Fort Collins, CO and Redlands, CA, July 10, 2002 -- The City of Monroe, North Carolina, a municipality with electric, gas, water, and sewer utilities, has recently completed its geographic information system (GIS) migration to ArcFM/ArcGIS 8.x technology with the help of Miner & Miner (M&M).
The utility completed the implementation of a powerful, full-scale GIS that provides integrated problem solving, greater operational and engineering efficiencies, improved decision making, and tremendous cost savings. The City of Monroe uses ArcFM along with ESRI's ArcGIS and ArcSDE on an Oracle database.
Monroe, North Carolina, founded in 1844, was named after James Monroe, the United States' fifth president. Located 25 miles southeast of Charlotte, North Carolina, this city serves a residential population of nearly 26,500. Aiming to modernize technology in pursuit of new business, the City of Monroe is a great example of a GIS implementation for a municipality with multiple utilities.
The city is using ArcFM for its energy services including the gas and electric departments and for its water resources including the water and the sewer departments. In addition, many other functional areas are using ArcGIS such as administration, collections, planning, engineering, economic development, building standards, and the police and fire departments.
Prior to the implementation of its GIS, Monroe had maintained data in various formats across the utility, which did not allow internal users to effectively share information. Hence, large efforts were required to maintain and disseminate information with data creation, collection, and analysis often being duplicated within various departments.
"We needed a centrally located system to store all data that could provide an accurate inventory of existing facilities so that queries and analysis could be performed for better decision making," said Jo Anne Manley, the City of Monroe's GIS Coordinator. "ArcFM provided us with a focal point to ensure a consistent interdepartmental vision is used for planning, maintenance, and repair."
In September 2000, M&M began assisting the city in migrating AutoCAD data, attribute data stored in external database management systems, and applications from the ARC/INFO 7.2 environment to ArcGIS and ArcFM 8.x technology. ArcInfo coverages were created from the various data sources, then moved into the target ArcFM/ArcSDE database. A series of data quality assurance/quality control routines were run against the database in preparation for the data and application installation and a review process was in place to ensure data quality.
To support immediate business requirements, M&M began migration with production data conversion of the wastewater system, followed by the electric and gas conversions. In addition to the core implementation, M&M developed an application to link customer information to service meters. The application provided a batch update to populate and update GIS data with appropriate information from the city's customer information system (CIS). The city now has the ability to be more proactive on customer service needs, and it opens the door for further GIS/CIS integration.
The City of Monroe is now benefiting from one integrated cohesive data repository for all electric, gas, water, and sewer records, which allows users to share information throughout the enterprise. The ArcFM solution also provides the city with one common application environment to more efficiently maintain its utility data. "The City of Monroe's GIS has advanced and evolved through a process of phased implementation," said Greg Bowles, M&M's Project Manager. "This enhancement has substantially improved Monroe's ability to manage its utility assets by utilizing ArcFM for all utility data management and analysis."
The City of Monroe's future vision is to integrate GIS with other enterprise systems, such as land records, to provide an effective way to perform utility system planning. The utility will then be able to better plan capital improvement projects along with managing operations such as leaks, inspections, maintenance, and repairs. The utility could then prioritize work areas when an electric outage is taking place or determine which valves need to be cut off when a gas leak has occurred. This will provide it with the ability to notify customers of those problems more efficiently and will assist them in customer billing and customer demand planning.
"We are pleased with Miner & Miner's assistance and services," concluded Manley. "We foresee great benefits using GIS technology. We anticipate improved business processes, better troubleshooting, faster decision making, promoted teamwork across all internal departments, and improved operations."
About Miner & Miner
Miner & Miner (M&M) is a specialist in the development and implementation of GIS software for utilities. M&M's ArcFM Solution and extended services assists electric, gas, water, and wastewater utilities in increasing productivity, lowering costs, and improving services by allowing them to effectively manage spatial information. Founded in 1946 as a full-service electrical engineering firm, M&M has been a business partner of ESRI since 1987. For more information, please visit www.miner.com.
About ESRI
For more than 30 years, ESRI has been a developer of GIS software with more than 300,000 clients worldwide. ESRI also provides consulting, implementation, and technical support services.
In addition to its headquarters in California, ESRI has regional offices throughout the United States, international distributors in more than 90 countries, and more than 1,400 business partners. ESRI's goal is to provide users with comprehensive tools to help them quickly and efficiently manage and use geographic information to make a real difference in the world around them. ESRI can be found on the Web at www.esri.com.
