The Village of Glencoe being a member of the GIS Consortium has a data sharing agreement in place with Cook County Illinois. This agreement allows the Village of Glencoe to receive County Parcel data which includes mapping, parcel information, PIN numbers, County assessor information, and many other very important land based information records.
This month was the scheduled update time for the Village of Glencoe to receive and update its parcel mapping within the GIS system. The GIS Consortium has developed an efficient and detailed updating procedure which was used by the GIS Specialist in Glencoe to complete the parcel update process. The process included all mapping updates, loading of new attribute information, loading in new assessor information from the County, verification of the updated and modified records, and of course final distribution of the updated data throughout the GIS system and corresponding applications.
The final result of the parcel update process ensured that the Village of Glencoe has incorporated the most recent and up to date parcel related information that is supplied by Cook County. Upon completion, the updated data was available to used and consumed by all personal within the Village and within the GIS applications.
An annual process for the Riverside GIS (Geographic Information System) program is to obtain parcel data and ownership information from the county as they are the custodians of that data. As a part of the 2010 data exchange the village was provided LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data.
LiDAR is a remote sensing technique where laser pulses are directed toward the earth and the time it takes for the impulse to return provides elevation information as well as some characteristics of the surface below. The village is currently using this information as an elevation resource as it provides a sample point every few feet. LiDAR can also be used to obtain a three dimensional view of an area and potentially derive additional GIS data. This data is made available from the county at no charge. This information is especially helpful given that the Village does not have a previous source of elevation information. This type of information comes into play when planning for flooding or other elevation sensitive projects.
The Village of Skokie Beautification and Improvement Commission assists the Mayor and Trustees in landscaping and conservation issues. Every year, the Commission seeks out properties whose owners maintain it at an exceptional level. During this time, the commission visits each nominated property, taking pictures and notes. The most time consuming part of this process is driving to all of these properties. That is where the Village’s Geographic Information System (GIS) comes in.
By using a tool called Network Analyst, the Village’s GIS Specialist was able to map out all properties nominated for the award. In addition to just plotting dots on a map, the Network Analyst provides turn by turn directions to all properties. This alleviates pressure from the Village Forrester. In the past, the Forrester would plot all addresses by hand and manually draw a route. By creating a more efficient workflow, the Forrester is now able concentrate on other tasks rather than drawing these maps by hand.
With the forward motion of technology, many local governments have taken advantage of what is on the market in order to bolster the productivity of their daily operations. For the Village of Morton Grove Public Works Department, the use of such technology was twofold; one being the change out and upgrade of all water meters to a wireless meter reading system and two, the use of Geographic Information System (GIS) to monitor the locations and status of these meter change outs.
The Morton Grove Public Works Department has recently engaged in a contract with an outside consultant to switch out all water meters from their standard system to a wireless system over the next few years. Not only will this new system read the water use numbers of each meter in town and send that number across the wireless network to one centralized database for billing, it will also free up time of the village staff who usually reads these meters manually allowing them to assist on other projects within community. So where does GIS get involved? Easy, the GIS Department takes spreadsheets full of water meter change out locations from the Water Foreman and maps them based on their address. From there these addresses become points on a map along with all of the other pertinent information about each meter. Once these locations are all mapped out, they are then published to the village’s interactive mapping website and color coded by the year the meter was installed. Over time, these meters will be continually mapped and published to this website and the colors of each meter will change to a standard color once the change out has occurred. Thus allowing the Water Foreman to visualize what areas of town have been changed out and what areas still need to be completed and further exemplifying the great use of technology to save the village time and money.
This year the City of Highland Parked moved from doing street sweeping in house to contracting out the service. It was important to provide information to the contractor that showed how often certain streets needed to be swept. For example, curbed streets are swept monthly while uncurbed streets are only swept twice a year. Arterial and other major roads are swept once per week.
The city maintains a GIS layer that contains attributes for 12 sweeping routes. Using this layer, 24 maps showing regular and arterial routes were created. These maps showed the contractor how often each street had to be swept. It also included street names and nearby streets not included in the sweeping routes. This is critical information for contractors who may not be familiar with the local area. The routes and the base layers ensure the contractor can find the streets included in each route.
Using GIS the city had a tool to quickly create a series maps to inform a contractor exactly what was expected. This avoided the extra man required to have employees hand draw the maps and avoided the in accuracy that accompanies hand drawn map. Thus minimizing the chances that street might be missed or that the wrong streets were swept.
The Village of Oak Brook has numerous private roads that are not maintained by the village. As a result, if a certain neighborhood wants a road to be converted to a public road they must adhere to village zoning code.
Two small, adjacent subdivisions in Oak Brook have put in a request to have their private roads converted to public roads in order to save money in maintenance fees. The first step that is required is for the village is to evaluate whether or not these private roads follow village zoning codes, and if they don’t, then the village must create a plan to convert these roads to village zoning standards.
In working with the engineering department I was able to create layers that display the minimum requirements for right of way and setback sizes. The map displays where the current road is, and the area that would be required to be converted to village property in order to adhere to village code.
This map assisted the village by providing them a visual reference to present these neighborhoods when the meeting occurs. By referencing the map alone, it is clear that these neighborhoods will not qualify for a road conversion because the required setbacks run into the houses on multiple lots.
Using GIS for this analysis saved the village time and money by not requiring engineers to go out in the field and manually measure the required distances and then map them by hand in the office.
The Village of Glenview has currently been tasked to come up with ways to more effectively and efficiently answer and fix drainage issues, and has requested assistance from the GIS department. One solution would be to set up a storm water fund, supplying that fund by applying a utility tax, and using it to perform maintenance on drainage ditches (which is currently not maintained by the Village.) GIS created data and maps that display major and minor public ditches and major and minor private ditches, and these maps will potentially be used to present to the Board of Trustees to assist with the approval of setting this storm water fund up.
Another solution is using GIS to assist with centralizing all complaint data (permits, subdivision plats, and etc.) for the inspectors to use in the field. The historical and current data is stored in Laserfiche (document management system) and MUNIS (records and work order system.) By using GIS to combine these two applications and viewing it through Map Office Advanced it will save the inspectors a lot of research time beforehand (before the inspectors go out on a complaint they have research and determine solutions and\or who is at fault.)
By using GIS it provides the Inspectors and the Village with a faster and a more cost effectively way for dealing with drainage complaints.
The Village of Lincolnwood, in an effort to reduce vehicular accidents and provide safer driving conditions within the Village, collected data for a line of sight ordinance. This ordinance targets areas where landscaping blocks the view of drivers turning to and from arterial roadways to residential streets. In order to accomplish this, GIS was used to provide the total number of intersections and to map data previously collected data such as intersections with a line of sight conflict as well as vehicular accidents at these locations. Data was gathered directly from Public Works staff as well as from the Village’s Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD). GIS was then able to summarize this information quickly and accurately. This work assisted community staff members in the writing and passing of a Village ordinance to restrict the amount of obstructions.
Municipalities typically pride themselves on the ability to keep their community clean. Whether that is in the form of street sweeping or garbage pickup, providing their residents with a clean standard of living an important part of local government. For the City of Park Ridge, a problem was occurring where the contractor for garbage collection was continually missing the pickup of trash at several courtesy can receptacle locations causing the city to spend time making multiple phone calls in order to get this trash picked up.
To increase efficiency the City’s Public Works Department decided to enlist the services of the Geographic Information System (GIS) Division to help by mapping out all of these receptacle locations with the effort to further alleviate the confusion. In the beginning, a list of the locations for each receptacle can was provided to the GIS Department; thus allowing for the creation of a series of maps detailing each property of interest, the address of this property and how many trash receptacles were to be picked up at each location. Once completed, these maps were passed onto the garbage pickup contractor to field check each property and markup the map as to where each receptacle can was situated. After the contractor completed this process, the maps were then handed back to the GIS Department where these field markups could become real GIS data.
The rest is downhill from here as the GIS Department could now edit the data in one centralized location and also generate new maps for distribution to the contractor to use in the field. Thus saving time that the city staff may normally be spending to call the contractor and ask them to return to a site for a missed trash receptacle pickup.
During an emergency event, knowing how a community is being impacted as a whole can be just as important as responding to an individual emergency call. Having an overall view of the event can provide emergency response personnel with a better idea of how wide-spread the problems are and reveal potential patterns that can lead to better management of the response efforts. To help maximize its ability to respond to a community-level emergency, the Village of Winnetka GIS department developed a process for showing staff-generated emergency information in a real-time mapping environment.
The environment for displaying the emergency event data generated by community staff is the GIS Consortium MapOffice™ Advanced mapping application, so the first step in the development process was to determine how the information would be stored and transferred from the input location to the map. The medium for bridging this gap is a Microsoft SQL database environment, which is used by MapOffice™ Advanced to display data and allows for multiple user inputs at one time. Using a Microsoft Access form as the point for data input, the staff member can enter emergency call information and, through a programming script developed by GIS department staff, have the information processed for input into the mapping application. Once processed, the event locations can be displayed by the application’s end users, providing them with a real-time view of what is occurring in the Village.
Viewing a community-level, real-time emergency event in an interactive spatial environment provides the potential for the Village of Winnetka to better plan for response situations and can assist Village staff in developing and executing better polices for future resource and manpower distribution.
The City of Highland Park recently developed a business page for their website. The purpose of the page is to promote Highland Park as a great place to establish new businesses. Providing the location available for commercial leasing is an excellent way to assist a businessperson with locating a good area to start their business.
The Office of Economic Development and the GIS Office worked together to create the base map. The base map shows the location of business district on a Citywide map. The user hovers the mouse pointer over the business district name, which then brings up a pop up bubble describing the business district. If the user clicks on the bubble, it brings up the interactive map showing the location of available commercial space.
The interactive map is created by converting the spreadsheet of available commercial space to a point file. Points are overlaid on a Google map. The user then clicks on the point to receive more information about that location. Thus the user can easily find the available square footage for leasing, contact information, and zoning. Points can also be located from a list of addresses on the left.
Working together the Office of Economic Development and GIS Office created a powerful tool that allows interested parties to quickly find the location of available commercial space. Thus avoiding the need to call the city or individual real estate brokers to determine the location of available commercial space. This streamlines targeting and attracting of future businesses to the area.