Esri's GIS vision for gas utilities and energy pipelines - Part 2

By Jeff Allen, Tom Coolidge, and Tom DeWitte

Our first blog presented a high-level overview of Esri’s GIS vision for gas utilities and energy pipelines, the key role location and time play in it, and the general-purpose capabilities of ArcGIS that underpin it. In this second blog, we more fully explore the industry-specific capabilities that unlock the full power of ArcGIS for gas utilities and energy pipelines.

One pipe network representation supports all workflows

Traditionally...

One industry-specific advance is the capability to define and store a single representation of the entire pipe network from the natural gas wellhead to the customer meter or hazardous liquids wellhead to the terminal or delivery point.

Traditionally many gas utilities and energy pipelines have multiple GIS instances, data models, and data repositories. This has complicated efforts to run a unified business. One reason for this complexity has been that each industry value chain link network often was managed independently—for instance in a transmission GIS and a distribution GIS. Each of these had its own data model and data repository. In many cases, the boundaries between these were artificial. Also, users in the office, in the field, and on the web used disparate systems for accessing information. And each of these systems developed its own data management method for defining location. Some used connectivity modeling, while others used linear referencing.

Now...

Esri's vision for gas utilities and energy pipelines—operating an integrated pipe network spanning multiple industry subsystems—includes removing the traditional silos, especially artificial ones. This creates a singular representation of the entire pipe network that mirrors the real network. It also enables users to work with that digital network just the way they do with the real network. The single representation of the pipe system requires a unique data organization approach to store the entire pipe system—from wellhead to meter or terminal or delivery poiny—and support the information model requirements of ArcGIS Utility Network Management and ArcGIS Pipeline Referencing. Esri’s UPDM and PODS 7.0.2 and later are data models that support this vision. We’ll talk more about data models later in this blog.

Network definition matters

The best run gas utilities and energy pipelines create, maintain, and rely heavily on a digital mirror representation of the in-ground real pipe network and its surroundings.

Creation of a digital mirror representation is as critical a responsibility as any other for a gas utility or energy pipeline. As a practical matter, once pipe and related components in the trench are covered, the digital mirror representation becomes the operator's primary authoritative record of assets in the ground.

Today’s pipe network GIS typically contains extensive and detailed information about each and every component of the physical network, what is going on within it, the natural and man-made surroundings through which the pipe network passes, and activity occurring around it.

We often are asked this question. How detailed should the definition of a pipe network in ArcGIS be?

There is no single answer to that question. With ArcGIS increasingly supporting the mapping and spatial analytics needs of a growing number of users in a broader range of gas utility and energy pipeline functional areas and roles, the answer to that question is continually evolving.

Here is one way to look at it: what needs to go into a geodatabase largely depends on what users want to get out of it. That is because each software application has its own specific data requirements. If users want the geodatabase to support one application, then only that application's data requirements need to be accommodated. If users want a geodatabase to support two applications, then the data requirements of both need to be accommodated. And so on. While some applications share data requirements, generally as the number of applications to be supported increases, so, too, do the breadth and depth of data requirements. The key to the question's answer lies in understanding the number of applications to be supported and their combined data requirements.

It is also important to note that the answer is largely a business issue and less of a technical matter. ArcGIS today can define a gas utility or energy pipe network from the wellhead to the customer meter at a high level of detail in one geodatabase.

Data Models

Earlier in this blog we noted that Esri’s UPDM and PODS 7.0.2 both support Esri’s GIS vision for gas utilities and energy pipelines. Most of Esri’s gas utility and energy pipeline customers use one of these two data models. Esri supports each customer making their own choice of the two based on their business needs and preferences.

UPDM

Esri’s UPDM is a geodatabase data model template for operators of pipe networks in the gas and hazardous liquids industries. UPDM supports data related to physical components, activity, and integrity.

UPDM is a moderately normalized data model that explicitly represents each physical component of a gas pipe network from the wellhead to the customer meter, or a hazardous liquids pipe network from the wellhead to the terminal or delivery point, in a single database table object.??

The goal of the Esri UPDM is to make it easier, quicker, and more cost-effective for pipeline operators and gas utilities to implement ArcGIS. The Esri UPDM accomplishes this by freely providing a data model that takes full advantage of the capabilities of the geodatabase. The data model is created and tested with ArcGIS products to ensure that it works. This significantly reduces the complexity, time, and cost to implement a spatially enabled hazardous liquid or gas pipe system data repository.

PODS

The Pipeline Open Data Standard (PODS) data model provides the database architecture pipeline operators need to submit regulatory reports (PHMSA & NPMS), store critical information, analyze pipeline systems data, and manage geospatial data in a linear-referenced database which can be visualized in any GIS platform. The PODS Pipeline Data Model houses the attribute, asset information, construction, inspection, integrity management, regulatory compliance, risk analysis, history, and operational data that pipeline companies have deemed mission-critical to successfully managing natural gas and hazardous liquids pipelines.

At PODS 7.0.2, the data model supports Esri’s ArcGIS Pipeline Referencing and ArcGIS Utility Network extensions.

The PODS Association is a membership organization. Esri is a member and active participant in this industry collaboration.

Creating and Maintaining Multiple Models on the Single Representation

A gas utility or energy pipeline today needs to answer more questions than ever from stakeholders about its pipe network and how it operates. Recent industry-specific capabilities developed in ArcGIS enable an operator to better answer these questions and further unlock the platform's full power to help achieve better business outcomes.?

Modeling is key to answering these questions. ?

Models most often are built from that data in one of two ways – depending upon whether the objective being examined is around “where is it located” or “how is it connected.”? Linear referencing is the model building method for the first, connectivity modeling for the second.?

While both methods create a network model, they do it in different ways.

For many years, pipe network modelers to satisfy both modeling needs had to create and maintain multiple digital mirror representations of their real pipe network.?

ArcGIS Pipeline Referencing

One of these was defined by linear referencing.? Linear referencing is a language that expresses pipeline attribute and event locations in terms of measurements along a pipeline, from a defined starting point.? The network model in Pipeline Referencing is established by the sequence of strictly increasing or decreasing measures on a continuous, unbroken non-branching run of physical pipe.

ArcGIS Utility Network

Another was defined by connectivity.? Connectivity describes the state where two or more features either share a connectivity association, or the collection of features are geometrically coincident at an endpoint (or midspan at a vertex), and a connectivity rule exists that supports the relationship.? For those to whom connectivity associations is a new term, they are used to model connectivity between two point features (Device or Junction) that are not necessarily geometrically coincident. An example of this in a pipe system is a flange bolted to a valve.? There is no pipe component between the flange and the valve in the physical world.? Now with connectivity associations in the utility network, this point-to-point connectivity can be correctly modeled in the digital world.

One key benefit of the utility network and the far-better definition of the connected pipe network it enables is the ability of ArcGIS to be a single source of the truth for our partners who provide the gas and hazardous liquid industries with hydraulic modeling and risk modeling capabilities. These integrations are enabling engineers to spend more time performing their analysis and less time manipulating the data.

Traditionally, each of these ways was enabled by a separate set of data – one for linear referencing and another for connectivity modeling. Now, linear referencing and connectivity modeling can be performed on the same single network representation.

Vision in a nutshell

With these industry-specific capabilities, the full power of ArcGIS is unlocked for gas utilities and energy pipelines. That brings us back to the vision itself. Esri’s GIS vision for gas utilities and energy pipelines of all configurations and sizes is simple.

PLEASE NOTE: The postings on this site are our own and don’t necessarily represent Esri’s position, strategies, or opinions.