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Wasserzählerstand

RyanKelso

<\/HEAD>Hallo!<\/SPAN>
Zur Hintergrundinformation: Ich arbeite in einer County-GIS-Abteilung und unser County übernimmt das Wassersystem einer kleinen lokalen Stadt. Soweit ich weiß, ist es das erste Mal, dass wir einen Versorgungsbetrieb führen. In den letzten Monaten wurde mir die Aufgabe übertragen, das Wassersystem so gut wie möglich zu kartieren, ohne es auszugraben, und es gab nicht viele verlässliche Informationen als Ausgangspunkt. Ich habe alle Ventile, Hydranten und Wasserzähler mit GPS erfasst und eine Art Punkt-zu-Punkt-Verbindung in Kombination mit lokalem Wissen und Aufzeichnungen der Wasserleitungen vorgenommen.<\/SPAN>

Jetzt steht die Zeit bevor, in der unsere Mitarbeiter die Zählerablesung übernehmen. Es gibt keine Fern- oder Funkablesung, alles wird manuell durchgeführt. Die vorherigen Betreiber haben dies anhand eines Ausdrucks gemacht, der nach Kontonummer sortiert ist; diese Nummer bestimmt die Route. Viele Zähler befinden sich in Gassen hinter Häusern, oft ist es schwierig zu bestimmen, welcher Zähler zu welchem Haus gehört, daher scheint das Folgen des Ausdrucks entscheidend zu sein, um den Überblick zu behalten, wo man sich befindet und welchen Zähler man abliest.<\/SPAN>

Diese Methode scheint sehr von lokaler Vertrautheit abhängig und etwas ineffizient zu sein. Weiß jemand, ob dies die allgemeine Methode für Wasserwerke ist, um Zähler manuell abzulesen? Meine aktuelle Aufgabe ist es, ein Kartenbuch zur Unterstützung der Wasserzählerablesung zu erstellen, und meine Sorge ist es, etwas zu schaffen, das tatsächlich <\/SPAN>nützlich<\/STRONG> ist und nicht nur wirre Seiten voller Punkte und Zahlen. Meine erste Idee war es, relativ großmaßstäbliche Seiten (vielleicht 1"=100') mit Zählerpunkten zu haben, die durch Linien mit den Kontonummern verbunden sind, überlagert auf einem aufgehellten (für Kontrast) Luftbild. Aber ich befinde mich noch im Anfangsstadium des Designs und wollte fragen, ob hier jemand seine Gedanken dazu teilen könnte, wie man das am besten angeht. <\/SPAN>

Danke,<\/SPAN>
Ryan<\/SPAN><\/BODY><\/HTML>

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RyanKelso

Meter reading sheets are normally generated by your utility billing software, and the meter serial number is the key piece of information for the meter reader. It is what the reader confirms before taking a reading. The customer address is secondary, because some meters are in those odd locations you mentioned. The sheets often include last month's reading and maybe average usage for the customer so the reader can do a common sense check on the new reading.

Ah, thanks, it did occur to me that this would be a good way to do it and it's nice to know that some utilities do it this way. I need to get the serial number database up to date.

Ryan,
I work for a utility with around 81,000 water meters we use map books for our commercial routes only because the location of the residential meters is pretty standard, and the routes are sequenced so that the meter reader walks from one meter to another. One advantage of having the map books is that we don't have to assign the same routes to the same meter reader each month. We also tend to have alot of turnover with our meter readers and the maps help to bring the new meter readers up to speed. If you would like to see some examples of our maps I'd be happy to send a couple to you.
Josh

Thanks this is some good input as well. I appreciate your offer and certainly wouldn't mind seeing an example of yours however, I've finished our map book and the system operator seemed quite happy with it. We've got less than 400 meters so my task was certainly less complicated!

JoshCarroll

Ryan,
I work for a utility with around 81,000 water meters we use map books for our commercial routes only because the location of the residential meters is pretty standard, and the routes are sequenced so that the meter reader walks from one meter to another. One advantage of having the map books is that we don't have to assign the same routes to the same meter reader each month. We also tend to have alot of turnover with our meter readers and the maps help to bring the new meter readers up to speed. If you would like to see some examples of our maps I'd be happy to send a couple to you.
Josh

PatrickOMalley

I agree with most of what has been said, especially about the maps. My personal experience comes from a small water utility, and is based on utility operation first and GIS second.

Meter reading sheets are normally generated by your utility billing software, and the meter serial number is the key piece of information for the meter reader. It is what the reader confirms before taking a reading. The customer address is secondary, because some meters are in those odd locations you mentioned. The sheets often include last month's reading and maybe average usage for the customer so the reader can do a common sense check on the new reading.

Billing software provides ways to customize the order in which meters are listed on the meter reading sheets, but most meter readers don't provide the office with enough feedback about what would be ideal for the order of the list to get optimized. Instead the meter readers get very good at flipping pages on the reading sheets to match the order in which they actually read the meters. It makes training a new reader more difficult, but works fine for an experienced reader.

RyanKelso

Thank you for your replies, it is encouraging to know that I'm going in the right direction from somebody who has been through a similar project. I also appreciate your insights from your experience, you confirm some of my thoughts such as the map book really only being needed to assist a new meter reader on the first few times around.

JoshuaDamron

I realized I ddin't actually answer all of your questions

This method seems to be very dependent on local familiarity and somewhat inefficient. Does anybody know if this is the general method for water utilities to read meters manually? My task right now is to create a map book to assist water meter reading and my concern is creating something that will actually be useful and not just garbled pages of dots and numbers.

There is no right way to read meters, and I wouldn't sweat the maps too much as most of the meters are in standard locations and after 6 months of reading the towns meters maps won't be needed till a new reader is trained.

In our small town as I mentioned above we read meters manually. Our city has been working for some time now to upgrade our meters to Itron electronic radio transmitters (ERT's), these typically have a battery life of 10 years or or more and make the task of reading much quicker. As building permits come in or we repair meters they get upgraded with ERT's.

The ERT's allow the meter reader to push a button on the handheld and get a meter's read from up to several hundred feet away; we are discussing moving to meters that "bubble up" so the meter reader doesn't have to push anything just be in range, of course this impacts battery life. There are many versions of ERT's. They can allow you to just drive around town and never leave the vehicle, some can notify if the property has a leak in the private system, some interact with a wireless network hence the meters are read automaticly and therein can give hourly use readings.

Manually reading meters has some value that is often overlooked: that is having a concerned employee who is positively interacting with the public daily in their neighborhoods and noticing things that may be out of place. For instance we educated our meter reader on storm water quality issues and he has been invaluable in that he observes situations and brings them to our attention. Also there is value to having a city employee physically observe the condition of your infrastructure regularly.

JoshuaDamron

I had a similar situation in our city where we lost our meter reader and therein lost route knowledge. Thankfully we had just completed mapping the meters in our GIS. In our case the handheld unit which the meter reader carried automatically prompted the meter reader with the address & serial # of the next meter. As you mentioned old water utilities are and ancient and imperfect world with a portion of the meters not located at the standard sidewalk location. To assist our new meter reader I took the same method you are contemplating and made up maps to help him find those obscure meters.

The maps I made were just as you are describing: faded black and white aerials with water meter points. I found that water valve/hydrant/main locations were confusing to the meter reader and obfuscated the map. I also found that labeling serial #�??s got way too complex and weren�??t necessary as the hand held unit had all that data anyways.

I made a grid with MapBook (now known as data driven pages), I think the original maps were 24�?�x36�?� at 1�?�= 80�??-100�?? scale, later I made up a smaller set of 11�?�x17�?� at 1�?�=160�?? scale because 24�?�x36�?� was to big to be reviewed in the cab of his truck. He found that it was unrealistic for him to carry the maps with him while reading meters and he only needed the maps for reference the first few times he did a route, really to note where the remotely located meters were. He�??d give the maps a once over to get his bearings or when he couldn�??t find a meter he made a note to review the map and come back later. Pretty much the maps sat in his truck and after those first few months they were junked.

All this to say you are going in the right direction!

As your county maintains and upgrades the water infrastructure you may look into Itron meter data collection technology, we in Public Works use Itron ERT's on our Badger water meters and the electric dept. uses them as well (http://www.itron.com/pages/products_category.asp?id=itr_000269.xml)

RyanKelso

Josh,
Thanks for your reply. That solution would definitely be the best and I think we are looking to do something along those lines in the future. Unfortunately we do not have the time or funding for a system like that right now, which is why I am tasked to make a map book to aid meter reading.

JoshHumphrey

Ryan,

I am not sure the funding you have available but check with sensus meter company they have a program called AutoVu/AutoRead this reads all meter from a labtop so essentially one guy could read your entire town.. Also this program requires lat/long coords to reference the read out therefore giving you a point position on your GIS software. If you have any more questions feel free to email me josh@poweshiekwater.com

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