High Winds Mean High Time for GIS Technology

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Central Lincoln uses GIS to link information in the automated call system to corresponding services.

With extreme winds, a lot of our transmission and distribution lines are susceptible to trees

Redlands, California (PRWEB) June 9, 2009

Living in the Kite Capital of the World means lovely Saturday afternoons for most residents of Lincoln County, Oregon. However, for utility crews, it means extensive efforts to keep the power flowing despite outrageous winds that send trees crashing into electric lines.

Central Lincoln People's Utility District found a faster way to prevent and fix such outages with vegetation and outage management based on geographic information system (GIS) technology from ESRI. The utility serves approximately 38,000 customers along the central Oregon coast--a strip 100 miles long and 2 miles wide.

"With extreme winds, a lot of our transmission and distribution lines are susceptible to trees," said Neal Myers, GIS supervisor for Central Lincoln People's Utility District. "Through GIS, we are able to link our voice recognition system with customer information. When we get an outage call, we are able to quickly create a work order and deploy field crews directly to the trouble areas."

Central Lincoln recently gained greater access to GIS technology by joining ESRI's Small Utility Enterprise License Agreement (SU-ELA) program, designed to make GIS more affordable for utilities in the United States with 100,000 meters/connections or fewer. Through the SU-ELA program, utilities are assured unlimited deployments of ESRI's ArcGIS platform over a three-year term. Additional program benefits include maintenance and support for products, staff training, and passes to ESRI's International User Conference.

At the heart of the SU-ELA program is ESRI's ArcGIS software, an open, scalable, and interoperable platform that provides a complete system to create, serve, and use geographic information. An enterprise GIS, based on ArcGIS technology, benefits designers, analysts, decision makers, field staff, and customers through mobile, Web server, and desktop applications.

For more information on the SU-ELA program and to listen to the SU-ELA podcast, visit http://www.esri.com/suela. To speak to an expert, call 800-447-9778, ext. 2990.

About ESRI
Since 1969, ESRI has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, ESRI software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. ESRI applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. ESRI is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at http://www.esri.com.

ESRI, the ESRI globe logo, GIS by ESRI, ArcGIS, http://www.esri.com, and @esri.com are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of ESRI in the United States, the European Community, or certain other jurisdictions. Other companies and products mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective trademark owners.

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