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Government GIS

Making the most out of your Infrastructure with GIS

By Clarice Africa | 10 September 2012 | Views: 8434

GIS when applied to the transportation industry can simplify data sharing in satellite offices, improve asset management, help airports give passengers a better travel experience and also guide logistics managers on how they can map out routes for their truck fleet.

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While GIS offers limitless opportunities for decision-makers to move away from using their yellow pads of papers to do work orders and pin maps for mapping, Terry Bills, Transportation Industry Manager at ESRI, says it has yet to reach that stage where we can see a widespread adoption of the technology.

“I think GIS in the transport Industry is just beginning to take off. This paradigm is indeed promising as agencies have begun to realise that the most valuable resource that they have is their organisation’s own information and the ability to use that information to make better decisions on where they should invest and how they should better maintain their resources and infrastructure,” he says.

Challenges on GIS adoption include issues and concerns on data sharing and coordination. This is because of perceived notions about data ownership, privacy and public access, unclear policies on sharing agreements, and liability, among others. In addition, there is also a need to articulate the value proposition on why an organisation should invest in GIS.

“Organisations manage and collect information individually, and by doing that, they’re not able to take advantage of the information that is unfortunately stuck in those silos,” he says.

Bills explains that where GIS comes in is in allowing decision-makers to free information out of the silos and integrate it in ways that allows users have greater situational awareness.

“It’s when we begin to think about how can we better manage that information and how we can bring them together so we can use information to make better decisions.”

In asset management, for example—which Bills says is where the Transportation Industry is facing particular challenges—how can organisations leverage spatial information to achieve the greatest benefit from their infrastructure?

He shares that there is a great deal of research which shows that if asset maintenance is done at the correct time, an organisation can achieve cost savings during the lifecycle of the infrastructure.

By knowing when to do the maintenance during an asset’s lifecycle versus letting the infrastructure degrade to the point of purchasing a replacement enables an organisation to ensure that costs, revenue and resources are managed effectively.

He adds that in order to make good decisions about an organisation’s assets, there is a need for a comprehensive source for storing reliable information, and this he says is where GIS plays an integral part.

“Using GIS in public works asset management enables decision-makers to have a network that provides them with centralised data management, analysis and visualisation to everyone in the organisation.”

By having a system that integrates workflows, asset managers are able to save costs as a result of better and more cost-effective management of existing assets and the ability to coordinate the timing and scheduling of cross-asset activities.

“GIS-based asset management promises the best return on every dollar invested by maximising system performance whilst minimising life cycle costs,” he concludes.

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