The paper considers the benefits and difficulties of establishing an integrated system to meet the increasingly demanding operational requirements. It gives three case studies of advanced approaches in the UK as components in total future integrated systems. These emphasize the effort which needs to be applied to achieve reliable predictive models which are essential in the development of the full operational systems. Substantial operational benefits have arisen from these studies. The author concludes by indicating some fundamentals for success, namely a clear vision of the total operational system with one step at a time implementation, the important role of GIS as a means of handling the essential flow of validated system data, the vital importance of validated network simulation models, a total quality approach and the challenge of continuous improvement.