Real Benefits - Advancing GIS Technology

Introduction - GIS at San Diego Water Utilities
San Diego Water Utilities serves the city of San Diego, which is the seventh largest city in the United States with a population of about 1.3 million people, covering an area of about 400 square miles. The climate of San Diego is quite arid. The average annual rainfall is 6.7 inches per year. Without a well-managed water distribution network, the San Diego area would be able to support a population of no greater than 50,000 people. San Diego is well known for its mild climate, beaches and popular tourist attractions. The environment is sensitive, and there are numerous endangered animal species such as the gnatcatcher and others. Information management related to the massive water and sewer infrastructure of San Diego is no simple task.

To solve the problems related to managing all the water and sewer data, San Diego Water Utilities became actively involved in GIS early on. With contracts awarded to two vendors to map the water and sewer infrastructure. Actual paper map conversion began in 1991. San Diego Water Utilities first went into production late in 1992 with the SPLASH application, based on the Arc/Info product from ESRI (Redlands, CA). The fundamental objectives of the original system were to be able to have a well-managed database so that the important infrastructure information could be available on a timely basis for all those that need to use it at San Diego Water Utilities. As a part of the GIS initiative, h was critical to have all of the mapping data into the system with regular updates to the sewer and water backlog. Unfortunately, the mapping backlog continued to develop due to conversion issues and problems with the production SPLASH applications.

With the large investment that San Diego Water Utilities had made in GIS data, it was becoming more and more important to move from a mapping-based system to an enterprise approach that would allow the GIS database to integrate with other key applications in the utility. In 1994, a logical model was developed for GIS that could be used to support a preventative maintenance and work order system. The system development began using the ARC/Info system and the Oracle relational database management system from Oracle Corporation, Redlands, CA. In 1995, the enterprise database was built, and the integration process began.