by Jason R. Tuck, GISP on November 24, 2012
Data is the foundation of GIS. If data is not accurate in a GIS it is similar to a football team not having a good offensive line. How many Super Bowl champions have there been which have had an offensive line that allowed massive amounts of sacks or could not at least blow holes in the defense in the running game? Every football team extremely reliant on the offensive and defensive lines. These are the foundation for the football team on the field. Data is the same foundation and it is critical to have accurate data.
How accurate is your data in your GIS? Have you stopped and thought about the accuracy of the data? If the answer is no to the last question, it would be beneficial to take a few days to evaluate the accuracy.
You might ask what I mean by accuracy. If I am evaluating an electrical utility data model I am looking at accuracy in phasing, connectivity, information related to devices, poles, meters, etc. If the data is not accurate then the outage management system cannot be accurate plus the restoration times will be longer which equals to lost revenue. Analysis of electrical facilities (fault current, fuse coordination, etc. ) cannot be preformed with any confidence without accurate data. If your utility has billing, customer information, and assets are integrated with your base mapping data then accuracy is critical especially if any the data in billing, customer information, or assets are updated from the mapping data.
A field inventory or completing a thorough field inspection over the course of a couple of years may be possible solutions to increase your data’s accuracy. Depending on the current status of the data will drive how drastic the solution. If it is decided to collect GPS information during the data clean up, the level of accuracy (Sub-Meter, Sub-Decimeter, or Centimeter) is a critical decision. If after the field collection the utility is going to use sub-meter accuracy in collection it makes no sense to collect in sub-decimeter accuracy. On the flip side if the landbase is not accurate location wise then when the GPS collected the utility data will look like it is not accurate when in reality it is the landbase which is inaccurate not the newly collected data.
Jason Tuck is the owner/founder of Providence GIS Solutions as well as a GIS evangelist. He can be found on twitter, facebook, and linkedin, you are welcome to follow and connect with him. Jason is always open to dialog about GIS and the impact on an organization. His passion is to educate organizations about the full power of GIS and GIS is “More than A Map”.
by Jason R. Tuck, GISP on September 13, 2012
For 10 years I was employed by a municipal government in the electrical utility (35,000 meters, 45,o00 citizens) as a GIS Coordinator. We would spend $50,000 per year on maintenance fees for the whole city to use our GIS software (Base software and 3rd party software). We spent close to $300,000 in purchase and installation. Plus the man-hour cost of in-house conversion project for the base electrical facilities 10 years ago. If a electrical utility wants to implement a GIS in the traditional sense plus integrate an Outage Management System (OMS), the utility can easily spend at least $200,000+ and a lot more depending on the size of the utility on software and hardware not to mention service fees from software vendors or consultants to implement. The question which needs to be asked is the organization receiving the full value or benefits of the GIS? In other words is the organization receiving a good return on the investment of $200,000+? If your GIS is not fully INTEGRATED your organization is not receiving the full value of GIS.
Did you catch the word “Integrated” in the previous paragraph? How do you as the decision maker, GIS coordinator, engineer, or whatever role you play in the organization define the word “Integrated”? Really, I mean it, stop right now to think about it and define it for you individually. It is that important of a word when it comes to GIS. I define this word as an environment where all the data outflow as well as inflow from the various pieces of software on-site or in the “cloud” are seamlessly connected together so every department in the organization can benefit. Based on my definition does your organization have integration? If not why? If we go back to where we buy the software the vendors will tell you about their new software solution to get more value out of the GIS. Do you see the issue here yet? If we continue to believe more software purchases and higher maintenance fees is the answer then we are letting the software vendors dictate the solution versus using the software in an efficient manner to maximize the benefits of GIS.
Let me stop right there for a minute. I have purposely not mentioned any GIS software vendors in this discussion. The reason is they have the right to sale their products and in most cases GIS software vendors know what they are doing and produce quality software. This holds true regardless if the vendor is “cloud” based, desktop based, or a hybrid between cloud and desktop. These vendors care about their customers and the advancing of GIS across all organizations. I have no issue with this at all. The only issue I have is the lack of actual integration which is carried out by the software vendors. They are great at development but not so great at integration with others. There are exceptions to every rule but usually it takes a 3rd party to build this integration bridge. Software is awesome and without it the building of this bridge is much more difficult. We need software but the bridge(s) are the means to integrate.
The bridge is where an organization will find their value and benefits of a GIS. If all GIS is viewed as is a mapping tool then you still have the data silos equaling the current paradigm. What if we change this paradigm? What if GIS has matured or is maturing to the point where it is now more of how we distribute not only the spatial data but also all they other data in the organization that never sees a map document? This is last question is the new paradigm. In this paradigm is efficiency, cost savings, integration. Are you willing to change your paradigm? If the answer is yes, lets talk!
Jason Tuck is the owner/founder of Providence GIS Solutions as well as a GIS evangelist. He can be found on twitter, facebook, and linkedin, you are welcome to follow and connect with him. Jason is always open to dialog about GIS and the impact on an organization. His passion is to educate organizations about the full power of GIS and GIS is “More than A Map”.
Data is the foundation of GIS. If data is not accurate in a GIS it is similar to a football team not having a good offensive line. How many Super Bowl champions have there been which have had an offensive line that allowed massive amounts of sacks or could not at least blow holes in the defense in the running game? Every football team extremely reliant on the offensive and defensive lines. These are the foundation for the football team on the field. Data is the same foundation and it is critical to have accurate data.
