Pinellas County selects Munsys to validate the integrity of their water and sanitary sewer systems

The Challenge

You are managing the infrastructure information systems for 280 square miles of a densely urbanized county. Your staff has been entering mapping data and related attributes for over 15 years. You have over 4,500 miles of road, 1,100 miles of sanitary sewer, and 2,400 miles of potable and reclaimed water, supporting a population of over a million people.

How do you ensure the accuracy and integrity of this information?  How do you satisfy the disparate needs of users who wish to access your core data with applications from various vendors? How do you monitor what changes are being made and by whom?

This was the situation faced by the Information Systems Department in Pinellas County, Florida.

The Situation

The County was an early adopter of enterprise principles for data management.  Information was to be captured once by the responsible department and then shared throughout the organization.  Oracle had been chosen as the enterprise database and was the heart of the County's information system. The GIS adopted by the County in the late 1980's -VISION*- was Oracle based and shared the County's enterprise objectives.

When VISION* was acquired by Autodesk Inc., the County had an opportunity to take advantage of emerging GIS trends.

The County wanted to reduce its dependence on home grown applications.  It wanted to leverage industry standards such as AutoCAD to create and manage the base maps that would be stored in Oracle. They also wanted to be able to share the core mapping and asset data with other enterprise applications such as Maximo for maintenance management and with analysis software that is offered by other GIS vendors.

The Solution

Initially, decision makers at the County re-confirmed their long term strategy and objectives:

1. A commitment to implement an enterprise solution where data was captured once and shared across the organization
2. A commitment to Oracle as the enterprise database
3. A commitment to proven commercial applications that minimize the amount of internal development

A key component in this strategy was the commitment to Oracle. Oracle has been systematically adding GIS functionality to their database.  For the first time, the location of an object was stored in the same record as the key attributes of an object in an enterprise database.  Looking forward, it was reasonable to expect that the Oracle database itself would provide 80% of all required GIS functionality.  Detailed GIS analyses, not provided by Oracle, would be carried out by specialists in specific departments who would use traditional GIS software.

To ensure data integrity, it was imperative that any applications adopted by the County be user friendly, efficient and contained business rules than ensured data integrity.

The Munsys suite of software was ultimately selected by the County.  These solutions worked with Autodesk products, had off the shelf applications driven by business rules, and stored all of its data in Oracle according to Open GIS standards.

The Results

The initial phase of the Munsys implementation was for the Utilities Department in Pinellas County. 

The work conducted by Open Spatial included:

1. Migrating the utility data from the Vision* format to an Open GIS compliant structure
2. Analyzing the integrity of the original data
3. Identifying topological errors and automatically correcting as many as possible with a combination of Munsys and Oracle spatial processes
4. Marking unresolved errors for County staff to correct
5. Training Utility Department staff

The initial data conversion analysis was conducted over an 8 week period.  Despite the fact that a GIS system had been used to capture the original utility data, the Munsys software accomplished the following on the water distribution system:

• Removed 16,267 redundant points from the water network
• Broke 2,194 pipes at T junctions to ensure network integrity
• Broke 33,839 pipes at nodes to ensure network integrity
• Aligned 68,875 symbols to their associated pipes to improve overall display
• Identified 6,154 isolated nodes for manual intervention
• Identified 360 duplicate nodes for manual intervention
• Identified 12,597 pipes without end nodes.

With 12 weeks of effort, using no additional staff, the Utilities Department was fully trained, had completed the cleanup of their water and sewer systems and had created topologically correct water distribution and sanitary sewerage systems. 

In Summary

Pinellas County's adoption of Oracle as its primary GIS server and the Munsys software for data capture enhanced the overall capabilities of the Utilities Department:

• Data cleanup and training was accomplished in record time
• Reports on the infrastructure can be generated through Munsys and also directly from Oracle
• For the first time, the department had clean, topologically structured data that was ready for export to analysis software
• Consistent topology in an Oracle format now supports enhanced integration with their asset management systems

Looking forward, as the County systematically migrates all of its mapping data to OpenGIS compliant structures, huge efficiency gains can be expected from:

• The ability to transparently share information between applications without translation
• The confidence that users will have in the accuracy of the underlying data

About Open Spatial

With offices on three continents the Open Spatial companies distribute and provide first level technical support for the Munsys suite of products. Open Spatial Inc. delivers desktop and web-based geospatial solutions to governments and utilities in North America. It bases its solutions on OpenGIS standards and is committed to bridging the gap between engineering and GIS using proven applications with well defined benefits.

For more information please visit www.openspatial.com

About Munsys

Munsys Technologies (Pty) Ltd is a leading software development company offering geospatial solutions that are specifically tailored to the growing needs of utility and government organizations. Founded in 1993, Munsys Technologies applies its industry expertise to offer database driven applications for the management of cadastral, drainage, electricity, roads, sewer, and water infrastructure.

For more information please visit www.munsys.com

Munsys is a trademark of Munsys Technologies (Pty) Ltd in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names or trademarks belong to their respective holders.