How Mobile GIS Technology Can Help Optimize Utility Restoration Efforts
The utilization of mobile GIS technology (AKA geographic information system) can pay massive dividends for utilities in every way, from asset management & maintenance to outage restoration & recovery.
From a restoration perspective, mobile GIS technology can improve the safety, speed and effectiveness of utility restoration crews. That said, the only way to ensure the technology is fully optimized is to meticulously define the use cases early on in the decision-making process so that highly comprehensive and accurate workflows can be developed to map out the deployment.
How Mobile GIS Technology Can Improve Restoration
GIS can do many things under the broad framework of collecting information, producing data visualizations, tracking assets and navigating environments. The reason it is so critical to define the workflows upfront is because the technology creates an app to facilitate each specific workflow. In other words, each app is a configuration targeted at a specific set of tasks. Therefore, a good understanding of the various use cases is critical.
Configuring apps around specific workflows ensures that field workers are presented only with information necessary to accomplish the task at hand. For example, if a worker is replacing a transformer, he or she would only be provided information relevant to this task.
The reason this is helpful is simple – the more relevant the information available at the point of work, the greater the odds that the job will be completed competently, safely and quickly. There is no searching for information or clicking or scrolling through large datasets. The worker sees the information necessary for the job, in real time – nothing more, nothing less.
In summary, there are numerous benefits of mobile GIS technology. It increases the accessibility & digestibility of information specific to the job at hand, it enhances situational awareness, it enables the rapid collection and dissemination of information, and it improves communication.
Not a bad business case if you ask me!
