CASE STUDY
MGISS X Northumbrian Water: Interruption Prevention Alert Service
MGISS X Northumbrian Water: Interruption Prevention Alert Service
Project Priorities Involved
How do we monitor our assets to respond correctly to rapidly changing environments and unpredicted events?
Value Proposition of Innovation
Changes to the built environment within proximity to utility assets are an area of increased risk and were identified by Water and Gas utilities at the 2020 Northumbrian Water Group (NWG) Innovation Festival as the second largest cause of supply disruption. With the further proposed UK government relaxation of planning rules, problems associated with both authorised and unauthorised developments are resulting in supply interruption events.
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The Issue:
With a target of 300,000 new homes to be built per annum and thousands of infrastructure projects in the pipeline, the current cost to water utilities of £150m in missed supply targets will likely increase due to 3rd party interference. The challenge of resolving situations where developers have built over strategic mains is increasing with infill sites being a particular and growing problem as these are often the areas where utility networks are located to supply housing estates.
Likewise, illegal connections are also a challenge for both water supply and energy utilities and a solution that can identify new settlements that are close to networks is being sought.
The current challenge of regular network monitoring by aircraft, drones or line walking is expensive, unreliable and carries significant carbon costs estimated to exceed £72m per annum. By utilising existing Earth Observation (EO) satellites, IPAS can provide a continuous risk monitoring service, with the required levels of data provenance including location accuracy and temporal attribution at a lower cost and with a zero-carbon footprint.
The Solution:
MGISS will be the first supplier offering an automated and constant monitoring service via earth observation satellites. The pilot project named IPAS ‘Interruption Prevention Alert Service’ identifies risks from 3rd party activity that is happening within proximity to critical assets.
Our data partner, Geospataial Insight provide the satellite processing and change detection algorithms which are integrated into the IPAS workflow.
IPAS is an automated change detection service for new developments or changes to the built environment that are within proximity to critical utility assets. The data is blended with change intelligence derived from EO data with existing asset data to generate automated detection alerts, as a preventative measure to avoid utility service interruptions.
IPAS provides a simple, easy-to-use ‘Risk to Resolution’ workflow that can be integrated into existing Asset Systems and Field Task Job Allocation solutions such as IBM Maximo.
It relies on being able to access accurate, well-maintained, and reliable asset data records to maximise the potential benefits. MGISS have been working with many utility companies and provides solutions to both capture and manage well-attributed asset information as part of our Capture, Manage and Use service offering.
Live Demonstration:
The Pilot:
Following the successful completion of the European Space Agency (ESA) funded concept stage to demonstrate that IPAS is both technically and commercially feasible, we moved to a live Pilot Phase in April 2024, working with Essex & Suffolk Water (ESW) to monitor strategic networks within the Essex area.
The regional team manager, Adam Lowdell is managing the pilot on behalf of ESW. Suspected Third Party Interference (TPI) locations are forwarded in small batches via email alerts for ESW to investigate and validate via the easy-to-use field inspection application.
The results are being fed back to MGISS to assist with the calibration of the change detection algorithms and AI machine learning with the purpose of automation and reducing the number of false positives.
Head to Spring’s Google Drive to view the slide deck from the event.
Pilot Results and Learnings:
The pilot phase of the project started on the 12th of June 2024 and will run until December (2024). Prior to that, 6 weeks of user acceptance testing (UAT) was carried out. This helped us test the concept product with our pilot customer Essex & Suffolk Water (ESW) and gather feedback.
UAT was carried out over 2-week cycles where a batch of potential TPIs were added to a web map. An initial assessment of the TPIs is carried out by the user with the back-office dashboard. If validation cannot be carried out by the back-office team, then a task is dispatched to the field operative who carries out the verification using the IPAS field app on site.
The input from ESW so far has been invaluable as they have actively validated all TPIs (between 7-20 every 2 weeks). The feedback has been very positive and instructive in helping to improve the system. Feedback and related actions are as follows:
1. TPI ground change confidence levels
Each TPI has a ground change confidence level value. Using feedback from TPI field validation we have been able to calibrate this confidence level meaning higher values are indicative of “ground change of interest” and lower values would be more likely to be false positives. This will be a continuous process of learning and adjustment throughout the pilot and beyond.
The current way of creating ground change reports creates constantly shifting GIS polygons of change. These are proving difficult to manage especially where change polygons overlap. We are currently testing a new hexagon-based detection and monitoring system based on the Uber H3 model which will add some consistency and reliability to this process. Also being able to monitor change over a consistent area will have the added benefit of tracking change consistently over longer periods, assisting with land classification and ultimately leading to more reliable confidence levels.
2. Back-office assessment
It was determined early on during UAT that having access to the satellite ground change imagery georeferenced in situ on the dashboard web map would help the back-office user decide whether to dismiss or dispatch a TPI. Obvious false positives can be spotted earlier providing a more efficient workflow. This has now been implemented with a simple intuitive layer slider deployed to switch the pre- and post-change imagery on the map. To help the team, we will be delivering a training session on basic satellite imagery analysis.
It was determined that assessing field operative feedback would be improved with some indication of the position and direction of the operative when taking photographs. We are testing a solution for this with Oriented Imagery.
3. System and data integration
Having proved the viability and useability of IPAS as a stand-alone product in the customer setting (System Acceptance Testing) the users are now interested in integrating IPAS with their corporate asset management system (IBM Maximo) to embed the product as BAU. This will have the benefits of streamlining current business processes such as works management and bring it into an environment that feels natural to the wider business.
As part of the prototype GIS front end, we decided to use an open API to enrich the experience with planning applications for the pilot area. The idea is that in some instances this will enable the asset manager to pair ground change with build applications. The value of this data service was clear from user feedback, and we, therefore, plan to explore this as a permanent managed data service along with others such as live road works.
Further Adoption:
Work has already started to engage, commercially with several of the 20 water supply utilities and some of the 6 Gas supply utilities covering the UK.
We are already looking to constantly improve the accuracy of the risk service by using calibration techniques and integrating the field validation workflow into the existing IBM Maximo solution. The MGISS team are also looking to integrate other supporting data sources such as planning permissions into the IPAS risk dashboard along with the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) database to improve IPAS performance along with a more intuitive user experience. .
IPAS aims to become the leading risk alert and aggregation engine for utilities.
About The Technology
MGISS is an award-winning SME, based in Liverpool and supports organisations by helping them capture, manage, and leverage accurate and richly attributed asset data to deliver improvements in operational performance.
From location to insight, we focus on asset resilience while delivering benefits in productivity and efficiency to keep services running to drive value from the intelligent use of leading geospatial technology.
For more information: mgiss.co.uk/ipas or [email protected].
