Weed Abatement for Fire Prevention Using GIS

Every year the City of Merced's Fire Department conducts a weed abatement survey to identify and locate areas where weed over-growth can cause a potential fire hazard.  

Residents are required to maintain their properties year round by removing weeds as well as other combustible debris such as junk wood, dead trees, and dead brush. Adherence to the ordinance is critical during the dry season.

Interwest partnered with the City’s GIS department to quickly develop a web based inspection application to help track all the information tied to the weed abatement survey. 

Read more here: http://www.mercedsunstar.com/news/local/article3259195.html#storylink=cpy

The GIS application helped the city gather the information in just a few weeks, allowing staff to analyze the data and work with citizens on mitigating the potential fire hazards.

Interested in having Interwest's GIS Solutions team create a web application for your agency?  Contact the GIS Team to get started. 

Drought Response and Water Conservation with GIS

The City of Elk Grove's citizens are served by multiple water purveyors. Each agency is responsible for determining rationing and restrictions of its customers as California faces the most severe drought in recorded history. The City created a web page to help citizens determine which agency services their home and their home's permitted watering days and times. 

Interwest's GIS team assisted this effort by creating a web map for citizens to determine which agency services their home.

In addition to the webmap, Interwest created a widget for the webpage that allows a citizen to look up their address and determine their watering restrictions. Addresses auto-fill as the citizen types, the citizen selects the appropriate address and searches.

The widget accesses the rest end point of the ArcGIS Online hosted feature service to display restrictions based on the water purveyor servicing that address and the even/odd address number of the parcel.

Interested in having Interwest's GIS Solutions team assist with your agency's drought response efforts?  Contact the GIS Team to get started. 

CSD Demonstrates Storm Water Compliance Using GIS

Cosumnes Community Services District (CSD) needed to create an inventory of drainage inlets to meet California State Water Control Board storm sewer system requirements.

Interwest acquired data, created map products, and a custom webpage to view and edit the data:

• Data exports acquired from the City of Elk Grove
• Web map of inlets, pipelines, and outfalls in or near the CSD’s parks and fire stations
• Field inspections to add inlets within the District’s parks
• Custom webpage to display the inlet details and images

The data creation process included starting with the infrastructure provided by the City of Elk Grove, removing inlets, pipeline and outfalls that were not connected to CSD’s parks or firestation, adding new inlets that were within CSD’s properties, and mapping them to their appropriate outfall. Field inspections were conducted using Collector for ArcGIS to add inlets and their related details and photos.

The District is able to demonstrate the flow of storm water from inlet to outfall to the California State Water Control Board for each of their properties, track inspection date, watershed area, ownership information and images to assist with state requirements as well as maintenance efforts. 

The webpage allows staff to edit live data from the rest end point of the hosted feature class; any changes to the inlets on the webpage are available immediately on the map in ArcGIS Online or Collector for ArcGIS. 

Interested in having Interwest's GIS Solutions team assist with your agency's State Water Control Board requirements?  Contact the GIS Team to get started.

LED Retrofit Utilizes ArcGIS Platform

Interwest provides GIS services to local government agencies to assist in field collection and citizen communication. The goal of this project was to provide field collection tools for staff converting streetlights to LED and a communication tool to share the progress with citizens in the City of Elk Grove.  The City was already using ArcGIS Online as a platform to collaborate with GIS and other data so this tool was the natural solution to support the LED retrofit.

FIELD INSPECTIONS 

To ensure accurate cost estimates an inventory of all lights was conducted using Collector for ArcGIS.  Missing lights were added, retired lights were removed and the description of light types was updated.  This data was exported for inclusion in the Request For Proposals.  Once the project was under way the installation contractor also utilized Collector to track the date each light was modified.  The view of the data for field crews was limited to just the attributes they needed to modify. 

COMMUNICATION

Project mangers were able to review the data for lights as they were replaced. They could inspect and accept each light as appropriate.  A very streamlined webmap application was created to show the public the status of lights as they were completed.   

KEY BENEFITS

Ease of use  -  Installation crews received one hour of  introductory training.  They modified GIS data for over 10,000 streetlights and did not request technical assistance at all throughout the process.

Up-to-the-minute data – Utilizing a platform that is accessible to all stakeholders allowed the data being captured in the field to be accessible to project mangers and citizens immediately.  

Centrally tracked data eliminated the situation of data inconsistency that often occurs when multiple copies of data is stored.

A grid showing the scheduled dates for installation showed citizens when to expect work in their neighborhood. The exact installation status of each light displayed the specific progress on each street.

The billing process was very efficient enabling staff to authorize payment on exactly the lights that were installed – per the vendors field data entry.

Speed of system deployment - A sample version of the database was created and accessible to the field crews in less than a week.

Most changes that were requested during the project were able to be accomplished immediately with no disruption to the field crews workflow.

BEFORE & AFTER

Images available on the City's website.

URISA News

Interwest is proud to announce GIS Analyst Jason Latoski has been re-elected to the Northern California URISA Board.  Congratulations Jason!

Hope to see you at URISA's Cal GIS Conference in Sacramento June 1 - 3rd.

Empowering Citizens' Emergency Preparedness with GIS

Interwest's GIS team created an interactive webmap to allow the citizens of Elk Grove to quickly locate the nearest open location to pick-up sandbags, enabling citizens to be prepared for the upcoming storm.  The map is embedded in the City's website at this link.

http://www.egpublicworks.org/flood-sandbags.asp

Utilizing GIS for Event Planning and Permit Review

The City of Elk Grove’s Community Event and Project Coordinator requested a series of printed maps for each of the City’s community events.  She used the maps to make event layouts for vendors, parking, first aid, and security.  For events hosted by a citizen, she passed the printed maps along to the event coordinator who would mark them up and submit plans for an event permit.  The marked up paper maps were then given back to Interwest GIS staff to create a final event map.

Intewest’s GIS team streamlined this paper process by creating an ArcGIS Online map template for event coordination and trained staff to use the template to make web maps for each event.  The City’s event coordinator is now able to create her own event mark ups of any area of the city.

The City also provides this tool to the public to submit event plans without needing to setup meetings and provide revisions.  The City’s event coordinator and the citizen are now able to set up conference calls and edit the web map markups in real time.

The City’s event coordinator reported that the new resource will efficiently communicate logistical information across multiple departments and will be extremely useful in reviewing plans with community event organizers and planning our own City events.

Interested in having Interwest's GIS Solutions team create streamlined GIS solutions for your organization?  Contact the GIS Team to get started.