Unix workstations) and software licenses to start
development
- Software Vision,
-
Oracle RDBMS
Candidate applications
Several business areas were considered to start the Project and the Electric Distribution Network
was chosen, mainly because of:
-
Big quantity of paper maps (around 30.000) to be maintained.
-
Biggest number of people involved.
-
This area already had a .culture. with handling UTM coordinates.
-
The paper maps already had coordinates . data conversion was expected to be easier than
with other business areas.
