Advancing Esri s Mobile Solutions for Leak Survey and Leak Reporting

Transcription

1 Advancing Esri s Mobile Solutions for Leak Survey and Leak Reporting Scott Ewart GIS Lead Peoples Gas Scott Orkis Manager, GIS & Planning Peoples Gas Joe Hershman Sr. Consultant RAMTeCH

2 Peoples Gas (PNG) is a gas utility currently serving more than more than 700,000 customers in western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky. PNG acquired PTWP in 2011 and EGC in This began a process of consolidating operations between the three utilities As a part of compliance, operational and risk mitigation needs, PNG sought to innovate the way it conducts leak reporting and surveys.

3 Initial Project Drivers Company acquisitions & consolidation of legacy systems Combine operations of the three utilities into a single process. This included: - Data Migration into a single Geodatabase based on the new UPDM - Modernize the approach used collection of Leaks in the field and also performing driving Leak Surveys In addition to improving field data collection integration with Essentials was required

4 Project Scope and Objective What we needed to do Deploy a field application for use in the collection of Leaks and later expand to use in mobile leak surveys. Requirements: - Needs to work completely offline - Needs to do a bidirectional Sync data without user involvement - Needs to be easy to use by a non-gis workforce - Needs to enforce Leak placement workflow - Needs to perform standard GIS functionality (identify, query, etc.) - Needs to look slick - Needs to deploy on Windows 7 field laptops & tablets And one last thing: - Needs to be completed & deployed to 700 users in 5 months

5 Initial Consideration Deploy a modified Leak Survey Mobile Map Overview The Leak Survey Mobile Map is an ArcGIS for Windows Mobile based application for use by field technicians to view, add, and update leak survey information. This application can be used in a connected or disconnected environment and allows users to: View detailed gas network and leak survey information Update leak survey status and reports Report gas leaks and ad hoc issues from the field Application is open source and available on github

6 Review of this Approach Why we went away from this Positives - Much of the functionality did exist - Configurable - Application used a component based approach Issues - Developed in VB.net, and team expertise was in C# - Configuration was overly complex - Many existing tools did not work as needed - Did not enforce workflow - Manual Sync required

7 The Quandary that followed Fix the application or start from scratch If we are thinking about starting from scratch-should we: - Use the Mobile for Windows API - Use ArcGIS Runtime Main considerations in decision: Mobile API - Mature - Stable Sync Process Syncs to a version - Know it will do everything we need ArcGIS Runtime API - Still new and untested - Could not Sync to a versioned DB - This was a show stopper in using the Runtime API

8 Decision ArcGIS for Mobile API and try to re-use what we could

9 The User Interface (Viewing with Identify)

10 The User Interface (Editing)

11 The User Interface (Search)

12 Leak Placement Workflow Enforce workflow so users don t forget anything Sync Process - During testing it was found that sync of attachments was not reliable. - Developed custom process to handle the document sync

13 Full Leak Processing Workflow Very high level

14 There is more to the story its not all about the field

15 Some things need to take place on the server What s happening back in the office Leaks require a unique company ID SAP needs to be notified if repair is customer s responsibility Essentials needs to know a Leak was detected and schedule the work Leak sketches need to be formatted into Leak Cards which include the unique ID Leak cards need to be uploaded to the DMS

16 Server Business process

17 Phase II Adding mobile leak survey Approach taken was to extend the existing application to include Leak Survey Functionality - User Enters Required Metadata about Survey - When survey is started the application collects breadcrumb trail of survey - Points filtered so only one point collected at stoplight - Breadcrumb displayed on the map moves along with truck - At completion - Breadcrumbs sent back to enterprise - Point layer updated with entire Breadcrumb trail - Line generated including operator Metadata and Survey Date - Line is synchronized back to the field

18 Leak Survey Interface Showing breadcrumb trail

19 Leak Survey Business process Custom service developed to sync breadcrumb trail back to office - Point collection too rapid to save points in offline database during collection - Quantity of points would have slowed down main data sync

20 Mobile Deployment Architecture Data flows Document Sync SAP Customer Billing HTTP Two Way Data Sync Windows Server Background Processing ArcGIS Server Mobile Data Service Updates Facility IDs Processes Attachments Updates Breadcrumbs SDE Mobile Version Essentials

21 Where we are now Leak collection The Leak Collection application has been in production since last summer - Deployed to over 800 users - Syncing data both directions - A leak collected in the field is assigned an ID and visible to the rest of the field crew in under 10 minutes during normal operations - Leak Cards are loaded into the DMS and available in about 5 minutes - Mass updates, like updating Meters from SAP are pushed to the field crew the next morning - Adding additional data collection to application requiring only configuration changes - CP Test Points, Visual Inspection Points, and more - Ownership of application has been taken over by PNG developers

22 Where we are now Leak survey Leak Survey configuration in production since early Deployed to about 40 people both in house and contractors - Survey path viewable by entire field crew in the same 10 minute timeframe - GPS Data Collection can use either truck mounted units (inhouse crew) or USB devices (contractors)

23 Future Plans Where are we going from here Everything is working but the goal is to move towards a long term Web GIS solution - The first step will be implementation of Portal for ArcGIS - There is an existing Flex web application which will be moved to a Web Application - Review the existing mobile deployment and develop a plan to deploy as an ArcGIS Runtime application - ArcGIS 10.4 along with the Quartz release of Runtime has addressed the previous shortcomings of the platform - Take advantage of the Xamarin Runtime to prepare for multiplatform deployment. This could extend the application to walking leak survey

24 Future Plans Where are we going from here Tracking and Traceability - Currently in the process of reviewing the requirements related upcoming PHMSA proposed rule amendment to the natural and other gas pipeline safety regulations (49 CFR part 192) - Communicating with esri about changes to UPDM to support the new data requirements - Considering extending the mobile application for collection of these data - Once collected Portal for ArcGIS and Dashboard can be used to share data and metrics within the company

25 Questions