Esri Community Member Spotlight: Brian Colson
This monthly series of member spotlights features you and your peers here in Esri Community — the people playing a role in finding solutions, sharing ideas, and collaborating to solve problems with GIS. We’re doing this to recognize amazing user contributions, to example how Esri Community’s purpose is being brought to life, and to bring depth to this group of incredible people who may never meet in person, but who benefit from each other’s generous expertise.
Getting to Know the Salt River Project
Positioned at the beating heart of Arizona, the Salt River Project (SRP) is a non-profit utility that supplies power and water to more than 2 million residents. Its founding organization, the Salt River Valley Water Users’ Association (Association), was established in 1903 — nearly a decade before Arizona would even achieve statehood.
The Association began when a collective of local farmers and ranchers, desperate to parry threats from droughts and flooding, joined hands in taking a risk. Together, they put up the lands they lived on and worked as collateral to secure a loan through the National Reclamation Act; funds they’d use to build the Theodore Roosevelt Dam.
Explore SRP's rich past in their ArcGIS heritage map and historical timeline
120 years later and with a great many milestones in between (including the Association taking on management and operation of the Salt River Project in 1917) recipients of SRP’s production are now more urban than agricultural. The need for water supply and energy stability remains as important as ever, though, and perhaps more so as climate change threatens Arizona’s water resources and increases pressure on energy systems.
Enter Esri Community member Brian Colson (@Brian_Colson), *Senior GIS Administrator at the Salt River Project. When our Esri Community team discovered that Brian was present at Esri User Conference 2022, we requested a meetup to learn more about him and how our platform supports the important work he does for SRP.
A Utility Network Proof-of-Concept
Retreating from the buzz of crowds inside the San Diego Convention Center, we accompanied Brian to a second-story walkway bordered by potted greens and overlooking a street with gently moving traffic. An industrial air conditioner hummed persistently against the afternoon heat.
We were delighted to quickly discover that Brian was at User Conference not just as an observer but as a presenter for the session Utility Network Migration Lessons Learned for Water Utilities — a walkthrough on using ArcGIS to support gravity-fed irrigation systems. What’s more, the subject of his presentation included a direct connection to Esri Community.
" ... when I've had questions with [the prototype] I've put my questions in the
Esri Community and those Solutions Engineers that we work with responded
in the Community, actually, relatively quickly. "
Brian and his team migrated to ArcGIS Pro in 2018, beginning the process of getting SRP’s analysts familiar with the application ahead of moving to the Utility Network. Their new Utility Network implementation is expected to go into their production environment at the end of January 2023.
That work meaningfully advanced in May of 2020 when Esri’s ArcGIS Solutions team published a Prototype Utility Network Data Model for Irrigation Districts to Esri Community. This model was created in collaboration with Salt River Project and another irrigation district. It’s the framework that SRP is building its Utility Network data model on for their project and aided the team in scripting out their entire process.
Because of how Esri Community works, the collaboration didn’t end at the prototype’s publication. Brian shared, “… when I’ve had questions with [the prototype], I’ve put my questions in the Esri Community and those Solution Engineers that we work with responded in the Community, actually, relatively quickly.”
Though there’s still ground to cover, Brian touched on one of the project benefits he looks forward to the most: “For me, the biggest thing will be to provide an internal client the ability to trace via a web map, rather than having a full-blown ArcGIS Desktop installation.” SRP’s Utility Network is expected to push to production at the end of January 2023.
A Great Place to Ask or Answer Questions
When Brian had first heard about Esri Community at a prior User Conference he wasn’t exactly sure how he’d end up using the platform. But he joined anyways.
Brian soon enough came to recognize that, as someone working on a specialized solution, Esri Community has a lot to offer someone in his position.
" It's been a great place to be able to answer questions or get questions
answered as a part of being on the Esri Community. "
He’s tuned into the cyclical nature of the platform by not just seeking help but also offering it to others when encountering posted questions within his expertise to answer.
Brian wasn’t bragging when he reflected, “I’ve seen where other users have posted questions about how to do something, and I’ve gone on the Community site and answered their questions for them.”
He summed up the communal benefits: “It’s been a great place to be able to answer questions or get questions answered as a part of being on the Esri Community.”
*In the time frame between interviewing and publishing this article, Brian's title changed from Senior IT Systems Analyst to Senior GIS Administrator.
Brian Colson is Senior GIS Administrator at the Salt River Project in Arizona. He and his team began migrating to ArcGIS Pro in 2018 — the first step in building a new utility network for SRP’s irrigation system, a process that’s included aid from the ArcGIS Solutions team and Esri Community. Their new Utility Network is expected to push to production in late January 2023.