The Hidden Risk Lurking in Your GIS Data
The Hidden Risk Lurking in Your GIS Data
Published: May 8, 2025
You could have the smartest grid on the planet. Real-time SCADA feeds. A powerful outage management system. Mobile work orders flying to every field tech.
But if your GIS data is wrong – if poles are misplaced, pipes disconnected, or rules broken – then the whole system stumbles.
Truck rolls take longer, while regulators start circling. Leadership starts asking uncomfortable questions, and the trust you’ve built inside your utility is gone in an instant.
The truth is, your utility’s digital twin is only as smart as the data behind it.
Small errors snowball into big costs. Connectivity gaps derail outage modeling, while schema drift slows storm recovery, and bad asset records invite FERC, NERC, and EPA penalties.
Ignore the data, and you’ll pay for it – in dollars, delays, and damaged reputations.
The New Reality: ArcGIS Utility Network Raises the Stakes
Esri’s Utility Network (UN) model promises a new era of smarter grids with a better way to manage your assets through real-time editing, advanced tracing, and IoT fusion.
But there’s a catch…
UN enforces strict topology and attribute rules. Legacy geometric networks? They rarely make the cut.
Esri’s Migration Toolset can help if your data is already pristine. However, skip validation, and you’ll be chasing errors for months after go-live, bleeding time, money, and trust.
No wonder early adopters now call “pre-migration data governance” the biggest hidden cost of the entire UN transition.
Proof: How Early Movers Beat the Curve
Utilities like Hunter Water didn’t wait for disaster. They used 1Spatial’s 1Integrate for ArcGIS to validate and clean their networks.
Closer to home, Holland Board of Public Works reached its UN go-live on budget and ahead of schedule.
The result? Complex migrations completed in under 100 business days.
How?
By running a UN Readiness App and pre-built rulesets before migration began.
Clean first. Migrate second. That’s the winning playbook.
Why Most GIS Teams Are Still Fighting the Wrong Battle
If you’re still relying on manual QA and spreadsheets, you’re fighting a battle you can’t win.
Today’s data governance needs to:
- Validate continuously. Nightly rule runs flag errors before they cause trouble.
- Cleanse automatically. Engines fix known issues on the fly—and log every change.
- Integrate everywhere. One clean source of truth, shared across OMS, SCADA, EAM, and mobile systems.
- Audit by design. Every edit documented, every regulator satisfied.
That’s not a pipe dream. It’s exactly what automation platforms like 1Integrate deliver today.
Five Quick Wins You Can Start This Month
- Audit your rules. Document what your network should do—and what it doesn’t.
- Run a readiness scan. Surface hidden data blockers early.
- Prioritize high-impact fixes. Start where outages or compliance risks loom largest.
- Schedule continuous validation. Make quality a daily habit, not a year-end scramble.
- Share your metrics. Let leadership see error counts drop—and confidence rise.
What Comes Next: Clean Data, Faster Decisions
Automation can take your GIS team from reactive editors to proactive stewards of enterprise data.
It’s not just about fixing errors. It’s about delivering a GIS that leadership, field crews, and regulators trust—without second-guessing.
Your GIS can do more. Let’s prove it—with your data.