Feature Corridor ID Total weight Subtotal Costs Segments Triaxial Summary Chart A ranked list of corridors Sum of the weights of all the segments that comprise a corridor Sum of the costs of all the segments that comprise the corridor An ordered list of all the segments comprising the corridor Representation of the total weight as bars and subtotal costs as lines Table 1: Fields exported to the Best Corridors worksheet adds it to the active data frame in ArcGIS. The new date- and time-stamped feature class is saved in the application’s Model Output folder. Each feature in this file is a potential pipeline route between origin and destination points. The number of potential routes is determined by the preset number of iterations. In summary, successful corridor identification requires „ A polyline feature class for the pipe segments „ A segment feature class with three fields named SgLength, SgWeight, and SgCost „ ArcGIS Network Analyst extension loaded and an active ArcGIS Network Analyst window Each route can be viewed in ArcGIS geographically and exported to CAD, if desired. Also, the application reads the values from the attribute table of the output feature class and exports it to Microsoft Excel. In Microsoft Excel, the file contains only one worksheet named Best Corridors and a chart. Both can be saved if desired. (See Table 1) The application also generates a summary report for each run, if it's present in a dialog, and a Microsoft Word document that lists „ The date and time of the application run „ The spatial data path „ Feature class used „ Geodatabase used (with path) „ Shapefile projection „ Shapefile alias name „ The modeler ID „ Number of fields and records in the used shapefile „ Total number of features selected While one “best route” may be sufficient in some cases, for most pipeline applications, a list of the top 20 routes will help decision makers arrive at a more well-informed choice. Because building transmission pipelines requires a large time investment and can have significant environmental and socioeconomic effects, determining pipeline routes deserves detailed analysis. This application can save time by automatically providing a list of potential routes. For major pipelines, the involvement www.esri.com of the public and other stakeholders in the decision-making process is paramount. The decision matrix and the dynamic process described are very useful. Stakeholders, agencies, and the public can be involved in assigning weights and scores to segments. Once that is done, the application can be run and, within a short time, a chart can be generated that ranks the top potential routes. Once a good algorithm is defined, automated route generation saves a lot of modeling time. By programmatically linking ArcGIS to Microsoft Excel/Word and/or CAD for further analysis and reporting, the application provides a user-friendly interface embedded into ArcGIS that lets users go through the optimization process. The linkage tool took about two weeks to program, test, and implement. The authors anticipate this tool will be used in future pipeline alignment projects. For more information, contact Ahmad M. Salah, GIS Specialist Stanley Consultants 383 W. Vine Street, Suite 400 Salt Lake City, Utah 84123 E-mail: salahahmad@stanleygroup.com ArcUser Spring 2010 35