As stated in Illinois Public Act 093-0687: “No license shall be issued for the sale at retail of any alcoholic liquor within 100 feet of any church, school other than an institution of higher learning, hospital, home for aged or indigent persons or for veterans… ” and “nor to the renewal of a license for the sale at retail of alcoholic liquor on premises within 100 feet of any church or school where the church or school has been established within such 100 feet since the issuance of the original license. In the case of a church, the distance of 100 feet shall be measured to the nearest part of any building used for worship services or educational programs and not to property boundaries.” The Village of Wheeling takes this law a step further and restricts liquor licenses within 100 ft of the property boundary and not the building.
The Village of Wheeling put together a map showing 100 ft boundaries around all schools in churches in the village to give them an idea of where there might be conflicts for any business looking to purchase a liquor license. Instead of taking the time to measure out distances by hand, the map displays what areas could be included in the restricted area. Although not the final determination of whether a liquor license meets the village requirements, the map allows village staff to get an idea where the restricted areas exist.
The Village of Norridge has begun putting together a village parking inventory for all public and private parking lots. The inventory will allow the village to determine whether each parking lot meets all regulations for such things as size and number of handicapped spaces. The inventory will also allow economic development to help sell properties by providing the prospective buyer with the amount of parking spaces available for customers.
By using the aerial imagery that the Village of Norridge acquired, every space in every parking lot is accounted for. The spaces are then linked to their respective parking lots. By linking the spaces, the village has the opportunity to easily and quickly sort through categories such as handicapped and paid parking spaces. Using GIS has allowed the Village of Norridge to put together a village wide parking inventory to help police village regulations and help spur economic development.
The Village of Lincolnshire has a rich intranet based mapping application MapOffice™ Advanced for all village users to access while on the network. The application has tools designed to fulfill business processes of the village staff to obtain information on a daily basis. MapOffice™ Advanced has a specific view to show Digital Terrain and Contour Information for viewing elevation data. Some users informed the GIS Department that they would like view just the Contour Information separate from the Terrain View. The goal was to provide village staff with a cleaner version of the Contour Information which could be used when printing Utility Infrastructure Maps. It was decided that a Custom Contour Overlay would be created to fulfill this request.
The GIS Department created and specific data layer that would display the Contour Information and worked with development staff to load this data layer as a Custom Overlay view within the MapOffice™ Application. When the data layer was completed, reviewed, and approved the application was updated to reflect the overlay. The end result gave village staff the ability to display the overlay when needed and print simple Contour and Utility Maps from MapOffice™ Advanced.
Lake Forest will be celebrating its 150th Anniversary next year, and with that celebration is a potential record-sized fireworks display that is in the planning. The idea is to have every resident of the city be able to view fireworks from their home. GIS has been able to help with planning this out by showing the committee the areas that require cover, as well as using the supplied data of minimum safety distances and viewing coverages for different sized fireworks.
The project included land use analysis, creating buffers, and using aerial photography to determine good launch sites and areas that can be excluded from the coverage. While this is only in its initial stages of planning, GIS will nonetheless be available to help further make this event a success.
As a member of the GIS Consortium the Village of Riverside participates in an annual data collection process which allows them to obtain remotely sensed information, or data collected from a distance. An advantage for the community is that they receive cost savings being a part of such a large group contracting these services. Data collection from the past two years has provided planimetric data such as buildings, driveways, roadways, etc. This spring the village collected a new orthophoto. This orthophoto is a series of aerial photos that have been geometrically corrected and referenced to remove distortions and properly represent the location of features in the image.
A quality control procedure was conducted to check for issues with image color, distortion, quality, shadow, and seam lines. When the final product is provided the village will have access to a 3 inch resolution orthophoto that will support planning and preliminary design, map presentation, utility mapping, infrastructure alignment, provide a historical record of development, and much more. This product is quite improved from the other imagery available, being a 1 foot resolution orthophoto from 2005.
Coordination between the Elk Grove Village Public Works and GIS Departments recently has enabled integration of televised sewer records into the GIS system. The initial objective of this effort was to be able to show where televising has taken place and link, or access, the corresponding videos by clicking on the sewer mains in a dynamic map. An added benefit was realized during the integration process in that all comments noted during the televising process such as the location of service lines or where cracks exist in the pipes could be mapped and/or queried.
Roughly a decade of sewer televising efforts was provided for this process which represents a significant portion of the community. Having so much information now connected to a mapping platform will allow the Public Works staff to evaluate their sewer infrastructure and more effectively plan improvements and maintenance. The GIS staff will also be able to use much of this information in efforts to build more detail into the sewer system such as mapping service lines.
About every ten years a Fire Department conducts a review of their services in order to increase their chances of getting a better Insurance Services Organization (ISO) rating; the better a rating the Fire Department receives, the more money a commercial property will save on their fire insurance. In order to prepare for this evaluation, The Village of Morton Grove Fire Department is using all the techniques they can find to boost their chances of a better overall rating. A technology aid that was not around the last time they conducted an ISO evaluation was the Geographic Information System or better known as GIS.
Although GIS is not the only contributor to this in-depth evaluation process, it definitely allows the Fire Department to take advantage of their in-house GIS staff to prepare maps and data at a lower cost. These maps and data outputs will supply the ISO reviewer with the information that they need in order to accurately judge the type of services the Morton Grove Fire Department supplies and should in help in all efforts to better the village’s ISO rating. In addition, should any other questions arise during the review process; the GIS will be a great place to start when trying to gather quick and accurate information; thus proving the usefulness of the Geographic Information System’s ability to help when needed and better yet, save people some money.
Over the past two years the City of Park Ridge has experienced some severe storm events that have drastically challenged their sewer system. In conjunction with these large events, there has also been a lot of questioning from the City’s residents as to what they can do to prevent storm water from damaging their home. Most of this questioning has lead some residents to install new sump pumps, generators or other flood like control devices; this in turn has lead the city’s Engineering Department to wonder if these installations have helped the residents in their fight to protect their homes.
Considering the Engineering Department originally used the Geographic Information System (GIS) to help map out all of the major flooding complaints from the past two years, comparing this data with the locations of recent flood control device installations only made the analysis portion of this project that much easier. The GIS Department was able to take flood control device installation data from the city’s permitting application and map this data out quickly and accurately. Once the data was mapped, the GIS Department was then able to perform multiple spatial queries in order to review where flood control devices were installed in comparison to where residents complained of flooding. The output of this analysis was a statistical spreadsheet that has directly helped the Engineering Department understand if flood control device installations are actually helping to reduce the amount of flooding to a specific residence. In addition, it has allowed the city staff to gain more input on what may be working to combat these flooding problems so that they may make recommendations that are more accurate.
Each year Public Works selects sections on roadways throughout the Village for its Minor Area Resurfacing Strategy or M.A.R.S project, and they use GIS to plot these areas based off an address, multiple addresses, and\or intersections. Once these areas have been determined then small resurfacing patches are applied, which can extend the life of the full roadway for up to 5 years.
By using GIS for this project it gives Public Works a better understanding for where these troubled areas are located. Which in return, assist them with prioritizing their list for the five-year Capital Improvements Plan. GIS and M.A.R.S allows for better cost effective decision making.
In order increase development, the Village decided to update its current storm water ordinance. This updated storm water ordinance would allow land to be developed if it is at least 80 percent impervious.
In order to see determine if enough properties would meet this criteria, the Village enlisted the help of the GIS department. Through the use of 2010 aerial imagery, parking, sidewalk and paved areas, the total area of impervious surface was calculated for parcels in the commercial corridor. Without the use of GIS, Village staff would have to rely on old imagery from Google maps to estimate the impervious percentage for each property in the commercial corridor which would take a considerable amount of time.
Parcels that had an impervious surface greater than 80 percent were color coded and identified on a map. This information was also combined with the age of the building on each property. Properties with buildings older than 30 years and an impervious surface greater than 80 percent were identified as areas for redevelopment. The Village will use this information in order to plan and attract new businesses in the area. Recently, Gibson’s restaurant opened up on Spring Rd.
The Village of Skokie’s Geographic Information System (GIS) Team has been hard at work developing tools to increase productivity and simplify employee’s workflows related to geographic data. Through MapOffice™ Advanced, a customized web mapping application, Village employees have many tools aimed at extracting tabular data using geographic contents. This new tool, the Water Main Isolation Tool, is aimed at providing Village water maintenance crews the ability to find all water valves connected to a section of water main. Water crews can now simply click on a water main and find all connected valves eliminating field work and research. This in turn will save not only time, but also water during a main break which can become very messy during the winter months. In addition to showing connected valves, the tool documents affected water hydrants, which have importance if a fire were to break out in the vicinity during a main break.
Village water crews are very excited to use this new tool as they had said many good things during a demonstration last week. New tools are routinely published in MapOffice™ Advanced on a monthly basis.