INFRASTRUCTURE INTEGRATION OF MEGA CITY – ISTANBUL

In water and sewerage system management, most of the activity is related to geographical references.  Thus GIS, to be more specific ISKABIS is regarded as a means for effective management and attain the targets in the long term. ISKABIS Project commenced at the beginning of 2000, and for the purpose of providing basic and effective means for the end users to reach, display, take hardcopy of the entire engineering and managerial data of Istanbul Water and Sewerage Authority. 

ISKABIS project has been built on very important key points. These are explained below.

- Create once, use many:

Data sharing is the main concept for the integration of all departments in ISKI. ISKABIS project is based on a file server system application to succeed in effective data sharing.  By applying a file server approach and using a very powerful CAD together with a VBA application to manage the files inside the CAD environment certainly makes it a lot easier to work with maps and drawings.

In the file server, there are various folders like maps, raster, infrastructure, superstructure, planning projects etc. categorized  as in the shape of a digital library. Each department in ISKI, such as mapping dept., GIS dept., Water Project dept., Sewerage Project dept. etc, updates only their responsible folders in the file server. Each branches of ISKI has certain control and rights over a set of data to take the full responsibility of creating, updating and storing the mentioned data set into file server for the use of every other potential users. Hence, an effective and mutually defined collaboration between the departments of ISKI is achieved about data sharing.

As for ISKABIS users, they get the latest engineering data from the file server which is really important for implementing their daily works.

- All in one:

More than 30 applications implemented into ISKABIS CAD/GIS program. Ultimate Map Management, Infrastructure Management, Projects Management, Address Query, Building Query, Cadastral Query, Geographical Information System Applications, Easy Print Utility etc. can be made via ISKABIS CAD/GIS Solution. It is fully open to additions of new applications when needed or requested by the ISKI personnel.

Thus, to say the least, the efficiency and performance of the users has increased a great portion by providing access to information in much shorter time for the implementation of their engineering works.

- Everything is 3D:

Water, wastewater and storm water as-built data are put into the ISKABIS in 3D.

All ISKI project engineers implemented trainings on 3d planning:

-      3d Digital Elevation Modeling(DEM),

-      Facility planning on DEM,

-      3d facility design.

Superstructure facilities like treatment plants, storage tanks, and ISKI buildings have been started to be drawn in 3D and expected to be finished by 2008.

Also all as-built specifications were revised according to 3d surveys.

 - Trainings Based Management:

ISKI believes that engineering is full of knowledge and experience. So far, more than 750 personals in ISKI had Microstation 2d, Microstation 3d, MS. Geographics, B.Inroads Site, B.Descartes trainings (basic level 75 hours/person, advanced level 150 hours/person)  and new trainings are still going on.  As a result, number of ISKABIS users is increasing accordingly.

- As easy as one click:

Map management has never been so easy. A user friendly application has been developed with Microstation VBA. Select any desired map type and Click on design file or Select any undesired map type and click on detach button. For GIS applications, just choose your criteria and click on Locate button or select any object to get attribute data.

- Automated Print/Plot Solution:

Customizable and ready to use standard forms are used in Print/Plot works. Users’ names and titles, their managers, date of print etc. attribute data is provided from oracle database and inserted into selected legend automatically. Dynamic scaling is possible according to paper size. North arrow and scale bar is standard objects placed into legend before printing.

- Monitoring of usage and performance:

All ISKABIS clients are registered to Oracle database and only registered clients can access to system. Since they are logged, it is easy to get answers to the questions below;

• How many times a client used ISKABIS CAD/GIS?
• Who are online?
• Are they using Microstation or Powerdraft?

Whenever ISKABIS CAD/GIS is upgraded, it is upgraded automatically on the client side.

Also it is possible to send instant messages and email to ISKABIS CAD/GIS users by administrator.

Each branches of ISKI has its own servers. These servers are updated by copying data from Main File Server using a batch file. Hence, ISKABIS users in branches get latest data every day automatically. All ISKABIS clients are connected to their file server with a speed of 100 mbit/s which is optimum network speed for performance.

What is the project status:

Project implementation completed. However, new additions have been applying to the project according to needs from users.

Size and impact of the project

         * Cost of the project                            :        200.000 USD

         * Number of People on project            :        10 people

         * Duration of project                           :        2 years

         * Population affected by project         :        more than 600 engineers/technicians

Major challenges of the project.

• Superior indexing, Powerful map management
• More than 600 users including engineers/technicians
• All in one: More than 30 applications
• Small in size, easy usage and simple interface
• Automated Print/Plot Solution
• Dynamical update of attribute & graphical data
• Online monitoring of usage and performance
• CCTV Integration

Bentley products and/or services involved in this project:

Microstation, Geographics, Powerdraft, Bentley Water, Bentley Wastewater, MS Descartes, InRoad Site, Select Services Technical Support

Why did we choose Bentley products/services for this project?

This journey with Bentley software has started as we perceived Microstation as a very powerful CAD to work with digital maps and rasters from the beginning. Its powerful tools has given our engineers the ability to work on large scale projects and related digital maps and rasters effectively. Once we felt contended with the abilities of Microstation, the opinion to design an automatic mapping and facility management system (AM/FM) around it came up. At that point we reviewed what other products can be installed to our work cycle around Microstation and what Bentley Solutions were offering and would offer in near future. We were very pleased to find out that Bentley had products dealing with water utilities as well. Then we adopted Bentley Water and Wastewater technology to make out water and wastewater infrastructure maps of the city. As parallel to that we deployed the Publishing technology to share data between our users. Also as being an infrastructure company, ISKI is in need of modeling software to use in its planning and maintaining works. We hope those will be our future steps to do our work with higher standards and reduced costs with the support of Bentley Solutions.

Describe what workflows became more efficient using Bentley software/services.

As an infrastructure company of Istanbul Metropolis, ISKI has many design, projecting and maintenance workflows to meet the infrastructure planning needs of the city. Before ISKABIS project, to some extent, Bentley software had been used for planning and projecting issues in the institution. But there were no specific workflow that had involved Bentley software. Instead, there were heavy workloads to reach the data resources and share data between users.

At the time, the situation concerning the sharing of engineering data resources could only be defined as very primitive and heavy work load. And also the workflow of data sharing was in an indescribable and undefined way. The efficiency of infrastructure projecting highly depends on accessing and exchanging the data of existing facilities as well as other sets of engineering data, maps, rasters etc. Also maintenance works of existing infrastructure facilities requires information of as-builts on daily periods. With the conventional approach to such works it takes days to get related data sets together and involves many officials inside writings, meetings, archive scanning, copying etc. This was a complete handicap standing in the way of an institution’s efficiency and performance.  

Our determination was to design an institutional application that will manage as-builts, city infrastructure maps and other related engineering data sets like maps, rasters, etc. and also to share this data among the user in best effective way possible. ISKABIS project thought to be an environment to supply users with all related data for their design and projecting works but also as a decision support system in which the information needed is just clicks away. 

At the beginning of the project the plain vision was to design a system that we can make out digital infrastructure maps of the city in a managed geoengineering environment. Making out the maps of infrastructure system of the city has great importance in the sense of planning and maintenance workflows.  By adopting Bentley software in which design operations of water and wastewater network is done in an integrated environment we came a long way to making out the infrastructure maps of the city.

Having progressed with making out of the infrastructure maps, we would need the means of sharing this data along with other engineering data sets. Even though initially we opted for Bentley publishing technology, our engineers were not satisfied with read only applications as users of the data. Sooner enough we felt that a much powerful environment needed for data sharing for our engineers' workflows. This is achieved by a Microstation/PowerDraft embedded application which deployed client server architecture. This way only one copy of data sets stored with the main server and shared with all the end users using embedded application of ISKABIS.

The main project strategy was to supply all users with related engineering data sets for their planning and operational works. ISKABIS project involves many concurrent users, working at their individual sites all over Istanbul City and uses data and resources which are supplied by ISKABIS. All ISKI staff is now able to get access to infrastructure information, maps, rasters and related engineering documents without any sort of corresponding, archive scanning or any other ways of conventional means. Instead, ISKABIS provides access to all information for the existing and planned infrastructure and other related engineering data sets.

What were we able to do differently or more effectively using Bentley solutions?

Using Bentley products we have defined a system to organize our engineering data and described an effective way of reaching and sharing it between departments. Apart from that most certainly Bentley software has provided our engineers a very powerful environment to work with digital photogrammetric maps, rasters as well as specific design projects.     

Project benefits/Return on Investment (ROI) using Bentley products/services

         Amount of money saved   :

         Spending such as stationery supplies, blueprint, photocopy, personnel etc. has been decreased in considerable amount. When considering amount of document circulation in our institution; stationary supplies’ spending were mostly coming from making blueprint, taking photocopy of as-builts and projects that are stored in archive room. Especially for those departments which are far from each other were suffering from transportation and communication expenses.

After ISKABIS project implementation, 40-90% of expenses have been saved depending on type of spending.

         Time saved   :

In 2006, because of pipe cracking 6358 of failure notice have been arrived at ISKI. For such cases, it is very important to know exact place of valves and pipe on the street. Otherwise, digging without knowing coordinates of pipes would result in waste of time and money.

Average document processing about answering to requests about existing infrastructure were decreased from 8 hour/document to 30 min./document. The difference of 7.5 hour time period let personnel give time for other jobs. For the infrastructure queries there were 2,246 of documents processed in 2006. Calculation of time saved is explained below.

Total time saved/year  =>  2,246 * 7.5=16,845 hours

1 Person working time/month  => 8 hour/day * 20 day/month = 160 hour/month 

16,845 hour / 160 hour/month = 105 personnel/month

Examples of benefits/ROI:

- Less official writings,

- Better collaboration between departments,

- Less hardcopy of the data,

-Time savings.

Benefits that relate to the product challenges listed above:

• Powerful CAD Abilities
• Powerful VBA Support
• CAD/GIS Integrated Platform
• Powerful 3D Environment
• Simple and Powerful Print/Plot Solution
• ProjectWise and Heastad Solutions Support
• Google Earth and Sketch-up Integration
• 2D/3D PDF Export

3D visualization of the project:

         All superstructure facilities like treatment plants, pumping stations etc. have been started to drawn using Microstation 3D. “All infrastructure facilities are 3D” is our target.

Have we implemented managed environment?

So far, our project is based on client-server architecture. In the file server, all departments store their own data. Project is ready for implementing Projectwise this year.