GIS and Smart Grid

“GIS + Smart Grid = Enabling location intelligence to utility network systems”

The highlight of the GIS technology in a smart grid concept is its capability in visually representing the geographic location of each and every events happening in a utility network detected by OT integration systems like SCADA, OMS, DMS and various other related smart metering systems. The one among many challenges faced by the utility network systems is the outage management. Giving an immediate response to restore an outage issue is one of the hurdles to pass by which is currently tedious because of the obscure information made available about the geographic location while an event is reported. But once GIS is integrated with the OT systems, these systems automatically sends corresponding signals pertaining to outage or power load in that very exact moment to the applications/systems built upon geographic data and enables the analysis and manipulation of location or event which therefore lowers the response time to resolve the issue. Hence, considering this ideology if we take a look at the smart grid concept implementation in an electric utility network, it is so obvious that without GIS, this concept is incomplete.

GIS is about leveraging the observation capability of the monitoring systems and pin pointing the exact location of the events happening in the nooks and corner of the utility network and hence we can say that integration of GIS will lead to enabling location intelligence to the smart grid concept.

The Third Dimension - A third factor that gives the realistic view (3d GIS)

If we turn back and look at the path that has been traversed by the geospatial technology, we could see the journey of amazing evolution of GIS technology starting from cartography and towards improvement and at each stage of its evolution this technology has been getting wide acceptance from the users around the world. The extrusion of GIS technology from paper maps to real time digital maps with the advent in computer and internet technology has given rise to a tempt to become aware about the location, time and cause – ‘where, when and how’. The ability of the geospatial technology to represent the world and its phenomenon in three dimension has brought about a revolution in this industry that for the professionals in the fields of architecture, production, planning and decision making belonging to various domains can now mould and analyze a conceptual design in their ideas by defining all the procedural rules and policies that abides by the real world’s and arrive at a conclusion that would best fit during the fare implementation.

For urban planning the 3D GIS can be best used to create a 3D landscape involving all the aspects like the in and surrounding environment, road and utility networks, population density, traffic data etc. that give a realistic view on how the scenarios will be like when the ideas are transformed into real. For the building construction and restructuring segment, a 3D GIS can be used to build a conceptual design and identify the pros and cons like whether the infrastructure blocks any kind of view, is there any violation in its measurements regarding the height and zoning, does the glare caused by the reflection from building affects any around it. Likewise, many analysis and manipulations can be done using the 3D GIS which gives away many speculations and thus the project becomes very cost effective.

The 3D GIS has proved its ability in depicting various crime incidents incorporating all the evidences and speculations and all represented in a 3D environment which facilitates the crime investigators to manipulate scenarios as if it would have happened or has happened. Thus GIS has given way to the crime investigation in a 3D conceptual design to study the incidents and arrive at a conclusion as if like investigating in the real world.

The GIS technology is for sure evolving towards greater improvements for aiding the decision makers to design the future and in depicting the world and its phenomena three dimensionally.

GIS – A technology that describes our world!!

Today’s wide spread technology in various domains are actually the result of many constant evolutionary processes which began from a concrete terminology. Geographic Information System (GIS) is one such technology that was innovated to better understand the spatial and non-spatial aspect of our world. As we all know, geography is the science that studies the land, the inhabitants, the features, and the phenomena of the earth. The scientists, spatial explorers, researchers and many others who were the part of revealing inventions and discoveries constantly maintained the records of their findings either as a hard or soft copy. The need for advancement and integration of technology in this field became more pervasive as the analysis of non-spatial attributes and data for finding solutions to spatial and non-spatial queries became impossible with the non-technical data.

GIS is a conglomerate technology that connects data (spatial and non-spatial), software and hardware which together functions to produce thematic display of various phenomenon of this world either as 3D or 2D that contains spatially referenced solutions for the queries that are being raised by the current worldly needs. The data being used as input for this system is highly evaluated that the input should be spatially referenced data that has high precision. Based on the queries given, the system works on these input data and finally comes out with the desired results intended by the end user.

Areas where GIS can be implemented includes natural resources, marketing and retailing, facilities management, health, utilities,  return on investment, transport/vehicle routing and many more.

GIS technology is all about integration with the vast domains and with its advancement, now it is possible to find solutions that describes spatially ‘what, where and when’.