Dynamic Topic Maps for Infrastructure Relationship Discovery
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Solution Overview
Problem
Infrastructure system managers face challenges in understanding and managing both physical and logical relationships within complex systems like water and transportation networks, particularly in identifying potential impacts of changes or events on system operations.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method and system that generates dynamic topic maps to represent infrastructure systems, allowing for the identification of interested elements, accessing relevant information, and performing impact analysis using graph theory operations and semantic web technologies.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If multiple separate data systems (SCADA, EAM, GIS, CRM) are used to manage infrastructure systems, then each system can provide specialized functionality for its domain, but the overall system complexity increases and integrated relationship discovery becomes difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple separate data systems (SCADA, EAM, GIS, CRM) into a unified topic map that integrates data from all sources. The topic map serves as a common framework that links equipment, locations, customers, and operational data together, enabling relationship discovery across previously siloed systems while maintaining the specialized functionality of each source system.
Solution Approach 2:
The topic map acts as an intermediary layer between the specialized data systems. It provides a standardized structure with topics, associations, and occurrences that mediates between different data formats and schemas, enabling integrated analysis without requiring direct integration between all source systems.
2Loss of information
If manual analysis of physical and logical relationships is performed by infrastructure managers, then relationship understanding can be achieved, but time consumption increases and automated discovery is limited
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables automated self-service relationship discovery through the topic map structure. The map automatically captures physical relationships (spatial proximity, connectivity) and logical relationships (functional dependencies, operational relationships) without requiring manual analysis. The system self-updates as infrastructure data changes, providing continuous relationship intelligence.
Solution Approach 2:
The topic map pre-establishes the framework for relationship analysis by organizing all infrastructure data into standardized topics and associations before any analysis is needed. This preliminary structuring enables rapid query and impact analysis when events occur, eliminating the need for time-consuming manual relationship mapping during incidents.
3Reliability
If comprehensive impact analysis is performed on infrastructure changes, then proactive problem prevention is enabled, but computational complexity and processing requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The topic map segments the infrastructure system into discrete topics (equipment, locations, customers, etc.) with defined associations between them. This segmentation allows impact analysis to be performed by traversing specific association paths rather than analyzing the entire system at once, reducing computational complexity while maintaining comprehensive coverage.
Solution Approach 2:
The system applies local quality by enabling targeted impact analysis on specific topics and their associated relationships rather than performing uniform analysis across all data. The topic map structure allows analysts to focus computational resources on relevant local areas of the infrastructure system based on the specific event or change being analyzed.
Data Source
AI summary
A method, system and computer-usable medium are disclosed for understanding and discovering relationships within infrastructure systems via an infrastructure management system. In certain embodiments, the infrastructure systems comprise water and/or transportation systems. Such an infrastructure management system enables accidents to be prevented, traffic to flow normally, water to be conserved, cleaned and delivered safely.