The modern GIS has been around since the mid-90s, to be more specific this is when utility network management was introduced to the spatial world. Interestingly enough this innovation wasn’t the news, the news was the innovation of outage management systems. The reality is GIS was implemented in utilities to feed a digital connected model to OMS. Why else were 10s of millions dollars spent, a better map? No. Not a lot of people were thinking what else can we do with this system back then.
Since then technology has evolved quite a bit and now we have web and mobile solutions and plenty of other integrations. But is seems to me GIS is still stuck as the servant only capable of providing where something is and how it is connected. This categorization has stunted the growth of GIS within utilities and impacted the data and people who support it. This is evident in most utilities I’ve worked with, just ask any group outside the GIS group what they think of the data. The shocker to me is why is this allowed to progress.
Falling back on all my observations, and my forward thinking ideas, I am going to explore many topics about GIS within utilities. I want to explore the questions I have and the things I’ve seen, what is possible, and why there is so much pushback. Ultimately, I want to find a way to break GIS out of the stigmatism it seems to have fallen in because I know it can provide so much more value. They energy market is changing drastically with the energy transition, electrification, and resilience efforts in full swing. This change is an opportunity to think different, look at what you have, and possibly overlooked, to solve the questions of today and tomorrow.
Spatially Aware 