Convergence of ERP-GMS-WMS-CIS-DM-WFMS-OMS-LIS-DMS—Who
Owns the Overlaps? What is the Importance of Integration?
Geofacilities Model Overlap
The geofacilities model overlaps traditionally converge between a company’s asset
management (accounting), the geofacilities model (GIS), and the operational facilities
model (Outage Management). The asset registry is typically a data-centric database
designed for managing detailed facility information primarily for accounting and tax
purposes. They are typically designed without the use of graphics and do not contain
spatial components. It is generally fed via the General Ledger based on materials used.
Geofacility models have grown to have a tighter integration with the construction
“as-builts” ensuring a better knowledge of where that material is and what it is used for.
Field inspections generally will ensure that the geofacilities model gets updated, but not
necessarily the asset registry. Operational models should represent the facilities as a real
time model. But where should it get its data? What if the change is temporary and not
permanent? These overlaps cause a data integrity issue that impacts the validity of all
three systems. In the best practice approach, the operational facilities model is a subset
of the geofacilities model and thus is only maintained once and is frequently updated not
duplicated. System and/or processes must be developed to ensure the operational model
does not allow temporary changes to stay indefinitely. Similarly the asset registry’s
primary data source should be the geofacilities model. If the asset registry and the
operational model are closely coupled with the geofacilities model, a host of new queries
can easily be executed to generate information in a geospatial context that has previously
been very difficult to provide.
Detail Drawings and Image Management
Enterprise drawing, work archives, and image management presents some real
challenges. Utilities possess enormous amounts of detail pictorial documents defining
land information, location, and configuration of designed and/or installed features.
Furthermore, this issue is expected to explode as new digital cameras, satellite imagery,
and 3-D modeling tools provide low cost images, video, and digital models that were
previously too difficult or too expensive to obtain. Overlaps even within the geofacilities model becomes an issue if the traditional CAD or design documents do not represent the
true “as-built” facility model. At CP&L, it is critical that subdivision design analysis
models are updated with how the model was actually built as later phases are added. If
this was being done at all, it was done through document management and not as a
traditional system interface. Land information systems and geographic information
systems generally developed in the real estate area of the company. These systems use
satellite images, which can be used as background for the geofacilities model. Easement
and right-of-way departments may also have developed sophisticated land information
management systems. While geofacilities incorporates most of the capabilities necessary
to manage land base information it may not be practical to maintain land information
outside of their corporate properties. Another integration issue is that the land base for
the traditional geofacilities model is hard to update and is often out of sync with satellite
imagery. The best practice solutions combines Document Management for the massive
storage and management of archives (e.g. work orders, redlines, detail drawings, pictures,
etc.) with geo-positioned links to the documents from the geofacilities model. It is
critical that land base best practices deal with accuracy for various overlay scenarios. In
general, if the huge volume of ancillary documents is not geocoded and associated with
the network facilities in the geofacilities model, they will be stranded or lost in terms of
their effective use in a distributed information environment.
