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Water utilities reduce expenses with mobile GIS

November 3, 2020  - By
GIS Manager Kenny Ratliff, Oldham County Water District, collects utility data. (Photo: Eos Positioning)

GIS Manager Kenny Ratliff, Oldham County Water District, collects utility data. (Photo: Eos Positioning)

Across North America, the use of high-accuracy GNSS technology has proliferated among water and wastewater service providers. Water utilities are saving time, cutting operational expenses, and definitively improving the accuracy of their asset management systems by capturing survey-grade location data.

Oldham County Water District serves more than 8,300 residences with 369 miles of pipeline in rural Kentucky. In 2001, the utility digitized its assets for the first time. In 2016, they decided it was time to improve the assets’ accuracy. GIS Manager Kenny Ratliff deployed ArcGIS Collector, iPad 2 mobile devices, and the Arrow Gold GNSS receiver by Eos Positioning Systems. As a result, OCWD was able to more quickly arrive exactly at the location where meters were to be replaced. With the savings of time, labor and fuel, OCWD cut the cost of installing each water meter by half, from $212 to $111.

Other water utilities are using GNSS technology to improve the office-to-field workflow, accelerate deployment of new systems, and map buried pipelines.