Hope Gas, a gas utility in West Virginia, needed a mobile solution to view and collect data for assessments along more than 6,900 miles (11,104 kilometers) of pipelines. These assessments typically relate to gas leaks, damage due to weather and outside forces, and overgrown rights-of-way.
The solution had to operate on the company’s field laptops, which run on Windows 11. It also needed to work in areas with and without cellular connectivity. And it had to be created within three months to properly service the company’s approximately 125,000 residential, industrial, and commercial customers.
A gas utility network map that shows streets, buildings, and gas lines in different colors with red, green, blue, and white points that include different kinds of leaks
RAMTeCH created an app for Hope Gas that shows gas leak locations.
Initially, Hope staff had planned to use Windows Subsystem for Android to deploy ArcGIS Field Maps. But various complications led Hope to seek a different solution. In late 2023, Hope began working with RAMTeCH
RAMTeCH’s gMobileTM solution, powered by ArcGIS Maps SDK for .NET, enabled RAMTeCH staff to quickly create a native Windows app with common GIS functions, including the ability to view asset attributes, locate addresses, and search for assets by location or attribute. RAMTeCH added the ability to perform damage assessments and place gas-leak and visual inspection points on a map. The solution also included offline data functions and asset attribute forms.
The gMobileTM solution uses forms that staff at Hope and RAMTeCH created in Field Maps using ArcGIS Arcade expressions. gMobileTM is built on a framework called the Prism Library, which allowed Hope’s gMobileTM app to be divided into independent modules for fast and flexible development, testing, and deployment. Staff members at RAMTeCH and Hope also used gMobile’s proprietary data synchronization process—built with the ArcGIS Enterprise feature services sync capability—which scales to allow near real-time data synchronization from hundreds of users. Integration of Esri feature services and SAP software utilizing the Open Data Protocol (OData) enables notifications in SAP that are then managed by internal Hope resources.
Hope deployed gMobileTM in January 2024, which met the utility’s core requirements within its three-month timeframe. With Hope’s plans to further expand the app to support an SAP-integrated pipeline damage-reporting process, the solution continues to aid the utility company in achieving its business objectives and meeting future needs.
