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Custom GIS Layers — Bringing Your Own Data into Prophetic

How to bring your own GIS data — utility layers, infrastructure, district boundaries, and more — into Prophetic's map environment.

Written by Mikaila McLane

Custom GIS layers let you bring your own spatial data into Prophetic — city and county infrastructure layers, utility networks, school district boundaries, flood control districts, environmental overlays, or any other geographic data your team relies on for site analysis. Instead of bouncing between Prophetic and a separate GIS tool, everything lives in one map.

What You Can Bring In

Any spatial data that can be expressed as a map layer is a candidate for integration. Common examples include:

  • City and county water and sewer mains

  • Stormwater and drainage infrastructure

  • Electric and gas utility corridors

  • School district attendance boundaries

  • Fire district boundaries

  • Specific plan areas and overlay districts not captured in base zoning data

  • State and federal agency layers (Army Corps, Fish & Wildlife, etc.)

  • Custom market or acquisition boundaries your team uses internally

How It Works

Custom GIS layer integration is handled by the Prophetic team — layers are deployed directly into your organization's map environment. Once deployed, the layer appears in your map layers panel alongside Prophetic's native layers and can be toggled on and off like any other layer.

What We Need From You

A link to the data from a public GIS portal is the primary and preferred way to submit a layer request. Most city and county GIS departments publish their data openly and for free — if you're not sure where to find the right portal, search for "[city or county name] GIS open data." Most municipalities publish their layers on platforms like ArcGIS Open Data, ESRI Hub, or their own city/county GIS portal. Common formats that work include Shapefile, GeoJSON, KML/KMZ, and GeoPackage. Requests submitted with a GIS link are typically deployed within a few business days.

If you only have a PDF: Before submitting a PDF, we strongly encourage you to search for the same data as a GIS link first — even if you already have the PDF in hand. The majority of publicly available map data also exists as a downloadable GIS file, and finding that link will get your layer live dramatically faster. Your account manager can help you locate the right source if you're not finding it.

If you've exhausted every option and a GIS link genuinely doesn't exist, you can submit the PDF and we'll add it to the queue. Be aware that PDF-based requests require significant manual processing and there is no guaranteed turnaround timeline — it could be weeks or months depending on volume. We prioritize PDF requests where a deal is actively at risk and no alternative data source exists. "I need this layer for my workflow" is not the same as "I have a deal closing and this data is a blocker" — the latter is when to flag urgency to your account manager.

How to Request a Custom Layer

Contact your account manager or reach out via Support inside the platform. Include:

  • The layer you need and the geographic area it covers

  • A link to the public GIS portal or data source — or let us know if only a PDF is available and why a GIS link couldn't be found

  • How you plan to use it — this helps the team configure the layer display appropriately

Custom GIS layer integration is available on Expert and Enterprise plans. Not on Expert or Enterprise yet? Talk to your account team.

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