GIS Technology for Water,Wastewater, and Storm Water Utilities

GIS Technology for Water, Wastewater, and Storm Water Utilities

Your utility keeps track of vast amounts of information about assets; distribution, collection, and drainage networks; customers; and financial records. All this information has a connection with location, whether it be the site of a water main or a customer’s meter. ESRI® geographic information system (GIS) technology uses these geographic connections to integrate key database systems, streamline asset data management tasks, and help you visualize important geospatial relationships. Using GIS helps you more effectively manage water distribution, sewer collection, and storm water drainage networks as well as related planning and customer care. You can think of a GIS as a “location-based operating picture” that unifies the databases essential to your activities.

Significantly more powerful and flexible than a computer-aided design (CAD) system, a GIS stores both attributes and images of pipes, valves, meters, manholes, and so forth, as objects with location coordinates. The maps you create link upstream and downstream objects through strong object-to-object network connectivity and indicate normal flow direction through the pipe network. GIS is a true model of the network and can be used to

• Track and report on assets in the network inventory.

• Generate inputs into hydraulic modeling software.

• Create a common operational picture for access to network operations information.

In creating a single database of assets, you can eliminate redundant data collection and maintenance activities. The shared database enables engineering to produce maps, finance to calculate asset valuations, maintenance to track work activities, and operations to create network models.

GIS technology also uses geographic relationships to link and merge disparate databases. For example, you can place a demographic layer projecting future population values on top of an existing sewer manhole layer and use it to estimate future loadings at specific nodes on the network. You can overlay water well data on hazardous material information to determine proximity and assess contamination risks.

What Is GIS?

GIS technology combines mapping software with database management tools to collect, organize, and share many types of information. Data is stored as thematic layers in geodatabases (data identified by its location coordinates) that can be accessed and shared from the field, within a department, and across an entire enterprise. You decide which layers are relevant. Utilities typically combine utility layers with land base, parcel, street, land-use, and administrative area layers.

Distribution system

Collection system

Population density

Jurisdiction boundaries

Urban development

Land features

Hydrographic data

CAD Graphics to Geographics

Make maps that are more than just pretty pictures—add spatial intelligence to maps created as CAD files. ArcGIS® can use CAD data without conversion so that land records kept in CAD can be fully integrated with ArcGIS. Move, rotate, and

scale CAD layers in ArcGIS.

Enterprise GIS Integrates Utilities Operations

Build a Foundation to Support All Your Departments

An ESRI enterprise GIS is an integrated, multidepartmental system composed of interoperable components. It provides broad access to geospatial data, a common infrastructure upon which to build and deploy GIS applications, and significant economies of scale. ESRI enterprise GIS customers report benefits that allow them to

• Reduce data redundancy.

• Improve accuracy and integrity of geographic information.

• Share data efficiently and quickly.

• Integrate GIS and non-GIS applications.

www.esri.com/water

Water/Wastewater professionals monitor vast amounts of information about an ever-changing inventory of physical assets. You are responsible for handling day-to-day demands as well as ensuring the future viability of the network.

Planning

As a decision maker, you need the ability to weigh multiple scenarios that balance levels of investment against asset life span. GIS technology provides the analytical tools to perform what-if analyses and dynamic segmentation.

Performance and Tracking

Enterprise asset management (EAM) solutions help utilities improve asset performance and tracking. The asset management component of ESRI GIS software gives you user-friendly access to tracking, locating, and managing assets. It also creates a consolidated view of operations and increases information availability across the organization.

Good asset management means performing the proper maintenance and service at the correct location. This produces better customer service as well as savings for tight budgets. GIS-enabled Web-based tools allow your field crews to annotate

(redline) work order requests and put information directly into the database from the field. These tools improve efficiency in meeting industry financial reporting requirements that include asset valuation, proper inspections, and preventive maintenance.

Benefits

An EAM application can help you achieve significant savings by standardizing

• Purchasing processes

• Maintenance procedures

• Equipment tracking

• Inventory stores

EAM also helps you manage the full life cycle of critical assets including

• Procurement

• Installation

• Service

• Repair

• Disposal

Use GIS to Improve Asset Management Control

Enable operations crews to bring GIS into the field.

Integrate GIS and Hydraulic Modeling Tools

Integrated GIS and hydraulic modeling packages provide sophisticated network modeling tools that work within a commonly shared GIS data repository, which reduces the labor costs of maintaining separate GIS and modeling databases.

With a single integrated database, you can quickly perform modeling scenarios such as

• Demand projections

• Fire flow assessments

• Water quality simulations

• Pump scheduling

• Surge protection

• Emergency planning

• Unidirectional Flushing

www.esri.com/water

ESRI supports you with predesigned data models for groundwater, sewer, storm, and water utilities available online at www.esri.com/water-datamodels. User-contributed ArcScriptsSM for utilities, such as manhole ID generators and custom valve isolation code, are also available for download at the link.

Advanced text and label placement tools are used to convey pertinent information.

An integrated map displays multiple types of data including land parcel identification, water delivery and collection systems, satellite images, and geolocated photographs of fire hydrants.

Utilities have always struggled with the use of maps and the needs of a mobile workforce. Your mobile crews need current information at their fingertips when performing daily tasks. They are key to keeping services running at peak efficiencies. You want to know where those workers are, what projects they are working on, and how projects in the pipeline rank in priority.

ESRI server and mobile access tools provide field crews with accurate, up-to-date maps through mobile GIS computing. These location-based applications provide them with map display and navigation, GPS support, and GIS editing. Mobile GIS application development tools allow you to edit versioned databases stored on a server, which makes it easy to update your database and keep its history. These tools can extend to support sophisticated field applications, like valve isolation tracing, or enhance existing nonspatial line-of-business applications with geospatial capabilities such as customer relationship management and field service automation systems. Your field crews will have access to the most up-to-date information and can save time and reduce errors by inputting new information directly into digital forms.

Access and Update Data in the Field

Benefits

Mobile access to current data helps you

• Improve workforce operations.

• Increase productivity.

• Improve customer service.

• Reduce costs.

A hand-held device displays a street map with utility features. Field inspectors, repair crews, and meter readers use the system to navigate and can create most-efficient routing diagrams according to the day’s work orders.

A mobile computer displays watershed features. Engineers and surveyors can verify information on-site and add data with precise locations.

In day-to-day operations, you can use GIS to closely model utility networks and easily integrate other related types of data such as raster images (e.g., aerial photographs) and CAD drawings. GIS spatial selection and display tools allow users to visualize both the location and all data on scheduled work, ongoing activities, recurring maintenance problems, and historical information.

The topological properties of a GIS database can support network tracing. You can use it to analyze how stoppages, main breaks, drainage defects, and so forth, may impact specific properties or services. GIS supports many other operations and maintenance tasks including work order and warehouse inventory management and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA).

GIS and SCADA

A utility’s SCADA system can be synchronized with GIS to show a geographic view of water management structures and distribution systems. This allows you to monitor all transactions throughout the system and perform analysis and control procedures. For example, you can use the real-time SCADA system to determine whether or not a leak is critical and requires immediate attention.

Visualization Adds Operations and Maintenance Insight

Upstream and Downstream Network Tracing

During a water main break, you need to quickly determine the minimum number of valves to shut off to isolate the break. Likewise, you may need the ability to trace sewer networks, both upstream and downstream from a problem area, in case there is a break or blockage that results in an overflow.

Looking at a map of water system valves, either of these tasks may seem simple. However, some valves inevitably turn out to be inoperable, which results in a scramble to find alternate valves in the maze of the water utility network. Specialized GIS tracing and isolation tools provide an efficient way to find the operable valves and isolate the main break.

www.esri.com/water

Visualize your network in three dimensions with a 3D display of buildings and the underground water network.

Analyze your network to quickly determine which valves to close when a main breaks.

Your finance and administration personnel provide the central administrative oversight to support your organization’s planning and operational activities. You can enhance budget forecasting, facility inventory analysis, customer billing, customer care, and other key administrative functions through the implementation of an integrated enterprise GIS solution.

Improve accuracy and efficiency when using GIS for tasks such as

• Rate justification

• Capital improvement project planning

• Customer care

• Complaint tracking

• Real property management

• Redistricting

Provide Up-to-Date, Accurate Information to Finance, Administration, and Customer Care Departments

Provide customer care representatives with up-to-date client information to improve accuracy and efficiency in customer service responses.

Administrators and engineers create management and planning analyses using integrated financial and facility data.

ESRI’s GIS software allows you to represent a project in three-dimensional form and visualize the impact of facilities on the landscape during the design process. Data can be combined with other computer-aided engineering functions to assist in the planning and scenario testing of multiple designs.

Water agencies use ESRI’s GIS software to map the full extent of their water distribution systems and link them to a database, defining each element including reservoirs, pipe segments, services, and system appurtenances. As a result, job planning, equipment inventory, and flow analysis become automated procedures integrated into one intelligent database.

Planning and engineering tasks that you can accomplish easily using ESRI’s GIS software include

• Watershed and groundwater management modeling

• Water distribution system master planning

• Population and demand projections

• Water quality monitoring

• Hazardous materials tracking and underground tank management

• Well log and data management

• Site analysis

• Geobibliography (past studies)

• Development review and approval

• Right-of-way engineering

• Automated mapping

• Capital improvement project tracking

• Underground service alert

Sharpen Planning and Engineering Analyses

www.esri.com/water

Visualize the entire watershed picture with 3D modeling.

Model your groundwater system with integrated data that includes topography, roads, municipality boundaries, and water well and volatile organic compound information.

As a complete geographic information system, ESRI ArcGIS allows you to easily author data, maps, globes, and models on the desktop; serve them to a GIS server; and use them through Web, desktop, and mobile clients. The ArcGIS family of products includes Desktop GIS, Server GIS, Mobile GIS, and Online GIS.

As a developer, you can access the capabilities of ArcGIS through the ESRI Developer Network (EDNSM), an annual subscription-based program that provides you with the resources you need to build a wide range of custom GIS solutions.

Desktop GIS

Desktop GIS allows you to see your data on a map and analyze it to reveal patterns, relationships, and trends that are not readily apparent in tabular data, improving your decision making. Desktop GIS lets you create and edit data and includes ready-to-use tools that let you build process models, scripts, and complete workflows to help you better test predictions, examine relationships in your data, and answer questions such as

• Where are my customers and where should I put new facilities?

• Who does an emergency impact?

• How will a power outage affect my operations?

• What is the impact of new urban development?

Server GIS

Server GIS lets you share and maintain the data that you create with Desktop GIS with a large number of users across the enterprise using focused, easy-to-use applications. Server GIS enables you to push your maps, models, and tools out to engineers, schedulers, and planners in a way that fits into their workflows. Staff in customer care and out in the field can query accurate, up-to-date data, increasing their productivity.

ArcGIS

ArcGIS

Desktop GISServer GIS

Online GIS

ESRI Data

Mobile GIS

ArcGIS ServerArcGIS Image Server

ArcGISSM OnlineArcWebSM Services

CommunityTM DataStreetMapTM

ESRI Data & Maps

ArcGIS MobileArcPad®

ArcGIS DesktopArcGIS EngineArcGIS Explorer

Centrally host GIS applications and data, delivering GIS capabilities to large numbers of users.

Compile, author, analyze, map, and publish geographic information and knowledge.

Online GIS

Online GIS provides ready-to-use content for your GIS. You can access 2D maps, 3D globes, and tasks via the Web to quick start your GIS projects. Online GIS also provides developers with a comprehensive Web platform for integrating GIS content and capabilities into desktop, server, mobile, or Web applications.

ArcGIS Schematics

Targeted applications help you address specific needs. For example, the ArcGIS Schematics extension tools help you automatically generate, visualize, and manipulate schemas from network data stored in a geodatabase. You can map your linear utility network, then drill down into it to manage network database information.

Obtain logical views and create easy-to-read multilevel representations (geographic, geoschematic, and schematic) of any linear network. Specific applications enhanced by ArcGIS Schematics include

• Customer information

• Forecast and planning

• Operations management

• GIS/FM SCADA

• Outage and trouble management

• Design and analysis

Mobile GIS

Mobile GIS is the expansion of a GIS from the office into the field. Wireless connectivity, geoservices, and Web mapping applications allow your inspectors and repair personnel to complete database transactions in near real time. Whether connected or disconnected from the database, this increases efficiency and provides users who may have little or no GIS experience with access to previously unavailable data.

ESRI Data

In addition to data provided as a Web service via ArcGIS SM Online, ESRI offers a full spectrum of ready-to-use geospatial data products delivered as packaged media.

ESRI Data & Maps is a set of map data included at no additional cost with ArcGIS software. StreetMap™ consists of enhanced street datasets from Tele Atlas or NAVTEQ®. Community™ data encompasses a variety of datasets including demographic data, consumer spending, segmentation, and business data.

Learn more about ArcGIS at www.esri.com/arcgis.

The Complete Geographic Information System

ArcGIS Schematics displays pipes and equipment networks in a simplified hierarchical view.

High-resolution street data from ArcGIS Online is available for the United States, Canada, and Europe.

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