Migrating Legacy GIS; an Evolutionary Approach
William Shaw
Manager GIS Mapping
We Energies
333 W. Everett St.
Milwaukee, WI 53290-0001
Telephone: 414/221-2379
Fax: 414/221-4543
Email: William.Shaw@We-Energies.com
Abstract:
Like many of today’s Electric and Gas Utilities, We Energies (formally known as Wisconsin
Electric Wisconsin Gas) is continuously confronted with the need to integrate, merge and evolve
its core legacy systems to meet the demands of new business requirements and the challenges of
effective implementation of newer technology. To this end we have chosen an evolutionary
approach to migrating three legacy Electric GIS systems into a single common source for all
Electric GIS data. The legacy systems that are being evolved include a working GIS
maintenance application and data reporting system, a traditional CAD Electric Dispatch mapping
system and a recently implemented Outage and Distribution Management System.
The project team at We Energies has come to appreciate two tenets of today’s technology as it
relates to effective business implementation and those are that ‘it’s a mixed bag at best’ and ‘that
bigger is not always better’. With an eye toward limiting our risk exposure we have managed to
overcome numerous technical hurdles while at the same time leveraging old and new technology
to arrive at a best fit for our Electric GIS applications.
Project background
Beginning in November 2000, We Energies began to implement a strategy to eliminate the
maintenance of multiple electric facility record keeping systems. The implementation of this
strategy prepares the way for establishing a single point of maintenance and control for our
critical spatial and asset inventory information. The strategy is targeted at achieving a principle
objective: to provide effective and reliable support of field mapping, outage management and
dispatch operations.
The evolution of the existing legacy mapping systems at We Energies is probably not unlike the
GIS development patterns experienced by many in our industry. GIS is first brought in because
GIS technology is unparalleled in its ability to integrate almost any aspect of daily operations.
Unfortunately to get GIS ‘right’ there needs to be an understanding that it is also a terrifically
well-suited disintegrator. The good and the bad tend to work against each other and until an
organization discovers this and acts to effectively coordinate its’ spatial information the more
issues that can arise to stand in the way of effective progress toward it’s enterprise goals.
