Navajo Tribal Utility Authority Overview
- Located in Fort Defiance, AZ
- Provides electric, water, wastewater, natural gas, solar energy, and communications services to the Navajo Nation
Project Highlights
Project Duration: 01/2025 – 03/2025
Objective: Develop GIS-ADMS Roadmap
UDC is excited to announce its continued work with the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA) on the utility’s electric GIS modernization initiative.
Founded in 1959 as a small water utility, NTUA has evolved into the largest multi-utility enterprise owned and operated by an American Indian tribe. The utility’s commitment to the Navajo Nation and its people has been a driving force behind the recent GIS upgrade initiative.
UDC first collaborated with NTUA to evaluate the readiness of the utility’s electric distribution data for the ArcGIS® Utility Network and Network Information Management System. For this initiative, UDC configured the Esri applications and ArcGIS Enterprise extensions in a UDC cloud environment and assessed the data’s completeness for the new model. This project was an essential step for NTUA on its journey to implementing an Advanced Distribution Management System (ADMS).
Building on the previous project work, UDC and NTUA are creating a roadmap to upgrade the utility’s electric distribution GIS from the geometric network model to the Utility Network. This effort includes assessing the current GIS environment, designing the future-state system architecture, and developing a detailed implementation plan and budget.
Project Goals
NTUA sought UDC’s help with ensuring that its Utility Network data supports the future ADMS implementation. The roadmap serves as a blueprint for the remaining phases of NTUA’s GIS upgrade as well as the ADMS deployment. While the roadmap focuses specifically on the electric data, it can also be leveraged by the utility for its other commodities – water, gas, sewer, and fiber.
UDC’s Role
The roadmap initiative consists of three phases. First, UDC is documenting the current state of NTUA’s data, applications, interfaces, analyses, and reporting in the GIS environment along with the future requirements for the GIS and related business functions. Next, UDC is using its reference enterprise solution architectures to develop a model for the future system architecture. This phase also involves analyzing related GIS areas, such as integrations, impacts on technology and applications, systems integration methods and tools, and enterprise IT tools. Finally, the roadmap is created and organized into business releases for the data and system migration, change management tasks, GIS governance, and deployable architecture.