Introduction

As decision-makers continue to rely on digital information to make decisions, an emerging tool for optimizing the understanding of location information is the operational dashboard.

Operational dashboards are an amazing tool to communicate location intelligent information through a graphical user interface that can be monitored and managed. Some key benefits of operational dashboards are to:

• Highlight important key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Provide valuable insights for decision-making
• Help maximize workflow efficiencies
• Create an optimal analytical user experience
• Offer a no-code option

Dashboards bring special insights into the realm of data analytics. They help us to understand abstract data (and sometimes large volumes of it) in an easy-to-read, real-world visualization.  This is especially true for location-based data in a Geographic Information System (GIS).

COVID-19 Operational Dashboard Example

A prime example of a well-known and effective operational dashboard is the now-famous Coronavirus COVID-19 dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (link). This dashboard is currently being accessed and used by millions of people worldwide to monitor and better understand the novel COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic, with over a billion webpage hits a day.

When looking at the concept of the operational dashboard and why this tool can bring tremendous value, it is important to look at how the arrangement of data must be engineered and designed beforehand for the dashboard to be effective.  A business case strategy can be generated to guide the dashboard design for maximum effect. Consider asking the following questions:

1. What are the problems we face and what are the underlying impacts?
2. What insights do we need to understand the problems better and how do we collect and organize this information?
3. How do we visualize the information most efficiently and effectively to improve understanding and decision-making?

Using the COVID-19 operational dashboard, we can attempt to answer the 3 questions above. This is to help us understand the thought process behind its design and why the dashboard has such impact and popularity.

What are the problems we face and what are the underlying impacts?

We observe that an emerging and little-understood virus is spreading, and we would like to mitigate potential damages by projecting its possible path and impact. As the global health crisis escalates, impacts include high rates of infections, increased hospitalizations, shortages of medical supplies, services and personnel, human fatalities, geopolitical fallout, and economic devastation. Further impacts are still being assessed and analyzed.

What insights do we need to understand the problems better and how do we collect and organize this information?

Many national and local authorities as well as medical industry decision-makers desire insights specific to their region, field, population, etc. This information for these insights is best represented with location-specific data. Reliable “Total Confirmed”, “Total Deaths”, and location data are needed from various sources across the globe to be integrated (see COVID-19 Cases US rest service) into one data source. Since the data is locational in nature, a location intelligent GIS platform software is needed to organize the data and design the user experience (UX).

How do we visualize the information most efficiently and effectively to improve understanding and decision-making?

Esri’s Operations Dashboard software was used to design and integrate the data to be visually and interactively displayed over the web.  This platform provides one of the best ways to understand, visualize, and interact with the data.  As an added benefit, there is no coding involved in its design, thus making it faster to implement. As the COVID-19 dashboard shows, information is easily recognizable and is displayed in the form of widgets. “Total Confirmed” and “Total Deaths” counts have displayed in a very readable “indicator” widget. Nations with confirmed case counts have displayed on the left in a “list” widget. By making the dashboard interactive, any country selected in the list will cause the dashboard indicator counts to change to counts pertaining only to that country and then the view is panned to that country on the map. Finally, a “serial chart” widget displays the climbing rate of COVID-19 cases by date for the user to understand the threat over time and by region. It is easy to compare regional rates of infections or to get an idea of impact for your region. Decision-making, such as knowing how many virus test kits or testing facilities are needed for a certain region, is made easier and a lot quicker if quality information and location data are made available in such an intuitive and user-friendly interface.

Taking the idea of the operational dashboard and relating it to the industry is compelling. How can we take the value of the COVID-19 dashboard and translate the concept to the utility industry?

A Use-Case for Utility Industry

Currently working with CPS Energy in San Antonio, Texas, SSP Innovations designed and implemented an operational dashboard using GIS technology (Esri’s Operations Dashboard). The plan was to help leaders within the business implement new operational dashboards as reporting tools to monitor GIS processes and track performance against organizational KPIs to make better decisions and improve workflows. One example of this effort was designing and implementing the “GIS Backlog Dashboard”. To do this effectively, SSP and CPS used the business method described above.

What are the problems we face and what are the underlying impacts?

There were numerous electric and gas premise work orders performed over a several-year span requiring customer reconciliation in the CPS GIS database. This represented the “backlog” of data that needed an additional validation step to verify the correct customer/network premise tie in the database. It is crucial that these records are correct to ensure field crew safety and to effectively dispatch crews to the right customer location.

What insights do we need to understand the problems better and how do we collect and organize this information?

The premise backlog needs to be identified spatially and tracked. An additional requirement is to also display each record by date range for corrective action by the appropriate internal business group. Older dated unassociated premises would be articulated as “before 2009”, the next range “2010-2019” and the most recent range “after 2019”. Finally, there needs to be a distinction between unassociated premises that are gas-related and those of electric related utility (gas versus electric). All this information needs to be assembled and integrated into a single GIS feature layer (unassociated premises) for visibility. Understanding and organizing data is an important factor. Some automation is needed to update the data in real-time and processes the data (from its source) into the format needed to feed the dashboard. The dashboard design and implementation however need no automation.

How do we visualize the information most efficiently and effectively to improve understanding and decision-making?

We can best portray an unassociated premises GIS feature layer by creating a visual interface that is intuitive and interactive. This dashboard includes elements such as a map, a list of unassociated premises, a legend, indicators displaying counts of unassociated premises split up into three distinct date ranges, two pie charts, a serial chart, and a user-defined date range finder. With these elements in the dashboard, the GIS team and leadership can view and interact with the information on unassociated premises, their three-date ranges, and the distinction between gas and electric records. It provides a spatial perspective by allowing users to zoom to a specific record by address. It has the ability and flexibility to select any of the elements, such as a pie slice, to determine how many total unassociated premises are accounted for between any of the date ranges. It also allows for a pop-up attribute-table display when a feature on the map is mouse-clicked.  This interactive ability of the dashboard gives multiple ways to examine and analyze the unassociated premise data needed for tracking and understanding.

GIS Backlog Dashboard Example

Using the concept and design strategy above, SSP Innovations designed and implemented the “GIS Backlog Dashboard”.

With this new dashboard, the CPS GIS team helps their organization achieve better process efficiency, data monitoring, and decision-making. By its continued adoption and use, the dashboard will demonstrate sustained business value over time.

Conclusion

Well-designed operational dashboards create value to any line of business, industry, or discipline through their ability to provide valuable insights for decision-making, track important KPIs, maximize workflow efficiencies, provide an easy-to-use interactive experience, and provide a no-code option for design. Adding the location aspect to the experience further enhances its value. It adds another dimension (location intelligence) to the solution.  Adding the location aspect to the dashboards also brings spatial analysis possibilities to the user experience, such as proximity analysis, density classifying, and cluster identifying, that are not present in traditional dashboards (i.e. Tableau, Power BI). Adding more analysis techniques always enhances the data interpretation process, especially if it’s visual. Location-intelligent operational dashboards are becoming more and more present in society. Whether on television, news sites, or social media, these dashboards are trending toward the most popular way to portray complex location-based data to the masses. The COVID-19 operational dashboard is just one example, and I would bet there are more to come.