Expert spatial data consultancy enhances pipeline safety programme
The GeoInformation Group, publishers of Cities Revealed aerial photography (http://www.citiesrevealed.com) has completed an extensive consultancy project for the UK’s second largest gas supplier, Scotia Gas Networks (SGN). SGN operates two of the largest regional gas networks - Scotland Gas Networks plc and Southern Gas Networks plc, it covers over 50% of the landmass and its first priority is to provide a safe and reliable supply of natural gas to all its 5.7m customers.
In order to comply with Pipelines Safety Regulations, SGN has a requirement to locate and identify high-rise buildings of five storeys and more so that it can carry out a regime of regular survey and inspection of those buildings containing internal metallic gas pipes.
The GeoInformation Group was tasked with the project; using heights databases combined with fieldwork to successfully identify all high-rise buildings for the entire SGN network area. From the hundreds of thousands of buildings analysed, SGN was supplied with a final database of over 14 000 addresses. SGN will be cross-referencing the address data against customer records to schedule surveys from 2008 onwards.
Tony Hughes, Network Support Manager at SGN, commented, “By outsourcing this project SGN are benefiting from highly accurate and cost-effective results. The alternative would have been a very costly, time consuming and much less accurate street-by-street survey of the entire gas network. The results provided by The GeoInformation Group enable us to run a more efficient maintenance programme and offer our customers the assurance of a safe gas supply.”
The height data used in this project was derived from multiple sources including: LiDAR, Intermap and photogrammetry, and verified vertical and oblique aerial imagery. By using a range of data sources and field verification the accuracy levels are highly consistent.