CEO David Tran Offers GIS Insights at UAS for Utilities and Energy

Atlanta, GA – Optelos CEO David Tran shared his perspective and insights this week in a professional panel discussing the benefits of leveraging GIS data for efficient asset management at the Marcus Evans Unmanned and Autonomous Systems for Utilities and Energy Conference in Atlanta (June 8-9). Having worked with forward-thinking utilities and energy companies globally, David was able to share the trends and goals these leading-edge companies are working relentlessly to solve using GIS inspection data.

Geographical Information Systems data, or GIS, is visual geospatial information which is gathered in support of routine asset inspections, surveys, monitoring and related data capture requirements. These image files are appended with GPS location and time stamp metadata, which allows for a more intuitive and visually interesting presentation of the data. By leveraging the metadata from the files in conjunction with color-coding for categorized results or date of inspection, it is easier to comprehend trends, outliers, and highest priority tasks when plotting the inspection results on a map or in a table. Many industries and market segments are adopting this visual medium for organizing, presenting, monitoring and interpreting large data sets, such as oil and gas, process manufacturing, utilities, municipalities and emergency response organizations.

Optelos customers are utilizing the platform to help solve their most pressing inspection challenges related to processing vast amounts of inspection data. Utilities face increasing pressure from regulatory actions and mandated oversight following natural disasters and weather aberrations that stress their electrical grids and wildfires stemming from unreported equipment failures, with an ambition to inspect more often and with greater accuracy within the cost constraints of a regulated industry. It has become increasingly more challenging to inspect more often using traditional methods, as experienced, skilled technical employees are more difficult to find and hire as experienced workers retire.

Since even a single infrastructure fault can trigger a wildfire with significant financial liability, rural co-ops, large power utilities and national energy corporations are swiftly moving to adopt drone powerline inspections with visual AI analysis to increase the capacity, efficiency and accuracy of their inspection teams. Leveraging drone electrical inspection to collect the infrastructure images with computer vision machine learning to process, analyze and prioritize the data, companies are learning that they can increase the inspection capacity of their team by up to +300% while also reducing the fatigue that comes from manual visual inspection. It’s a win/win, as employees are more productive and focused on flagged issues, and companies get better results.

If your company is interested in learning more about the benefits and returns from the digital transformation of asset inspections with machine learning and AI integration (such as reduced inspection costs, operational efficiency and worker safety), contact us today, and we’ll show you how we can help you get started immediately. Optelos provides free consultation and a 100% satisfaction guarantee of our turnkey inspection services (if required), providing a risk-free opportunity to investigate the benefits of moving to drone-based inspections. Contact us today by filling out the form below to request additional information or for a free demonstration, consultation or trial.