Kim Tae-gyun, the head of the Seoul Waterworks Authority. (Photos: Seoul Waterworks Authority)

The Seoul Waterworks Authority of the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) had printed about 80,000 printouts annually for tap water supply construction and facility management.

However, the blueprints for tap water geographic information systems (GIS) have been subject to management scrutiny since they contain information related to underground facilities.

Now the Seoul Waterworks Authority has built the “Tap Water GIS Mobile System,” a PC-based geographic information system (GIS) that is designed to tackle on-the-spot work, such as water supply work, restoring leaks, and inspecting facilities.

The Tap Water GIS Mobile System is available for work related to tap water.

The tap water GIS contains information on the capital’s tap water pipeline network, stretching 13,432 km, its diameter, material, year of installation, and history of work.

It is also designed to comprehensively manage information on the location and attributes of water reservoirs, booster stations, valves and meters.

The tap water GIS system has been operated since 2000, and access been allowed at offices, but not at worksites.

Building the Tap Water GIS Mobile System makes printouts of tap water blueprints unnecessary.

On-the-spot responses such as tap water supply work, leakage restoration and adjusting tap water valves allow services to happen in a quick and precise fashion.

SMG is able to restore leaks faster based on datasets accumulated on the tap water GIS system.

The metropolitan government also can prevent safety accidents related to road excavation since it can grasp exact information on the buried depth and location of underground facilities.

Officials with the Seoul Waterworks Authority of the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) use a tablet PC via Tap Water GIS Mobile System instead of printouts for tap water supply construction and facility management.

To this end, 100 tablet PCs are being supplied and operated successfully at water supply operation departments and facility management departments at Seoul Waterworks Authority, plus eight water treatment sites.

The tap water GIS data sets have been managed strictly by limiting access to the undisclosed information through only designated PC gadgets.

Searching and registering information on the managing of facilities and a variety of work is done in real time from worksites without time and space restrictions.

Judging on-the-spot staffers’ high satisfaction and greater work efficiency, SMG is considering supplying additional PC terminals and tasking them with additional functions.

Kim Tae-gyun, head of the Seoul Waterworks Authority, said, “The tap water segment has begun to undergo multi-faceted changes in compliance with digital transformation, the trends of the times, and the GIS mobile system, one of them, will be made to raise field work efficiency and offer services to citizens in a quick and exact fashion.”

A whole view of the Seoul Waterworks Authority building.