Objectives of the service
Developments or changes to the built environment being constructed near strategic mains belonging to utility companies pose a threat to the supply of critical and essential services to customers. Large geographical areas can be difficult to continuously monitor, and considering the demand for housing and infrastructure investment, IPAS provides a cutting-edge solution that detects risks from 3rd party interference. IPAS harnesses the power of satellite data combined with accurate asset information to provide utilities with a risk alert service.
Users and their needs
UK Water and Gas supply utilities have identified 3rd Party interference as a major cause of service supply disruption. Relaxation in planning laws and investment in building projects is likely to increase the risk in incidents resulting in loss of supply. Regulatory incentive penalties, combined with remediation costs, risk to life and property and loss of reputation amounts to £ billions in value.
Current methods of monitoring assets, based on regular flying programmes and line walking are costly both in financial and carbon footprint terms. Utility organisations are looking for new ways of managing this growing risk and are supporting MGISS in the development of IPAS as an insight service based on a more sustainable approach, using an eye in the sky to track 3rd party interference near critical assets.
Service/ system concept
IPAS is broken down into three distinct and connected services.
Space Added Value
IPAS will be leveraging an array of satellite, earth observation services including Sentinel 1& 2 in addition to medium and high-resolution satellites for the purposes of detecting change. GNSS positioning services at sub metre level accuracy will be utilised as part of the field inspection workflow to verify reports from the risk alert service.
Current Status
Phase 1 of the IPAS project is to demonstrate and validate both the technical and commercial feasibility before moving to the go to market stage at Phase 2.
As part of the initial stages of Phase 1, the team has been working with Gas and Water supply utilities to define the costs and impacts of 3rd party interference on strategic assets along with evaluating current methodologies used to identify the risk. This data gathering exercise is operating alongside building a service architecture and assessment of satellite services and change detection algorithms as a base product to begin monitoring the test area in Essex, in partnership with Essex and Suffolk Water.
Subcontractor(s)
