Water & Wastewater Treatment

In the know Digging deeper: geographic information systems 34 |DECEMBER 2015 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk the groups using tools such as these does not penetrate far into other areas of the water company. Consequently the business-wide benefits of GIS remain, to date, largely untapped. There are examples, however, of water companies adopting more open access approaches to GIS. One has a GIS map - highlighting where critical assets are in close proximity to essential public infrastructure such as hospitals - accessible across virtually the entire business. Thus the location of the most high-risk assets can be ascertained swi•ly and widely. Another water company has allowed the GIS team to create its own data sets and specify what is in them. The GIS team has been empowered to request the data – from across the business - required to deliver the maximum benefits from the investment in GIS. One of the most significant developments leading into the next AMP will be the growing role of mobile technology. As the value of GIS are realised more fully across water companies demand will grow. Symbiotic with this increase in demand will be proliferation of GIS apps and datasets. Driving the growth in apps and datasets will be the falling cost of data coverage: a greater availability of map so•ware means utilities are increasingly able to create their own maps, reducing their reliance on costly bespoke data and applications. Coupled with this is hardware development. Tablet computers are, literally, placing these GIS in the hands of field workers. We have already seen examples of utility employees equipped with two- kilogram water-proof laptops setting aside company equipment in favour of their own tablets. The ability to capture and validate data on-site is following GIS' move from the modelling suite to the field. An early example of this has been a project to help a water company prepare for the October 2016 deadline for the adoption of privately owned pumping stations (PPS). This required developing a methodology to identify, locate and determine the condition of PPS. The work encompassed more than 500 sites. At the centre of the project was a single, central database accessible to the entire project team. Innovative use of technology enabled the team to survey up to fi•een sites per day, reducing time on site, increasing the ability to adjust the plan of sites to be surveyed and crucially, allowing more time to be focused on developing the adoption strategy. Survey teams were equipped with global positioning system (GPS) enabled tablets to capture data digitally, directly into the single central database. Office teams supported the process using Google Street View to pre-visit sites, and GPS trackers to keep up to date with the surveyors' locations. A more recent, and significantly bigger, GIS-based survey shows how the technology has advanced. The challenges facing the energy utility client have direct parallels with those experienced in the water sector. This survey had to confirm the location of, and record an initial condition assessment for, 47,000 cable pits in a major city. Records had not kept pace with the changing cityscape. So, before deploying highly trained inspection teams with expensive equipment to assess each asset in detail, a walkover survey of all 47,000 locations was undertaken to confirm pit locations and assess the feasibility of access for detailed inspection. Initially surveyors were provided with batches of paper maps, based on historic data, on which they would indicate whether the asset was present or absent. The surveyors' findings were then transcribed to spreadsheet. Return visits were arranged if an asset could not be located. The process was slow and labour intensive. The quality of the results did not always meet the standard required. Surveyors were o•en unsure which pit they had located, and lacked the tools to record suitable written and photographic data. It was difficult to calculate the number of pits being GIS evaluating potential risks posed by intersection of different utilities' buried assets

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