Broad principles in integrating network analysis data

Based on the past ten years work in the integration of engineering technical data for the electrical distribution industry, a number of key issues have been identified. These can be broadly entitled: the size of the problem; the location of specialist data; circuit display requirements; response time needs; updating and concurrency issues; holding “connectivity” information; database designs; and data responsibility and conflicting data. Most of the above headings have differing interpretations in different departments, and the earlier concept of putting all possible network analysis data into one big “pot” is proving questionable. On the other hand, substantial engineering resources are regularly absorbed in simply tracking down data relevant to a current problem, or in responding to management requests, and hence as much mechanisation and automatic retrieval as possible has important financial and organisational advantages. The paper summaries the author´s findings in the above areas, and discusses a suggested practical forward path