New GIS and Laser Scanning Methods for Monitoring Power Line Utilities

Author: Jorg Schaller
Organization: Esri-Germany

RingstrBe 7
Kranzberg, D-8540
Germany

Phone: 08166/677-0
Fax: 08166/677-111
j.schaller@Esri-germany.de

On our globe there are thousands of kilometers of power lines that have to be monitored permanently. To reduce monitoring costs and to deliver certain information on the status of the lines, a combination of laser scanning technology mounted in a helicopter and GIS evaluation tools has been created and tested in Germany and Portugal.

One important issue is the distance of vegetation or buildings to power lines. The developed system allows delivery in a very short time and by high accuracy of 10 cm three-dimensional GIS information based on digital surface model data created out of the LIDAR measurements. The full system was tested by German and Portugese power supply companies in 1999. Based on their requirements and suggestions, the system has been improved and will be now developed as a turnkey application using embedded GIS functionality.