CartoPac, New Century Offer New Method of Moving Pipeline GIS Data

CartoPac Field Solutions, powered by Spatial Data Technologies, Inc. and New Century Software, have announced that they are offering a joint solution to the oil and gas pipeline industry that creates an efficient round-trip workflow between the field and the office by integrating a number of their applications and processes. This synergy will help to manage legacy pipeline data, minimize data silos, improve field data collection, and implement data model standards. While CartoPac Field Solutions offers a total office-to-field solution for field data collection, New Century Software provides the tools for the data to be loaded, managed, and analyzed within a pipeline GIS.

The CartoPac suite of technology includes CartoPac Mobile software for enterprise data collection, which enables field crews to access and manage very large amounts of data on a handheld computer. The CartoPac solution also includes the CartoPac Field Server, which allows the deployment and management of mobile field data collection solutions via the web, and the CartoPac ToolKit, which makes it easy for users to customize the company’s technologies as businesses grow and needs change.

The New Century Software applications used for this type of solution include the GPS DataLoader and RouteLoad Express applications that load field data to a staging database following an initial validation process. The information is then made available online through Centerline Browser, an ArcGIS Server 9.2 application that provides additional validation capabilities before the data is loaded to a production database. Centerline Browser can also be accessed by field users to run queries on the data, select datasets to load to handheld devices and download alignment sheets.

"The need to create a streamlined round-trip data flow between the field and the office is brought up frequently by pipeline operators," said Ron Brush, president of New Century Software. "By working with CartoPac Field Solutions, we can leverage our strengths in managing pipeline GIS data with CartoPac's advances in field data collection."

"New Century Software has excelled at dealing with the backend processes, such as validating incoming schema, staging data for validation and figuring out what to do with legacy pipeline data," said Glenn Vlass, president of CartoPac Field Solutions. "Not only are field users enabled to take a PODS database into the field thru our technology but now they have a workflow for the backend processes that will save time and money."

Both companies will be exhibiting at the upcoming ESRI Petroleum User Group (PUG) Conference in Houston, TX on February 23-25. New Century Software will be located in booth #105 and CartoPac Field Solutions will be located at booth #410.