Improving Pipe Network Data Management in PODS
By Tom Coolidge and Jeff Allen
This time of year, it's customary to begin thinking about a New Year's resolution.
As 2023 approaches, so, too, does a new era in pipe network data management for pipeline operators using the PODS data model. With a pipe network typically geographically widespread, topologically complex, and buried underground, the performance of many tasks and workflows, in a wide range of functional areas and roles, necessarily involves application software operating on a digital model of the pipe network and the surroundings through which it passes.
These models are only as good as the data available to them. Today’s pipe network GIS typically contains extensive and detailed information about each 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.
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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 and what is known about that location” or “how is it connected and how does it behave.” 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 this reason, Esri offers two industry-specific extensions. ArcGIS Pipeline Referencing provides linear referring capabilities and ArcGIS Utility Network provides connectivity modeling capabilities.
PODS first supported ArcGIS Pipeline Referencing at PODS 7.0.1. Arrival in 2023 of PODS 7.0.2 will mark the data standard’s first support of the ArcGIS Utility Network. At that point, pipeline operators using PODS will be able to have linear referencing and connectivity modeling working on not just the same geodatabase, but the same feature classes within the enterprise geodatabase. This is an incredibly important advance!
So a good New Year's wish for 2023 is that pipeline operators begin enjoying the real business benefits these improved pipe network data management capabilities provide working together on PODS 7.0.2!
Watch this space in the year ahead to learn more about this exciting new era.