In Asset Intensive Industries like Oil & Gas, Railways, Utilities and Public Sector the utilization of traditional hierarchical structure of assets to represent their production or infrastructure networks is a complex and difficult process. The need to represent and model assets which extend for several kilometers (or miles) with changing characteristics and conditions requires modeling and management tools to provide the specific capabilities to support and manage these complex assets.
These types of assets are usually referred to as Linear Assets as they have a length dimension associated to them. Some of types of linear assets that we find in different industries are:
- Oil & Gas: Oil and Gas pipelines (comprising line pipe, valves, pumping and compressor units, metering stations and tankage).
- Railways: Tracks, Electrification, Communication and Signaling lines, Bridges, Sidings.
- Utilities: Power Lines, Bridges, Tunnels and Pipelines (gas, water and sewage).
- Public Sector: Roads, Sewage and Water pipelines.
- Mining: Railway tracks and related systems e.g. Conveyor belts
Having a length dimension requires more that just having a starting and end point, it requires to represent assets with changing configuration along its length requiring dynamic segmentation capabilities to represent specific characteristic of one segment of the asset.
Dynamic segmentation is a two-step process performed on a spatial data set comprised of linear features. First, a route system is created by associating adjacent line segments into one or more groups that have a definite linear sequence. Second, descriptive information is associated with the route system by referencing distances from the starting point of each route.
