Eagleview Imagery Speeds Tower Classification and Cuts Costs for Prominent U.S. Utility Company

By leveraging Eagleview’s oblique aerial imagery, the company transformed asset verification and accelerated productivity across multiple departments.

Background

This large utility company in the Northeastern U.S. has thousands of transmission towers and more than 2,800 miles of overhead lines to accurately classify in order to ensure proper maintenance and avoid interruptions in service. Although they all perform the same function, the transmission towers that support overhead lines are not uniform in material throughout the network. Some are made of wood while others are formed from steel lattice work or tubular steel poles.

According to the company data manager, “This patchwork is a result of varying ages and geographic locations. For example, in Massachusetts it’s easy to get wood poles, but in New York it’s a little tougher.”

Challenge

The differences in composition made accurately classifying towers essential, but effectively validating assets was a struggle. Just as you wouldn’t maintain a wooden fence the same way you would a metal one, the towers needed to be handled differently in terms of maintenance, allocation of costs, and replacement schedule. Having undergone several mergers over the last six years, the company needed to organize its information and incorporate existing as-built records about the types of towers into its Smallworld geographic information system (GIS).

The company assembled a project team consisting of an internal project manager, a contractor project manager, and six GIS contractors, but the group quickly discovered the project was much more challenging than anyone had anticipated. Not only were many of the records in the form of old CAD drawings, many more were simply missing or had never actually been acquired during the mergers. Four months into the effort, the team found their $650,000 budget was exhausted, and only 30% of the towers in the network were classified. The remaining 70% were either unknown or had conflicting data.

Solution

The company decided to turn to web-based orthogonal imagery—top-down aerial photographs that have been geometrically corrected to reduce distortion—to fill the data gaps. Two internal GIS analysts were charged with identifying the locations and materials of the towers. Unfortunately, three months and $50,000 into the effort, little progress had been made. As the analyst discovered, the straight-down imagery on which they were relying simply did not allow for an accurate assessment of the materials used in the towers’ construction.

Tired of seeing few results for relatively large spend, the company enlisted a consultant to examine high-resolution Eagleview aerial oblique imagery. Unlike orthogonal imagery, which has a straight-down perspective, Eagleview imagery is taken at an angle to the earth’s surface—capturing a more comprehensive perspective from the four cardinal points. Because they are also geo-referenced to the locations of the objects they depict, the images allow users to extract measurements.

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With three months and $50,000 wasted, the company was thrilled to explore Eagleview’s imagery and learn of its value proposition—and they were just as happy with the results.

Impact

Significant Reduction in Unknown Towers

When the project concluded, the percentage of unknown towers had been reduced from 70% to 8%. (Remaining unknowns will be classified by on-site visits or flyovers as conducted as part of their regular inspection schedule.)

Better Office Productivity

Within three days, stakeholders were using Map 3D to bring data in, turn layers off, and work through the remaining towers—allowing much faster and more thorough tracking from the start.

Property Department Improvements

With Eagleview, the property department can now access assessor data to evaluate possible encroachments.

Forestry Department Enhancements

The company’s forestry department now uses Eagleview to compare images from different years to look for increases in vegetation that require intervention.

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