Abstract
Abstract. The organisational data models that support the information needs of utility network managers are proprietary and domain-specific, while the emerging national standards in this field often lack lifecycle data representation capabilities. However, multiple types of utility networks can be comprehensively represented with the free and open-source Utility Network Application Domain Extension (ADE) of the international standard CityGML. The Operation & Maintenance (O&M) Domain Ontology is a proposed extended version of the Utility Network ADE that allows for consistent and comprehensive processing, storage and exchange of O&M-related utility network data. So far, this ontology has not yet been implemented in a spatial-relational database. Consequently, the support it offers during routine utility asset management tasks has remained untested. This paper, therefore, tests the support of the O&M domain ontology for asset management and proposes a database implementation of this data model. To this end, it models and loads two utility networks from the campus of the University of Twente, the Netherlands. It tests the ontology’s support for asset management by simulating a street reconstruction project and retrieving necessary project information in relation to a utility’s (a) maintenance history and performance, and (b) site conditions and valve locations. Results show that the implemented model supports projects with rapid, comprehensive, and consistent information about semantic details of utilities. Such data needs yet to be collected and registered systematically to enable future data-driven asset management practices.
Highlights
The supply and disposal of the commodities that sustain society are realized through utility networks
We show the planning support that the Operation & Maintenance (O&M) Domain Ontology enables with its Utility-NetworkADE-inherited topological module
The aim of the project was to test the support for asset management enabled by the O&M Domain Ontology and to encode it into a database
Summary
The supply and disposal of the commodities that sustain society are realized through utility networks. The lifecycle management of utility networks is fragmented vertically, horizontally, and longitudinally. In-house integrated ownership, management and execution of Operation & Maintenance (O&M) of utility networks becomes increasingly infrequent. Horizontal or inter-disciplinary fragmentation occurs because utility networks transporting distinct commodities are owned by different parties, and they are constructed with the combined efforts of several trades (e.g. design, piping, surveying, systems, etc.). Longitudinal fragmentation exists while information and knowledge about a utility network and its components do not flow seamlessly through the different life phases and stakeholders that manage the network. This may be because of the inability to integrate historical asset records
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