Workflow Narrative

Utility Corridor Access Planning

Who It Is For

Utility corridor maintenance planners and linear-infrastructure field operations teams.
Vegetation/encroachment risk analysts coordinating access logistics.

Primary User

Transmission/distribution utilities and corridor maintenance operations.

What It Does

Identifies encroachment hotspots that fall within a configurable corridor influence distance.
Scores hotspot risk based on proximity to corridor centerlines.
Assigns nearest access points for field-response feasibility.
Produces ranked hotspot CSV plus planning summary JSON for operations teams.
Adds dispatch-ready priority bands, SLA guidance, and optional response queue export.

How It Works

Loads corridor line geometry, encroachment observations, and access points.
Converts corridor geometry to line segments and computes minimum point-to-segment distance for each encroachment.
Keeps in-range encroachments as hotspots using `corridor_influence_distance` threshold.
Computes risk score as inverse-distance to corridor (closer = higher risk).
Computes access score from nearest access-point distance and combines with risk into priority score.
Classifies each hotspot into `critical`, `high`, `medium`, or `low` response bands and assigns response SLA hours.
Emits hotspot vector with attributes: ENC_FID, DIST_CORR, RISK_SCORE, ACCESS_FID, ACCESS_DIST, PRIORITY, PRIOR_BAND, SLA_HOURS, ACCESS_DIFF.

Inputs

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`corridors`	LineVector path	Required	Corridor centerline layer
`encroachments`	Vector path	Required	Encroachment observations (point/line/polygon; representative point sampled)
`access_points`	PointVector path	Required	Field access points
`corridor_influence_distance`	float	Optional	Max distance from corridor to retain as hotspot (default 30.0)
`high_risk_distance`	float	Optional	Distance considered highest-risk zone (default 10.0)
`hotspots`	vector path	Required	Output hotspot vector
`priority_csv`	path	Required	Output ranked hotspot CSV
`planning_report`	path	Required	Output planning summary JSON
`response_queue_csv`	path	Optional	Optional dispatch-ready response queue with SLA guidance

Outputs

Output	Type	Contents
`hotspots`	Vector	Hotspot points with risk/access/priority attributes plus corridor lineage fields (`CORR_FID`, `SEG_IDX`, `LINEAGE_ID`)
`priority_csv`	CSV	Ranked hotspots: rank, enc_fid, corridor_fid, segment_idx, dist_to_corridor, risk_score, nearest_access_fid, access_dist, priority_score, priority_band, response_sla_hours, access_difficulty, lineage_id
`planning_report`	JSON	Counts, averages, thresholds, counts by priority band, and top hotspot summary
`response_queue_csv`	CSV	Response queue with priority band, SLA target, access difficulty, recommended action, and lineage_id

Python Example

env = WbEnvironment(license_tier="pro")

result = env.run_tool("utility_corridor_encroachment_and_access_planning",
    corridors="corridor_centerlines.gpkg",
    encroachments="encroachment_points.gpkg",
    access_points="field_access_points.gpkg",
    corridor_influence_distance=30.0,
    high_risk_distance=10.0,
    hotspots="output/corridor_hotspots.gpkg",
    priority_csv="output/corridor_priority.csv",
    planning_report="output/corridor_planning_report.json",
    response_queue_csv="output/corridor_response_queue.csv",
)

print(result)

License Notice

Use of this function requires a license for Whitebox Workflows Professional (WbW-Pro). Please visit www.whiteboxgeo.com to purchase a license.

Project Links

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