Overview#
When a substation feeder trips during a summer peak, the control room needs to know instantly which customers are dark, where the nearest isolation switch is, and whether there is an alternate feed available. The Network Topology domain models utility infrastructure as a directed graph of elements and connections, supporting real-time tracing, isolation identification, and alternate path discovery across electric, water, and gas networks.
Key Features#
- Twenty-four network element types across electric, water, and gas utilities
- Eight connection types for directed infrastructure relationships
- Downstream and upstream graph tracing with configurable depth
- Customer impact calculation for outage assessment
- Isolation point identification for switches, valves, and reclosers
- Alternate feed discovery via normally-open tie switches and interconnections
- Shortest path finding between any two network elements
- Topology statistics for dashboard views
- Switch state tracking with normal position awareness
Use Cases#
Relevant sectors include critical infrastructure, utility operations, and public safety (outage impact on hospitals and life-support customers).
- Tracing downstream elements from a fault point to assess customer impact during outages
- Identifying isolation devices to contain infrastructure faults
- Discovering alternate supply paths to restore service through network switching
- Visualising utility infrastructure topology for planning and operations
Integration#
The Network Topology domain integrates with Utility Assets for linking elements to physical assets, and provides graph traversal operations used by Outage Management for impact analysis and Intelligent Dispatch for crew routing decisions.
Open Standards#
- IEC 61968/61970 (Common Information Model): The network element taxonomy, Substation, Feeder, Transformer, Recloser, Switch, CapacitorBank, VoltageRegulator, and equivalent water and gas classes, aligns with the IEC CIM class hierarchy for distribution and transmission networks, enabling interoperability with SCADA/OMS platforms that consume CIM-based data.
- GraphQL (June 2018 specification): All queries, mutations, and subscriptions are exposed through a typed GraphQL schema, including trace, isolation, alternate-feed, and shortest-path operations, with strongly typed enums and input objects.
- RFC 7519 (JSON Web Token) / OAuth 2.0: Every GraphQL resolver enforces the IsAuthenticated permission class, which validates RS256-signed JWTs issued by the platform's OIDC-compliant authorisation server before any topology data is returned.
- ISO 6709 / WGS 84 (EPSG:4326): Element positions are stored as decimal-degree latitude/longitude coordinates in the WGS 84 reference frame, consistent with the EPSG:4326 CRS used throughout the platform's spatial layer.
- GeoJSON (RFC 7946): Spatial boundaries for GIS zones linked to topology elements are encoded as GeoJSON, and element coordinates are consumed by map clients that render GeoJSON feature collections.
- SQL:1999 WITH RECURSIVE (ISO/IEC 9075): Upstream, downstream, shortest-path, and alternate-feed traversals are implemented entirely as recursive common-table expressions, a standard SQL graph-traversal pattern, avoiding any proprietary graph-database query language.
- RFC 8259 (JSON): The
propertiesfield on every element and connection is stored as JSONB and returned as a JSON scalar, allowing arbitrary vendor-specific metadata to be carried without schema changes.
Last Reviewed: 2026-02-24 Last Updated: 2026-04-14