Turning Aerial Imagery into Operational Information for Utility Vegetation Management

1. Turning Aerial Imagery into
Operational Information for
Utility Vegetation
Management
Effigis Geo-Solutions
Trees & Utilities
September 21th 2022
1
In partnership with

2. In the next 30 minutes
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Presentation Overview
• Introductions
• Current and future UVM challenges and drivers
• The role and benefits of remote sensing-based solutions
• Our approach and solution
• Hydro-Sherbrooke results and case study
• Development roadmap
• Q & A

3. Getting to know you
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Quick survey

4. Who we are
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Introductions
Hydro-Sherbrooke
A municipality-owned producer, transporter and distributor of electricity since 1905 that serves nearly 90,000 customers
Effigis Geo-Solutions
A leader in innovative geospatial solutions for more than 30 years for the energy, telecom, aerospace, and natural
resources industries. We collect and exploit geospatial data to improve our customers’ operational effectiveness by
developing custom solutions for vegetation and asset management, cable network monitoring and more.
My team
Highly Qualified Personnel with expertise in image processing, including AI, geomatics, computing, and forestry,
ecology and more.
Myself
16+ years leading innovation and R&D, mainly for developing operational remote-sensing solutions

5. A challenging context
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Current and future UVM challenges
and drivers
• VM is often the largest operational expense
• Up to 60% of outages caused by vegetation
• More frequent and severe natural disasters
• Regulatory pressures
• Budget constraints (profitability)
• Labour shortages
• Vegetation growth monitoring and prediction
• Increased customer demand for quality of service As of August 31, 2022
https://www.fireweatheravalanche.org/fire/

6. Good to know
What you can expect :
• Quantitative assessment
• Continuous and repeatable coverage
• Adjustable to any scale
• Time series analysis
• Perpetual and available at your fingertips
• Serves multiple purposes
• More than the eye can see
• Available for blue sky and gray sky conditions
• Staff augmentation
• Ease of integration
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What you shouldn’t expect:
 Results without knowledge (some expertise
required)
 24/7 availability
 Consistency between platforms and sensors
 The same level of detail from different sensors and
platforms
 All the answers
The role & benefits of remote sensing UVM solutions

7. Using imagery
Why is spatial resolution important?
• The higher the resolution, the more details
 You can expect more detailed UVM information from 7,5 cm imagery than from 3 m imagery
 It also means more precision and accuracy
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Resolution
7,5 cm 30 cm 50 cm 1 m 3 m 5 m 10 m
Local Regional
Scale

8. Our approach and solution
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Annual Aerial Imagery AI Cloud Processing Provide operational information
• Vegetation encroachment
• Danger and hazard trees
• Post-disaster assessment
• And more
Powered
by
1. Acquire 2. Process 3. Integrate

9. Our approach and solution
• Use 7,5 cm aerial imagery as inputs
 Orthoimages, nadirs & obliques from Vexcel Data Program
 Including infrared band (vegetation)
• Combine AI, spatial analytics techniques and more to
extract operational UVM information
• Create 3D rendering of assets, vegetation & other
features
• Assess vegetation health
• Extract encroachment inventory, danger & hazard trees
 Configurable to deliver results to integrate with utility operations
• Our solution is tailored for distribution UVM
 Will expand to transmission
 Compatible with GIS-enabled UVM software
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7,5 cm true orthoimage
Oblique view
7,5 cm true orthoimage – colour infrared
© Vexcel Imaging - 2020

10. Vegetation Encroachment
3D Rendering of Results (Video)
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11. Results
Hydro-Sherbrooke Case Study
• Needed an inventory of vegetation encroachment and hazard trees to:
 Optimize annual contractor spend
 Objectively quantify VM debt and evaluate budgets to tackle that debt
 Prioritize fieldwork
 Validate contractor reports
• Delivered span-level encroachment detection with
95% accuracy and hazard trees with 92% accuracy
 Field validation conducted in collaboration with Hydro-Sherbrooke
 For encroachment, results included accessibility and density
 Delivered in GIS format
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Encroachment and danger tree inventory

12. Hydro-Sherbrooke Case Study
«Hydro-Sherbrooke needs to leverage innovative solutions for staff augmentation and grid resiliency
purposes. Effigis’ solution directly provides operational UVM information that allows us to better budget,
plan and prioritize our annual trimming cycle.
The inventory of danger and hazard trees is also key in identifying threats to our network, especially since
we’ve been experiencing an increase in severe storms.
Our pilot project demonstrated very high quality and reliable results that were validated in the field.
Our partnership with Effigis has already proven valuable and we look forward to our continued
collaboration and the evolution of their solution. »
David Seminaro, Distribution Division Lead, Hydro-Sherbrooke
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Quote from our partner

13. What’s next
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Roadmap
• Distribution asset network repositioning and
mapping
• Volumetric canopy estimation
• Buildings and other encroachments into ROW
• Vegetation growth monitoring
• Post-disaster damage assessment
• Tree species identification
• Asset & facility environment: fences, access, slope,
water and wetlands, fallen trees or debris, etc.
• And more

14. Join us
Consult or collaborate
• You’re from a Utility and would like to know more? Would like to participate in our development efforts?
Perhaps even steer our roadmap? Please contact us.
• Also, for Utilities who are using a remote sensing-based solution, we’d love your feedback.
• If you’d like to know how to choose a remote sensing-based UVM approach, feel free to consult with us.
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15. Thank you!
Visit our website
https://effigis.com/en/solutions/utility-vegetation-
management/
Ludovic Légaré
Manager, Sales & Partnerships
ludovic.legare@effigis.com
+1 (514) 495-6500, #219
Christian Nadeau
Executive Director
christian.nadeau@effigis.com
+1 (514) 495-6500, #187