Case Study: American Electric Power promotes economic development and business attraction with ESRI ArcGIS Desktop

Utility Promotes Economic Development with ArcGIS Desktop

American Electric Power (AEP), which serves parts of 11 states across a 200,000‑square‑mile territory, needed a way to promote business expansion and community development and to provide site selectors with clear feasibility analysis on its redesigned aeped.com site. To make location intelligence accessible to economic developers and prospects, AEP turned to ESRI technologies including ArcGIS Desktop/ArcGIS Pro and the Business Analyst web app.

Using ESRI’s ArcGIS tools, AEP built thematic and analytical maps and drive‑time polygons to visualize demographics, business data, and site accessibility on its website. The ESRI-powered solution helped the economic development team support 170 attraction and retention projects in 2015, contributing to the creation of 22,500 jobs across AEP’s service territory.

American Electric Power

Mark James

Vice President of Economic and Business Development