Antalya Water and Sewerage Administration, Turkey

Antalya, with a population of over 1 million people is a well-known holiday destination located in a bay of the Mediterranean Sea in Southern Turkey. The drinking-water supply of local inhabitants and guests is provided by Antalya Water and Sewerage Administration. To keep up with the challenges of rapid growing urban area, the company introduced and operates a GIS system, supported by handheld Topcon GRS-1 GNSS receivers with DigiTerra Explorer.

The Challenge

Fast increase in population of urban areas in and around Antalya caused unplanned and unfounded development in the past years. Recently developed areas had to be supplied by new drinking and waste water pipes, while the maintenance of existing infrastructure gives a heavy workload as well. Information technology systems and administration could not keep up with the needs of construction companies, government institutions. Maintenance workers and citizens could not be informed in an adequate way either.In order to get the unusually rapid changes under control, a comprehensive IT system had to be established. The process started in 2002, when existing data have been transferred to a new GIS database, based on land survey. In order to correct infrastructure data, Antalya Water and Sewerage was the first administration in Turkey that has established a Single Reference Station by Topcon to enable continuous observation and communication via GPRS.As a next step, the GIS system had to be completed with on-site data collection, in order to map new constructions, record changes and update existing descriptive data.

Mr. Erkan Demirbas, GIS manager summarizes why Antalya Water and Sewerage decided to complete the GIS system with mobile data collection operating on handheld GNSS receivers:

• Navigation to find easily valves, plugs, pipe locations
• Fast and accurate accessibility of infrastructure data on site of the developments and constructions
• Query and identification of data stored in the central database (streets, roads, pipe type, block of buildings etc.)

The Solution

As digitalized GIS data for water pipes were already available it would have been illogical to return to paper maps and hand them out to employees. For this reason, it was decided to make use of the established GNSS Single Reference Station and purchase Topcon GRS-1 GNSS receivers that are able to process RTK correction signals, resulting in measurements with centimetre accuracy. These devices are equipped and seamlessly integrated with DigiTerra Explorer 6 Professional. This is an easy to use and still robust mobile data collection and field mapping software, being able to quickly display large raster and vector files even on handheld computers.

Transferring data from the existing GIS database to the mobile application of DigiTerra Explorer was simply to solve as the software supports a wide range of standard files. We did not encounter any problem when using the forms in the same structure as previously designed.

The Results

Printed maps and outdated water and wastewater GIS database belong to the past in Antalya. Thanks to Topcon’s GNSS receiver with centimetre accuracy and DigiTerra’s high performing mobile data capture software, any rapid changes are recorded and documented immediately. Daily work of construction and maintenance has been significantly facilitated by identifying infrastructure elements and collecting relevant data by the GNSS receiver easily.

Antalya Water and Sewerage is committed to keep their system up-to-date and adapt improved technology to support our daily work. Paksoy Teknik and DigiTerra proved to be a flexible partner to us because they are able to continuously adjust their solution to our changing needs. Based on this partnership, we are able to reach our goal and remain the first in our industry that is implementing revolutionary developments.

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