eGrid: Supporting the Control Room Operation of a Utility Company With Multi-Touch Tables

Abstract

This work presents eGrid, a software environment designed for utility companies to enable the collaboration of control center team members in their daily tasks of analyzing and managing the electrical grid of a city. Despite the recent advances in geospatial data analysis applications, the need still arises for the design of innovative applications which facilitate the collaboration of control center team members in discussing problems and finding solutions, eliminating the headache of synchronizing paper maps frequently to reflect the changes made daily in electricity circuits. eGrid utilizes multi-touch digital table-top hardware to allow multiple users to interact concurrently with domain specific geographic information system (GIS) using finger touches and natural hand gestures. It is an advanced prototype of an actual application of tabletop technology in a non-trivial domain. The development of eGrid shows strong buy-in from the intended end-user community.