EWSU IT/GIS Team Receives Excellence in GIS Award

Congratulations to Evansville Water and Sewer Utility GIS Application Coordinator Ryan Key and GIS Technician Aaron Krohn on winning the Excellence in GIS Award from the Indiana Geographic Information Council. The award recognizes EWSU’s IT/GIS Team as a leader in statewide GIS.

Ryan and Aaron received top honors for the modernization of EWSU’s GIS environment and hundreds of thousands of related geospatial records. This Information not only serves as a mapping tool for distribution and collections operations but also drives informed decision making on everything from asset management, infrastructure projects, and EPA reporting, to customer service and public safety.

For nearly 20 years, the City of Evansville and Evansville Water and Sewer Utilities (EWSU) GIS environment had been managed by an IT vendor. This was a beneficial partnership. However, EWSU’s IT/GIS Team realized the complexity of our GIS centric applications, like Cityworks and GranitNet, and the need for dependent system upgrades required a new way of thinking and a new, modern GIS environment tailored specifically for the Utility and managed in-house by EWSU staff.

EWSU recognized our current Geometric Network model is nearly two decades old and is approaching end of supported life. In order to continue to maintain critical system information, migrating data models from the Geometric Network to the new Utility Network became a top priority. EWSU management saw this as an opportunity to broaden and modernize customer outreach related to boil advisories and road closures. High priority was also placed on improving internal communications related to capital project planning, operations, and customer service.

Through nearly three years of planning, hard work, and determination EWSU has now created a robust, modern GIS to serve the organization for many years to come.