Integrating information with GIS

As the use of GIS systems becomes standard for public works departments, utilities and others who manage large amounts of infrastructure, the need for more people to access that material has grown.

Everyone from city planners to the public may at some point need to check a map to determine the location of a pipe or hydro hookup. Accessibility of software, the ability to update maps where necessary, and ease of use are all important considerations when GIS software systems are purchased.
Tom Wilga, GIS co-ordinator for Welland Hydro-Electric System Corp. in Ontario, said the material his utility uses for planning and maintenance has traditionally been kept offline. To be specific, it was kept in hundreds of binders full of drawings, some of them the big 24-inch by 36-inch drawings, many going back into the 1940s and 1950s.

Moving to the digital age
For Welland Hydro, the challenge was to move that knowledge into the digital age.

“What we want to do is transfer all that information into one software system – then we can maintain that software rather than jumping back and forth,” says Wilga.

The utility serves around 22,000 customers spread over 86 square kilometres in southern Ontario, near Niagara Falls. That coverage means a vast amount of data in terms of marking out the location of poles, transformers and other assets. The binders all include that information, but drawings don’t include a lot of important information.

“There’s no geospatial aspect at all – it’s basically just a drawing,” Wilga says.Recently, Wilga and Welland Hydro decided to move towards something more inclusive and easier to use. Because the company was well-versed in Autodesk products thanks to long use of AutoCAD, Welland Hydro became one of the first utilities in Ontario to switch to Autodesk Topobase software for infrastructure management.

“Topobase is our first geospatial system – every line and symbol has an attribute such as its size, its owner, and so forth... any kind of attribute we can attach to it right now,” Wilga says. “There were other programs we considered, but the main reason for Topobase was that it’s Autodesk software, and because we were already using AutoCAD we decided to keep the same flavour. In drafting, Autodesk is pretty much the standard, so it’s easier to work with for new employees.”

Integrate GIS and CAD
Topobase allows users to integrate their CAD and GIS information easily, and blend it with customer information into an easy to use system that allows users to extract information quickly. That was a big positive in selecting Topobase for the city of Lloydminster, Alberta, according to GIS manager Terry Burton.

There, the municipality faced the same problems as Welland Hydro: lots of information, and little interconnection. “We previously had used AutoCAD map drawings linked to an access database, for five or 10 years – we’ve had an overall map for each system, but it’s not a smart map with a database attached to it,” explains Burton. “These were very crude drawings that would show there was a valve someplace but have no information attached to it.”
With the amount of infrastructure under Lloydminster’s care, it was important to have an option to cover all of that material through a single system, Burton says.

“I wanted something that was more centralized, so I could provide access to other people in the organization and let them update their data as well,” he says. “That was key for me. Even in our part of the system, maintaining yearly updates was cumbersome with just individual drawings – you’d have to pull up three different drawings, which adds extra work. I decided we needed something that would allow us to manipulate multiple things at once.”
Accessing information through Topobase is made easier through a number of interface options.

“With our maps, you pretty much need to have an AutoCAD map seat wherever you want people to input data. Now I’m going to do it either through a map viewer application or through the Topobase Web viewer application,” Burton says. “It gives you full capabilities just like the client would do. People can work at their own workstation and not have to fight for one... we don’t have to buy a license for everyone who needs it.”

Topobase links information using an Oracle database server, making it easy to extract information, Wilga notes. “Rather than us having to go back and forth to find the owner of a house, then switch to some other software for details on the equipment while whipping out binders and looking them over, everything is right here for us,” he says. “We’re still putting things into the system... every piece of cable, every transformer, every house meter is interconnected.”

Adding more departments
Burton is expecting to have even more city departments get involved in using Topobase soon.“We’re starting with the utility side of things and the underground infrastructure,” he says. ‘The next step will probably get into the above-ground side, so we’ll look at roads, curbs, sidewalks, traffic lights, signs – the whole works. I can imagine us getting into the parks and recreation side – playgruonds, trees and trails. Whatever databases they have will be able to work with the Topobase system, whether linking to them or being input directly into it.”