Utility Network

The Vision of GIS for Utilities Esri Canada White Paper EC5_0364_1805_11A 13 Taking Advantage of Both Workflows Utilities have much opportunity to geoenable workflows by leveraging data not typically spatialized. For instance, customer satisfaction is often measured by surveys, providing a top KPI commonly delivered in a tabular form, a BI dashboard, or a report. The survey results can be used to benchmark the best-performing utility in the region and help others develop improvement plans that are followed by an additional survey to track progress. However, this workflow misses the location of both the least satisfied customers and the factors (e.g., poor reliability, complaints of high bills, unpopular tree trimming, maintenance shut-off frequency) that may correlate to that dissatisfaction. Plotting survey results on the map is geocentric work. Layering on additional factors to correlate insights and produce improvement projects is an example of geoenabling a workflow. What to Do Now Utility GIS is evolving rapidly. Users are recognizing the need to make their critical GIS asset data available to nearly everyone in the company. Fortunately, utilities can leverage the modern GIS platform to publish their data from their GIS using web services. The following provides a step-by-step process to get the most out of the GIS now: • Set up ArcGIS Enterprise. This gives users the ability to share their current network information throughout the organization as well as with those outside whom they select. This provides the framework for the system of engagement. • Upgrade or install ArcGIS 10.6.1 for Desktop and the latest releases of all other products. Make sure to install the most recent patches. The latest release of other Esri products are compatible with ArcGIS 10.6.1 for Desktop. • Stay current on platform improvements. As platform capabilities are updated, new versions are released. • Make use of ArcGIS solutions for the electric, gas, water and telecommunication industries available for download at solutions.arcgis.com. • Create your plan for the new ArcGIS Utility Network Management Extension when comfortable with the above steps. Users who have a considerable investment in custom applications can migrate them to ArcGIS Enterprise/ArcGIS Online. In many cases, those custom applications will only require configuration of the platform. This will save considerable effort when it's time to move to Utility Network. The ArcGIS Solutions site (solutions.arcgis.com) offers many maps and apps for utility and telecom domains, which organizations can take advantage of to jump-start their solutions, particularly in the web and mobile areas. One of the most popular downloads from the site is the Model Organization configuration, which provides users with guidelines to follow when setting up an ArcGIS organizational account. Client/Server technologies have been used in GIS for quite some time. In these cases, users operate a heavy client on a desktop to add content to the data stored by the GIS data management server.

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