Network Information Systems (NIS)

In supply and disposal companies with the sectors electricity, gas, water, waste water, district heating, sewer, broadband etc. this independent GIS field of application has already established itself in the 1980s. But network operators are also the municipalities, the post office, the military, companies in the chemical industry, etc. Their task is the documentation and processing of resource data, i.e. from customer data to the pipelines and systems for supply and disposal. Digital network documentation is now available to support network planning and operation. The necessity to use digital technologies is given by the efficiency of electronic data processing (faster data processing, more intuitive visualization and extended analysis possibilities), in particular with respect to the decreasing space e.g. in the road body, which also requires a close coordination and an exchange e.g. in planning procedures, as well as the high accident risk with considerable risk for the population, but also increasingly by legal requirements (e.g. the self-control regulation) and the increasing liberalisation of the supply market.

In addition to the facilities (transformer stations, pumping stations, transmitter masts, production facilities, distributors, shafts, etc.) of the utility company, resource data includes all the cables, most of which comprise several 1,000 km, that the company operates for the supply and disposal of its customers. These are assigned descriptive data such as civil engineering values for dimensioning, construction material, installation company and date. Administrative data, on the other hand, manage the customer relationship, order backlog and the company assets. The linking of resource data with commercial data, such as sales data, is done, for example, via the reference address (street name or street key and house number). The information content of the geodata coupled with the business data from the commercial accounting generates necessary decision bases. Increasingly, workflows are being emulated (workflow management) so that the coexistence of different software solutions can be overcome.