NorthSouth GIS LLC (NSGIS) helps water utilities on their path towards greater utilization and benefit of all geospatial technologies. Our services range from master plans, system architecture and upgrades, and software implementation and configuration, to system integrations, software development, and staff augmentation.

For utilities with limited or no GIS, we help design and implement a practical and gradual introduction to the technology, focusing on demonstrable return on investment. For utilities with well-established departmental use of GIS, we help lift GIS and other geospatial tools and capabilities to the enterprise level, where modern software architecture can have a much greater impact on the utility’s business imperatives. And for mature enterprises, we provide expert strategies for upgrading geospatial technologies to take advantage of the latest capabilities and deployment patterns.

NSGIS is an expert at integrating GIS with other core utility systems like work order management and ERP, hydraulic and network modeling, inspection and reporting, mass notifications and public information portals. We preach and practice the concept that GIS is no longer just a System of Record, but also a System of Engagement, a technology that often presents a more effective front-end to users than other systems’ own interfaces, because of the intuitive map interface. We also leverage GIS as an enabling Information Management technology, one that can connect other systems that are difficult or impossible to connect if not for the use of their common spatial component.

NSGIS also provides software solutions for helping water utilities manage, query and retrieve their documents spatially – just the right document for the right place at the right time.

Our success is based on our ability to think like water and wastewater utility professionals, forming strong and long-lasting bonds with our clients. While our goals are guided by your business drivers our methods are based on deep enterprise IT experience, and tight partnerships with our software suppliers, especially Esri^® and VertiGIS™.

Explore our services, solutions, clients, and success stories, and contact us today for a discussion or a demo.

Eastern Municipal Water District (EMWD)

EMWD provides water, sewage collection, water desalination and water recycling for about 758,000 residents within a 542-square mile service area in western Riverside County. NSGIS has been supporting EMWD’s GIS efforts since 2013, performing a wide range of technical support activities, including the upgrade of Esri server technology, optimization of multi-user GIS editing environments, deployment of web GIS based apps like Collector, and the upgrade and improvement of web viewers.

The Fleet web mapping application created by NSGIS is used by EMWD maintenance staff to learn more about the water, sewage and recycled water pump stations, lift stations and tanks that needed maintenance and repair before traveling to that destination. The Integrated Operations Center (IOC) web mapping application is used by EMWD operations staff to easily see customer reported issues, such as water pressure, water quality, etc., based on specific time (last 24-hours, last week, last month, etc.). NSGIS has deployed robust Cathodic Test Station and Water Valve collection and inspection via ArcGIS Collector for the infield Water Operations staff; Water Operations management can immediately view the field crew progress and perform powerful Geocortex Essentials reports deployed by NSGIS into the web viewer in moments, saving them weeks of tedious and error prone manual calculations. NSGIS upgraded the enterprise geodatabase permissions approach and entire versioning process, ensuring that all users have the right access while protecting the data and ensuring the multi-user editing process is smooth and increases data integrity. NSGIS is now in the process of overhauling over 500 data processing scripts to use the latest ArcPy technology for better performance, tracking, and error logging.

Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility District (AWWU)

AWWU awarded NSGIS the contract to create and present its five-year GIS Master Plan. AWWU is one of the oldest implementers of Esri GIS in the water utility sector, but as with many other veteran customers, had reached a plateau in its use of GIS, and brought NSGIS’s subject matter experts to help propel it to the next level of efficiency and broad use of geospatial technologies. NSGIS conducted extensive in-depth interviews to reveal current processes, needs, and experience; reviewed existing spatial data both digital and paper,; researched all current integrations as well as any systems that could be integrated in the future; and carefully reviewed the existing and planned IT infrastructure. Working closely key stakeholders at AWWU, NSGIS delivered a detailed plan covering its Assessment of Current Conditions, Gap Analysis, Needs Assessment, Benefits, and its Recommendations for Governance, Staffing, Process, Budget, and more. With this plan, AWWU has a clear direction for moving GIS forward with balanced and logical steps that are closely aligned with the organization’s vision and budget, and has a roadmap for ensuring that GIS remains an integral and vital enterprise information management system that supports AWWU’s core mission.

Water Replenishment District of Southern California (WRD)

WRD initially retained NSGIS to assess the current state of its Interactive Well Search web GIS site, and design a new system. The existing system, based on Esri’s ArcIMS, was no longer supported and needed to be replaced. NSGIS performed an on-site needs assessment, cataloged the functionality that will need to be migrated to a modern architecture, and advised WRD on new functionality and data that was requested by WRD staff. NSGIS then submitted a proposed architecture for a replacement system that will be based on Esri’s ArcGIS platform and Latitude Geographics’s Geocortex Essentials.

WRD followed NSGIS’s recommendations and used the proposed architecture to upgrade to the Esri platform and awarded NSGIS a contract to upgrade their Well Search GIS web site. The WRD Well Search site was built on Geocortex Essentials with simple but intelligent ArcGIS map services and features numerous robust reports and hydrographs to efficiently display the vast number of data records available for the thousands of wells within WRD’s district.

NSGIS also collaborated with WRD staff to create WRD 60th Anniversary Story Map, helping to communicate WRD’s rich history and commitment to helping maintain and monitor the groundwater supply for the great Los Angeles region.

Today, NSGIS continues to work with WRD to enhance the Well Search site to provide even more robust reporting tools and plans are in the works to expand public access to WRD’s data with more easy to use and robust interactive tools and maps.

Burbank Water and Power (BWP)

The City of Burbank Department of Water and Power has a strong business need to track engineering drawings through their entire lifecycle, and to quickly locate them on demand. Not finding current information about a piece of infrastructure can have far-reaching and costly consequences, ranging from damaged utility lines, damaged public infrastructure (e.g. a sinkhole destroying an area when shutoff valves cannot be quickly located to isolate a leak), increased repair costs, delayed response to frustrated customers, etc. This is true even in agency with a mature GIS, since drawings hold much-needed detail that cannot be derived merely from GIS. NSGIS began by deploying a special instance of the City of Burbank’s GEMS web GIS viewer to meet the Water Division’s specific needs. NSGIS then implemented Enesgy^® Documents with the Record Drawing Management Template within that viewer to help the City catalog and quickly locate it engineering drawings at any stage of progress (design, construction, as-built, etc.) via a spatially enabled search engine. This allows users to search by a combination of keywords and selection of areas of interest on a map to quickly find relevant information and detailed metadata about any area within its jurisdiction. NSGIS configured the deployment to tailor it the City’s specific needs, including substantial adjustments to database schemas, informational map-tip, business workflows, staff email notifications, and more.