The public utilities, mainly water, wastewater and stormwater utilities have all pretty much accepted GIS as a necessary tool for their business. Despite this acceptance, the use of GIS at these agencies continues to be rudimentary. When one takes an unbiased look at the nature of the information that a utility deals with, it quickly becomes clear that GIS can play a critical inter-application role for such a utility.
Faced with having to do more with less at utilities, actually at all levels of government, has become a way of life. And this attitude has begun eating away at everyone's budgets and the certainty of their future. Coupled with the fact that most public utilities have a GIS effort which is outside of their traditional Data Processing environment, GIS has become a likely target for cutbacks.
This paper/presentation will focus on what makes GIS an indispensable and central application in the overall information management solution for a public utility. It will not only identify what these elements are but also suggest ways and means to move your ArcInfo application toward the center of the solution at your utility. Specific examples will be used in every case which have proven themselves recently in the real world of public utilities.
Mehmet "DJ" Kutsal
Director of Information Technologies
Brown & Caldwell
Pleasant Hill, CA
Telephone: 510-210-2258
Fax: 510-937-9026