In the Commonwealth of Virginia, Dominion and Verizon share thousands of utility poles in their combined service territories in an effort to reduce the number of poles placed in the field. Traditionally, it has been difficult to track pole ownership and attachments, because facilities change on a daily basis due to new construction, system improvements and maintenance. Random outside forces, such as storms and vehicle collisions, damage poles, thus contributing to the difficulty of keeping accurate records.

Federal and state mandates require periodic rate adjustments associated with joint-use agreements. Many utility companies are using joint-use surveys to update pole ownership and joint-use status to meet standards and reporting requirements. In the past, joint-use surveys were typically conducted by outside contractors trained to accurately identify electric devices and circuits along with telecommunications attachments. Paper maps were used in the field as a guide for referencing pole locations as well as plotting their location for future identification. Joint-use and ownership determinations were made in the field; information was handwritten and converted to a digital format in the office. This was a typical scenario before the introduction of mobile computers and global positioning system (GPS) and geographic information systems (GIS) technologies.

In 2001, Dominion and Verizon contracted with GIS consulting firm Timmons Group (Richmond, Virginia, U.S.) to conduct a joint-use survey in their combined territories located throughout Virginia. The survey consisted of collecting GPS coordinates and attribute information on 620,000 poles, associated with 16,000 miles (25,750 km) of service lines, with an average of 10 field technicians working at any given time. New technologies in mobile computing and GPS were used to develop a method to collect joint-use and ownership data in a more efficient and accurate manner. Data were captured digitally, which formed the framework for a spatially enabled database and GIS.

Hardware and Application Development

A team of surveyors was equipped with mobile pen tablets, such as the Fujitsu 3500. These systems were chosen based on their mobility, outdoor screen readability, Windows 2000 compatibility and ability to interface with a GPS receiver using a standard RS-232 serial port. The Trimble PRO XR Pathfinder system was chosen to fulfill the GPS component. The PRO XR has the ability to collect real-time corrected positions.

A crucial component of the solution was a GIS-enabled asset inventory software application based on the ESRI suite of desktop applications. This solution needed to integrate with GIS, GPS and support multiple technicians collecting data in the field for long periods of time. The application component scoped, designed and ultimately built allows users to view electrical devices, circuits and other supporting GIS base layers. Users are provided a user-friendly interface to collect data, which is captured in the personal Geodatabase. Poles, number and type of attachments are captured for all joint-use poles to help quantify the lease arrangement in the share service area.

The joint-use collection application consists of a suite of asset inventory tools to enable field personnel to collect and store utility pole asset attributes and coordinate data collected using GPS. Visual Basic and ESRI ArcObjects were used to build a customized COM-based extension to the ArcGIS ArcView architecture. A joint-use toolbar was built to house collection, query, modification and edit tools for spatial and attribute information. Trimble Pathfinder Tools Software Development Kit (SDK) and Visual Basic were used to develop the GPS interface. The GPS receiver component handles all communications between the GPS receiver and the application, including the configuration and supply of real-time differential corrections from radio beacons and satellites. Coordinate transformation and unit conversion components included in the SDK were also utilized to convert the utility data collected into the Virginia State Plane projection. The SSF Writer component was used to customize the creation of an SSF file with unique point records that could be related back to the GIS data after post-processing and differential correction. The application provided real-time status feeds into ArcView ArcMap to display GPS information, such as PDOP, DGPS and satellite availability and position collection, directly onto the custom toolbar in ArcView.

The Tablet PC Support for the ArcView extension was utilized to achieve redlining and gesturing functionality. Tablet PC Support interfaces enabled functionality to be built allowing the pen motion to be stored as Microsoft “INK” in an annotation feature class. Application users utilized this technology to draw, circle and note assets in the field or identify potential problems during surveying. Other functionality was built into the application using Microsoft INK technologies, for example, to allow on-screen navigation through gesturing. Users could draw a right arrow on the screen with a stylus, and the “gesture” triggers the current view in the ArcView ArcMap document to pan to the right.

The user interface was designed based on a rule-based matrix enabling a “smart” application that would disable attribute choices that did not follow the logic inherent in the decision matrix. This served to reduce the amount of human error associated with collecting important attribute information. Joint-use surveys typically require a high accuracy standard. This rule-base matrix approach allowed for a higher-quality end product while reducing the amount of post-processing associated with internal quality-control efforts. Prior to the development of this tool it is estimated that 12 to 16 hours per week were spent on QA/QC efforts. This level of effort was all but eliminated after application roll out.

Conclusion

With the correct hardware in place and a mobile GIS platform, a new method of conducting joint-use surveys was established for Dominion and Verizon. The ability to collect joint-use data and GPS coordinates in the field using mobile technology now enables both utilities to update and maintain joint-use data more effectively with the use of GIS. This application will carry both companies into the future and be used for a wide variety of general asset collection projects.

Matt Gregory is the geographic information systems (GIS) project manager for the Timmons Group, where he manages field survey crews involved with GIS projects using global positioning systems (GPS) surveying. He has experience in agriculture and utility applications and has been heavily involved with GIS/GPS survey projects with Dominion since 1999. matt.gregory@timmons.com