Thanks for all your support. Yes, perhaps I should explain in more detail what we do.
We work with water companies in the UK to identify leaks on customer supplies. This involves our site team to visit the external stoptap (a hole in the ground with access to the water pipe), where we attach our sensor. It is important for us to record the connection/disconnection date and varies bits of information about the stoptap. However, a stoptap chamber can have multiple supplies (pipes) and a supply can have multiple properties associated with it (i.e. one pipe can feed multiple houses). To get around this many-to-many relationship, we have one set of forms for the property and another set for the pipes (and more forms for when we locate a previously unknown property or pipe). So, we're essentially using the forms as a jobs list.
This process requires multiple visits and multiple operations team members to carry out the work. We've seen that there are often stoptaps in very obscure locations, so if one person finds a new tap, records it (along with the gps data), the next person may not know where the tap is and on the second sweep the tap may be missed. However, if we have a map of all the geopoints from the first sweep or if we see a job on the forms list that has not been done, being able to locate that tap on a map and show our current location would be very very useful.
To answer your questions directly:
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how many different data collectors do you have?
20 at the moment but likely more in the future. -
how many different locations does each data collector need to visit?
1000s, but each person visits around 100 per day. -
how are assignments geographically distributed? That is, is each data collector doing a specific region?
Yes, Water companies in the UK group properties into DMAs (District Metered Areas), and they can range from 20-2000 properties in each DMA. But we also work across DMAs too, so we can sometimes generate 5000+ forms. -
are the locations identified in any way (e.g. Bob's house, western river bank, etc)
Yes, they are broken down into 'Bob's house' and 'the stoptap to Bobs house'. -
how are the locations to visit originally discovered (e.g. does someone fill out another form while visiting the region? Is it based on some process completed at a desk?)
Both, we get an address list from the water company (we use this to generate the forms list) and we can identify new stoptaps while visiting the area. -
are the same locations visited multiple times? If so, is it always by the same data collector?
Yes, and most likely different data collectors.
I hope this clarifies what we're trying to accomplish.