Features and capabilities

Esri's ArcGIS suite helps you to visualize the data that underpins your PI assets. ArcGIS displays this information many different ways, such as colored features on the map, event records created as a Geo Fence is violated, and even hyperlinks to AVEVA PI Vision for further historical analysis.

Layering of spatial data is a central feature of geographic information systems. Given a map of any arbitrary area, you have the ability to add layers that might show weather patterns, terrain, traffic, population density, energy usage, or any of a number of resources available through Esri ArcGIS. With PI Integrator for Esri ArcGIS, you can now add your PI System assets to a layer and overlay that layer onto any Esri ArcGIS map.

PI Integrator for Esri ArcGIS offers two methods to incorporate PI System data within the Esri ArcGIS platform. You create and configure layers within PI Integrator for Esri ArcGIS to use one or both of these methods. Selecting different options during the layer creation process determines the access method used by a layer.

General features

• Uniform asset-based operation

  PI Integrator for Esri ArcGIS is a ready-to-consume framework. During installation, your administrator configures the PI System and ArcGIS to use corresponding PI assets as rich features, as they are known in ArcGIS. These assets may correspond to physical assets you want to place on a map (electrical meters, vehicles, slurry ponds) or may be functional in nature (aggregates of physical assets by area, connectivity, or type).

  The data available to you is gathered and arranged for intuitive use. Similar assets are easy to compare - for example, the efficiency of every electric pump or the load-factor of every power consumer. What appears in one system is ready for further analysis in the other.

  As business needs evolve, you and your colleagues might participate in enriching the current assets (to contain more information) or in bringing additional assets online (more assets to power your maps).

• Real-time data

  ArcGIS map symbols can update dynamically - through color, shape or size - to reflect real-time status or data values. For example, an operator may ask: show me each power transformer's core temperature, by colored quartile or size them by time since their last maintenance.

• Historical and future data

  A major feature of PI Integrator for Esri ArcGIS is the ability to create time-enabled feature layers and add them to your maps. Maps with time-enabled feature layers display a time slider you can use to go back in time and analyze events generated by your PI assets as they occurred. You can select different time spans, playback speeds, start and stop times, and so on.

  In addition, you can define and apply filters which display only those assets and features that match an expression you supply. You can also use the time slider to visualize PI tags that are configured with future data by specifying a future time extent.

• Time-based analytics

  Time-based statistics are readily available for you to see as details or to display directly on the map. With its support of time, Data Archive provides ready-to-use statistics such as average, standard deviation, maximum and minimum data values.

• Automatic detection of some asset modifications

  When updates are made to AF, PI Integrator for Esri ArcGIS automatically detects and propagates some of the updates to the ArcGIS system that is providing data to feature layers.

• Geographical analysis

  You can create Event Frames in the PI system that show when assets have entered or left an area marked by a Geo Fence.

• Layering and zooming

  You can configure map views and the visibility of corresponding feature layers to see the level of aggregation desired. Typically, granular feature-level data is shown.

• Advanced cartography

  PI Integrator for Esri ArcGIS can provide data to ArcGIS GeoEvent Server in native formats, allowing features such as visual heat maps based on magnitudes of values and geographical proximities. These advanced cartography applications allow you to pose and answer more complex geographic questions visually:

  • Where do my wind turbines underperform in the early morning hours?

  • What terrain patterns seem to correlate with this?

Time-enabled feature layers

The first method for allowing PI System data access to ArcGIS is through time-enabled feature layers. Layers created with this capability provide access to both current and historical PI System data. When time-enabled feature layers are added to a map and time animation is enabled, a time slider displays, which allows you to review your PI System assets at various historical time periods and view the data on a map.

Using time-enabled feature layers, no PI System data is stored in ArcGIS; rather clients access data directly from the PI System. When you query a time-enabled feature layer for historical data, the operational data returned from the PI System is interpolated to the end time of the specified time interval. Location data (geometry) that is provided by the PI System is not interpolated; rather, it is returned as of the most recently recorded time stamp prior to the end time of the specified interval.

You can choose to have PI Integrator for Esri ArcGIS create items for time-enabled feature layers in either ArcGIS Online or Portal for ArcGIS. When using time-enabled feature layers, ArcGIS handles authentication and content management.

ArcGIS GeoEvent Server

The second method for allowing PI System data access to ArcGIS is through ArcGIS GeoEvent Server. This method enables users to take advantage of the real-time filtering and processing capabilities of GeoEvent Server as well as the fully-enabled ArcGIS feature services. When using ArcGIS GeoEvent Server, PI System data is written to a registered ArcGIS relational data store and a reference to that information is registered in GeoEvent Server.

Enabling this capability on your layer requires that you complete the ArcGIS Feature Service and GeoEvent Server Configuration Wizard (see Run the ArcGIS Feature Service and GeoEvent Server Configuration Wizard for more information). The wizard creates an ArcGIS-hosted feature service and the necessary GeoEvent Server components to stream live PI System data to ArcGIS. These hosted feature services are not time-enabled and therefore only support visualizing current data.

ArcGIS clients and time-enabled feature layers

Not all ArcGIS clients support time-enabled feature layers hosted by PI Integrator for Esri ArcGIS. The ArcGIS clients that have been tested are listed here with a description of the expected behavior.