CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY
Climate-Resilient Infrastructure with FME
By automating asset vulnerability assessments, Powerco is strengthening its electricity and gas networks against climate risks and enabling smarter, future-ready planning.
Thousands of assets assessed
Electricity lines, gas pipelines and critical infrastructure analyzed
Automated vulnerability analysis
Previously manual, time-intensive processes are now repeatable and scalable
Future-ready planning
Insights directly feed into Climate Adaptation & Resilience Plan and disclosure reporting
Upskilled workforce
Engineers trained in FME and GIS for ongoing climate risk analysis
A key benefit of the project was upskilling people who work with our assets to create the analysis needed for the report, which builds a foundation for future climate risk analysis.”
– Elizabeth Shires
Sustainability Project Engineer, Powerco
The Challenge:
Understanding Climate Risk Across Thousands of Assets
Powerco, New Zealand’s largest electricity utility by area and a major gas distributor, manages over 29,000 km of electricity lines and 6,200 km of gas pipelines, serving hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses. As climate change increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, the company recognized a critical need: to understand how its infrastructure would perform under a range of future climate scenarios.
Manually assessing asset exposure across such a large and geographically diverse network would have been prohibitively time-consuming. Every asset from underground gas pipes and electricity cables on bridges to overhead conductors near forests needed to be evaluated for vulnerability to hazards such as flooding, sea level rise, high winds and landslides. Without a scalable solution, planning for resilience and ensuring reliable service would remain a slow and reactive process.
Getting the plan to completion has been a major team effort involving many people across the business sharing their expertise.”
– Elizabeth Shires
Sustainability Project Engineer, Powerco
The Solution:
Automating Vulnerability Assessments with FME
To tackle this challenge, Powerco partnered with Locus to develop a custom FME-powered solution that could integrate electricity and gas asset data with regional climate hazard datasets in Powerco’s GIS platform.
The system automated the analysis of point, line and polygon assets against multiple climate scenarios and time horizons. Custom rules flagged high-risk assets, such as underground pipelines on flood-prone bridges or overhead conductors near unstable terrain. By doing so, the company could rapidly identify vulnerabilities across its entire network.
Once FME processed the data, Powerco engineers used GIS to overlay critical factors, including customer supply points like hospitals and visualize risk through detailed maps. Combining LiDAR, aerial imagery and other geospatial tools, the team transformed raw data into actionable insights for infrastructure planning and investment prioritization.
A key benefit of the project was upskilling people who work with our assets to create the analysis needed for the report, which builds a foundation for future climate risk analysis.”
– Elizabeth Shires
Sustainability Project Engineer, Powerco
The Results:
Smarter, Faster, Future-Ready Planning
By automating vulnerability assessments with FME, Powerco now has a comprehensive, repeatable, and scalable process for evaluating climate risk across thousands of assets. The results feed directly into the company’s Climate Adaptation & Resilience Plan and Climate-Related Disclosures Report, which inform long-term investment decisions and operational strategies.
The new workflow enables Powerco to:
- Efficiently identify assets exposed to climate hazards across multiple scenarios and time horizons
- Prioritize critical infrastructure investments based on risk and potential impact
- Maintain reliable, safe, and sustainable service for customers
- Build internal capability for ongoing climate risk analysis
Sharing an understanding of those risks, and the approach to planning and responding, is an important part of working with communities on adaptation and resilience strategies.”
– Elizabeth Shires
Sustainability Project Engineer, Powerco
Why it Matters
Powerco’s proactive approach demonstrates how automation and geospatial analysis can transform climate resilience planning. By leveraging FME to automate vulnerability assessments, the company has built a future-ready infrastructure strategy that balances safety, reliability, and sustainability. This approach provides a model for utilities and infrastructure operators worldwide, showing that with the right tools, organizations can anticipate climate risks, mitigate vulnerabilities, and make smarter, data-driven decisions for the long term.
YOUR TRUSTED FME PARTNER
The Locus
Advantage
For over 20 years, Locus has offered high quality, trusted expertise to Government and Enterprise Client and Private Companies across the globe.
Premier Safe Software Partner and FME Reseller
We have a deep, long-standing relationship with Safe Software, ensuring our training is current and aligned with the latest FME capabilities
Certified Trainers Who Use FME Every Day
Learn from active FME consultants and specialists who apply FME in complex, real-world projects, bringing practical insights to every session
Trusted by Government and Enterprise Clients
Our extensive experience with high-profile organizations means our training is built on a foundation of proven success and industry best practices
100+ Data Professionals Trained Every Year
Join a growing community of empowered FME users who have advanced their careers and transformed their data workflows with Locus
Ready to take your FME skills to the next level?
Whether you’re looking to streamline data workflows, automate reporting or improve operational efficiency, Locus training empowers your team to get the most from FME.
Industry tested and globally trusted, learn from Certified Trainers with proven experience delivering real-world results.