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MapFrame News Release Dominion Resources Selects FieldSmart View for Office and Field DALLAS (JULY 17, 2000) - MapFrame Corporation announced today that Dominion Resources (Richmond, VA) has selected FieldSmart View for viewing map data in both the office and the field. Dominion anticipates that 1000+ users will have access to the map viewer either on office computers or on mobile pen-based tablet computers and laptops. Users can view facility maps and also easily access attribute data. Dominion is the largest fully integrated natural gas and electric company in the nation. The utility represents the recent merger of Virginia Power and Consolidated Natural Gas along with various other holdings. One of the outcomes of the merger is that Dominion is using both a Smallworld GIS and ESRI’s Arc/Info GIS. FieldSmart View accepts data from both systems. Separate applications will be set up for electric and gas groups. MapFrame will also format the data so that the entire service territory for each group can reside on a mobile computer with data quickly accessible in the field. Dominion provides electric service to over 2 million customers in Virginia and North Carolina and gas service to 1.5 million customers in parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. To fit this much data on laptops and pen tablets, MapFrame is using a variety of proprietary data compression techniques. On the electric side, FieldSmart View will function as part of Dominion’s mobile dispatch system, enabling users to view spatial data associated with individual work orders. The system will be set up so that, after receiving a work order, a user taps a button and the project map displays. Dominion believes the availability of map data will speed the maintenance and repair process, providing field personnel with information that was previously unavailable or took too long to find with paper map books. Mobile mapping technology is expected to be an important new tool in improving response times during critical storm and outage situations. To help maintain the accuracy of the GIS database, FieldSmart View will also provide users with the ability to mark up maps in the field. For example, if a user sees an error on a map or a change that needs to be made, he or she can indicate this by placing a note or symbol on the map. At the end of the day, redlined maps will be uploaded to the server and circulated to other users until a change is made in the GIS. This ability to mark up maps at the source and communicate information back to the office will result in important efficiencies for the corporation. MapFrame and Dominion are working closely together to deploy FieldSmart View by August 2000. MapFrame is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The company specializes in helping organizations incorporate mobile computing technologies in their field operations. In a previous project, MapFrame customized it FieldSmart Design system for Dominion so field engineers can create distribution designs using mobile computers at the job site. # # # Press Information: Heather Patton, MapFrame email: Click here tel: 214.741.2264 x105 General Information: Click here |
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