Northern Kentucky Sanitation District No. 1 Integrates Maintenance Management and GIS
In addition to the real-time tracing tools and locate functions, district personnel were interested
in performing historical system analyses. Pin maps of sewer odor problems, sewer backups, or
frequent flooding problems could potentially help prioritize repair and preventative maintenance.
Additional cleaning schedules could be developed based on areas of the map showing high
grease accumulations or root growth. All of these features have provided district personnel with
the tools necessary to effectively meet their infrastructure management and GIS needs.
A software feature called subsets provides a communication link between the database software
suite and ESRI’s ArcView. Subsets provide advanced filtering capabilities against the
infrastructure and work order management databases and allows the data to be viewed within
GIS, while providing spatial filter functionality to users creating work orders and routine
maintenance schedules within the maintenance management software database. Combining the
two uses for subsets to more efficiently schedule work provides ultimate functionality. District
maintenance supervisors can easily locate features requiring maintenance; view those features in
GIS; and, then limit the selected set to a specific geographical area to create a work order for a
crew’s daily work.
Data Conversion
The Sanitation District was using a legacy database to maintain the asset information, and
ARC/INFO to create and maintain the sanitary sewer maps. The newly selected database
software application replaced the legacy databases with Microsoft SQL Server databases and
augmented the GIS capabilities by adding ArcView with a specific GIS application for
maintenance and collection system personnel.
The first task was to merge the existing data sources including the sanitary sewer coverages and
the legacy databases. "We discovered a lot of manhole identifier discrepancies while merging
our data," explained Braun. While in the field, the crews were using the legacy program to track
asset information, but manhole numbers were not validated, so they were able to enter inaccurate
manhole identifiers. The identifiers themselves were usually close to being correct, but the
formats of the numbers were inconsistent. The numbers included leading zeros, leading spaces,
dashes, slashes and other characters as well as occasional misspellings. By comparing
permutations of the numbers in the legacy databases with the accurate values in the sanitary
sewer coverages, the district was able to correct the legacy databases. Once these two data
sources were synchronized, data was populated into the SQL Server databases using the
ARC/INFO coverages to create the initial sewer network. General asset information from the
legacy database was imported as well.
The newly selected software database application was then installed at the Sanitation District’s
site, and the District started the task of entering work order history. Today, Sanitation District
No. 1 has input almost all the data from the last five years of operations into the software
databases. "We kept one person busy just looking up history on paper documents," commented
Braun about internal procedures from the past. Now, historical information is readily available
simply by selecting or identifying an asset from the software program.
