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Disaster Management
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Mobile Systems Costs and Benefits
Jim Hargis
har*GIS LLC, Field Information Systems™
8093 S Oneida Ct. Centennial, CO 80112-3133
303-220-0253
E-Mail: jim@har-gis.com
Abstract
Barriers to implementing a mobile system include technology risks, lack of resources, and for many
companies, Money. While most analysts agree that mobile/wireless 'strategic benefits' are
compelling, there are few who can realistically estimate total costs and paybacks in the mobile
environment. It turns out that mobile projects typically have much faster payback than projects like
GIS. This is due to several features unique to mobile systems.
This paper will present a simple to use cost/benefit methodology for analyzing the environment.
The paper includes sample tables listing the complete range of project cost items and benefit items.
Introduction
The approach to this paper is to provide a realistic list of tangible project costs and benefits
associated with a mobile system. Mobile Systems are unique from other projects in that the
majority of the benefits depend on field productivity improvements rather than office. These
systems include both field applications, and the office systems and data required to them.
Traditional cost/benefit analysis often fails to recognize the unique differences of the mobile
environment. Projects should support business needs, be accepted by user, and provide measurable
benefits both to the user and the company. Studies of several mobile projects identify many that
have paybacks of less than one year, even a few months. How realistic are these?
Corporate Objectives
A Mobile System project should support multiple company objectives, such as:
- Operational Excellence: improve customer service and reduce costs of service.
- Improve Field Productivity: reduce wasted time, eliminate bottlenecks, and improve
communications.
- Empower Workforce: with easy to use, quickly accepted, collaborative, and secure tools and
information.
- Timely and Accurate Information: integrate with enterprise network applications, real time
communications, current facility status, and large amounts of dynamic geographic information.
- Leverage Corporate Strengths: through data distribution and access, Location Based Services,
GPS, Automated Vehicle Location, automated routing and seamless mapping.
- Increase Profitability: timely deployment, lower development risks, leverage existing data,
phased implementation, and re-usability multiple field applications.
Typical Field Applications
The project must provide certain applications to realize benefits. The following are important for
many field applications.
| Application/Feature |
Benefits |
| Map Viewing: aerial photographs. satellite images, scanned
drawings, CAD maps, and GIS maps. |
High performance, compact data storage for large geographic areas. Maps
for entire service territory are instantly available. Eliminate Paper.
User defined custom maps, streets,equipment and facilities, at multiple
scales. View maps anytime, anywhere, with or without communications
coverage. Use underground and in rural areas. Current, accurate
information |
| Field Notes and Map Sketch. |
Crews can markup maps with notes, text, sketches, and pictures.
Essential operating Information that is not in GIS or mapping. Provide
accurate, timely updates to engineering, GIS and operations. |
| Wireless communications |
Real-time, location-based status, messages, and query. Information
available immediately. Reduces voice traffic. Provides dynamic information
such as crew locations, incident reporting, equipment operating status,
and job locations. |
| Messaging |
Avoids dispatch bottlenecks. Provides guaranteed delivery, durable
connections when there is intermittent wireless coverage. Better crew
coordination and control. Compatible with most wireless services, Internet
and digital radio. |
| Locate addresses and landmarks, points of interest. Perform street
routing to multiple locations. |
Crews can find unfamiliar locations less time wasted on routing, directions, driving instructions and
trip planning. Automatically converts addresses to location. Remove paper
index maps and listings. |
| Locate facilities by identifier |
Quickly find facilities, eliminate paper lookups. Quickly locate
network problems. Reduce time to repair. |
| Field Data Forms |
Accurate field data entry, inventory, recording. Eliminate paper, office
work. |
Cost/Benefit Approach
The cost/benefit analysis seeks to determine all the incremental costs associated with implementing a
field automaton project. The analysis must also identify the resulting operational savings. The
following four steps can be used to perform a cost/benefit analysis.
- Identify and estimate the costs for implementing the project.
- Identify and estimate the baseline costs currently required for field operations.
- Estimate benefits or savings to be realized by the project.
- Calculate the resulting paybacks and cost/benefit ratios.
The following identifies each of these steps. Tables and spreadsheets for calculating the
information are available from the author on request to jim@har-gis.com.
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