Water Outage Map Gives Seattle Residents And Staff Crucial Information

By Christa Campbell

When Seattle residents turn on the tap to find their water has been shut down—usually for an emergency repair or scheduled maintenance—they can now call up an online map to see the extend of the outage, what caused the outage, and when the water will return.

Seattle Public Utilities recently unveiled this new map, built with geographic information system (GIS) technology, so the city’s more than 800,000 residents can easily search for information about local water shutdowns and zoom in to street level to view impacted properties. The move was inspired by community demand after Seattle City Light created a similar electrical outage map.