Asset Management

Summary

This article describes some special functionality within Diamond Maps that was developed in conjunction with the Florida Rural Water Association as part of their asset management program.  This article is intended to be read by other state rural water associations or service companies who wish to offer a similar service to sewer and water systems in their area.  This special functionality consists of some special layer templates, calculations for end of life and criticality, reports to help identify your most critical assets, and an interface into a financial application called RevPlan.

Account Level Setup

The first step is to assure that your account has the Asset Management functionality enabled.  To do this go to the Diamond Maps Account Screen (from your map click Menu - Account & User List) , select the "Account Details" section, and find the "Options" section.  This should show a checked box titled "Enable asset mgmt features".  If you don't see that let us know and we will enable it for your account.

Map Layer Setup

The next step is to add the special asset management fields to your map layers.  It is not necessary to do this to all of your layers but rather just those layers that contain assets upon which you want to perform the special calculations and reporting described in this article.

1. Open an existing map or create a new one
2. Add one or more layers to your map by either creating new layers using the standard layer templates, or by importing some layers from another GIS.
3. Click Menu then Click Asset Management
4. Click "Convert to AM layer"
5. Click the select button to choose an existing layer from your map
6. The remainder of the screen lists all the special fields that are about to be added to your layer.  If your existing layer already has some of these fields then indicate which existing field should be used.  Otherwise, the converter will add a new field for you.
7. Click "Convert" at the bottom of the form to convert the selected layer to an Asset Management layer.
8. To confirm that it worked, either click on an existing feature on your layer or add a new feature to see these special new fields that are displayed in a different color.

Using Map Templates

Once you have create your first asset management map (using steps above) and set it up with layers.  You can use that map as a template when creating additional maps.  When creating a new map from the Diamond Maps Account screen you will see a link titled "Choose A Template".  When you click here you will be prompted to select any map that you previously created to use as a template for this new map.  The new map will be created with blank layers that are formatted exactly like the layers in your template map complete with all the special fields used in the asset management calculations.

Data Collection

Once your special Asset Management layers are setup (see above) you can add content to these layers using the same procedures you would use for any other layers.  You can use Diamond Maps in the field as a data collector or at your desk for organizing and modifying the data.  You can also create your content using a different GIS software application, import the finished data into Diamond Maps, and then use the setup steps above to convert the layers to a format compatible with these calculations.

Calculations

See Asset Criticality Calculations for a description of how Diamond Maps uses the information like condition, design life, install year, etc to calculate an expected end of life and other criticality scores for each asset.

Reporting

Diamond Maps contains a couple of reports to help bring attention to critical assets.  You can access these reports by clicking Menu, then Asset Management.  The first report is a risk matrix that plots all assets on a chart showing the probability of failure on one axis versus the consequence of failure on the other axis.  Assets in the upper right quadrant are both likely to fail and critical to operation.  A second report lists all your assets in a spreadsheet where you can sort your list by expected end of life or risk score to see which assets, along with their replacement costs, should be considered in upcoming fiscal planning. 

RevPlan

The Florida Rural Water Association, in partnership with Reftelis developed an application called RevPlan that does a financial analysis of your system.  It has the ability to interface with Diamond Maps to extract the information in your GIS to use as the basis for some of its calculations.  When you run RevPlan it will prompt you for the map ID of your Diamond Maps map.  You can find this ID in the web address of the map page.  RevPlan will only process layers that have been setup with the special asset management fields as described in the layer setup above.

For more information about RevPlan see this link to the FRWA website or contact them directly.