Utility Asset Collection

Urban GIS was contracted by West Virginia American Water to conduct a comprehensive state-wide audit of their inventory of assets. An initial database of more than 15 feature types was provided to Urban GIS, which included water valves, hydrants, distribution pipes, meters, among others. Our team systematically traversed the state to conduct a full audit of both spatial location and asset condition for each feature. During the work, additional features that were not previously included in the inventory were discovered, amounting to an estimated 5% of the total inventory. Obtaining highly accurate GPS locations across the entire state is challenging due to the incomplete cellular network coverage used for RTK positional corrections. To overcome this challenge, our team included Satellite based GNSS corrections through Leica SPOT Prime. A transformation was applied to address an observed offset between RTK corrected positions and satellite corrected positions based off a measurement of 3,000 test points. Our work for West Virginia American Water represented a significant contribution to their ability to accurately manage their inventory of field assets. With this information, their asset management program can better plan for maintenance, upgrade, and enhancement to the network.