Kentucky GIS Conference 2024

In March, 2023, The New York Times ran a story describing a broken 48-inch water main in Jackson, Mississippi gushing 5 million gallons of water each day. This was only one in an entire catalog of problems facing the city’s water department. Jackson, Mississippi’s capitol, has one of the most fragile water systems in the US. The city routinely deals with supply problems, contamination, pipe breaks, low water pressure, and boil-water notices. Decades in the making, this situation became a crisis in August, 2022, when flooding knocked out the city’s water treatment plants. State and federal disaster declarations kicked off a massive effort to rebuild the crippled utility into a resilient, reliable water source. Starting with paper maps, Stantec assembled an ESRI Utility Network from historic utility records and field data collection. Jackson can use this UN to be the single source of truth; to track repairs, maintenance, and upgrades, and maintain uninterrupted service to residents.