Geographic Business Solutions

Genesis Energy do applied GIS Analysis - its a critical part of their business. They deleiver GIS to their staff via Citrix and need specialist tools to help them get the results they need. GBS continue to assist them deliver this GIS service ensuring they have the tailored tools and data to allow them to use their time effectively - doing GIS Analysis

Who are Genesis Energy?

Genesis Energy is a state-owned enterprise with a diverse electricity generation portfolio. Genesis is New Zealand’s largest energy retailer, with more than 700,000 electricity and gas customers located predominantly in the North Island.

Their Requirement

Genesis Energy has a team based at their hydro station at Tongariro. The Tongariro scheme and its structures extend from the southern flanks of Mount Ruapehu in the south, to the southern point of Lake Taupo in the north, and along either side of the mountain range formed by Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe and Tongariro. The scheme taps a catchment area of more than 2600 sq km.

The Tongariro Power Scheme sits on the fringe of the Tongariro National Park, an area that is classified on the World Heritage List for its ecological and cultural values. Furthermore, the scheme is built on the headwaters of two significant river systems (the Tongariro and Whanganui rivers) and Genesis Energy has many resource consent conditions to ensure the preservation of these rivers. Monitoring of the river-flows to ensure compliance with the consent conditions forms a significant part of the operation of the scheme. The Whanganui and Tongariro rivers are also popular with other users for sporting activities and consideration for these users when managing flows has to be taken into account.

The team at Tongariro has a raft of challenges to manage and monitor their assets and the effects these assets have on the wider scheme. GIS plays a key role in managing the scheme. 

How GBS Helped

Genesis helped to enable the team at Tongariro make better use of their GIS. GBS had to implement a series of desktop customisations within a Citrix environment. These customisations include:

• Tools to spatially identify consents information in the scheme, and drill down into an external web based business system to get detailed consents information
• A series of tools which integrated another key business system into the GIS were developed which allow staff to efficiently identify key monitoring sites and quickly drill down and visualise the data from these sites
• The GBS Theme Manager, which allows the GIS administrator to easily and effectively organise and manage the data layers within ArcGIS
• The GBS Search Tool - Genesis need to be able to quickly search over their assets and also over their CRS data. The GBS Search Tool allows the GIS administrator to easily design a series of searches which provides a more effective means of searcing data than the mechanisms provided out of the box with ArcGIS
• Print tools - a set of templates were delivered which are dynamically updated with user information, dates and legend data to ensure a consistent approach to map production