University Students Transform Gas Data Systems

Community Innovation
Congratulations to our 2022 student interns, who recently presented the results of their Gas Asset Management Project with Vector - we were extremely impressed with their work! 

The project is a double-semester paper for students in their final year of study at The University of Auckland and requires students to solve a real-world business problem. Guided by Vector’s Wayne Chung, Sabrina Ibrahim, Navaneeth Alle, Jiaxuan LI, and Olivia Joe-West created a new data dashboard to analyse gas flow and consumption via our piped gas distribution network.  

Previously, this information was captured in a large legacy spreadsheet manually updated each year. The new dashboard created by the student team is fully automated, capturing data from the gas meter and forecasting peak gas flow.  

This huge project required transforming Excel data through Microsoft SQL, then using WhereScape data warehouse automation. The result is a data dashboard showing historical gas flow as well as peak gas flow forecasts of each gate station in the wider Auckland region for the next 10 years.  

Having accurate, comprehensive, and accessible data helps Vector meet its goals of compliance, efficiency and future proofing.  

For the students, they’ve gained valuable insight into an agile business environment and real-world experience solving a practical problem, while they also developed confidence in communication and presenting. It was a highly successful partnership! 
 
Photo L-R: 
Navaneeth Alle, Sabrina Ibrahim, Olivia Joe-West, Wayne Chung and Christina Li presenting at University of Auckland.