via IT News
Ergon Energy is experimenting with open source gaming engines and physics models in an effort to capitalise on a massive geospatial data set from its ongoing laser-mapping project.
The Queensland utility has completed 10 percent of its year-old ROAMES project, expected to map out some 150,000km of power lines in the state by June 2013.
It aimed to collect about a petabyte of data a year by completing more than 900 regional aerial mapping runs with plane-mounted LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) equipment.
Data would be used to identify and target unwanted trees around its power lines and inform asset management practices.
ROAMES research director Matthew Coleman said Ergon developers – including games industry veterans from companies like THQ – were building SimCity-like graphical interfaces to allow the firm to play out what-if scenarios with the data.
"The traditional asset management systems we're used to today are moving away from tabular data sets and bringing that to a very rich, game-like environment," he told iTnews.
"They'll be more like SimCity. Utilities will be able to play out scenarios – for example, 'what if I deferred maintenance of all poles for the next five years' – and the system should be able to show us the effect of those changes."
Vegetation management was the first target for the effort, which would not only measure growth but eventually be able to simulate the movement of trees in a strong wind.
Ergon hoped to save $44 million over five years by better targeting vegetation in exclusion zones around its power lines.
Coleman told the recent GITA 2012 ANZ geospatial conference that Ergon normally removed threatening vegetation in rolling patterns at a cost of nearly $100 million a year – representing Ergon's single largest opex item.
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