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Fiber Field Collection with ArcGIS Online

February 8, 2016 — Skye Perry

Back in late 2014, my colleague, Brian Higgins, wrote an article on Fiber Field Data Acquisition Methods which covered several approaches to gathering telecom data in the field. We then recently received a request from a customer to put together a demo using ArcGIS Online to gather fiber optic facility data in the field to then be transferred back into an outside plant (OSP) management tool such as Schneider Electric’s Fiber Manager™.

I was excited to take on this demo as it shows a really strong use case for the introduction of ArcGIS Online to new telecom customers. I will provide a quick overview of the demonstration here in this post but have also created a full video of the demo which can be viewed below. They say a picture is worth a thousand words and that makes a video worth even more!

The use case starts with having users collect new and/or as-built facilities in the field utilizing ArcGIS Online applications such as Collector for ArcGIS. If you’ve followed our blog for any length of time, you know we are big fans of collector and have implemented it at many of our customer sites across the US. It provides an out of the box, lightweight, and easy to use application to field users geared toward collecting facility attribution, GPS/map location, and even images or other attachments.

Collectable LayersIn the video we show a telecom pattern for collecting facility data that we implemented at a large telecom just over a year ago. That specific customer only implemented ArcGIS Online at the time and was not yet ready to use an OSP management tool quite yet. But we went ahead and set up the telecom data model in a way that would allow them to most of the data that they would need for a conversion into an OSP management tool in the future (partially shown to the right).

Keep in mind that these are simple feature classes geared toward mobile collection. There is no geometric network and no explicit connectivity details required. Why? Because we always want to keep field collection as simple as possible. That’s the biggest complaint we get from field users – “it’s too hard to use”.

The field users can use iPads, Android devices, and now even Windows devices with Collector to access a standard telecom WebMap, use GPS to locate themselves and the facilities they want to collect, and to input data.

Collector for Fiber Collection

This field-collected data is then used as a template for entering the data into the OSP management tool in the back office. We recommend using the Esri trace tool for tracing along the field data:

Fiber Trace of Field Edits

As the user enters the back office GIS data, they are not only entering the GIS linear feature but also the related buffer tube and fiber strand information. For the 12 count fiber optic cable drawn above it is actually entering 14 records (12 fiber strands, 1 buffer tube, and 1 fiber optic cable linear feature). This data is then used for splicing and connectivity. Splicing details were communicated from the field to the back office via a FieldNotes feature which is represented above as the question mark feature on the map. The user can select the FieldNotes feature to view the notes:

Field Notes

The back office user then applies these changes to the OSP management tool via the native splicing functionality.

Splicing

In summary, this solution allows users to collect the data in the field using ArcGIS Online which is made available to the back office. It can then be used as a template for entering the detailed OSP details into the back office connected geodatabase model. As mentioned above, the full demonstration video is worth more than any words I can write. Check it out below!

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