Seasonal operations planning is a process all municipalities, large and small, must deal with throughout the year. Whether it’s ordering salt for the winter months or flowers for the spring plantings, all municipalities are involved with planning out their process for providing seasonal services. For the Village of Winnetka Public Works department, snow removal has always been one of the primary services included in its winter operation plans. In past years, the snow removal maps used by the plow operators have been maintained in a Computer Aided Design (CAD) based system, which has proven difficult to update and maintain. In an effort to improve map maintenance and currency, the department asked the village’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) department to assist in recreating them to both update the mapped routes and make the mapping process more efficient.
In addition to providing an administrative advantage for overall planning, having “easy-to-update” maps creates an operational advantage by providing a consistent tool for any truck operator who is not familiar with his assigned route. Developing the maps in GIS allows for duplication and redundancy with the mapping, resulting in a much easier process for printing off new maps as needed. By converting the village’s snow removal route information to GIS, the Public Works department has improved its winter operations planning efficiency and developed a more stable operational resource for the truck operators. For these reasons, the department has decided to use GIS as its primary medium for maintaining this information moving forward.
Historically police departments do a great job of recording their crime information for analysis as well as for public record. Though how a police department staff chooses to analyze this data once it is collected may vary widely. For the police department of Park Ridge, IL, they have enlisted the services of the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) over the past few years to create maps displaying the most current burglary locations as well as any trends that may have been occurring over time. These maps are very beneficial and are usually created on a monthly basis. Although this timeline seems to work, a large amount of burglaries can happen on any given day or week making the need for fluctuation within these maps all the more necessary.
For this reason alone, the GIS Department has upgraded the police department’s ability to analyze the data for any select day, week, month or year by incorporating business intelligence into the citywide interactive mapping application. In general terms, business intelligence can be defined as accessing live data from a source that is actively being edited and representing that data in form that is usable, in this case it is for mapping purposes. The data that is actively being edited by the Park Ridge Police Department is held within an excel file that then gets saved to a .CSV file on a citywide central server. Because the data is in a centralized location, GIS can connect to it in order to read the data and map it on the fly within the interactive mapping application. Additionally, the data can also queried with the help of Structured Query Language (SQL) in order to allow the police department to select which police beat they want to analyze for any given time frame. The power is now in the hands of the Police Department to query what they want, make a map of it and export this map to a PDF format to insert into their weekly reports.
All in all, it is easy to see that with the help of GIS the Police Department can now analyze their data more efficiently.
Identifying and responding to concerns regarding the safety of residents is always a top priority of local government. The ability of a community to respond to a concern varies based, among other things, on the nature of the concern, the availability of funds, and the availability of staff. In some cases, the best solution to an issue is simply to notify a community that there is a problem so they can determine an appropriate course of action. For the City of Des Plaines, IL identifying fire hydrant locations that may be inaccessible to the Fire department serves as an example of identifying a potential problem before it becomes a bigger issue that negatively impacts community residents.
Two of the biggest problem areas for fire hydrant access are along the two interstates that border the eastern and southern edges of the city. To assist with identifying hydrants in these areas with limited accessibility, the city’s Geographic Information System (GIS) department generated a map showing the extent of each interstate with the city’s fire hydrant information included. While this helped to show proximity of the hydrants to the interstates, it failed to show any impedances that may restrict how and when a hydrant can be used. To resolve that issue, the GIS department staff used plans provided by the Engineering department to map out all sound walls and other features along the interstates that could prevent a hydrant from being accessed in the event of an emergency.
With a resource for visualizing the current hydrant locations, along with their potential impedances, the Fire Department was able to easily identify hotspots along each road where a hydrant’s accessibility was either partially or completely restricted. Knowing about these hotspot areas before an emergency occurs allows the department to plan for alternate solutions and be better equipped to respond appropriately to each event.
For local governments, updating and replacing components of publically funded services, such as utility systems and roads, is critical for maintaining the overall well being of the community and the happiness of its residents. One example of how a community can determine which component of a system may need to be replaced is by tracking breaks that occur within the water system mains. For the Village of Winnetka, IL Water and Electric Department, tracking this information is critical when developing a construction budget from year to year and for highlighting potential problem areas that may require future improvements. To assist with determining which water mains should be considered for replacement in the most recent budget year, the village Geographic Information System (GIS) department was asked to generate a map highlighting all the mains in the village that had recorded breaks over the past 25 years.
Using previously mapped water main data and the recorded water main break locations, the GIS department was able to link individual main break records to specific water mains. Once the break records were linked to the main data, the number of breaks per main could be calculated and used for mapping across the village. An additional component that needed to be considered as part of the budgeting process was past water system improvements that were not captured by the raw main break data. By factoring in system mains that were already replaced or repaired during previous years, the GIS department was able to filter out numerous main breaks that would have otherwise been included in the analysis, thereby providing a more accurate product that reflected the true number of breaks within the system.
Using GIS to analyze the water main break information tracked by the Water and Electric department provided a powerful analysis and visualization tool for viewing this information across the entire village. Providing a spatial, easy-to-understand final product allowed department staff to make more informed decisions regarding the next year’s construction budget, leading to more responsible fiscal spending and better resource management.
The Village of Riverside has been coordinating with the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) and Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) since the summer of 2010 to plan removal of the Hofmann and Fairbank Dams along the Des Plaines River in Riverside. The Village has utilized its Geographic Information System (GIS) to create maps that express their desired alignment of access roads and seeding paths to minimize the impact of construction activities on the landscape and existing infrastructure. Using GIS, The Village’s tree inventory and other important data could be shared with the ACE and IDNR to ease design efforts for regarding of Swan Pond Park, also located along the Des Plaines River in Riverside.
The Records Clerk for the Police Department is responsible with sending out notices to residents who qualify for Residential Only Parking Permits. These are permits that permit residents to of certain areas to park on specific streets as described in the ordinances. It is important that all the residents who qualify for the permits are notified. Otherwise if they park on the street they will be ticketed.
Previously the address list for each permit was stored in an Excel worksheet. This made it hard to maintain as updates were performed manually. Also, there were no guarantees that they would be notified of address updates. The GIS Office was asked if they could setup an automated process that would generate an address list for each Resident Only Permit. Using GIS software the extent specified for each permit was created as an area. Next areas not designated as a residential zoning district were removed. Finally all the address points within these areas were selected and summarized to remove duplicates. The final product was an Excel Worksheet with a list of addresses for each resident only permit area.
Without access to GIS software, the Police Department would still be using outdated address list stored in Excel. By using GIS software, address list can be generated using the GIS address database which is the master address database for the City. Thus the City will save money by not sending notices to incorrect addresses or have to worry about missing addresses that should be included in a Resident Only Permit area.
It was recently realized by the Elk Grove Village, IL GIS staff that most, if not all, of the land division information related to properties was being provided them by their data sharing agreement with Cook County. The data represents all of the components a piece of land is described by in a legal description and includes the Township, Range, Section, Quarter Section, Subdivision, Block, Parcel, and Lot. All of this information was combined in The Village’s interactive GIS map so that staff can have quick access to this information when faced with future land divisions and/or inquiries without an address to identify the location.
Organizing local government elections is an important component of how a community operates and can often be a significant investment, both in time and resources, for that community’s staff. While information on registered voters is often maintained by a county or township, local government staff may also need to use this data to assist with planning and executing various aspects of the elections process. To help prepare for an upcoming city council election, the City of Des Plaines, IL was asked to provide a list of all registered voter addresses to potential candidates so they could petition for signatures to get on the local ballot.
The Des Plaines city council is made up of eight aldermen, each representing a different ward, or electoral area, within the city and each potential candidate that wants to run for alderman can only petition registered voters within their respective ward. Since the list of registered voters provided by the county is for the entire city, the city’s Geographic Information System (GIS) department was asked to assist city staff with determining which addresses from the master list fall within each ward boundary.
Using previously developed ward boundary data and the master list of registered voters provided by the county, the GIS department staff was able to geocode, or match to a known location, each registered address within a specific city ward. Once an address was linked to a ward, a list of registered voter locations for each ward could be created and provided to city staff for distribution to the alderman candidates. Before using GIS to assist with the project, this process could take city staff several weeks to accomplish, taking away time and resources from other important city functions.
The Village of Lincolnwood recently began collecting a village wide sign inventory. This inventory looks at satisfying a federal mandate requiring communities to establish and implement a sign inventory by January 2012. Using the Village’s Geographic Information System (GIS) software installed on a Toughbook laptop, Public Works employees have been able to collect 75% of the Village’s signs in less than one month while only working on this project part time. Advances in software have allowed the Village to “check out” software that could not be used in a disconnected environment in the past. Additionally, only a couple hours of training and map setup were required for this project. The Village is collecting data including sign location, type, size, condition, visibility and much more.
More information about the federal requirements can be found through the Federal Highway Administration’s website.
For local governments, updating and replacing components of publically funded services, such as utility systems and roads, is critical for maintaining the overall well being of the community and the happiness of its residents. One example of how a community can determine which component of a system may need to be replaced is by tracking breaks that occur within the water system mains. For the Village of Winnetka, IL Water and Electric Department, tracking this information is critical when developing a construction budget from year to year and for highlighting potential problem areas that may require future improvements. To assist with determining which water mains should be considered for replacement in the most recent budget year, the village Geographic Information System (GIS) department was asked to generate a map highlighting all the mains in the village that had recorded breaks over the past 25 years.
Using previously mapped water main data and the recorded water main break locations, the GIS department was able to link individual main break records to specific water mains. Once the break records were linked to the main data, the number of breaks per main could be calculated and used for mapping across the village. An additional component that needed to be considered as part of the budgeting process was past water system improvements that were not captured by the raw main break data. By factoring in system mains that were already replaced or repaired during previous years, the GIS department was able to filter out numerous main breaks that would have otherwise been included in the analysis, thereby providing a more accurate product that reflected the true number of breaks within the system.
Using GIS to analyze the water main break information tracked by the Water and Electric department provided a powerful analysis and visualization tool for viewing this information across the entire village. Providing a spatial, easy-to-understand final product allowed department staff to make more informed decisions regarding the next year’s construction budget, leading to more responsible fiscal spending and better resource management.
We are pleased to announce that the Village of Tinley Park has joined the GIS Consortium. The Village becomes the 18th member of the Consortium and our first in the Chicago South Suburbs. We would like to welcome Tinley Park to the GIS Consortium and look forward to an exciting and collaborative partnership.
The Village of Riverside often performs landscape burns along the Des Plaines River which winds along and through its incorporated area. The Village Forester is required by law to obtain an open burn permit to perform such activities and recently took advantage of their Geographic Information System (GIS) to create a map product to accompany the permit application. Seeing that the burning locations vary from year to year, but are always in and along the same forested areas, the image highlighted all areas that could potentially be burned. Identifying in the map all of the sensitive facilities such as schools, senior care facilities, medical facilities, and even a nearby airport gives a clear picture of any potential proximity issues that may need to be considered as well. Reusing the map product will allow staff to quickly complete the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency permit process each year.
Any storm event that disrupts day to day operations can often spur local government to investigate solutions to help mitigate future problems. After a major emergency event that occurred on July 23rd 2011 caused significant flood damage to the Village of Winnetka, IL, the village’s Public Works Department began looking at options for improving its storm water utility system to help reduce the impacts of future flooding. As part of the investigative process, department staff is required to present all options under consideration to the general public as a way to show progress. To assist with these presentations, the village’s Geographic Information System (GIS) department was asked to create a map showing all project locations to help provide the public with a tool for visualizing the proposed improvements.
After working with an engineering firm to determine areas of need and design the new storm water system components, the Public Works staff provided the GIS department with each project location and requested a map product that was easy to understand in order provide the public with a preview of the changes without confusing things with too many details. Using a basic street map of the community, the project streets and the surrounding areas impacted by the proposed construction were highlighted and color coded based on the projected impact they would have on the village’s flood mitigation plan. Showing the information this way provides context for how each project will improve flood control in the village and help to reduce the risk of future flood damages.
As a part of its disaster preparedness process, the Village of Glencoe has been working with GIS to build a repository of maps to meet a variety of needs. One of the recent projects was the creation of an evacuation route map to distribute to the public during an event. The letter-sized map clearly highlights the main roads that lead in and out of the Village. By having copies on hand during an emergency, community staff will be able to quickly direct people to safety, even if they are unfamiliar with the area.
Without GIS, emergency planners would either have to hand-draw and copy a map or hire an outside vendor to create these maps at a considerably higher cost. Plus, as the Village continues to change over time, GIS can be used to update these maps without taking up valuable staff time. Even the initial creation of the map was efficient because existing data was used as the basis.
The Village of Oak Brook handles dozens of drainage complaints annually, many of which involve multiple properties or even entire subdivisions. A few causes of these drainage problems vary from sump pump backup or failure, heavy rains, damaged storm utilities, and river or stream flood events. In order give the highest degree of service to its residents, the Village does its best to review and provide a solution for all of the drainage complaints and issues. One issue that has been affecting approximately 8 homes within single subdivision has been hot topic as of recently. The issue has to do with a pond overflowing during heavy rain events into a street and across residents’ backyards. Multiple scenarios have been brought forward as to why this pond has a tendency to overflow, but no solid solution could be found during a drainage study of the 4 contributing watersheds. Although no single solution was found, it was determined that the storm utilities were clogged or damaged and the overland flow of water was one of the results.
As shown in the image, 1 foot contours and lidar elevation points were used to determine the areas that the water crested over the road and then traveled through the backyards. Once the direction and area of flow was determined, village engineers were able to walk the path of overland flow and develop ideas as to how and where drainage swales could be added of modified. By cleaning out the storm utilities and modifying the land that the water flows over, the Village hopes to alleviate some of the excessive flooding that has been occurring in the backyards of these residents. Without GIS and lidar data the Village would have needed a land survey which would have cost into the thousands of dollars without a guaranteed solution.
Without a doubt, the biggest challenge facing municipalities across the country is a dwindling supply of revenue. Communities are continually pressured to do more with less, and tough choices are always on the horizon. Fortunately, GIS offers a cost-efficient way to audit existing revenue streams to ensure that all forms of income are maximized in these budget-lean times.
The Village of Lincolnshire recently took advantage of its access to this technology to conduct an audit of its billing records. GIS was used to compare the Village’s address database to finance records for water and sewer billing to find discrepancies. Once the differences between the two sets were identified, GIS generated a spreadsheet of issues and then mapped them across the Village. These two products allowed Finance and Public Works personnel to review the mismatches quickly and determine if there were any customers in the Village who were being improperly billed. As a secondary benefit, both address databases were reviewed for accuracy to ensure that the community is using the most accurate and up-to-date information available.
Without GIS, the Village would have had to manually compare the address lists or hire an outside auditor at considerably greater expense.
Many homes may come equipped with a driveway for parking vehicles, there are many homes that do not. Additionally, there may be homes that have too many cars to fit on one drive way requiring them to park on the street. Regardless of the case, parking on public streets is something that needs to be monitored in order to ensure traffic safety or potential neighborly disputes. In local government, parking on public streets is handled by the municipal ordinances, monitored by the police and permit parking sticker distribution is controlled by local staff.
Although these systems have been working for years, the Village of Morton Grove, IL wanted to take things in a different direction by making their ordinance information spatial. By way of their Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Department, the data from the Village’s ordinance manual was mapped out so that anyone who is allowed to receive a permit parking vehicle sticker would indeed get one. Moreover, those residents that did not show up in the allowable permit parking mapped areas, would not be eligible to receive a sticker.
All of the mapped out data is now available to the Village staff via a local interactive mapping application. Instead of looking up ordinances in the municipal code or reviewing paper files for each property, the Village employee can now launch the interactive map, search for a property and identify if that resident lives within a permit parking zone. Not only is this application easy to use, it keeps the data in one centralized location so that things are easier to find, thus improving the time efficiency of each employee who uses it.
Every five years the City of Highland Park must be renew their accreditation with the Commission of Fire Accreditation International (CFAI). This involves gathering a lot of information regarding Fire Department resources such as station response times and resource deployment. It also includes gathering demographic information about the community such as age and population density. The goal of the accreditation review is to assess the City’s Fire Department ability to properly deploy resources.
One report required by CFAI is a breakdown of the types of structures per fire grid. Essentially they are looking for primary structures such as a house or shopping center versus a secondary structure such as a garage or shed. They also want a breakdown of the use for each structure such as residential, commercial, or school. Creating this report requires classifying each structure with a type classification derived from address point information and then assigning it a Zoning District designation as well as a Fire Grid designation to each structure.
The address classification, Zoning District classification, building areas, and Fire Grids were combined into one summary table by using GIS. This table was then summarized by Fire Grid to create a final report of the types of structures for each Fire Grid. Without the availability of GIS, this report would have taken many more man hours and involved several Departments to create an estimate of structures per Fire Grid.
Home owners are almost always looking for ways to change their home in order to make it a better fit for them and their family. At times it is a simple fix within the home and at other times it is more complex, for example, constructing an addition to the existing building footprint. Most of these types of upgrades require permits and inspections to be done by the local government in which the home resides. More serious upgrades may at times may require a full review of the property setbacks that are normal for the block on which the home is located. In the City of Park Ridge, IL one case in particular regarding an appilication for the rights to construct a garagae required this type of review.
The property under inspection was applying to have a garage installed in the back of their house which had an entrance off of a major road and not an alley. In keeping in compliance with city standards, the Community and Preservation Devlopment Department had to determine what the average home setbacks were from the road on one particular block in order to ensure that the applicant was not breaking the rules. The normal workflow is to measure the setbacks of each house on that block and decide if this new applicant is within compliance. The problem that arises is how to display this information properly to the Board of Appeals so they can understand the scenario first hand rather than just being told facts from a piece of paper. For this instance the use of the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Department was implemented to help map out the scenario as it is out in the field so that the reviewers of this specific case could easily decipher if the applicant was worthy of acceptance. Now, instead of trying to envision the problem at hand, the reviewers can see each property with its driveway and setback distance from the road. Thus making decisions easier to come by as well as highlighting the effectiveness of GIS mapping.
This fall, the Committee for Representing Our Young Adults, also known as CROYA, has introduced a visual aid to help with their annual poinsettia orders and deliveries. CROYA is a branch of the Rec Center in Lake Forest, and offers programs for young people to become involved in their communities.
The GIS department worked with CROYA staff to discuss the needs and options available to create a better workflow for the upcoming poinsettia deliveries. Due to the number of orders, as well as the number of people available to deliver, having a map to plan out who will deliver in certain areas was a big help to the logistics of the whole process.
The outcome of the project resulted in large scale maps for CROYA staff to reference when planning deliveries, which included addresses and the order information spreadsheet. In addition to this, the plotted out orders were put into MapOffice Advanced for staff to be able to reference on the fly. Having an interactive version of their data will prove useful when zooming into an area or turning on the aerial photography to gain more information.
CROYA hopes to continue utilizing GIS in future events, which are provided not only for the City of Lake Forest, but also neighboring Lake Bluff and Knollwood.
In the Village of Wheeling, each resident with gas service from NiCOR, has to pay a small tax to the village which is included in their bill. In an effort to make sure the village was receiving all possible tax money, it requested a list of the addresses that NiCOR had for Wheeling, so that a review could be done. The Finance Department requested that all addresses from NiCOR be mapped out and lists be made detailing what matched and what didn’t match. The information would be then sent back to NiCOR so that any inconsistencies could be reviewed and corrected.
The list of addresses were first geocoded (a process of assigning an address to a location on a map) to get a preliminary list of what did and didn’t match. The unmatched addresses were then reviewed to determine why they were not matching i.e. misspelling, wrong town, non-existent address, etc… Two lists were then created to be sent back to NiCOR; one that was all the reviewed addresses provided by NiCOR that did not match the address database maintained by the village and one that was a list of addresses maintained by the village, but were not in the list provided by NiCOR. These two lists, along with a map showing unmatched addresses, were the final products. After NiCOR received the data from Wheeling, they made the appropriate changes resulting in the village receiving tax money they did not receive in the past. By using GIS, the village was able to easily find missing revenue that they might not have found in the past.
Elk Grove Village Public Works has inventoried their crosswalk locations using their Geographic Information System (GIS) to assist maintenance and tracking of the walks. Knowing all locations has benefited the department because the data provides support information for map products, road reconstruction projects, pedestrian safety studies, and maybe most importantly maintenance. There are now quite a few different types of crosswalks in The Village including striped, brick, and painted concrete. Through the GIS, staff can assess when these walkways were last maintained and schedule upkeep based on a combination of the type of walk, proximity to schools, and the maintenance frequency specific to that type of surface. Also by referencing the GIS they can be certain none of the locations are missed if an assessment needs to be made of the status of the walks.
Updater is a desktop application which manages GISC products on a desktop computer. It allows users a single interface for registration, new products, and updates for all GISC applications.
System Requirements
- System requirements
- Microsoft Windows XP/Vista/7/2003/2008 R2
- Microsoft .NET 2.0,3.5 Framework
- Network adapter
- Processor - 700 MHz or faster
- Memory – 256 MB of RAM or more
- User requirements
- User must have valid GISC web user name and password
- User must have computer's administrative or power user account
- Internet connection
During the major snowstorm of February 2011, the Village of Norridge Public Works staff needed to start plowing the alleys so that residents could get their vehicles out of their garages. Unfortunately, the amount of snow prohibited staff from plowing them. The Village wanted to send notices to all residents along the alleys to assure them that they would be cleared of snow as soon as possible. The village did not have a current list of the addresses along the alleys and asked the GIS department to create a list that could be added to the village’s CTY Reverse 911 system.
First, the village staff, using aerial imagery and local knowledge, highlighted all the alleys within the village limits. Then, all the addresses with access to the alleys were added to a specific table. This table was then added to the village’s notification system allowing the village to contact just residents who live on the alleys to let them know of any specific events that only concern them. By using GIS, the village was able to quickly select all the residences that were attached to the alleys and add their addresses as a group, therefore eliminating the need to pick out each individual address anytime a notification had to be sent out.