Perspectives

How Do Asset Management Applications Benefit Through Geospatial Tools?

Assets can include property, infrastructure and resources associated with business operations. Institutions, governments and other organisations may also own and operate assets. Since the number and location of assets may be large and widely distributed, tools capable of supporting their management increase the possibility to more accurately managing them. Through geospatial technologies, owner-operators can see, understand and maintain their operations more effectively. These gains augment and support improved decision-making.

Several software manufacturers are providing asset management software in the market place. These tools have been available for many years, and have often been referred to as enterprise tools - due to the fact that they provide spatial capabilities throughout organisations.

Energy companies, for example, may have widely distributed resources including pipelines, refineries, service vehincles, construction equipment, offices, ships and more. Collectively, these resources need to be managed together, that is, each pipe, ship, office item, drill rig and piece of construction equipment etc. needs to be accessible. Individual assets are managed through geospatial tools, enabling the collection to be integrated and managed.

This asset management may take place through the integration of several databases. Conversely, it may include a single database through which dozens or hundreds of users integrate and update their work flows. Asset management software contributes by providing the means to see an overview or common picture of operations.

Railways benefit through the use of geospatial asset management tools. At the International Union of Railways in Paris, France, I had the opportunity to listen to several rail operators present how geographic information system (GIS) software was being used to manage and maintain railways in Europe. Rail operations and maintenance are often time-dependent, with both operations and maintenance vying for time to perform differ operations, scheduling of resources and understanding the state of infrastructure and scheduling it's maintenance must dovetail with operations - reducing downtime.

At the same time signalling across the rail network and rail replacement must also be ascertained, monitored and maintained through close integration. With widely spread operations, large railway operations depend upon knowing where their assets are, and geospatial tools support the decision-making from various perspectives.

Many asset management applications are now moving into 3D, and implementing graphical interfaces that provide map-based approaches for managing resources. Additionally, field-based technologies, including GNSS navigation and guidance technology allows field workers to link into asset management databases from the field, thereby helping field workers to locate field resources, but also to include updates and markups to existing records while in the field.

Today, it is hard to imagine businesses with widespread resources, and many of them, not using asset management tools and technologies. Everything has a place and this applies to the resources of most operations.