The Future of GIS – Part 2:

Systems Integration
We can create new relationships that may not have been apparent or
even possible without the GIS

Skye Perry | Dec 13, 2018

And we’re back! If you missed my post last month, please check out The Future of
GIS – Part 1, In a Relationship where I explored three different types of GIS
relationships that drive immediate value in a utility or telco. The relationship types
include database relationships, spatial relationships and network relationships, all of
which are crucial to setting the stage for the future.

This month I’ll continue to review where a utility should be with GIS today before
exploring where you should be focused to maximize your investment in GIS in the
future. As a utility or telco matures with its relationships, it will begin to relate
outward.

Related: The Future of GIS – Part 1: In a Relationship

Whenever I am speaking with utilities, I often challenge them to find any piece of
data within their organization that CANNOT be spatially represented within a GIS.
We’re talking customer data, work order data, inspection data, asset data, vehicle
data, monitoring data, etc.

And as that data is presented in a geospatial context, we can create new relationships
that may not have been apparent or even possible without the GIS. As we discussed
last month, relationships fuel decision-making and therefore GIS systems integration
fuels exponential decision-making throughout a utility by relating disparate data
points.

Related: Smart Investing in Your GIS

Many of you will have already embarked on systems integration between your GIS
and other systems within your organization. Every customer has slightly different
priorities and there’s no right or wrong when it comes to these integration points.

Over time I have worked with enough customers to establish some common themes
based on implementations I’ve seen which are worth sharing here. I’d be interested
in any feedback on which of these systems you have integrated to and perhaps which
others you may have touched that are not listed.

Like any long-term geo-geek pulling his weight in the industry, I usually talk about
the GIS being at the center of the universe. I know plenty of folks who may have
other thoughts, but we will agree to disagree!

With that said here are the most common system integration points I’ve seen:
Customer Information System (CIS) – this is perhaps the most common
integration point, as all of our utility and telecom clients are in turn servicing their
own end customers that consume some form of energy or data services from them.
This may be as simple as automating a load of customer meters or service points
from the CIS into the GIS but can also be much more extensive. A lot of utilities push
coordinate data from GIS back to CIS and others that pull additional usage data
(monthly and/or peak usage) from CIS into GIS to fuel other analysis. No matter
what level of data you integrate, it will absolutely add significant value. We are also
forecasting a tremendous uptick in CIS integration as customers continue to add
personal renewable generation points as well as behind the meter smart home
devices that interact with energy. This creates a challenge but also an opportunity for
us to consume and expose this data geospatially to other systems throughout the
utility.

Work Management System (WMS) – this is probably number two on my list,

but it’s a close second to the CIS. Work management systems track work as it is
designed, approved and subsequently completed at a utility/telco. All of these phases
of work can be tied into a GIS. Many utilities perform graphic work designs within
GIS that drive material ordering and costing of the job, visualizing the workflow of
the assets in the system (design, approved, in construction, etc.) and finally,
capturing the as-built details of the job into GIS at the completion of the work. If you
don’t have these systems integrated, I can almost predict that you are performing
duplicate data entry at some point in the process which introduces errors and
omissions. The speed with which we process field network changes into our GIS
directly affects almost every other system and process within the utility and clearly
affects the safety, reliability, and efficiency of utility operations.

Distribution Planning (DPS) – there are a number of DPS applications out there
that will assist utilities in planning for expanding their energy distribution to new
customers based on projected demands. Most of these systems can accept your
current utility network into their system via an ETL (extract, transform, load)
process. This is a key integration utilities must perform to export your authoritative
network data from your GIS into these external systems on a regular or on-demand
basis. The target data formats can vary, but your Esri GIS often has all of the detail
required.

Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) – there are a lot of details managed in an

EAM surrounding the assets owned by your organization. A TON of value can be
added by automating the process of adding and retiring assets in EAM based on the
editing actions taken within GIS tied back to your as-built entry process. This is often
a round trip integration that allows the asset records in GIS to be tied to the EAM
asset records. A utility can then drive inspection and maintenance events in EAM
based on spatial relevance such as inspection grids, service territories, etc. Enabling
EAM processes with geospatial drivers will always increase efficiency.

Outage Management System (OMS) – some of you may run your OMS directly
on top of your GIS data but for those that don’t, you will most often want to feed your
network data from GIS into that external OMS. Similar to a DPS, this is often
accomplished using an ETL process that will consume your utility or telco network to
drive a scheduled or on-demand import into the external OMS. Many OMS
applications also now support the concept of incremental updates where utilities
send regular updates from the GIS into OMS based at the circuit or utility system
level as opposed to extracting the entire network during each push. OMS apps
usually require a high level of quality in your GIS which ties back to your data
maintenance procedures and the relationships that we discussed last month.

Engineering Analysis (EA) – engineering analysis tools allow you to design

facilities based on asset-based and external factors. This often includes pole loading,
secondary transformer loading, cable pulling or any number of engineering
functions. There are applications out there that specialize in these and many others
that can be fueled with your GIS data as an input to represent the current as-built
asset data and/or newly designed data.

Weather – while this may seem obvious, not enough utilities are using real-time
weather data within their GIS. Weather data is now readily available via web services
from a number of companies in native Esri formats. This data can be overlaid on top
of your GIS assets to present a new view of how weather may affect your network,
your customers and your operations.This can be used in assessing ongoing storms or
even for forecasting weather patterns against your service territory.

Document Management – document management systems usually allow you to

add, index and search documents of any type based on stored metadata about the
document or its content. We’ve built some pretty cool document management
integrations that use GIS features or their spatial locations to drive automatic
searching of documents. This really adds value when you have located an asset or
address in GIS and want to view all documents related to that location.We can often
use the attribution in GIS to automatically locate and display the related documents
directly in the GIS (desktop or web). This provides a whole new pattern for locating
your docs.

SCADA & AMI/MDM – these systems are all about real time monitoring of assets
in the field. They can send event notifications to the GIS to represent meter status or
connectivity which we can use to display to users on a map, driving all types of
decisions. One utility allowed GIS users to query an AMI system to get the real-time
status of one or more selected meters in their GIS. Meters and devices are typically
already on a utility’s maps, so why not consume their status to enable other spatial
processes!? Beyond status, we’re also seeing a general uptick in consuming other
monitoring information in GIS. In another example, we were able to consume
voltage alarms from AMI meters and subsequently tie them back spatially and
through the GIS network to predictively determine transformers that needed to be
inspected or even replaced. All before the customer ever knew there was a problem!

Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) – all utilities have mobile workforces that
dispatch various types of trucks and other equipment to service the assets in the
field. Many of them have now moved toward adding AVL tracking to their fleets
which allows for GPS coordinates to be transmitted at regular intervals to the back
office.A typical AVL integration allows that data to be made available in GIS to show
crew or other staff locations in real time with relation to our assets/network. This can
drive a lot of processes by determining which crews are closest to incidents or assets,
which crews are currently en route and which are already onsite. It’s a whole new
level of real-time data.

As mentioned above, this isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list but does represent a
common theme that I’ve seen among many utilities. Let me know what other systems
you have integrated to and if you haven’t hit one of these systems, perhaps this will
give you some new ideas.

All of the above integrations are still what I would consider “traditional GIS.” Most of
these patterns have been around for 15 years or more with one key difference. Back
in 2000, only the largest utilities could afford these enterprise integrations whereas
now we see cooperatives, municipalities and other smaller utilities achieving
significant return on investment through these same patterns (for a whole lot less
dough).
The bottom line is that there absolutely is value to be realized if you haven’t looked at
any of these areas within your organization!

This wraps up part two as well as my high-level assessment of where you should be
with your GIS today. All of these relationships and integrations are not necessary to
embrace the future of GIS, but they can absolutely drive its success.

Next month I’ll dive right into where we’re headed as an industry and how you can
embrace that change!