Overview

Launched as a pilot program in 2021, The Coastal Villages Region Fund (CVRF) partnered with The Alaska Mapping Company — A Kenai, Alaska based GIS services firm with decades of experience working with rural and remote Alaskan communities — to begin the CVRF Community Mapping Initiative, aimed at digitally mapping rural communities in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region of Alaska. Based on the initial success of this initiative, which received both state and national acclaim, CVRF expanded the initiative to include all 20 of its member communities. Following a successful launch, CVRF expanded its scope of work to include drone-based imagery collection and water level management (in partnership with JOA Surveys).

As CVRF expanded the geographic scope of its geospatial data development and regional data portfolio, it was also growing its team. On the recommendation of The Alaska Mapping Company, CVRF proactively sought out a partner with the geospatial software engineering capabilities to help CVRF implement an enterprise GIS database. Through Esri’s partner directory, CVRF identified Sanborn Geospatial and ultimately selected it as its implementation partner.

Transitioning to an Enterprise Database Architecture

While CVRF was able to accomplish much with off-the-shelf software and solutions, the need for more robust tools for multi-user editing, data dissemination and team coordination pointed them to ESRI’s ArcGIS Enterprise as the ideal centralized solution. The addition of Sanborn Geospatial to the partnership added additional expertise to the CVRF GIS team’s existing strengths to work with and rapidly adapt to an ever-increasing number of critical datasets.

With the Alaska Mapping Company technicians providing crucial place-based mapping insights and CVRF bringing the much-needed community engagement and perspective, Sanborn Geospatial, in conjunction with their ESRI partner, was able to help formulate a technical approach to achieve the desired goals and prepare the full team for continued geospatial success.

With CVRF at the center of the effort, providing essential community-centered data collection and visualization, experience, and local knowledge, and the Alaska Mapping Company serving as a catalyst through crucial data insights, Sanborn Geospatial architected and deployed a technical foundation for CVRF’s growing aspirations through a practical technical approach. Together, the teams established a strong foundation to support each other and achieve geospatial success.

Establishing an Authoritative Database

Sanborn Geospatial partnered with CVRF to design and build a customized ArcGIS Enterprise system that directly addressed CVRF’s identified needs. These solutions ensure that CVRF has a scalable, maintainable GIS environment for every community. Sanborn Geospatial facilitated a highly collaborative approach: meeting with CVRF leadership and users, reviewing their existing systems and workflows, and iterating designs based on feedback. The outcome is a robust enterprise infrastructure designed for CVRF’s unique situation, improving data quality, responsiveness, and enabling new types of data collection.

CVRF staff will utilize this enterprise-based approach to facilitate new ways to collect data and capture key assets across all communities. This structural upgrade allows for collaborative, near- real-time updates to these datasets to; prepare for community expansion, respond to extreme weather events, perform utility asset management, and facilitate community and stakeholder engagement.

The new ArcGIS Enterprise system allows all CVRF staff, and community collaborators to work in a single authoritative database, with near-real- time updates being tracked across all communities. This system additionally allows the CVRF GIS staff to work within the specific state plane zones that vary throughout their operational region. To streamline workflows, the system implements automated processes to consolidate these state plane zone datasets into a single, master, database for dissemination to relevant stakeholders and government agencies.

The new ArcGIS Enterprise system is also integrated with CVRF’s well- established (and widely adopted) ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Hub sites, which continue to serve each community with an emphasis on locally focused data. Leveraging the enterprise system as their backbone, these sites will display near-live data through automated update processes.

Details

Needs Assessment and Design

Sanborn Geospatial began with a detailed Architecture Review of CVRF's existing GIS setup. A comprehensive needs assessment and preliminary design document, outlining an enterprise architecture suited to CVRF's workflows, was developed. This included documenting how users create, edit, and share data across villages. The new GIS solution would need to host village maps and boundaries of infrastructure locations (airstrips, ports, facilities, housing, utilities), project updates and planning information, as well as environmental or coastal data affecting communities.

From this analysis, Sanborn Geospatial produced a Preliminary Design & Recommendations report. This document laid out an optimal enterprise GIS architecture for CVRF, recommending a multi-tier deployment in Azure, central geodatabases for spatial data, and improvements to CVRF's online workflows. Sanborn proposed methods for harmonizing datasets from different zones, which comprise multiple State Plane coordinate zones, and for capturing community feedback directly into the enterprise system. CVRF reviewed this design, provided iterative feedback, and collaborated with Sanborn Geospatial to refine the architecture to meet their operational goals.

Implementation, Testing, and Launch

With a new and organized ArcGIS Portal site, new workflows were created for community-driven data updates. From there, Sanborn Geospatial helped CVRF establish an Azure virtual network (subnet) to host their GIS servers. This provides secure, cloud-based hardware that CVRF owns. The system is now fully up and running on Azure. CVRF can log in to its ArcGIS Enterprise portal and use it much like a local server-based GIS, but with the flexibility of the cloud.

CVRF's existing geospatial datasets (maps of villages, utilities, etc.) were imported into the new enterprise geodatabases. Sanborn also reorganized CVRF's ArcGIS Online. Outdated or duplicate services are still in the process of being archived (as of July 2026), and new feature layers are being published where appropriate. Clear group and item structures were established so staff can find and update web maps easily. Automated data-management tools (scripts) and improved dataflows are leveraged to ensure all local edits across zones are merged correctly each night.

To handle edits from multiple zones, Sanborn Geospatial implemented nightly scripts. Overnight, the system runs an automated job that compares data edited by core GIS users, applies any necessary reprojections, and merges them into a consistent spatial database. This ensures that, for example, a boundary updated in one zone will appear correctly throughout the dataset.

Key Results

Unified Enterprise System: CVRF now has a centralized ArcGIS Enterprise environment in Azure, providing a more cohesive foundation for consistent data management, faster analysis, and future growth.

Automated Data Integrity: Nightly processing scripts maintain data integrity across coordinate zones, saving staff time each week that was previously spent on manual data merging.

Improved Collaboration: With the new portal and workflows, GIS and non-GIS users can contribute data more effectively. CVRF can capture field edits immediately and incorporate community feedback routinely.

Scalable and Documented: The solution is designed for CVRF’s future needs. Detailed design documents and training materials mean CVRF can upgrade or expand the system (e.g. adding more apps or data) with confidence.

This project highlights how Sanborn Geospatial’s tailored approach — focusing on CVRF’s specific mission and constraints — delivered a practical, sustainable geospatial solution rather than a one-size-fits-all GIS implementation.

A Continued Partnership, Full of Opportunities

After the success of this Enterprise Implementation, CVRF, The Alaska Mapping Company, and Sanborn Geospatial aim to continue this robust partnership into the future. This powerhouse team, leveraging each of their areas of expertise, will continue to provide geospatial excellence to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region and potentially beyond. CVRF during this time has continued to expand their geographic scope to include drone-based imagery collection and water level measurements. In the near future, the team plans to develop procedures for storage, capture, and data governance recommendations for these new and existing initiatives. This continuing relationship between the three teams has become a trifecta of geospatial excellence that continues to boldly expand the geospatial footprint within the region.