Using 3D GeoDesign for planning of new electricity networks in Spain

Abstract

Power supply plays a fundamental role in society to boost development in some nations and maintain the standard of living in others. The development of an electricity transmission network involves the planning of a new infrastructure and subsequent construction which entails the creation of new conditions in the territory. This article proposes a new workflow in which the GeoDesign principles are applied, so that the actors share their interests and work together to develop a new electrical infrastructure and thus achieve the planned objectives. We present a consistent method to describe the context, requirement analysis, identification of constraints and relationship stages, a proposed workflow, a web-based GeoDesign tool prototype and tools for 3D visualisation and GoogleEarth interaction as well as other tools to generate reports for administration processing. The first available results related to GeoDesign in administration processing are encouraging in terms of productivity growth and costs and timeframes reduction. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.