| |July 201919ublic infrastructures in many regions across the nation are nearing the 100-year mark. As cities and towns have grown during this time, so have infrastructures that provide critical services to custom-ers. Many of these systems, such as water, sewer and electrical utilities are comprised of thousands of individual components. At some point, these assets need repair and these large systems may require shutting down sections of the system interrupting service to homes and businesses. The magnitude of repairing a water main break for example, may be too taxing on public works departments forcing municipalities to outsource which can become costly. All of this is a lot more difficult if all of these assets aren't properly identified and inventoried. Historically, keeping tight control over the condition and maintenance of assets has been a problem for asset manag-ers. Especially when they have traditionally used a paper system where asset records were tracked on paper in a fil-ing cabinet. This doesn't cut it when you really need that information in the field during an emergency. Implement-ing a Geographic Information System (GIS) can help. Using a water distribution authority as a model, this system consists of water storage facilities, pipes and asset components. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), there are over one million miles of water distribution piping networks throughout the U.S. that re-quire daily maintenance and operational activities to keep them running properly. As water distribution systems age, their management becomes even more critical in order to maintain the delivery of clean water to homes, schools, hospitals, businesses and industrial facilities. Recently in New Jersey, the enactment of the NJ Wa-ter Quality Accountability Act (WQAA) has prompted the mandatory inventorying of water distribution assets, coupled with an asset management plan to track opera-tion and maintenance of distribution systems throughout the state following American Water Works Association (AWWA) standards. This has resulted in the develop-ment of a replacement plan for assets that are past their life expectancy.One of the main components of the WQAA mandates the verification of each asset's location. This can be done using a Global Positioning System (GPS) which uses sat-ellite positioning. While using GPS to locate your assets is the right tool for the job, it can still be a daunting task due to the sheer number of assets. On the other end of the plan is the inspection, maintenance, repair, and rehabili-tation of the infrastructure. This is where GIS comes in. GIS is a customizable program that encompasses all your needs and can easily handle everything from data collec-tion to storage. If you're going to dedicate the immense amount of time it takes to GPS-locate all your assets, it would make sense to integrate GIS at the same time. GIS can be applied to a multi-tude of public works settings and has become the go-to tool for managing assets, particularly for multi-component infrastruc-ture authorities. The beauty of GIS is that it enables users to gather, manage and analyze many types of assets all through the convenience of one interactive frame-work. This interface can even be used in conjunction with CXO INSIGHTSPBy Suzanne M. Zitzman, GISP, GIS Asset Management Services Division Leader, Maser Consulting P.A.GIS: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS FOR PUBLIC UTILITIESSuzanne M. Zitzman
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