Denver Airport Digitally Transforms with Indoor GIS for the Vision 100 Plan

Denver International Airport (DEN) is one of the largest in the US. An economic engine for the nation’s western states, it is a major hub for travel, cargo, and tourism. The airport itself spans more than 53 square miles and is consistently ranked as one of the busiest in North America, having served over 82 million passengers in 2025. With this volume of traffic, plus 140 concessions and businesses supported by the airport, DEN management launched two strategic initiatives—Vision 100 and Operation 2045, with the aim of positioning DEN as the nation’s preeminent aviation thought leader. These initiatives have several goals: increasing the workforce, building integrated systems, growing sustainability efforts, improving durability, predictability, and maintenance of DEN’s assets, and expanding flights to underserved destinations in the Middle East and North Africa.

Achieving this requires a complete rethinking of how the airport manages its operations, assets, and data. Spread out into two phases, Vision 100 focuses on the immediate future of DEN’s mission to serve 100 million passengers in the next decade. With 2045 marking the airport’s 50th anniversary, Operation 2045 serves as a strategic goal preparing for 120 million annual passengers by that year.

To achieve these strategic and ambitious goals, the DEN geospatial technologies team collaborated with Esri partner HNTB Corp, a US-based architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) firm, focused on transportation infrastructure. With decades of deep experience in geographic information system (GIS) tools and enterprise technology platforms, HNTB works with clients on civil engineering, planning, inspections, program management, construction management, sports architecture, and emerging digital transformation maturity needs. But specifically, within the US transportation market, the firm serves departments of transportation, tollways, airports, and rail/transit organizations.

HNTB was awarded an on-call contract to help DEN migrate its GIS data to a modern, online portal. It accomplished this with Esri’s ArcGIS Enterprise—a powerful enterprise geospatial platform that enables organizations to manage, analyze, visualize, and share spatial data.

For DEN, the journey to a GIS-based platform wasn’t just technical. “I’ve been talking about this for years,” said Chelsea Seiter-Weatherford, DEN’s geospatial manager. “It’s patience with getting buy-in from the teams—getting them to understand what GIS is and why it’s important.” Seiter-Weatherford knew she had to lead a cultural shift to digitally transform the airport. “The concept that GIS serves as the authoritative platform for spatial data, and system of reference for other agency data, is a new concept.”

Considering its projected business goals, DEN staff knew their technology needed a major update. For over a decade prior to Seiter-Weatherford joining the geospatial team, airfield information and building occupant data was managed in building information modeling (BIM) and computer-aided design (CAD) software by the Digital Facilities and Infrastructure (DFI) team. Information maintained in BIM and CAD files wasn’t as comprehensive because some operational attributes—like occupants and department names of indoor assets—were not all housed together. But with a growing workforce and increasing passenger traffic, DEN personnel wanted more concrete building asset data covering the entire airport campus, including more than 7,000 rooms.

Esri’s ArcGIS Indoors was chosen for its ease and compatibility with DEN’s already-established enterprise GIS system. The Geospatial Technologies team imports CAD and BIM data into ArcGIS Indoors, creating floor-aware maps that contain points of interest, meeting rooms, assets, and safety and security equipment on a digital indoor map. “ArcGIS Indoors is a leader for indoor data, and that’s why we chose it,” explained Seiter-Weatherford.

Indoor geospatial data powers a spatial operations platform for managing airport buildings and spaces. With ArcGIS technology, DEN brings together BIM, GIS, assets, and operational data into one living system that supports daily decision-making. For indoor workflows, ArcGIS Indoors provides the foundational layer that connects floor plans, rooms, and other spaces to this operational environment.

Darin Welch, director of digital transformation solutions at HNTB, noted the benefits of implementing ArcGIS Indoors for clients. “It's still fundamentally all about the data,” said Welch. "If your data is sound and trustworthy—and if it’s organized and presented in a way that each audience can use for decision-making, whether that’s an airport executive, a maintenance and operations team member, or a passenger—you can create the best possible experience for everyone."

The deployment of ArcGIS Indoors allowed DEN to build an 18-million-square-foot Indoors database that leveraged the strong data standards already in place and established by its DFI team. “Pulling DEN’s data into the out-of-the-box tool was one of the most successful I’ve experienced to date,” said James Van Schoick, national geospatial manager at HNTB. “A good foundational hierarchy in your dataset removes a lot of barriers, which DEN has been establishing for more than a decade.”

In one business day, Patrick Gahagan, aviation GIS delivery manager at HNTB, took BIM files and transformed them into GIS data within the ArcGIS Indoors database. “It made a serious impact when I showed that to senior leadership,” said Seiter-Weatherford.

By rapidly converting design and construction model data into operational intelligence, DEN can now move from digital as-built information to usable insights in days instead of months. Requiring these practices from early design stages preserves data integrity throughout the project life cycle and delivers immediate value to operations, maintenance, and safety teams as soon as spaces open. This kind of data discipline has prepared DEN for the incorporation of major upcoming capital projects like the C West and North Terminal expansions, where integration of BIM deliverables to ArcGIS Indoors ensures DEN receives operational-ready data. It reduces rework, speeds commissioning, and allows new facilities to update the digital campus almost immediately.

Today, DEN’s completed database provides a full digital view of its indoor assets. For other airports looking to modernize their data management with ArcGIS Indoors, Welch advises, “Implement it with the future in mind and make sure you don’t have to go back and redo or completely rearchitect. Understanding the ArcGIS Indoors information model, its full potential with the rest of the Esri ecosystem, and how it rolls into your hierarchy is critical.”

Looking ahead, DEN is set to elevate its digital twin to a next-generation system by adding real-time asset tracking, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) compliance workflows, AI integration, and passenger-facing kiosks to deliver a smarter, more connected airport experience in partnership with HNTB.

Seiter-Weatherford remarked that the success of ArcGIS Indoors as an authoritative system of reference has opened new possibilities for the airport’s continuing digital transformation. “Eventually, we would like to have wayfinding so you can figure out where you need to go from a different part of the airport office building to a meeting room on a concourse, and leverage that same underlying IPS to support our operations and maintenance activities.”

DEN’s digital transformation journey illustrates how airports can prepare for dramatic growth while improving operational efficiency and the passenger experience. By building a solid foundation of trusted geographic data and thoughtfully adopting emerging capabilities like AI, DEN is well-positioned to achieve its Vision 100 goal and continue serving as a model for airport innovation.