Three dimensional visualization of water pipelines

Abstract

The water pipeline industry is one of the key industries that serve the basic public needs of the society. Just like other essential utilities such as gas and electricity, underground cables are required to transport this vital human need from one part of the city to another. From Dubai to Paris, virtually all cities around the world have underground pipes serving the same purpose and the city of Kuantan isn’t any different. Due to the importance of these water pipes, it is necessary to device reliable means of protecting them from various forms of damages.For a system that affects the human existence so much, a pipe failure would be disastrous, as would an extended repair outage. Experience has shown that many pipelines get damaged when construction workers accidentally strike pipes buried underground, during excavation or other tasks that require digging the earth’s surface. This occurs due to the fact that most existing pipes are represented in two dimensional (2D) format and the information contained in 2D maps isn’t entirely accurate. This limitation in 2D visualization makes it difficult to clearly understand or conceptualize the pipelines below the ground, hence, the need for a more effective way of visualizing the underground water pipes. Three dimensional (3D) visualization is increasingly being used to overcome these limitations, but not many individuals or organisations can afford the huge cost of most of the available packages and there is a growing demand for more affordable 3D visualization tools. This research has devised a means of visualizing underground water pipes using a series of software packages, including the ArcGIS 3D Analyst extension. The integration of datasets with these packages is vital to the actualization of the research objectives. This research will illustrate how such integration is possible using the ESRI geodatabase for data storage, and exporting the dataset into other environments for visualization purposes.