Imperial Irrigation District reportedly announced that it will use mobile geographic information system or GIS technology from ESRI to conduct a thorough field collection of data about all its overhead and underground facilities. This is to help the preparation work it has undertaken for its smart grid initiative.

 

“Our GIS system is going to be really the heart and soul of the smart grid initiative,” said Bill Wickersheim, GIS administration supervisor for Imperial Irrigation District, in a statement. “Our main goal is to collect all the data about everything we have in the field so that the proper departments can do the planning they need to do to upgrade our system.”

 

Imperial Irrigation District or IID is proposing to implement a smart grid and all the collected data is already being used by other departments, official sources said.

 

IID’s environmental department is leveraging the field data in its GIS for both right-of-way and habitat analysis. The real estate department is using it for right-of-way negotiations, deed research and territory negotiations with neighboring Native American tribes.

 

Also the utility’s legal department is using the GIS data to take care of its regulatory compliance needs. The right-of-way department is already using the collected data to get permits for geothermal and mineral research, according to IID sources.

 

“GIS traditionally plays a strong role in all aspects of the utility, and it becomes crucial when implementing a smart grid,” Bill Meehan, ESRI's (News - Alert) director of utility solutions, said.

 

Meehan said that by enabling data management, planning and analysis, field collection, and situational awareness, GIS is the most important requisite for making a smart grid function optimally.

 

ESRI enables global customers to plan geographically. ESRI software specializes in GIS and its services are used by more than 300,000 organizations across the globe including nearly 200 large cities in the United States. GIS is also used by national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities, said ESRI sources.

 

ESRI applications are found running on millions of desktops and several thousand Web and enterprise servers. It provides the backbone for mapping and spatial analysis requirements. Also ESRI provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server and Internet platforms.