Unmapped service lines

Question

Background

We are a public gas utility with approx 65k customers covering approx 30 counties. We get the locations of meters through our billing system and incoming work orders. Field guys adjust locations of meters during annual maintenance through feature services on the ipads. Mains are located and mapped with pretty good accuracy. Any new service lines, since 201,5 we have Gps'd and added to the map. We are using the ESRI UPDM

Question

There are a TON of service lines that we know where the meters are located and we also know where the main is located. What do we do about the service line? Do we draw them in a best as possible initially and put a system in place to located and Gps so many per year until we have them all? Leave them off the map?  Draw a straight line from meter to main?

As it is now we have about 10% of service lines on the map, but all meters and main are on the map, therefore we have ton of meters not connected to anything, and we are wanting to migrate to Geometric / Utility Network in the near future...

Thanks in advance for any advice on this.

deleted-user-amp86F9KgPL3 · Answer

I like that plan, we are planning to use definition queries for the webmaps to keep scripted services from showing up until we know their proper locations. The field crews like to use the maps instead of proper line locating at times, so we are a little cautions.  We too are more concerned with meter locations for regulatory compliance. The proper locations of the services would be nice to have but at this time there are necessities and novelties and meters are the need. Thank you for the comment!

brettangel · Answer

I had a similar issue. We are more concerned with the accuracy of the meters and using the geometric network. We scripted the process of creating the services lines (straight line to main) and fix them on a need-to-be-fixed basis.