改变现场的准确性和精度data capture and transmission

Author:AMT-Sybex，Capita Plc的一部分

Britain’s gas network is the oldest in the world, dating back to the early 1800s, and although its gas mains have been upgraded over time, many thousands of miles of pipelines are still made from cast iron and other ductile metals. Over time, these pipes degrade and may eventually fracture, leading to gas leaks that impact the environment, reduce efficiency, increase costs, and can pose a danger to people and buildings.

威尔士和西公用事业公司以前是国家电网的一部分之后，于2005年建立为独立网络35,000公里的天然气分销管道将天然气运输到250万户房屋以及威尔士和英格兰西南部的企业。该公司的首要任务是通过汽油连接和可以依靠的天然气供应以及他们可以信任的服务水平保持其750万客户的安全和温暖。

当威尔士和西部公用事业用威尔士和英格兰西南部的新型塑料塑料代替旧的金属气管时，它希望确保这些新管道在未来很容易找到和维护。

当它升级其管道时，该公司还希望升级其数据，并对资产的位置更加准确地了解。威尔士和西部公用事业公司已与AMT-Sybexand Leica Geosystems to build a new mobile solution that uses high-precision GNSS equipment to measure and map the exact coordinates of each new pipe as it is laid, as well as capturing important metadata about valves, junctions and other components. Capturing the information digitally has numerous benefits:

• 数字数据捕获节省了现场工程师和后台团队的时间
• 高精度GNSS提高了资产数据的准确性并降低了错误的风险
• 资产数据可以在几秒钟内从现场传输到办公室，而不是几天
• 消除基于纸张的流程，削减成本并降低环境影响
• 由于位置数据更好，因此未来的维护工作应更安全，更有效。

将安全放在首位

Safety is a top priority for Wales & West Utilities. The company invests £1.4 million pounds a week in replacing all old metal gas pipes within 30 metres of buildings with new plastic ones – reducing leakage and improving safety.

Replacing these metal mains with more modern plastic pipes can significantly improve the security and reliability of the network, reducing the risk of leaks and the number of repairs required. For this reason, the Health and Safety Executive has advised all the gas distribution networks to accelerate the replacement of metal main, especially those that are within 30 m of a building.

Wales & West Utilities has taken this advice on board and is already nearly halfway through a 30-year replacement programme. On average, the companyreplaces more than 400 km of pipe every year。

Beverley Robinson, data records manager at Wales & West Utilities, comments:“这是一个巨大的计划，对企业和监管机构非常重要。除了捕获现场信息外，我的团队还负责验证所包含的数据，使我们的资产存储库在我们的SAP ERP业务系统中保持最新状态，并为监管机构提供有关我们替代计划进度的报告。”

Part of the effort is to ensure that when the new pipework is laid, the company updates its asset data to keep track of how the pipes, valves and joints fit together, what they are made of, and where to find them. Recording the position of a pipe accurately may seem like a simple task, but it can create complex problems.

基于纸的过程的问题

威尔士和西公用事业记录官西蒙·巴雷特（Simon Barrett）解释说：“过去，我们的测量工程师将使用纸质地图，剪贴板和测量轮在现场驶出，并通过与地面上述参考点有关的测量值在地图上绘制新管道。例如，管道可能平行于距离科布斯通（Kerbstone）75厘米的道路平行。

“But what if a few years after we’ve laid the pipe, the road is widened and the kerb moved? Then our reference point is no longer accurate, and our crews could easily end up digging in the wrong place. Or what if we’re laying a pipe somewhere that doesn’t have any convenient reference points nearby, such as the middle of a field?”

捕获初始数据后，下游过程也很费力。工程师将扩大其现场草图，并在较大的地图上绘制新管道，并将其发布到总部。然后，总部团队将查看地图并将数据输入公司的中央映射系统ESRI。

“我们不得不等待几天才能从现场到达最新信息，并且处理数据为每个人都耗时。”adds Robinson.“我们还使用了大量纸，这是浪费且不切实际的。我们的测量工程师需要在任何情况下都能在户外工作，当下雨或大风时，处理纸质地图可能是一个大问题。”

寻找解决方案

威尔士和西部公用事业公司希望找到一种解决方案，该解决方案将承担从用户中找到资产的负担，并确切，明确的视图，以了解每个管道所在的位置。它还希望将整个工作流程数字化并减少每个阶段的手动努力。

“For a few years, our leakage teams have been using a mobile solution called Affinity Geofield from AMT-SYBEX, which gives them access to accurate mapping data while they’re working on-site - even if they’re in a remote area where they don’t have a mobile data connection,” says Barrett. “When we saw that Geofield could be used for drawing assets too, we saw its potential to help with some of our paperwork issues.”

To solve the other half of the problem, the company decided to use莉卡·泽诺（Leica Zeno），从Leica Geosystems的高精度GNSS设备，将每个管道的地理坐标定位到一个accuracy of centimetres。但是，将ZENO GNSS硬件与地理菲尔德集成在一起将是首个项目。

“最大的挑战之一是确保即使我们的测量工程师失去了数据连接，该系统仍然可以工作。”explains Barrett.“通常，该系统通过使用HXGN SmartNet实时运动学GNSS服务来工作。工程师持有一个接收器，该接收器从GNSS卫星的星座中获取位置数据。然后将这些读数与附近基站所做的读数进行了比较，后者已经知道其精确的位置。通过比较两者，您可以纠正读数中的任何错误并达到难以置信的准确性。

“However, if you don’t have a mobile data connection to the base station, you can’t compare the readings, so you can’t do the correction. Since our engineers often work in remote areas where there’s little or no mobile phone signal, this was potentially a big problem.”

The project team solved this challenge by building a post-processing feature – if Geofield can’t find a mobile data connection, it will store all of the uncorrected readings from Zeno equipment locally until the connection is re-established. Once connectivity is restored, it can then process all of the readings in a batch, and provide准确，校正的地理位置数据。