Most water industry professionals involved in planning, design, construction, and operation will now routinely be using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), says Jonathan Carrivick, lecturer in Geomorphology within the School of Geography at the University of Leeds.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are hardware and software capable capturing, displaying, storing, manipulating and analyzing spatial information in an efficient manner. The widespread and intensive use of GIS within the water industry has developed at an unprecedented rate in comparison with other utilities and industries. The water industry has realised the potential of GIS beyond basic mapping and inventory functions. GIS has been taken to an operational level. It has been made a business tool, a critical input to management information systems (MIS), and a critically-integrated component of most projects.
This ‘revolution’ has been occurred due to a combination of factors. Firstly, GIS hardware now is almost unrecognizable in comparison to the early mainframes of the 1980s. Even desktop PCs that superseded workstations in the 1990s are comparatively overshadowed by field-portable notebooks. Secondly, GIS software has evolved from entirely command-line driven code to windows-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) menus and wizards (e.g. Fig. 1), open-source freeware and multiple internet-based online forums where services, patches and scripts can be exchanged. For instance the Flood Estimation Handbook (FEH) is provided with a simple GUI that facilitates users to interrogate catchment information from a map-based front end. Overall, a modern GIS has greater interoperability, and is faster, cheaper and more easy to use than ever before.
The water industry has realised that when a modern GIS is networked across its company it saves time and money and thus increases productivity. Projects can be turned around in a very short space of time because a GIS permits data to be mapped, monitored, modelled and maintained. GIS has a power of integration. It enables decision support frameworks, communication tools and indeed in terms of applications is apparently limited only by imagination and availability of data.
Currently, the water industry primarily uses GIS as the centre point of data management. For example, for coordinating raw data collation via mobile GIS, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and remote sensing; for data processing including sorting, cleaning, pre- and post-processing, and for data communication such as mapping and visualisations to describe infrastructure facilities, to identify problems, to recommend solutions, to schedule and report maintenance activities, and to support technical analysis. Combinations of spatial layers are manipulated to address planning, operation, and management issues. Topology information about how network elements are connected makes identifying scenarios of service interruption possible. Regulatory requirements that are increasingly reliant on computer-generated maps are satisfied. GIS works alongside hydrological and hydraulic models of surface water and sewer systems, watersheds and floodplains. It is used to design efficient meter-reading routes, or to facilitate automated readings. It integrates automated mapping/facilities management (AM/FM) systems for inspection, maintenance and monitoring. GIS with and without model interface has been applied to numerous areas including surface water hydrologic and groundwater modeling, water supply and sewer line design, and stormwater and diffuse source pollution modeling for urban and agricultural areas. Other applications, such as floodplain management, environmental impact assessment studies, erosion and sedimentation, and hazardous waste site locations are also indirectly related to the water industry.
Most pertinent to understanding the company-wide adoption of GIS-based operating systems, is firstly the ability of GIS to develop decision support systems for efficient management and best management practices, and secondly the ability of GIS to integrate related technologies such as relational database management systems (RDMS), the internet, wireless communications, Computer Aided Design (CAD), GPS, and remotely sensed data.
It is in fact those related technologies that have helped to bring GIS to the fore in the water industry. Evolving GIS applications and trends today include the use of web-based GIS, such as ArcIMS, of wireless communications, networking and remote-sensing technologies. The latter include very high-resolution satellite images and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), which can produce Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) with unprecedented spatial resolution. Competition in acquisition, processing and distribution of these data has produced falling costs, and commercial software companies have responded to take GIS well beyond the sole domain of specialists. It has been said that the strength of GIS software is increasing whilst the learning curve is decreasing.
At present the water industry is implementing more mobile GIS systems than any other market sector. Field-portable electronic notebooks or tabletPCs with PocketGIS are becoming common-place and most have the capability to be online via a realtime radio and/or GSM link. In the office, real-time monitoring data from the field are increasingly received automatically to a GIS via a telemetry system, again utilizing a radio and/or GSM link. Vertical Mapper in MapInfo or Spatial Analyst in ArcGIS are frequently used to create contour plots, water surfaces and flood extents using LiDAR (DTM) data (Fig. 2). ArcHydro can be used to delineate flow accumulation and direction grids, watercourses and catchment boundaries. It also provides a set of industry-specific data models, which promotes uniform model standards.
GIS in parts of the water industry has clearly moved well beyond mapping. It is an analytical tool, taking model results to delineate flood extents, to determine flow routes, risk areas, and property, people, critical infrastructure and agriculture at risk. It is used in above- and below-ground inventories, for leakage mapping, for the identification of voids and for debt mapping, for distribution management and for biodiversity action planning. GIS enables the allocation of jobs and pulsed meter usage mapping,
Recently, the most significant success of GIS has been in those parts of the water industry that have utilized its potential for business applications; specifically the ability of GIS to be used for asset management and for optimisation of existing networks. This presently remains restricted to a few companies and organisations but should be adopted as competitors seek the same benefits. Integration of expert GIS systems can be used to provide regulatory information by linking facts stored in a database to sites located through an expert system query interface. Expert system rules can also be employed to interrogate a GIS database and to check for completeness and connectivity of database elements. The exchange of data between GIS and hydrological and hydraulic models is now a lot easier, not least because GIS can now be used for building and trouble-shooting hydraulic models as well as processing output.
So, future prospects/opportunities for GIS in the water industry look extremely promising, despite the fact that it is evident that some individuals, departments and organisations either still do not fully appreciate the opportunities of GIS beyond mapping, or have not being given sufficient finances for incorporating GIS into everyday tasks. Undoubtedly the cost of licensing remains prohibitive to some, but free-viewing tools are available from both MapInfo and ESRI. There will be further development of applications such as maintenance management, capita planning and customer service. This is not least because we are living in an information age that requires much more than individuals who can sketch an efficient infrastructure plan. Our technologically hungry society expects excellent communicators who can keep all stakeholders; the public, regulators and clients, ‘informed’. A classic example of this now is the Environment Agency’s online web-based queryable flood risk maps.
The increased development of web-based GIS and the customisation of add-on tools for ArcGIS will expand. Web-based GIS is fast becoming a familiar way of displaying and accessing data. The new layered PDF function allows layers to be turned on and off without the need for GIS software and this is excellent for meetings! I recently heard of a customised toolbar in which a point along a culvert can be selected and it generates flow, culvert capacity, existing and proposed urban extent and the level of risk associated with each culvert. Where this toolbar is lacking is in the modelling capability. Currently modellers have to take water levels from ISIS, or from Infoworks, and some powerful hydraulic models such as TUFLOW and Modflow rely on GIS as a primary GUI. This has led to development of other applications such as SMS (which incorporates TUFLOW; Fig. 4), FESWMS, HYDRO 2D and XMS, that pull together several different computational engines and give them a uniform front end, which effectively is a user-friendly GIS.
Finally, the use of GIS will continue to proliferate across many sectors of an organization. It will break out of engineering / works management and into environmental management and non-regulated commercial activities. It will deliver as a public engagement and public relations tool, especially through the internet. GIS will no longer merely a valuable and frequently indispensable tool confined to a specialist operator or personnel team and this should draw a cautionary note as regards the requirement for professional protocols and standards. For example, it is routine for users to lose vital accompanying files, by breaking up directories and a common base-level of understanding of data compatibility, transfer formats, projections and file structures is absolutely essential. GIS will be used as a company-wide operating system for documentation, management, storage and visualization of spatial data, and for parameterization of both ‘black-box’ and numerical models. One example where the potential of GIS should be pivotal to reshaping the water industry in the future is through use of both the geographic and the temporal dimension to data. Specifically, there is an obvious need for the water industry to move away from wasteful under-optimisation of its networks, which are designed to peak demand conditions that only occur 10% of the time. Innovatively introducing variable standards, such as for the abstraction of water from channels, would be a far more efficient and sustainable method of managing our water resources.
About the author:
Jonathan Carrivick is a lecturer in Geomorphology, within the School of Geography at the University of Leeds. He is also programme director for two very successful taught Masters of Science (MSc) courses; Catchment Dynamics and Management, and Geographic Information Systems for Catchment Dynamics and Management. Jonathan would like to acknowledge the many academic colleagues and industry personnel who through informal correspondence contributed to this article, particularly Simon Jepps of Thomas Mackay Ltd.
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