Ranking of Routes for Electrical Transmission Lines Using GIS and Image Processing Techniques

Selecting a route for an electrical transmission line is the first step of building a new transmission line. The most common practice of selecting a route involves ranking possible route options, which is a complex process that demands many decision considerations to be taken into account. The ranking process is mainly done manually by humans using printed maps and field surveys that makes it time-consuming and prone to errors. In this paper, we study the most common decision considerations that affect the process of ranking a set of route options. We classify these decision considerations into four main categories. Then, we propose a methodology to automate the process of ranking routes for an electrical transmission line using GIS (Geographic Information System) and image processing techniques. We evaluate the effectiveness of the methodology by comparing the results obtained with industrial results of an actual project in Saskatoon, Canada. The preliminary results are very promising. Out of five route options, our methodology ranks the top two options accurately, and it successfully identifies the least preferred route options.