Development of Geospatial Information and Decision Support System (GIS-IDSS) for Transmission line Project Execution Reddy C. Suresh Babu, Ranjan Rajiv, Baka Ramesh Babu Larsen & Toubro Limited, India Online published on 6 January, 2017. Abstract As transmission lines have to traverse the length and breadth of the country, for evacuation of power from generating stations to load centers and to the pooling stations, the topographical & geographical nature of the terrain plays a significant role in the project cost and implementation time. Hence, it is essential at the planning stage itself to study and examine various alternative routes and technical solutions in detail. For undertaking such studies, one of the major requirements is obtaining adequate information regarding physical constrains, environmental factors, social impacts, political parameters & technical issues related to the design etc. along the route and whole such information is merged in a common environment where people from different disciplines can access and study to recommend optimum solutions to achieve the best possible route in terms of cost and execution. Any new transmission line construction project comprises of various activities like route selection, route alignment, survey, land acquisition, statutory compliance & clearance, structure design, tower spotting, planning, fabrication, logistics/construction. Many of these activities are performed simultaneously and most of these activities are executed/controlled at different places like project site office, design office, planning office, fabrication factory, stores, administration office etc and by the people of different discipline with different tools. Finally, transmission line is a product of different service and activities done at different places and time. For complete success of transmission line project as a whole, it is necessary and important that correct information and inputs to be shared between different teams in correct time. Any activity, process, decision, product, and data initiated/generated by different teams at different time and space domains are directly or indirectly related to complete or to the component of the transmission line. This physical component can be defined spatially in the real world as standard feature geometry with associated attribute and can be easily accessed usually by using Geographical Information System as a platform. A common platform will help to understand the comprehensive geographical information involved at different stages of execution to all stakeholders involved in the planning and execution team. By utilizing Geographical Information System, all departments can get a better sense of how the final transmission line is going to look and understand the relation between different components by relating each other with diverse geographic constraint. Any data or information generated can be assigned a spatial tag, which will then link to an associated component in different feature class stored in central database. By using different data model and processing tool, data can be retrieved, processed, enhanced, build relationship, create accessibility and finally decision can be made using decision-making tool. Most importantly, it is possible to implement this in real time mode, with day-to-day update and interaction at different levels and disciplines, i.e., from large to small scale. Also this can be used as effective monitoring tool at site and management level. Visualization of information along with spatial aspect of the project helps in determining and implementing effective decision and ensures proper construction and coordination of the transmission line project from route selection to construction. In this paper, a framework for the development of Geographical Information System based Information and decision support application (GIS-IDSS) for better planning and execution of a transmission line project is modelled and discussed. This paper illustrates the development of Geographical Information System (GIS) based Information and Decision Support System (IDSS) to assist design and construction engineers in execution of a new transmission line project efficiently. Here the powerful analytical and visualization capabilities of a Geographical Information System are combined with tools used by different disciplines and integrated to a common geo-data base. By utilizing this, all concerned stakeholders can have a better idea of, how the final transmission line is going to be executed and maintained. It can also facilitate to understand the connection between different components as well as the future encountered geographic constraint for planning new transmission corridors. This system facilitates the sharing of information across the People of different departments involved in the project and supports for the effective decision-making which leads to superior results. Top Keywords GIS (Geographical Information System), RDBMS (Relational Database Management System), TLVIMA (Transmission line Visualization, Information and Mapping Application), ODBC (Open Database Connectivity), IDSS (Information and Decision Support System), GEOSPATIAL DATA (records in a dataset have locational information), ArcSDE (ArcGIS Server Based Spatial database Engine from ESRI), ArcGIS Desktop (Mapping and analysis Software from ESRI), PLSCADD (Tower Spotting software from POWERLINE SYSTEMS.), PLS-TOWER (Tower Design software from POWERLINE SYSTEMS.). Top |