{"id":583885,"date":"2026-05-15T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T22:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/industries\/blog\/?post_type=blog&p=583885"},"modified":"2026-05-15T22:24:57","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T22:24:57","slug":"gis-cloud-and-ams-integration","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/industries\/blog\/articles\/gis-cloud-and-ams-integration","title":{"rendered":"Texarkana Water Utilities: Advancing GIS, Cloud Resilience, and AMS Integration"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was developed collaborativey by Terri Rogers, GISP – Texarkana Water Utilities, Bill Moss – Texarkana Water Utilities, NewEdge Services, and Kwiver.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

Texarkana Water Utilities (TWU) delivers water services across two cities and two states\u2014Texarkana, Texas, and Texarkana, Arkansas\u2014creating a complex, multijurisdictional operating environment. To manage this complexity, TWU needed to modernize its geographic information system (GIS), build cloud resiliency, and integrate systems across the organization.<\/p>\n\n

Establishing a Secure GIS Foundation with ArcGIS Enterprise<\/h2>\n\n

Texarkana Water Utilities engaged NewEdge Services to implement ArcGIS Enterprise, creating a centralized GIS platform capable of managing data across both Texas and Arkansas jurisdictions. The deployment allowed TWU to move away from siloed data systems and establish authoritative datasets to support water utility operations, infrastructure management, and land records.<\/p>\n\n

This GIS foundation became even more critical when TWU experienced a cyberattack that encrypted on-premises systems and disrupted essential services. Working closely with TWU, NewEdge rapidly stood up a temporary ArcGIS Enterprise recovery environment using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), and Amazon WorkSpaces. Restoring access to maps, applications, and critical datasets while on-premises systems remained offline.<\/p>\n\n

Following the recovery period, TWU fully migrated its ArcGIS Enterprise environment into AWS, significantly strengthening security, improving up time, and providing far more flexible access for staff across city departments and state lines. Cloud hosting now enables remote access, streamlined updates, and built-in redundancy that was not possible with the previous on-premises setup. Access to outside data sources has also expanded; for example, parcel data across both states is now updated nightly through automated services that pull directly from Texas and Arkansas county assessor computer-assisted mass appraisal (CAMA) systems, ensuring accurate information for planning, billing, and customer service operations. The cyberattack underscored the importance of secure, flexible operations. For leadership at Texarkana Water Utilities, the new environment reduced operational risk while enabling staff to securely work remotely during recovery efforts. This approach ensured uninterrupted service delivery and positioned the organization with a stronger, more resilient security framework moving forward.<\/p>\n\n

Expanding Cityworks AMS Across Departments<\/h2>\n\n

Although TWU had been using Trimble powered by the Cityworks AMS (Asset Management System) for years, adoption was limited to the water and sewer field operations group. Recently, TWU partnered with NewEdge Services on a full Cityworks AMS enterprise expansion, bringing engineering, field services, customer service, and inflow and infiltration (I&I) into the platform. Today, Cityworks AMS, fully integrated with TWU\u2019s GIS, supports more than 33,000 residential and commercial connections through centralized asset management.<\/p>\n\n

This expansion allows TWU to leverage location intelligence across the organization, using Esri-powered GIS layers directly inside Cityworks AMS to better manage work orders, infrastructure assets, inspections, and service requests. Future phases will extend Cityworks to the water and wastewater treatment divisions.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"
Centralized ArcGIS Enterprise view of Texarkana Water Utilities\u2019 water and wastewater infrastructure, enabling improved operational visibility and decision-making.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Integrating Utility Billing with GIS and AMS<\/h2>\n\n

As part of the AMS expansion, TWU prioritized integrating its utility billing system (CUSI) with GIS and Cityworks AMS. NewEdge developed a custom integration that now allows billing, asset management, and GIS to work together in a seamless workflow. This has resulted in significant workflow improvements.<\/p>\n\n