The Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC), on Wednesday, launched an App that uses Geographic Information System (GIS) to identify all buildings and roads within South-East.

Addressing newsmen during the commemoration of GIS Day in Enugu, EEDC Manager of GIS Project, Mr. Uche Anyalewechi, said that the geo-spatial address database App contains all buildings and roads in the South-East extracted from high-resolution satellite imagery.

Anyalewechi said that the new App, which is known as “Kpakpando’’ which means the moon, had each building uniquely identified with a Property Identification Number (PID) developed from the Natural Area Coding (NAC) system.

According to him, the PIDs are physically tagged on each building for ease of reference.

“EEDC has completed the creation of an addressing solution by developing an address searching, routing and navigation App known as Kpakpando.

“Kpakpando will solve the problems tracing an irregular and incomplete building numbers and road names in the South-East geopolitical zone covering states such as; Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo States.

“In EEDC, this application will eliminate the challenges relating to untraceable customer electricity bills and customers without addresses in the billing database. It will also solve the problem of suspended customers, accounts found in multiple addresses etc; while with this universal address solution, all mail pieces can be automatically sorted from world level to final household mail boxes.

“All Global Positioning Systems (GPS) can leverage on Kpakpando App to provide door-to-door navigation services everywhere, and all news reports will have the simplest and most accurate reference of the location of any event in the geopolitical zone,’’ he said.

The manager noted that the App would enable South-East to adopt a holistic approach to property addressing using information communication and technology system consistent with global best practice.

Also speaking, the EEDC Head of Communications, Mr. Emeka Ezeh, noted that the company had leveraged on National Electricity Regulatory Commission initiated Assets Registration and Customer Enumeration Project to develop the region-wide and universal address database for the South-East.

Ezeh, who noted the company had continued to develop its GIS base for over five years, noted that the current GIS developed and package would help EEDC to reduce technical and commercial losses as well get more buildings and world-be customers to the EEDC database.

“EEDC has been in the fore-front in using technology to drive its operations; while the GIS base and Kpapando App would help us in strengthening network monitoring and ensure improved electricity supply to our customers,’’ he said.

The GIS Day, observed every Novermber 13, is an annual event to celebrate the technology of Geographic Information System and its enormous benefits to modern development and science.

The theme for this year’s GIS Day at EEDC is: ‘Driving Efficiency in Power Distribution through GIS’.

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