Introduction
A well-planned and well-developed geographic information system (GIS) can significantly improve the decision-making and planning efforts of utility professionals who rely on accurate, readily available data. The use of GIS allows everyday activities, such as asset management, hydraulic modeling and land use planning, to be performed more efficiently, generating substantial savings in time and money.
Each municipality, public works, and utility has the responsibility to provide sustainable services to their citizens while maintaining their assets in a cost effective manner.
The GIS advanced data structure and analytical functionality proves critical for asset management and other needs. It's goal is to move more and more from short-term reactive work to longer-term life-cycle asset management. The logical and cost-effective conclusion is to use the geodatabase as the asset data management repository and to leverage their investment in GIS for asset management.
Organizations can use maintenance history assessment, visual inspection, monitoring, and condition assessment to determine and gain insights regarding the level of asset deterioration to assess likelihood of asset failure. Generally, the cost to assess likelihood of asset failure increases from CMMS maintenance history inspection (clustering, frequency, and costs analysis of unplanned maintenance) and visual inspection (routine maintenance, SCADA interface, etc.), to non-destructive and destructive condition assessment.