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Workflow Design

The Inside Story on Outside Plant Spatial Data "Warehousing"

John Lancaster, BSc, BE, FAIE, MIEEE, FAICD

David Alston BE (Hons), MIEEE

Presented at Annual General Meeting of AM/FM Australia-New Zealand, 1996

ABSTRACT

As spatial information systems (SIS) mature, they are increasingly being applied to mission-critical tasks within utilities, local government and other agencies providing services to the public. Typical applications in utilities include asset management, network design and maintenance, the real-time location of faults in the network, and the dispatch of maintenance vehicles to rectify those faults. In emergency services, SIS technology linked to a Computer Aided Dispatch system, Caller-Line-Identification database, (000 in Australia or elsewhere 111, 911 or 999) and global positioning technology (GPS), can automatically pinpoint both the location of an incident and the responding emergency service vehicles. In relying on SIS technology to perform these tasks, managers are discovering an ever widening range of other applications for which the technology is suitable. They also find that introduction of the technology provides real opportunities for re-engineering their organisations by modifying their workflow and work practices, in order to improve their productivity. All of these applications are pointing the way to a need for enterprise wide access to spatial data embedded in the corporate database. The implication of the demand for user access to spatial related data (asset maps, geocoded networks, field workprints and orders, dispatch and SCADA control room maps etc) requires that the corporate relational data model includes two simple additional attributes, namely "x" and "y" map co-ordinates, for any outside plant, personnel and customers. This paper draws on extensive experience in the telecommunications, power distribution and other industries to illustrate the benefits of using SIS technology in a "spatial Data Warehouse" context for all corporate applications having anything to do with location on the face of the earth. Experience encompasses a wide range of technologies including AM/FM/GIS, real-time control (SCADA) systems, CADD, cadastral mapping, GIS for state and local government, and image based document management.

INTRODUCTION

Spatial information systems (SIS) are maturing as strategic tools in many user environments. In Utilities, amongst other enterprises, SIS are becoming a continuum of applications rather than an abstract technology at the cerebral level, or just electronic CAD mapping at the peripheral drawing office level. Formerly, in either case, the "map" based computer systems were operated as "islands" separate from daily mainstream operations. Once integrated, the promise and predictions of spatial information systems in realworld applications are beginning to bear fruit. Grant (1) observed "There are innumerable varieties of spatial information. Spatial information is any data with a positional component, not simply the information pertaining to cadastre and engineering surveys. It is employed to support planning and decision making in a growing number of diverse applications, from public safety to the sustainable development of a nation's resources. The spatial information industry has enormous breadth involving all aspects of data collection, storage, transfer, manipulation and analysis for an almost endless list of potential users and applications, as well as research, training and technological capabilities." The new generation of multi data type storage technology makes spatial information as ubiquitous as text within the same databases

CONVERGENCE

The "economic imperatives" of de-regulation bring another driver and focus to bear on organisations whose "core" business involves knowing "where" (spatial location) both field equipment and personnel are located on a dynamic daily, if not hourly, basis. Further, in the case of life critical emergency services, an "up-to-the minute" and accurate status is essential. This latter issue gives rise to a new class of "responsive" GIS criteria which involves the integration of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), AM/FM/GIS for spatial backdrop, Computer Aided Dispatch and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) for vehicle and personnel tracking - in fact any form of moveable asset - all being integrated by secure data networks and realtime "fault tolerant" processors. These in turn, support failsafe proven data management techniques, providing a coherent temporal realisation of the status of physical elements and personnel in a "Spatial Visualisation" environment for mission critical operations.

EVOLUTION

Before examining the ever increasing convergence of technologies and specific ramifications in the spatial realm, it is worth noting that disparate use of spatial data has been marked by a slow evolution. Granger (2) noted a number of distinct phases: The First Generation This period has been marked by:

a supply (rather than demand) driven-market.
an overwhelming emphasis on esoteric technology requiring highly specialised operating personnel.
a tendency to simply "automate" established manual methods.
an emphasis on the graphic (rather than information) quality of output.
narrowly based, short-term project focus.
data model "apartheid" between vector, raster and image based systems.
limited availability of formal training and education.
an emphasis on data capture and data conversion programs - the "database stuffing era".
"islands of technology" in Design, Finance and Operations.

Second Generation "A decision support system involving the integration of spatially referenced data in a problem solving environment". (Cowan)

Again, Granger observed, "The emphasis here is on the application (decision making), on integration, on the data and on problem solving (ie on beneficiaries). The technology is assumed or incidental. It is this altered perspective that marks the generational change. Increasingly GIS projects are marked by:

a demand driven market - users are more knowledgeable and discriminating and vendors are now more responsive to user requirements.
an increasing emphasis on user friendly, applications oriented technology.
a tendency to develop techniques and procedures to make maximum benefit from the technology.
an emphasis on the information quality of output.
broadly based, multi-purpose, long term real world focus.
data model integration.
an emphasis on data integrity, maintenance and custodianship.
recognition that team/partner approach is needed for integration process.

This paper looks beyond the latter generation with emphasis on project management, data integrity, data sharing and custodianship in reflecting real world imperatives involved in using "workflow" models to re-engineer organisations to take advantage of technology convergence. Field experience and case studies are drawn from the Utility sector as examples of "systems integration in progress" towards workflow and re-engineering of corporate structures and concomitant corporate data warehouses. Principal to this concept is an unwavering focus by the enterprise on the customer by "enabling" operatives to deliver more and better service via a "one-stop" customer service point.

While specific reference is made in this paper to Utilities, the "workflow" processes also apply to all spatial arenas, from large construction sites and town planning, to State/Nationwide digital cadastres and surveying. Typically, inter-organisation data flow and maintenance is co-ordinated on a "Data-highway" in a multi-layer continuum all ultimately aimed at us, the ratepayers, taxpayers, constituents and consumers!

ECONOMIC IMPERATIVES

RE-ENGINEERING THE ORGANISATION

Business enterprises such as electric power, water and gas utilities, telecommunications and infrastructure managers (road, rail, air) have entered the 90's to discover a new business environment based on competition and de-regulation (ie. being able to offer a broader array of services with lesser regulatory restraint, but without the 'benefits' of monopoly control). Despite the onset of de-regulation the business environment is also marked by stricter public accountability, particularly in the areas of consumer rights and safety, plus, in the present times and extremely tight economic constraints.

Formerly government owned enterprises, as well as traditionally private sector operations, have business objectives based on the not unusual premise of making a return on investment. These objectives devolve into maintenance and growth of the customer base, to controlling capital expenditure and growing customer revenue. On the cost side of the profit equation there is extreme pressure to reduce operating costs and to increase the productivity of the workforce. Due to the geographical dispersion of their enterprises, and significant automation of engineering and office based processes, increasing the productivity of the workforce is primarily about extracting maximum benefit from the field based portions of that workforce as well as integrating the "islands of technology" ( Figure 1).

A suitable business approach capable of satisfying the business objectives in the current environment is to invest the enterprise with the hallmark of a quality service provider. This philosophy revolves around the enterprise focusing absolutely on the customer with two primary attributes sought by those customers for service delivery: a guarantee of responsiveness and an acceptable pricing structure. The value of the services being purchased by these consumers, being deliverable's such as energy, communications and transport, is that they are now considered to be lifestyle essentials for which people are not prepared to wait. With competition the consumer dollar will be taken to another enterprise.

The business pressure on the enterprise is to have sufficient infrastructure in place to permit "no wait" service and to streamline the work processes associated with service provision. Re-engineering of old style work practices is required to achieve these business goals, especially in the area of management of the field and the office based administrative workforce via the vision of shared information reducing intermediate time and manpower consuming (usually) clerical activities.

Workflow Initiation

The point in time at which the enterprise provides service to a particular customer is generally at the customers' own initiative, whether it be an application for a new connection, an enquiry to upgrade an existing facility, or a report of a faulty service. Sometimes, of course, the customer initiative is stimulated by marketing pressure from the utility itself in the form value-added product "upsell" and "specials".

Most significantly, many of these initiatives trigger a change in workflow ie. a different sequence of work processes is set in train, many of which overlap in functionality.

Past Organisation Approach

All organisations in the public utility sector have grown from both natural demand and very often politically motivated mergers. As management grapples with change imposed from outside, a natural tendency is to retain and duplicate processes which appear "manageable" from within. For example as telephone companies moved to "communications providers" and began adding new products and services, quite often the new "product" was set up with separate accounting systems, service outlets and field staff. Duplication of administration within may be justified, however the consumer was somehow expected to know how to differentiate between the service provider departments (eg phone billing, installation service, data services, maintenance, mobile etc) and their individual records and system. Obviously, this was untenable in a modern consumer driven environment. Hence the massive move to customer focus and "one stop" point of sale. Community growth plans (demography) are monitored Community growth plans (demography) are monitored and used in conjunction with customer load history data and seasonal load patterns (network visualisation) to predict future demands on the facility (network) . The installed facilities network (Automated Mapping/Facilities Management - AM/FM - visualisation) is analysed in conjunction with approved change orders to identify network deficiencies that prevent satisfaction of projected demands. Plans (map extract) are developed to define requirements for expanding capacity or extending service to new locations. Rough estimates of materials, labour, and overall costs are prepared to support the budgeting process. Several alternatives may be developed at this stage. When an approach is defined, a change order request is prepared.

This example is just one set of workflow process and related spatial data types of many sets in the planning/design/operations departmental interaction. The utilisation of Utility AM/FM/ GIS in a corporate warehouse in the day-to-day enterprise permits a continuing interplay between office automation, corporate consumer details. Engineering documents and manual historical records are now leading to demand for "multimedia" integration.

The above example is included to show that integration is not a simple plug-and-play process. Implementation has to be a carefully planned process which takes account of existing platforms and processes, addressing the corporate goal of re-engineering the process around information flow, while maintaining customer service all the while!

In the case of distribution utilities, spatial systems are a natural "fit", particularly at the lowest level of service, since they can provide added data discrimination by locating the physical point of service and all intermediate equipment via network tracing between the source and consumer. The location of any element can be a map coordinate (or offset from a cadastral feature) which in itself is a unique locater of both customer facility and plant elements. This can be used to validate service address against consumer billing database for vehicle dispatch. This is a natural process of spatial data capture in design at one end being used in a continuum of service provision at the other end.

Other workflow/workforce management elements within the customer service and operations area which impact and are impacted by spatial systems include:

Workflow For New Connections
Workflow For Fault Repair
Workflow For Operations

Each of these processes, when reviewed from the point of view of enabling field operations such as sales, service and installation, leads to the convergence concept envisaged by Telecom Australia (Lovelock (3)) where Facilities and network staff would "telecommute from their home workstations, using ISDN technology. They would access corporate data stores to obtain information for analysis or network planning, drawing on expert systems to aid them in design, economic analysis and in selecting the best technology for a specific market. Completed design information would be sent electronically for approval and scheduling in the form of digital pictures, video and help advice for field technicians, finally being despatched electronically to the technician's mobile van as work orders for installation".

INTEGRATION THROUGH SHARED INFORMATION IN THE WAREHOUSE

Fundamental to ensuring that information is shared is the imperative that data is "ubiquitous" - any representation of any element of data must be globally available for access but stored only once. This concept of ensuring that there is only one version of information is all the more imperative the greater the number of functions accessing such data. Security access to prevent inadvertent change and consequential levels of authorisation, coupled with backup procedures become a corporate issue. Implementation therefore must be a strategic issue supported by the executive and all departments via mutual understanding of corporate data models.

Figure 2 shows a simplified conceptual diagram of the access to a corporate database wherein former "islands" share information. There is nothing new is this concept in the general world of EDP and of alphanumeric data. The thrust of this paper however contends that all data including CAD graphics, physical location (spatial) and network topology, realtime data, document images etc should be shared through a distributed "data highway" concept. The adoption of open systems architecture and gradual acceptance by industry of emerging standards for interoperability means hardware platform realisation can be achieved in distributed, client server and hybrid migration environments according to need.

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT

While the foregoing indicates an implementation strategy for an ideal and agreed corporate plan it presumes that this has been a precursor. In many cases of both greenfields and past implementations, the lack of adopting a corporate strategic plan and its embrace from the Chief Executive Officer down has meant that the best technology and intentions have lacked a corporate commitment.

Case history indicates that despite the potential gain of SIS once implemented, the very significant cost of initial conversion (paper records into digital media) has proven a massive stumbling block if the working level productivity at the departmental base office level alone is taken as the basis for the business case justification.

Abel (4) observed that where massive investments have been made in acquisition of spatial data whose primary justification was to improve cost-effectiveness of traditional activities, this also was motivated by the greater (and often intangible) benefits derived from wider use within the enterprise.

In spite of orders of magnitude, improvement in both computing performance and software functionality, attempts to justify utility Spatial Information Systems (AM/FM/GIS) at an island working level is doomed to never receive executive endorsement.

However, those organisations who have taken a longer term view have learnt from experience that business cases can, and are, holding up when an enterprise-wide and strategic approach is taken.

Corporate Strategic Focus For this, another management "workflow" cycle is needed within the organisation to lift the integration process to a strategic level. Moving into the third dimension (figure 3), in this model the spatial information systems implementation "ownership" is taken by an executive team embracing all core "information" users and, most significantly, spatial data is promoted from the drawing office where it quite often resided on a drafted map (or even a sophisticated CAD system), to a vital and visible role in corporate asset management integral with other elements in the corporate data model. This group is empowered by the executive to review work flow imperatives relevant to business needs and steers an implementation course to ensure applications address these Customer focused processes will by nature be cross

Customer focused processes will by nature be cross functional. The primary aim of the strategic alignment "workflow" and data model/warehouse is to plan end-to-end management of information. Utilities, by both the size and diversity of disciplines which they need to perform, are indeed complex. So, too, is the information flow. The concept of strategic alignment to a common customer focus helps analysis and identification of superfluous processes which often have grown from computerisation of manual procedures. The executive team is strategically placed above sectional interests and can steer individual designers of component processes to whom some data would appear unrelated yet be vital to the efficient operation of the business as a whole. user specific interfaces and application software the toolkit or modules for enterprise-wide integration of spatial data and systems. These module are placed in an architecture which in effect is a technical strategic alignment complementary to the organisational user specific interfaces and application software user specific interfaces and application software

user specific interfaces and application software
interfaces to other systems and databases which may industry
interfaces to other systems and databases which may contain other sets of the client's data
spatial/relational databases required to hold the attribute characteristics of the 'objects'
computer hardware - both CPU and workstations in either stand-alone or networked environments at a single site or across a multiple number of locations.

People Architecture

Software technology is producing lower cost yet more effective products in the drive to commodity "packages". A tendency arising as a result is that good old fashioned design and planning can be bypassed by expediency of "plug & play". This can be useful in creating awareness and learning, however the result of low investment in design and consequential lack of "buy-in" by potential users usually results in cost overruns when the initial expectations are not met and the project is doomed to troubled implementation.

Formulation of strategic planning processes and business case assessment must involve end users. Similarly, once contracts are formed, the vendor and customer teams should coalesce as a common team focused on implementation, supported by an executive steering committee drawn from all key players (vendor and customer alike).

Subject matter expertise is mandatory in the people team. Key knowledge base and experience includes as examples: (fig 5)

Relationship Management

High level project management skills in both business case and technology management.

Interpretation

Rules of the "game" including disciplines as diverse as demographics and load flow to surveying and supervisory control.

Support

Technical expertise in communications, software "products" and modules, operating systems, configuration management.

CONCLUSIONS

As utility oriented enterprises "re-engineer" and downsize, the promise of technology and technologists to automate processes will only be effective if the technology itself is embraced and understood by the enterprise executives and strategic planners themselves. Of paramount importance to any authority relying on routine spatial information for the location of physical plant, assets and personnel, the workflow process design must integrate spatial technology in a seamless fashion as part of the corporate activity. A key component of such a system is an agreed corporate data model.

Long term benefits of cost reduction in service provision will only accrue as a result of well structured and strategic positioning of spatial systems in the enterprise-wide operation.

APPENDIX A

UTILITY SIS DESIGN OBJECTIVES

There a number of primary functional objectives Lancaster (5) which are fundamental to the capability to deliver user-effective AM/FM/GIS systems These objectives relate to the fundamentals of the 'problem' that is to be 'solved' (from a user perspective), and the major of these objectives are to provide an integration toolkit which:

accurately represents (models) in the Spatial Information System (SIS) the items (objects) of interest from the real-world, such as the location and topology of a land parcel, the location and characteristics of a power pole telecom pit manhole etc including connectivity, spatial topology (adjacency etc); These objects may take a variety of forms/characteristics, from the amorphous (such as a road) to the physical (such as a pipe), and all of the forms have associated attributes (such as material type) plus optional image association;
replace existing paper maps / drawings with those generated from the computer based information in a seamless heterogeneous environment derived from both vector and raster data;
interface with other systems and databases, particularly via industry standard SQL interfaces, as well as via Spatially Extended SQL (SSQL) capabilities;
provide dynamic network connectivity specific to the type of network;

For example, linear networks requires connectivity in the context of flow, with the physical devices such as valves, circuit breakers appropriately constraining the flow, depending on whether they are in an open or closed state; In addition telco's need parallel connectivity within the linear cable/conduit for cross connect assignments and circuit tracing;

provide the common model for use by all groups within the organisation;
provide a close fit solution to the client's user requirements, both in terms of functionality, and in terms of symbology, terminology, rules and types of information;
provide interfaces and functionality that are designed around the users of the SIS systems, where different users will have differing requirements to perform their jobs of work as part of corporate "workflow" processes.

Transportability

All of the applications should use high level graphics application languages and standard graphical user interfaces to ensure maximum transportability of applications across operating systems and hardware platforms.

Distributed Databases

Distributed database systems utilise distributed file systems and/or networks in order to scatter databases across different computer systems. The distributed nature of such systems is developed by using a variety of tools, such as networks, inter-process communication, remote procedure calls and distributed file systems.

Generally available distributed database systems have become prevalent in the past few years, and are usually the result of adding computer networking capabilities to an existing database product.

The ability to hold attribute data against models, graphic objects, their versions and references;
Extensions to provide the ability to interface with other databases which can also hold such attribute data;
The ability to handle 'seamless' spatial databases (map and network);
Spatial modelling and polygon processing capability based on full topological data structures.

The areas of applications code receiving most attention from these effort are :

Connectivity validation of data entry, such as what is permitted to be connected to what, and by what means, under what circumstances;
Automatic graphic generation or extraction from the 'normal' view of a model, including graphics clash management;
Global network model integrity checking, including checks on the likelihood of missing data, erroneous connectivity, unused portions of the network asset base, and non-standard connectivity practices.

Artificial Intelligence

In addition, larger applications are suggested which are intended to be grafted on to the outside of corporate network databases. Such applications as fault location and management require an artificial intelligence (AI) approach to sift fault history and new fault data for network feature commonality, and to report graphically to an operator probable cause, location and causative incident. In this case this would become a Network Visualisation" application.

References

Grant, Donald M July 1993 'Provision and Management of Spatial Data in NSW' University of NSW Land Information Conference July 1993
Granger, Ken March 1993 'Chemical Hazards & Emergency Management Unit, Queensland Bureau of Emergency Services' Submission by AURISA to Senate Enquiry into Major Disasters & Emergencies March 1993
Lovelock, B November 1992 Opening Address GDS World User Conference Sydney November 1992
Abel, Dr Dave 1992 'Technical Directions in Spatial Integration' ACADS Symposium 1992
Lancaster, J K 1990 'Australian Developments in Large Scale AM/FM Projects using Object Structured Databases' AM/FM International Conference Baltimore 1990
Kain, J M, Lancaster, J K, Sward, R G August 1988 'Computerised Expert System in the Design and Management of Electricity Supply Systems'
Lancaster, J K, Sward, R G 1989 'Knowledge Based Systems in Water Resource Facilities Management' WATERCOMP '89