Engineering-grade, production-ready reference for modeling, tracing, and automating pipe and cable utility networks.
🌐 Visit the live site → www.utilitynetwork.org
Utility Network is a deep, hands-on reference for the engineers who keep water, gas, and electric networks running as data. It is written for utility engineers, GIS technicians, Python automation builders, and infrastructure teams who need to move beyond static maps to a topology-aware network model — and to automate the workflows that model makes possible.
Every page is built for real production use, not demos. The guidance combines the architectural reasoning behind a workflow with concrete, copy-paste Python, validation checkpoints, and integration patterns. Code blocks are runnable, diagrams are hand-authored, and every recommendation is grounded in the operational realities of running critical infrastructure.
- Runnable, not hand-wavy. Working Python built on the tools utilities actually use —
arcpy, NetworkX, GeoPandas, Shapely, and OR-Tools — with type hints, exception handling, and structured, auditable output. - Correctness first. Traces, isolation logic, and impact analysis are treated as deterministic computations over a validated topology, because a confident wrong answer is worse than no answer when crews and customers are on the line.
- Standards-aligned. Compliance guidance points at primary sources — AWWA G400, EPA Safe Drinking Water Act, NERC CIP, ISO 55001, and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework — and shows how each workflow produces the audit trail a regulator expects.
- Genuinely visual. Every reference carries original, accessible diagrams that explain the hardest idea on the page, and they adapt cleanly to light and dark reading.
- Densely cross-linked. Concepts link to the workflow that explains them on first mention, so you can follow a real problem from architecture down to a single copy-paste routine.
| Area | What you'll find |
|---|---|
| Core Utility GIS Fundamentals & Network Models | The topology-aware data model, coordinate-reference alignment, asset hierarchy design, ingestion pipelines, and precision standards that everything else depends on. |
| Topology & Tracing Workflows | Connectivity rules, upstream and downstream tracing, valve and isolator barrier logic, batch processing in Python, and automated error handling. |
| Outage Routing & Impact Automation | Real-time SCADA and AMI telemetry, impact analysis and affected-customer tracing, and crew dispatch with route optimization. |
| Asset Lifecycle & Maintenance Automation | Condition-based maintenance scheduling, lifecycle state machines, CMMS and GIS work-order integration, and automated regulatory compliance reporting. |
New to topology-aware networks? Start with Understanding UN vs. traditional GIS networks and follow the cross-links from there.
This repository holds the source for the site — content and templates — built as a fast, dependency-light static site.
- Content lives in
content/as Markdown, one folder per page. - Templates, styles, and assets live in
src/. - The site is generated with Eleventy and served as static files.
npm install # install build dependencies
npm run build # generate the static site into _site/
npm run serve # preview locally with live reloadIssues and pull requests that improve technical accuracy, add runnable examples, or sharpen the diagrams are welcome. Please keep code runnable, keep external references pointed at primary and official documentation, and match the existing engineering-grade tone.
www.utilitynetwork.org · Built for utility engineers, GIS technicians, and infrastructure teams.