A GIS acts as the central hub to integrate critical data sources like customer information, metering data, maps, vehicle tracking and outage calls. This allows dispatchers to manage outage restoration more efficiently by having all relevant information organized on a map. Integrating these previously separate sources reduces costs by lowering staffing needs and speeds decision making during outages. A GIS also enables faster outage reporting and analysis to further aid restoration efforts.

1. Outage Management
The number one area of lost revenue in electrical utilities are outages, planned or
unplanned. Outages have been a constant in the past and will continue to be a constant
into the future. We can manage these outages more efficiently in the future by utilizing
and analyzing the data provided to utilities during the outage(s) from one location. This
location is a GIS (Geographical Information System).
Data Sources
What are the possible data sources for the electrical utility?
• Customer Information System (CIS)
• Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) or Advance Metering Infrastructure (AMI)
• Phone calls from the customers during the outage using an Interactive Voice
Recording (IVR)/Auto Attendant or calling into a Customer Service
Representative (CSR)
• Maps (Digital or Paper/Mylar) of the electrical facilities.
• Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) or GPS in the vehicles
• SCADA
• Weather Radar
Figure 1

2. Notice in Figure 1 the data sources are not connected and have a person next to each
source. When data sources are not connected together seamlessly, more employees are
needed to manage the data sources. Not all utilities will have all of these data sources but
all utilities have at least some of these sources. All utilities have some sort of mapping
whether or not the mapping has been converted into a digital format depends on the
utility. All utilities have customer information in some form or another. If the utility has
Smart Metering (AMR/AMI) then they typically have a CIS. We find that most utilities
we deal with have just the mapping and Smart Metering with a CIS but not much more.
These components are typically not integrated together.
Integration
Integration of data is the key to managing outages efficiently. GIS is the integrator of data
sources. For electrical utilities, it is important to note the how critical having all data
sources MultiSpeak (multispeak.org) compliant and interoperable. I can not stress enough
how important it is to make sure all the software that is accessed by the GIS to manage
not only Outage Management Systems (OMS) but as well as the Engineering Analysis,
Staking, Billing, Smart Metering, etc. If the interoperability is there from the beginning
the marriage of all the data will be seamless in the GIS making the integration easier and
more cost effective for the utility in the integration process.
GIS joins all the data sources together. It truly is the hub. From this hub the decision
makers can make decisions at a high accuracy rate and faster than ever before. The reason
for this is because the data is displayed on a map. So the trends and patterns become very
easy to discern on the fly.
Figure 2

3. Notice in Figure 2 GIS is now the hub of the wheel and the data sources are the spokes.
The number of employees now allocated to managing the data sources has dropped from
7 to 4, saving money and resources for the utility. Once the GIS becomes the hub creating
custom reports for analysis becomes very straight forward and also reduces man-hours in
creating the report because the data is brought together in one location.
Managing the Outages
Dispatchers for utilities process a tremendous amount of information during an outage
event.
• Who is out of power
• Where are the crews (Tree and Line)
• Which crews have been assigned to which areas
• Are crews clear of a line being re-energized
• Answering phone calls coming in from customers to report outages
• Communicating with crews
• Planning where to send crews as the outage event progresses
Without GIS this job can be chaotic at best at the beginning of an outage event. With GIS
this job is very hectic at worst. The GIS allows the dispatcher to remain organized
resulting in clear decision making, not to mention the correct decisions are usually made
because of data being organized in the GIS then being outputted to the dispatcher in a
format he/she can easily disseminate very quickly.
See how a GIS makes life easier on the dispatcher by bringing together the data sources
shown below:
Figure 3

4. As you can see in Figure 3, IVR and Web applications help in the communications with
customers improving the service customers receive from the utility. AVL allows the
dispatcher to see where the crews are located at all times to improve safety of the crews.
The AMR/AMI and IVR calls also give the dispatcher an accurate picture of the current
state of the outage event allowing him/her to leverage utility resources to restore the
power to the customers in the most efficient manner.
To state the obvious, the less time the customer is out of power the more revenue the
utility captures and the higher customer satisfaction. Another benefit to having a GIS
with regards to Outage restoration is when it comes time to create statistical reports on
the outage, man hours can be decreased as much as 90% - 95% from my experience. This
can translate into thousands of dollars in savings to the utility.