Read how the leading supplier of heating energy in one of the large Polish cities, ENEA Ciepło, reduced network maintenance costs by implementing DH.GIS – a GIS solution for district heating companies.
GIS (Geographical Information System) systems operate on spatial data (e.g. data concerning location, route, or area). They not only collect such data but also allow to perform various actions on it, e.g.: checking if a point belongs to an area, determining routes between locations, etc.
Heating companies have an extensive distributed infrastructure, e.g. network sections, nodes, fixtures, regions, so they collect huge amounts of information with a spatial component. To be able to take advantage of this information, it should be stored in one place and systematized. This is where the GIS system comes in handy – it is responsible for organizing data on network infrastructure elements; It allows for convenient searching, displaying, editing, or adding objects in a given location and thus for monitoring and managing various processes in the network.
In 2002, the heating company ENEA Ciepło (formerly MPEC Białystok) decided to implement a modern GIS system for the heating sector, which would help to improve the access to information about the heating network and the overall quality of the data. The system would facilitate conducting network analyses as well as matching heating parameters and handling failures, and as a result:
- improve the current handling of processes within the organization,
- decrease network maintenance costs,
- increase the quality of services provided to the customers.
ENEA Ciepło (MPEC Białystok) asked for Globema’s support in this project.
In order to meet the requirements set out by the customer, we proposed the implementation of our proprietary GIS system for district heating companies – DH.GIS together with Globema’s other related applications. DH.GIS was created based on GE’s Smallworld GIS platform – one of the leading solutions on the network asset management market.
The first implementation took place in 2003. Gradually, our cooperation started taking on pace and we began implementing new modules to the system. Ideas for new functionalities were provided by the users themselves. By conducting adequate training, we gave the client the opportunity to develop them further independently. Our long-term cooperation continues and solutions implemented at ENEA are constantly being developed.
Read the history of our cooperation with ENEA Ciepło and find out:
- What were the biggest challenges Globema had to face during the project implementation?
- What is the architecture of the implemented solution?
- What functionalities were added to the system in subsequent years?
- In what areas did the implementation improve ENEA’s work?
