Project Highlights:
- Rochester Public Utilities
- Headquartered in Rochester, MN
- Largest municipal utility in MN
- 57,000 electric customers
- 41,000 water customers
In the discovery phase of migrating its current water and electric data to Esri’s Advanced Network Management platform, Rochester Public Utilities (RPU), a municipal water and electric utility in southern Minnesota, is successfully using the cloud to prepare for the ArcGIS Utility Network (UN) model. This first step in RPU’s migration journey analyzed and evaluated the utility’s data and systems for both commodities in a cloud-based environment, providing a detailed data readiness plan to help the utility achieve its organizational goals and minimize its full migration effort.
Migration Readiness Assessment Goals
UDC’s UN Data Assessment Program endeavored to accurately determine RPU’s data readiness to move to the advanced network capabilities in ArcGIS Pro and the UN for its electric and water commodities, and in doing so, help reduce the migration effort required by its resources to assess and achieve ready state. RPU additionally sought to receive guidance in the best possible methodology for moving its unique data to the UN model as well as gain valuable insight into what the utility can do now to better prepare for migration to the platform.
To accomplish these objectives, UDC implemented the Amazon Web Service (AWS) GovCloud desktop to conduct a full UN data assessment of RPU’s electric and water data. Included in the assessment, UDC migrated complete UN datasets to ArcGIS Pro, configured sample subsets of electric and water subnetworks, defined RPU’s data needs for UN model alignment, and helped the utility understand the migration lift for its specific organization.
Working in the Cloud
RPU’s water and electric UN data was delivered in a cloud desktop with no start-up time required from the utility, helping to reduce the timeline and effort to set up a real-world lab environment. Along with direct access to view its migrated sample data in a secure cloud setting, RPU also had an opportunity to interact with its UN data using the platform’s tools and workflows in a sandbox ArcGIS Pro environment.
This hands-on experience allowed RPU and its users to learn about their individual data in the platform before full migration as well as discover how the new model differs from the current system, empowering the utility to make informed-migration related decisions for its organization and users as it continues its path to the new platform.
Evaluating Migration Readiness
To determine RPU’s migration readiness, UDC evaluated the utility’s electric and water data through a series of programmatically driven routines to assess the data quality and suitability to meet the requirements of the UN model. Leveraging our HEIDE (High-fidelity Export Import Data Exchange) tool and Toolkit for ArcGIS Pro during the assessment process greatly reduced the amount of data refinement and effort required by RPU’s resources, through limiting the amount of manual editing and configuration needed in the target databases.
The application of automated processes combined with the depth and breadth of the assessment are helping to increase the efficiency and business benefits of the utility’s future migration.
HEIDE
UDC’s HEIDE auto-migration tool was applied to perform a robust GIS data analysis for RPU’s water and electric datasets to determine fit and data completeness for the UN, migrating and mapping RPU’s custom relationships that did not align with the electric and water models. The comprehensiveness and extent of the analysis also helped to expand the functionality of the UN model for RPU by identifying what needs to be done now for the utility to achieve certain outcomes and functionalities in the new platform. This process provided the utility the ability to see how its individual data would function in the UN model, which is serving to guide the utility in the next steps of its migration journey.
Configured Sample Subnetworks
HEIDE also configured sample subsets of RPU’s electric and water subnetworks to determine the utility’s subnetwork readiness for the UN. This analysis suggested model enhancement recommendations for full subnetwork creation that will enable the utility to fully leverage the advanced tracing and network management functionalities once migrated over.
Increased Data Fidelity
With HEIDE in place, all future data posted to RPU’s system will undergo robust quality control checks until the utility is fully migrated to the new system, alerting RPU to any errors or data anomalies that are incompatible with the UN’s model requirements. Monitoring and fixing these issues ahead of full implementation will allow the utility to streamline the migration process and reduce the lift of moving its data over to the new platform.
Toolkit for ArcGIS Pro
UDC’s Toolkit for ArcGIS Pro, an expanding group of custom add-in tools, helped analyze RPU’s data at a deeper level by providing insight into opportunities for automated data resolution. UDC’s Toolkit was instrumental in reducing the effort of error resolution by automating fixes related to phase propagation, geometry, and connectivity.
Batching RPU’s data areas that did not adhere to the UN’s requirements, UDC’s Toolkit also enabled the team to create and add valid UN rules from RPU’s data into the system, directly from the tools. This functionality helped to streamline the error resolution process by resolving additional errors related to missing rules.
Creating an Effective Data Readiness Plan
The results from the assessment were leveraged to create a data readiness plan that details the steps for RPU to migrate its electric and water data to the UN at the level of functionality required to meet the utility’s business objectives. Regardless of the utility’s timeline for migration, the plan will allow RPU to apply substantial data updates to improve data fidelity and enhance its system in meaningful ways.
The plan detailed remediation options for addressing the UN errors identified during the assessments, including a level of effort classification, whether the remediation is required, recommended, or informational, and potential costs and benefits, where appropriate. These options permitted UDC to continue forward with the assessment while providing RPU real-time feedback on its data’s compatibility with the UN models.
Change Management Support
Several items within the data readiness plan can be addressed proactively to expediate and streamline the migration process. UDC created actionable items from the UN errors HEIDE identified by incrementally creating step-by-step instructions for RPU to resolve the errors independently going forward, providing validations to ensure the utility is performing the remediations correctly as the source data is updated.
The documentation included an error hierarchy with directions for fixing errors in a specific order to achieve a ‘trickle-down impact.’ By resolving certain errors first, such as geometry errors, RPU can fix multiple, related downstream errors concurrently – leading to less manual remediation. To accomplish this effect, UDC assigned a unique error key to each error combination detected during the assessments, creating groupings of the same error resolution recommendations to streamline cleanup activities. The errors were then appended into a helper database within the UN environment. UDC provided definition queries for each error combination, enabling RPU to apply the queries in the database and view the exact locations of where they occur in the GIS. UDC also implemented a progress tracker in the database for each error to help facilitate a coordinated cleanup effort.
“The thorough Utility Network readiness data assessment has provided us with clear, actionable steps to implement that will yield a smoother UN migration.”
Ryan Moore, Manager of Geographic Information Services at Rochester Public Utilities
These user-friendly queries allowed UDC to provide more targeted advice to RPU for fixing the errors without introducing new errors into the system, empowering RPU to efficiently manage and control certain aspects of its data cleanup without reliance on external support.
UN Data Assessment Components:
The aspects of the Esri UN Migration Data Assessment project include:
- Developing preliminary source to target data mappings to identify gaps between the source data model and the core UN model
- Performing analyses of water and electric GIS data to determine fit and completeness for UN model and to identify data geometry anomalies
- Loading source data into ArcGIS Pro and enabling UN
- Investigating UN errors and suggesting courses of error resolution
- Configuring samples subnetworks for water and electric and providing remediation recommendations for full subnetwork creation
- Generating a data readiness plan to help determine the needs for a full migration effort
- Providing access to data in a secure cloud environment
Equipping RPU with base evaluations for its water and electric networks in a secure cloud setting, the migration readiness assessment provided RPU with vital insight for understanding the required next steps for moving its electric and water data to the UN models as well as helped the utility determine the lift for migrating its individual data. These outcomes, coupled with the hands-on experience in ArcGIS Pro enabled by the cloud environment, are helping RPU effectively prepare its organization for a successful Advanced Network Management implementation.
For more information on how your organization can prepare for migration, see Considerations for Migrating Water Data to the Utility Network.