{"id":587842,"date":"2026-09-21T20:27:31","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T20:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/industries\/blog\/?post_type=blog&p=587842"},"modified":"2026-10-01T18:48:25","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T18:48:25","slug":"de-pere-utility-network-gis-modernization","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/industries\/blog\/articles\/de-pere-utility-network-gis-modernization","title":{"rendered":"Mapping to Modeling: Modernizing De Pere\u2019s Wet Utilities GIS"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the City of De Pere, Wisconsin<\/a>, GIS is a critical business system supporting water, sanitary sewer, and stormwater operations. Serving more than 25,000 residents and managing approximately 380 miles of utility mains and more than 20,000 utility assets, the city relies on accurate infrastructure data to support planning, engineering, maintenance, and daily operations across departments. For more than 20 years, De Pere has invested in building and maintaining a mature GIS program that is widely adopted throughout the organization. As the city looked to modernize its technology platform and position itself for future growth, it embarked on a transition from Esri\u2019s geometric network to ArcGIS Utility Network<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

The Challenge<\/h2>\n\n

Over two decades, the City of De Pere developed a mature GIS program that became deeply integrated into utility operations and decision-making across the organization. However, as Esri technology evolved, the city recognized that its legacy geometric network could no longer be maintained within ArcGIS Pro<\/a>. The transition presented an opportunity to modernize utility data management while preserving the workflows and outputs that staff relied upon every day.<\/p>\n\n

Through conversations with an Esri solution engineer and independent research, the city evaluated several paths forward, including removing network connectivity, implementing a trace network, or adopting ArcGIS Utility Network. After assessing the available options and the long-term value of advanced network modeling and analytics, city staff determined that ArcGIS Utility Network offered the strongest foundation for the future. They also recognized that a successful implementation would require specialized expertise and partner support.<\/p>\n\n

At the same time, the GIS Division needed to continue supporting daily operational demands, making it difficult to dedicate resources to such a complex migration effort. The city also sought to strengthen governance practices surrounding both GIS content and enterprise systems. While responsibilities between the GIS Division and IT Department were generally understood, formal documentation was needed to clearly define ownership, administration responsibilities, maintenance schedules, and operational procedures.<\/p>\n\n

Like many utilities, the city needed a framework for managing content naming conventions, metadata standards, tagging practices, user and group administration, development-to-production workflows, and content life cycle management. Establishing these standards was critical for improving trust in GIS data, ensuring consistency across departments, and supporting long-term system sustainability. The city also wanted to position itself for broader user participation through ArcGIS Enterprise Portal and branch versioning workflows, enabling subject matter experts to contribute updates while maintaining appropriate governance controls.<\/p>\n\n

One of the most significant workflow limitations involved utility editing. Editors previously built network features individually, manually creating assets and entering attributes one at a time. The process was time-consuming and lacked automated validation, making it more difficult to identify errors before changes were incorporated into the utility network.<\/p>\n\n

The Solution<\/h2>\n\n

The city partnered with Avineon<\/a>, an Esri partner with extensive experience supporting municipal and utility organizations, to modernize its GIS environment and implement ArcGIS Utility Network. Working closely with De Pere\u2019s GIS, IT, and Public Works teams, Avineon developed and executed a comprehensive modernization strategy that included<\/p>\n\n