Projects and the network

How ruumica models a network as nodes, spans and cables, and how measurements and evidence attach to it.

ruumica records a built network the way it lies in the ground: physical places joined by physical routes, with cables running through them. Everything else, measurements, photos and OTDR traces, hangs on that structure.

Organisation and project

An organisation is the company that builds and delivers. Its people and devices belong to it, and it sees only its own projects.

A project is one delivery: for example one fibre route in one municipality. A project fixes three things that never change silently:

its jurisdiction (EE, NO, …), which decides the rules that apply;
its coordinate pipeline, the one verified way its positions are converted (see Heights and datums);
its export profile, which decides how the delivery drawing looks (see Profiles and authorities).

Nodes and spans

A node is a place: a handhole, manhole, cabinet, splice closure, pole, or a single surveyed point such as a depth point, a bend or a structure. It has a position with a height.

A span is the physical route between two nodes: a trench, a duct, a microduct. It has a type, a course of points with heights, and a length computed from that course. A span always joins two different nodes.

Nodes and spans together are the network. When a handhole is added in the middle of an existing span, the span is split: it is retired, and two new spans take its place, one on each side of the new handhole. ruumica remembers this history, so anything that referred to the old span can be moved to the right new one.

Cables, fibres and splices

A cable is not a span. It runs through spans: its route is the ordered list of spans it passes, each in or against the span’s direction. A cable has a specification, a number of fibres, and a length factor: how much longer its fibres are than the route, because they lie in a helix with some excess length.

A slack loop is spare cable stored at a node, such as a coil in a vault. Its length counts toward the fibre length.

A splice joins one fibre of one cable to one fibre of another, inside a closure at a node. Each fibre is named by tube colour, fibre colour and number.

Measurements and evidence

An OTDR trace belongs to one fibre of one cable, measured in one direction. Its events are placed on the route: at a node or along a span (see OTDR verdicts).
Evidence is a photo, video or sketch of a node or a span, such as a depth-rod photo showing the cover over a duct.
Every raw file, trace or photo, is kept unchanged and named by its SHA-256 fingerprint. A file can never be swapped without that showing.

From records to a delivery

The project’s records keep changing while work goes on. A delivery takes them as they are at one instant, the freeze instant, and writes them into a frozen package that never changes afterwards (see Exports never change).