Automated agricultural compensation calculation tool for a Large Canadian public utility company

The background

The organization needed to modernize a critical tool used to calculate financial compensation for landowners affected by the installation of electrical infrastructure.

The main objective was to replace an outdated system dating back to 2005 with a reliable, automated solution capable of handling the geospatial complexity of the calculations, while providing a clear visualization of the compensated areas to facilitate negotiations and ensure fairness to landowners.

The challenges

For several years, the company’s team of agronomists had been struggling with a tool that had become unusable: unstable, unable to handle all scenarios, producing visually incomprehensible results, and requiring constant intervention from external resources for maintenance.

This problem directly affected the agricultural compensation assessment process. Each analysis could involve between 100 and 250 input parameters (crop type, machinery, crop rotations, maintenance costs, obstacles, etc.), making the task cumbersome and prone to errors.

The lack of an accurate, visual calculation of lost acreage slowed down negotiations and jeopardized the reliability of the decision-making process. It was therefore a priority to implement an automated, geospatial, and transparent solution that would allow for virtual simulation of machinery movements and accurate assessment of productivity losses for each affected landowner.

Deliverables included

• Complete overhaul of the compensation calculation tool (full replacement of the 2005 version).
• Support for 100 to 250 input parameters per analysis.
• Virtual simulation of agricultural machinery movement to estimate productivity loss.
• Automated management of pre-existing obstacles to exclude non-compensable areas.
• Automated production of PDF reports and KML files (GIS maps of impacted areas) in less than two minutes.
• Low-code architecture developed under FME Workbench, ensuring maintainability and independence for internal teams.
• Integration of results directly into the customer’s GIS for immediate visualization.

Challenges and solutions

Challenge 1 – Geospatial complexity of calculations

Each structure installed on a plot of land required multiple simulations depending on the crops and machinery used.

Solution: Consortech developed an FME model that virtually reproduced the movements of each piece of machinery around the structures, accurately calculating the actual unusable area and the corresponding compensation.

Challenge 2 – Difficult tool to maintain and external dependency

The users were not developers and struggled to adjust the previous system.

Solution: The new low-code architecture on FME Form reduced code dependency, simplified maintenance, and ensured complete transparency on the calculations performed.

Key impacts and gains for the customer

• Effective use of geospatial data to facilitate decision-making, i.e., compensation amounts.
• Performance gains: automatic generation of reports and KML geometries in less than 2 minutes per analysis.
• Increased reliability: more than 50 real-world scenarios tested and validated by users.
• Team autonomy: independent solution, with no dependence on an external supplier.
• Improved transparency and fairness in the compensation process.
• Significant reduction in the risk of human error and analysis time for each file.

Environment and governance

The solution integrates with the customer’s GIS ecosystem and is based on an architecture focused on data quality, performance, and governance.

Thanks to FME, geospatial calculations, report generation, and map production are carried out within a secure and controlled infrastructure, ensuring traceability and internal compliance.