The disconnect between the locations shown within Integrys’ GIS system and the GPS coordinates being gathered by field crews was causing difficulties when locating and updating existing facilities, designing and estimating projects and responding to customer and emergency situations.  Integrys identified and weighed the options:

• Re-digitize the land base and facilities as needed
• Purchase a new land base and just move the facilities
• Outsource the project
• Use an existing adjustment software package

… before choosing iFactor’s VRS module.  Why?  Integrys noted that VRS was designed specifically for Smallworld, was relatively inexpensive, user friendly, worked seamlessly with iFactor’s Web Maps Connector they were already using and allowed them to use in-house labor to do the time consuming Ground Control Point (GCP) digitization after a single day of on-site training.  Integrys’ experience with iFactor gave them the confidence to use this relatively new Vector Rubber Sheeting software.

Integrys’ conflation project has moved over 420,000 geometries across multiple datastores.  A detailed look at the project was presented at GITA 2011 in Grapevine, Texas (http://tinyurl.com/4olpfw3) with the title: “Deflating the High Cost of Landbase Conflation – A Low Cost Approach at Minnesota Energy Resources”

Entergy (www.entergy.com) chose VRS for similar reasons: cost, simplicity, ease of training for internal resources and a long standing relationship with iFactor.  An on-site training session had technicians digitizing GCPs after a few hours and over the next few months they digitized some 16,500 GCPs to closely define the various shifts across the region. The production move of the gas infrastructure in the Baton Rouge area is scheduled to run before the end of March 2011.

iFactor Consulting’s Vector Rubber Sheeting (VRS) module provides a simple, intuitive and effective means of re-aligning your data.  Whether you choose to make alignment adjustments based on an updated landbase, orthophotos or web-maps VRS gives you the tools to make local or global adjustments, each minutely refinable as needed.   Here’s an example of a re-alignment in action:

The selected road (solid red) needs to be aligned to the underlying land base (a background Bing Maps street view accessed with iFactor’s Web Maps Connector is used here).   Ground control vectors (blue pins and arrows) digitized by the user control the predicted re-alignment (dashed red).   The bounding polygon of the ground vectors defines the area of influence for the re-alignment.  Once the re-alignment looks acceptable it can be applied to some or all of the geometries in a given area, even if they are in a different dataset.  The VRS module provides a rich set of tools for managing the digitized control vectors, their display and analysis.  The user digitized data can be saved to file for later use, refinement or for conglomeration with other control vectors defined by other users.

Contact sales@ifactorconsulting.com to learn more.