Mobile Open Systems Technology for the Utilities Industries

Abstract

This chapter considers the provision of mobile computing support for field engineers in the electricity distribution industry. The work described has been carried out by the authors as part of the MOST (Mobile Open Systems Technologies for the Utilities Industries) project which is a collaborative venture involving Lancaster University, EA Technology and APM. The MOST project comes after a number of related projects which have attempted to analyze the IT requirements of the electricity distribution industry The first of these projects was carried out in 1984/5 and examined the broad issues of IT in the engineering function of an electricity board’s district office. A further program of analysis was carried out in 1988/9 as part of RACE 1063 which looked at the requirements for information systems in the field. These projects identified a large number of application areas which required access to data in the field. Examples of these application areas include work scheduling to enable craftsmen and jobs to be dynamically allocated, remote expert consultation in order to maximize the use of specialist expertise, and access to corporate information including network diagrams and map data. At the time, these applications were considered unrealizable due to the limitations of portable computers and data communications technologies.