NFPA Journal - Summer 2021 - 29

with what it sees as the ideal approach to structuring ITM
data to best facilitate data exchange and analytics in the
future.
Hutchison explained the approach in an article she wrote
for Facility Executive in December. " Have you ever sketched
out an idea, problem, or process on a whiteboard? " she
asked. " If you're trying to explain the flow of information,
a process, or key entities and the relationships between
them, I bet you start drawing circles and arrows on your
whiteboard to convey this information. The circles likely
represent the people, places, or items you are talking about
and the arrows represent the relationships between them. "
A fire pump, for example, could be represented by a
circle, with arrows connecting that circle to other circles
representing the pump's pressure, rated flow, manufacturer,
and so on. This concept is known as a graph data model,
and it's the way FPRF researchers see ITM data being
structured in the future. The advantages to the model,
Hutchison said, include being able to visualize how individual elements of data relate to one another and the flexibility
of data input and analysis. " If someone wants to analyze
a hundred data elements, they can do that, " she said. " If
someone wants to analyze only five, they can do that, too. "
The model also allows users to easily look at ITM activities from different perspectives. They can look at data for

one specific fire pump, a specific building, all fire pumps
from one specific manufacturer, or a specific building over
a specific date range.
" That's the beauty of the model, " Bart van Leeuwen,
founder of Netage BV, said in a video created in January.
Netage BV is a knowledge graph company that worked with
the foundation on the data exchange project. " We've seen
from data that sometimes the test and the inspection were
done in the same run, " and the data model allows you to see
that " without doing really ugly, ugly things. "
" With stakeholder participation in future data collection
efforts, our long-term aim is to provide recommendations
to technical committees on what ITM frequencies should
be, " Hutchison said. " These frequencies could address the
breakdown of specific components, when they should be
replaced, how often they should be inspected, whether
pumps are running too much or not enough-a lot of questions we're hoping we can provide analysis on. This data
model brings us one step closer to being able to harness the
true value and transformative power of ITM information. "
The results of the ITM Data Exchange project are
expected to be released in May. More information on the
ITM project, including the full video that features van Leeuwen explaining the data model, is available online at
nfpa.org/itmproject.
N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

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NFPA Journal - Summer 2021

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