Analyze the criticality of water mains using ArcGIS Utility Network
When talking to water distribution companies they will often mention that it is important for them to determine the criticality of network assets. Whether this is to allocate investments or to carry out preventive maintenance, this will be a major topic for most of them.
Many companies may have some procedure in place to analyze this and include using information on affected customers to determine the criticality. However, if you dig a little deeper you will often find that not connectivity, but proximity is used to assign the number of customers affected to a portion of the network.
It is crucial to realize that this will lead to incorrect results and might impact critical decision-making in the process.?Below is an example of joining the number of customers to the nearest water main:
Proximity will not consider the affected customers downstream of a water main repair.
The #ArcGIS #utilitynetwork provides a state-of-the-art analytical framework and the isolation trace is able to return the affected customers in case of a main break. It is possible to loop through all the water mains, simulate a main break at the center of the main and determine the number of affected customers. This will result in a completely different picture, one that is far more accurate.
In the process, the trace tool was configured to create a JSON file containing the affected customers for each trace including information on the identification. This allows us to link the information back to the individual customer and indicate the length of the water mains that, in case of a main break, will affect the service for each customer.
ArcGIS and the Utility Network enable advanced management of utility networks and allow you to do the necessary analysis and aid the decision-making process to provide a better service to your clients.
To learn more about the Utility Network, please visit:
For this analysis, the data of Naperville, provided with the Utility Network Foundation for water distribution was used.
Edit (August, 24 2023): Find an explanation on how to do this here .
GIS Manager - Sabesp
1 年Very good article. But I didn't understand what is the index of "vulnerability of customer". Why is it in meters ?
Senior Solution Engineer at Esri Colombia
1 年I have added an article explaining how you can do this: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-analyze-criticality-water-mains-using-arcgis-utility-bakker
Geospatial Services Manager at City of Round Rock
1 年Rich Reedy Sophia Zegarra
Product Engineer (Utility Network)
1 年Cool stuff Xander Bakker! I've been meaning to write an article about this for several months now and it's good to see you beat me to it! Of course, criticality/consequence of failure is just one piece of the puzzle. But with a little know-how you can start to bring in additional layers to model risk/likelihood of failure or even bring in information from indices describing areas where customers may be disadvantaged to have a complete picture.
Solution Engineer for Utilities at Imagem | Helping organizations build winning geospatial strategies
1 年Great work Xander Bakker!! ??????