International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) - Volume4Issue4- April 2013
GIS- Its Overview and Practical Implementation
M. Kiran kumar^1, V.V.S.Bhavani Kumar#2, P.Vinodh#3
^1
Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, KL University, Vaddeswaram, AP, India
Final Year B. Tech, Dept. of EEE, KL University, Vaddeswaram, AP, India
#3
Final Year B. Tech, Dept. of EEE, KL University, Vaddeswaram, AP, India
#2
Abstract-Geographic Information System (GIS) is a system which
is used to integrate both spatial (geographical picture) and nonspatial data (attribute data) together which helps in interlinking
a geographical citation with its information. This feature of GIS
makes its way forward into many applied services. This paper
proposes an overall view of GIS and one of its present practical
implementation of structuring ‘APDRP’ (Accelerated Power
Development and Reforms Programme) an APEPDCL (Andhra
Pradesh Eastern Power Distribution Company Limited) project.
Restructuring implies Digitization of the entire power system
distribution sector through IT based applications.
Keywords-GIS, RAPDRP (Restructured Accelerated Power
Development and Reforms Programme), Digitization, PGDB
(Personal Geo Data Base)
I.
INTRODUCTION
GIS (Geographical Information Systems) is one such
famous IT application tool which can provide best decision
support to bridge the gap between the requirements and the
reality.A geographic information system (GIS) integrates
hardware, software, and data for capturing, managing,
analyzing, and displaying all forms of geographically
referenced information.GIS allows us to view, understand,
question, interpret, and visualize data in many ways that
reveal relationships, patterns, and trends in the form of maps,
globes, reports, and charts. A GIS helps you answer questions
and solve problems by looking at your data in a way that is
quickly understood and easily shared.With the exponential
growth in IT application and the Digital literacy all over the
world, and GIS being the most advantageous visual dimension
of data base, the potential for GIS application has increased
over the years. A GIS is a virtual representation of the real
world and its infrastructure. GIS cannot be defined in a single
definition, but different authors define GIS in different ways
as follows:
 The common ground between information processing
and the many fields using spatial analysis techniques.
(Tomlinson, 1972).
 A powerful set of tools for collecting, storing,
retrieving, transforming, and displaying spatial data
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from the real world. (Burroughs, 1986).
A computerized database management system for the
capture, storage, retrieval, analysis and display of
spatial (locationally defined) data. (NCGIA, 1987).
A decision support system involving the integration
of spatially referenced data in a problem solving
environment. (Cowen, 1988).
GIS=Cartography (study & making of maps) +
Statistical Analysis + Database Technology.
II.
GIS:HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
This technology has developed from:
 Digital cartography and CAD.
 Data Base Management Systems
Prof. Ian McHarg first to set the theoretical foundation of GIS.
His well known book “Design with Nature”(published in
1969).However, extensive commercial activity relatively
recent starting late 1980’s/early 1990’s.
 1965: “Canada GIS”; first nation-wide GIS
 1967: “New York Land Use and Natural Resources
Inventory System”
 1969: “Minnesota Land Management Information
System”
III.
GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGIES
Various technologies that are available to collect the
Geographical Information are:
a) Global Positioning Systems (GPS): a system of
earth-orbiting satellites which can provide precise
(100 meter to sub-cm.) location on the earth’s
surface (in lat/long coordinates or equiv.)
b) Remote Sensing (RS): use of satellites or aircraft to
capture information about the earth’s surface.
Digital ortho images a key product (map accurate
digital photos).
c) Geographic Information Systems (GIS): Software
systems with capability for input, storage,
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manipulation/analysis and output/display of
geographic (spatial) information
d) A GIS provides for storing and manipulating GPS
and RS data
IV.
GIS COMPONENTS
There are 3 components of GIS:
1. Database
2. Layering
3. GIS analysis
 Geographic data for each type of feature (e.g. roads,
rivers, towns, forests etc.) found in a specific area the geographic extent - are stored in individual
layers.
 With GIS databases and layers, we can carry out GIS
analysis.
 What GIS is all about today is the bringing together
of spatial analysis techniques and digital spatial data
combined with computer technology.
1. Database:
In a GIS, as with a paper map, we can visualize on
the computer (digitally) what is occurring at a location. More
importantly though, we also have a whole database of data
describing the attributes of the feature at that location. For
example, on a map, a road is a road. Full stop. In a GIS, a
road is a road PLUS a table full of road attributes - data
describing that road. For example, the database may describe
the road length, the route no., whether a particular road is a
secondary vs. primary road or has a gravel vs. paved surface,
etc. This database component gives us the ability to carry out
queries based on given criteria in the database (i.e. show me
all roads in the S. Island that have a paved surface and are also
primary roads). Further, we can carry out some simple
calculations such as: what is the total length of the roads
meeting the above criteria.
2. Layering:
This is the real source of power in a GIS. For a given
area, we may have a streets layer/database, a soils
layer/database, a land parcel layer/database, an administrative
district layer/database, a land use layer/database. You get the
idea. With layers, we can carry out a spatial overlay. Using
layers in a GIS can give us new insights and information that
can be used to make better decisions. A thematic plane of GIS
features containing geographically and logically related data.
Overlaying involves superimposing two or more map layers to
produce a new map layer.
3. GIS Analysis:
In the context of GIS, analysis is “Deriving new
information from existing data”. It is also the manipulation of
data to solve a problem. e.g. identify all areas within 500m of
a lake. Increasing use is made of the analytical capabilities of
GIS, But many GIS projects only use the software to store and
manage geographical data. Yet analysis often relies on many
simple basic GIS techniques.
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V.
PROPERTIES OF GIS
Properties of real world geographic information are:
1. Location:
We can identify the location of the objects by simply
looking at the map that is with the coordinate system that
provides location of objects through its coordinates in space
for example we can identify the location of different states in
the map.
2. Attributes:
Geographic information also includes attributes
which provide information about the location for example
California geographic object has a number of attributes
associated with including population, number of farms and
number of mobile homes.
3. Spatial relationship:
Final property of real world geographic information
is the spatial relationship associated with the object, spatial
relationship includes such things as the shape of an object or
the relation between the other objects as we see in the picture
California is the long narrow state surrounded by other three
states.
VI.
DATA STRUCTURE OF GIS
Data Structure of GIS includes different types of
formats in which the data is collected from the space with the
help of
Fig. 1. GIS Data Structure
Data can be collected in two formats. They are:
i. Spatial data.
ii. Non-Spatial data (Attribute data)
GIS Spatial Data Formats:
There are two formats used by GIS systems to store
and retrieve geographical data:
 Vector
 Raster
Vector data:
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Vector data allows you to precisely model
geographic data such as point, lines and polygons. The key to
the vector data is the ability to define the exact location of
geographic feature you wish to map to do this we use the
coordinate system which allows you to exactly specify the
location of features an is key to understand how vector data
works in GIS.
 All points have to have a set of coordinates that define
the point occupies.
 Using the Cartesian coordinate system, a set of x & y
coordinates defines this locate so the GIS software
knows where to draw the point.
 All the vectors in a GIS must have unique
identification number assigned to the geospatial
feature. This unique ID allows the user to assign
attribute into each feature. example the figure below
describes ID assigned to the manholes.
 Lines are used to display data that is in linear format
example streams, roads, water lines and transmission
lines.
 Lines have length as spatial attribute. And every line
has a unique ID as well.
Polygons are used to display the data that covers
specific areas of earth surface examples of polygons are:
 Parcels
 Municipal boundaries
 Police beats
There are many sources of vector data for use in GIS.
Government agencies at federal, states and many local level
governments all produce vector data for their use.
Raster data:
There are three different types of raster images
 Aerial imagery
 Satellite imagery
 Scanned images
Aerial imagery:
As the name implies, aerial imagery is the imagery
that is captured from the airplane using rather sophisticated
cameras. Most aerial imagery used in GIS is orthorectifed
imagery. In simple terms this means the image captured by the
camera is processed by a photogrammetric to reduce
horizontal distortions caused by elevations changes on the
ground.
Fig.2. Aerial image of town
Satellite imagery:
These types of images are mostly captured from the
satellite that orbit the earth but they are not limited to the
images collected from the satellite. The use of these images is
also called remote sensing.
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Fig.3.Satellite image of town
Raster’s are also called as grids. Raster data is
organized in a grid format by rows and columns.
Within a raster image the cells that make up the
raster are each assigned a value. This value depends on what
type of the data raster is representing. Cells are also called as
pixels
Fig.4. Raster image zoomed in step
When you are zoomed into an aerial raster image
the raster image may not make much sense but when you
zoom out then you can see what the raster is representing
as shown in the above image. Each cell in the raster image
has a specific size that is specified when the raster image
is created these sizes could range from one inch cells to 30
meter cells, the higher the resolution the more details that
can be observed.
VII.
ENABLING GIS IN DISTRIBUTION
UTILITY FOR ENERGY AUDIT AND
LOAD FLOW ANALYSIS
Introduction:
In the nationwide implementation of IT reforms in
state distribution utilities, under the prestigious R-APDRP
project, Geographical Information System (GIS) has gained
importance as an effective tool for improving customer
services, enhancing operational and energy efficiency and
optimizing costs.
Lot of emphasis is given by the state utilities on the
leveraging GIS for creating an energy balance sheet and take
effective measures to plug the revenue leakages. The georeferenced electrical network overlaid on area base map is
handy for the utility not only for managing assets and their
maintenance, but also being used for mapping the electrical
consumers to its source of supply for energy audit
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applications. Moreover, by integrating electrical GIS with
network analysis application, various analytical are possible
for load flow analysis, short circuit analysis, efficiency
calculations and load planning.
This chapter describes how GIS is being leveraged in
power utilities for energy audit and network analysis, and
emerging as a powerful tool for load planning and
management with the aim to improve the quality of electricity
supply and related services.GIS helps in providing a
transparency for the distribution sector of the power system
using the IT-Application scenario. This use of GIS, make its
beneficial in minimizing the Aggregate Technical and
commercial (AT&C) losses in the distribution sector of the
power system network. Out of the 1 MW of power generated ,
50 percent of the power that is 0.5 MW of the power is getting
wasted in the form of losses.
Energy Audit and Load Flow Analysis are two
vital objectives of the R-APDRP reforms under way in most
of the State Electrical Distribution Utilities in India. This is in
line with the requirements of reduction in ATC losses and
total energy accounting. The reforms are envisaged to be
brought about through IT-enablement of utility business
processes, in which GIS plays a crucial role. The GIS
application helps in maintaining indexed consumer database
and electrical assets database. The indexed consumers are
mapped to their respective source of supply. This is essential
for performing energy accounting Distribution Transformerwise and Feeder-wise. GIS application integrated with
Network Analysis module helps in various calculations like
technical losses, load flow analysis, energy audit, network
optimization and “what-if” analyses.
VIII.
PRACTICAL IMPLEMENTATION
The data that is collected in both the formats that is
spatial, attribute data formats is stored as a PGDB (Personal
Geo Data Base) file. The PGDB is usually prepared for a
particular town for which the Digitization has to be carried
out. The Digitization is a process by which transparency in the
power system distribution network can be created, by which
the amount of power input/output to a substation/distribution
transformer can be calculated and hence the losses can be
calculated as a subtraction of the power input and power
output. The PGDB file of a particular town consists of the
entire details of the number of feeders, number of distribution
transformers, number of poles for each distribution
transformer existing in that particular town. The PGDB
consists of the geographic images in the form of AUTO-CAD
drawings and the Attribute data integrated to it. So, once we
load the PGDB of a particular town the entire map of that
particular town consisting of the Feeder details, Distribution
transformer details, Pole details can be retrieved. The PGDB
can be accessed by using software ARC-GIS version-9.3/10
and any other advanced version of ARC-GIS software.
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ARC-GIS-9.3/10:
Arc-GIS is an integrated collection of GIS software
products for building a complete GIS for your organization.
The Arc-GIS framework enables you to deploy GIS
functionality and business logic wherever it is needed in
desktops, servers (including the Web), or mobile devices. The
system provides an infrastructure for making maps and
geographic information available throughout an organization,
across a community, and openly on the Web. After loading the
PGDB into the ARC-MAP file, the PGDB consisting of the
Attribute data and the spatial data will be displayed in the
form of a map as shown below:
Fig.5.ARC-GIS software preview
Distribution Transformer Sketch preparation:
 There exists a unique code for every DTR in the map
known as DTR_STRUC code.
 After entering the unique code for each DTR, that
DTR will be pointed and the necessary updations
have to be done in order to prepare that particular
sketch of an DTR. That particular sketch which we
get after applying the necessary queries is known as
‘ARC-MAP’.
 The queries that are to be applied to obtain the DTR
sketch are:
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Fig.6. Distribution Transformer Query table
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The sequence of steps required for obtaining a
substation sketch are listed below:
Fig.7.Sample Distribution transformer sketch prepared in ARCGIS-9.3
Feeder sketch preparation:
 In order to get the feeder sketch of a particular feeder in
a town, the particular query ‘feeder_id’ should be
entered into the ARC-GIS software.
 The sequence of steps to be followed in order to obtain
a feeder sketch are:
Fig.10. Substation Query table
Fig.11. Sample Substation sketch prepared in ARC-GIS-9.3
Fig.8. Sample DTR sketch prepared in ARC-GIS-9.3
The above mentioned sketches are to be saved in
both .MXD format and .JPEG format. The .MXD format is
useful to perform any updation to the file and after that the file
can be exported in .JPEG format.
CONCLUSION
Fig.9. Sample Feeder sketch prepared in ARC-GIS-9.3
Substation sketch preparation:
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In Electricity Distribution Utility, it is a
fundamental requirement to have a proper energy accounting
and auditing system, aided by distribution network analysis on
GIS platform. This can be achieved by automating the
distribution value chain using open-standards architecture and
appropriate technology. A high level of integration is required
using enabling features and web services for timely and
accurately recording, processing and mining of data for
energy audit and analysis. The process integration envisages
the solution to be designed in a multi-tier, web-based and
service-oriented architecture (SOA) model. Enabled by GIS,
Energy Audit and Network Analysis modules can be seamless
integrated with meter data management, billing and
collections, asset management, indexed consumer database
and electrical network mapping on a middleware enterprise
service bus.
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FUTURE SCOPE
Acquiring data for a new GIS is no longer a major
problem.GPS has become a major source of new GIS data,
and comes increasingly from integrated GPS/GIS systems.
Digital map images such as scanned maps and air photos
are often used as a background image for cross-layer
registration and update. Remote sensing will become an
important source of GIS data as the cost of data falls and
new sorts of data arrive. Data exchange will become more
common and has been facilitated by exchange standards
Email ID: bhavanikumarvvs@gmail.com
Pusuluri Vinodh was born in India in
1992. He is persuing B.Tech final year
in K.L.University in Electrical and
Electronics Engineering. He developed
interest on GIS while doing his
Internship at Nanomindz Technologies
Pvt Ltd. His area of interest are
machines and power electronics.
Email ID: vinodhkool@gmail.com
REFERENCES
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
ARC-GIS Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArcGIS
ESRI-official website
http://www.esri.com/what-isgis/overview#geographic_panel
GIS @LINCOLN Website
http://oldlearn.lincoln.ac.nz/gis/gis/Links/Links_main_test.htm
GIS fundamentals,4th edition by Paul Bolstad
http://www.paulbolstad.net/gisbook.html
Components of GIS
http:// www.essex-countynj.org/GIS.pdf
GIS-Analysis
http://maps.unomaha.edu/Peterson/gis/notes/GISAnal1.html
GIS-Overview
http://www.uta.edu/library/gis/
ARCGIS Overview
www.nashuarpc.org/gis/pdf/ArcGIS_93_NRPC.pdf
ARCGIS- ESRI
http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/about/gis-for-me
BIOGRAPHIES
M. Kiran Kumar received B.Tech
Degree in Electrical and Electronics
Engineering from Gokula Krishna
College of Engineering and Technology
J N T University,Hyderabad, India, in
2007.,M.E. Degree in Power Electronics
and Drives from Sree Sastha Institute of
Engineering and Technology, Anna
University, Chennai,
India, in 2010 and Pursuing Ph.D in Electrical Engineering
at K L University, Guntur, India. Currently he is Asst.
Professor in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, at K L
University, Guntur, India. His research interest includes
Switched Reluctance Machines, Power Electronics and
Control Systems.
Email ID: kiran.malligunta@kluniversity.in
Veerla Venkata Sai Bhavani Kumar was
born in India in 1991. He is pursuing B.
Tech final year in K.L. University in
Electrical and Electronics Engineering.
He developed interest on GIS while doing
his
Internship
at
Nanomindz
Technologies Pvt Ltd.
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