Interpreting GIS data for operation and control of distribution networks

This paper introduces a software application to interpret geographic features and attributes of a geographical information system (GIS) in such a way that the interpretation can then be used by electric utility distribution network management systems that operate and control the electric utility distribution system. The software application is based on information from a GIS, user-defined rules and mapping relationships to generate data files in an extensible markup language (XML) format. By extracting the geographical data from the GIS, the extracted data can be interpreted using the rules and mapping relationships so that output data can be created which are useful to modern distribution network management systems. The software application provides utilities with a data engineering tool that can be used to update their network management systems from GIS sources.