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Exercise: Violations on what should be related facilities

This exercise demonstrates a common siting pattern: two facilities that look like a violation under default unrelated assumptions, but resolve cleanly once they are assigned the relationship code that reflects how they actually operate. The exercise reinforces the artifact-first triage from the Violations lesson — many early-stage violations are data-completeness issues.

Learning objectives

By the end of this exercise you should be able to:

  • Identify a violation that may be an artifact of an incorrect relationship code
  • Convert the violation into a related-Exposure-Type evaluation
  • Confirm the result via the criteria-path trace

Prerequisites​

Setup​

[TODO: FILL IN — provide a starter project ID or shapefile/GeoJSON dataset that reproduces the scenario reliably. For now, instructions below assume the user constructs the scenario manually.]

  1. Open or create a project with two PES candidates that operationally belong to the same operation but have no relationship configured

  2. Set both facilities to a multi-face type code (e.g., ECM7) and assign fronts so they do not land in Requires Analysis

  3. Place them at a distance that exceeds barricaded ILD but is less than IBD for the NEW you intend to use

  4. Enter the same NEW on each

  5. Run analysis and confirm a violation appears between them — the engine treated the pair as unrelated, so IBD applied

Diagnose​

  1. Open the feature dashboard for one of the facilities and review the Spatial Analysis tab
  2. Note the analysis code that produced the violation — likely an IBD-Exposure-Type code
  3. Open the analysis path for the violating pair and identify where the engine treated the pair as unrelated
  4. Confirm that the operational relationship in real life would be sameline or related, not unrelated

Mitigate​

  1. Assign the two facilities to a relationship group (see Module 7: Relationship groups)

  2. Set the group's relationship to sameline if the facilities are part of the same operating line, or related if they are on parallel operating lines

  3. Re-run analysis

  4. Confirm the violation is replaced with an ILD-Exposure-Type result, and review the new analysis path

  5. (Optional) If the relationship is sameline, add an effective barricade between PES and ES and re-run. The required distance should drop further as the K18 → K9 reduction activates.

Discussion​

A violation is not always a siting problem — sometimes it is a data-completeness problem. Before redesigning a layout to clear an arc, walk the analysis path and confirm the engine reached the verdict it should have under the correct operational picture. The cheapest mitigation is usually a relationship assignment that was missing from the start, and the difference between IBD and ILD for the same pair can be a factor of several.

The discipline this exercise builds: relationships before geometry. Always.