The Village of Glenview annually plants new parkway trees. With upwards of 300 trees planted each year there was no easy way to find the best route to take. Therefore, Public Works approached GIS to see if there was a more efficient way to plant these trees across the Village.
GIS used a feature in ArcGIS that allows a route to be set up using many stops you would like to make. This route is then created by using a road network and a set traveling speed. Returned are a direction list and the route that should be taken. This has allowed Public Works to lower their cost and time to plant these trees annually.
In Illinois, state law prevents a sex offender from living within 500 feet of a school, park, playground, or any other facility that provides recreation or other services to children. When a sex offender moves into a new community, they are required by law to register with their local law enforcement agency. This includes providing their address of their place of residence. The local police must determine whether or not the sex offender’s address is within 500 feet of a restricted area. We determined that the most efficient way to accomplish this was by utilizing GIS.
Using GIS, the offender’s parcel was highlighted along with all the other restricted areas within the community. A 500 foot buffer was created from the offender’s parcel boundary and then overlaid to compare with the restricted areas. In this case, the property was within 500 feet of a park, so the police officer must notify the offender that a new place of residence is needed. Once a new residence is notified to the authorities, this same process will occur all over again. This method is a quick and efficient way of handling the problem, being that it is uses an accurate measurement and it saves time and money by avoiding unnecessary field work.
If a person investigates their phone bill close enough they will find a surcharge that is allocated to 911 emergency services. This money is distributed by the state government to local municipalities and dispatch centers. It is used for updating old equipment as well supplement operation costs of the 911 center. The method for distributing funds is by address count, by zip code, within the municipalities or dispatch center service area. Until the implementation of the GIS this was a very arduous process in Tinley Park. Before GIS, coming up with a final number was a tough task, sometimes taking a week or more. The Village of Tinley Park is split by two zip codes as well as two counties and incorporated and unincorporated areas. This sectioning of the village made it difficult to get an accurate count of addresses within these different place classifications in the village. It is important to allocate the addresses properly among these different classifications because it will determine where funds will be allocated.
Once GIS was implemented this became a simpler much more strait forward process than before. Using geo-location and spatial selections and with the use of a map, the GIS specialist was easily able to select the address points of for each place location and report back to the village with precise counts of addresses within the two counties, zip codes and incorporation status. This allowed for Tinley Park to receive the correct dollar amount for use by its 911 dispatch center.
Two new enhancements have been made to MapOffice™ this month. They include combination view and auto complete for find and go. Combination view provides the ability to see the standard GISC map side by side with both Google Street View and Microsoft Bird's Eye View. Clicking any of the maps will update the corresponding maps. The combination of the three views in a single image provides new opportunities and efficiencies for field verification. The enhancement to the find and go will provide the user with suggestions for possible address matches. The intent is to make the search function more user friendly and increase its accuracy. Both of these new enhancements are available in MapOffice™ Public and MapOffice™ Advanced.
Like any community, Elk Grove Village, IL has its share of apartment, condominium, townhouse, and assisted living complexes. At times village inspectors may identify property maintenance issues at such locations which need to be addressed. The Village has mapped these association areas and their related contact information in its Geographic Information System (GIS) providing a quick resource for staff when dealing with issues that pertain to common areas. In many cases the association contact information is available in a community’s water billing database or something similar, but most staff do not have access to those records so the GIS map has been quite useful for all staff to easily obtain the association contact and phone number allowing them to resolve the issues at hand quickly.
The Village of Lincolnwood Police Department creates an annual report to share with residents, Village staff, and the Village Board. The report outlines the achievements by the Police Department while also providing crime statistics. In order to better serve the residents, the Geographic Information System (GIS) Department worked with the Police Department to create maps to display the crime data visually by Police Beat. This creates more transparency and allows the Police Department to better assess the crime locations. In addition to providing visuals, the GIS can also provide spatial analysis which is important when trying to locate patterns of criminal activity.
The City of Highland Public Works Forestry Division uses GIS to manage landscape areas maintained by contractors. Traditionally the primary focus was on getting bids for mowing areas. The City Forester created a Mowing Area layer for creating maps and providing square footage values for areas requiring landscaping maintenance to contractors. The City Forester realized that the landscaping areas are actually divided into two types of areas, pervious areas such as grass and gardens and impervious areas such as parking lots and paths. Each of these areas have different maintenance and thus contractors need to know how many square feet pervious and impervious surface were at each landscaping area.
The City Forester contacted the GIS Office about dividing the landscaping areas into pervious and impervious areas to create a table of square footages. The GIS Office accomplished this task by merging all the impervious areas such as roads, parking lots, and sidewalks into one area. This area was then merged with the existing landscape areas so that now had impervious and pervious sections. The City Forester did not want the existing landscape areas divided into separate features. Therefore, the values from the new feature were joined to the table of the existing feature. This provided a feature showing the entire mowing areas that also included the impervious and pervious values of each area.
By using GIS, the City Forester improved the accuracy of information that they provided to contractors biding on City landscaping projects. Without GIS the City Forester would have had to use field checks and estimations to create pervious and impervious values for each landscape area.
The City of Lake Forest recently began a project to help determine the costs and effects of water main construction projects in relation to water main breaks. Water main breaks are an issue for all communities, and ensuring residents that the most needed areas are being repaired is an important part of government-public relations.
The GIS department used existing data for water main breaks over the past ten years, and coupled that with previous Capital Improvement projects for water main replacements. Being able to visualize areas with a high occurrence of main breaks allows engineering staff to determine if their water main replacements were effective, as well as to target new water mains to be repaired in the coming years.
To take the project one step further, main breaks and CIP projects were grouped together by fiscal year and associated to their respective wards. Costs per ward could then be determined to ensure there is a fair distribution of funds and necessary repairs among the City’s four wards.
The City hopes to continue this type of project in the years to come to ensure yearly CIP funds are meeting the needs of the residents and City infrastructure.
For a small-town central business district, there are few things more important than encouraging pedestrian traffic along the store fronts. A proven method for doing this in downtown areas is to have ample on-street parking available, which encourages shoppers to park near their favorite store and then enjoy strolling along in front of the shops. Recognizing this, the Village Manager’s office recently used its GIS data to inventory and create maps of its parking spaces. These maps, now available on the Village’s website, give visitors a quick way to find parking that best meets their needs.
Thanks to a previous GIS base mapping project, Glencoe already had a visual inventory of the available spaces all over town. This data was quickly documented in a map book, and the manager’s office intern took these pages into the field to mark up parking restrictions in each area. When the field-collected data was entered into GIS, it was easy to create color-coded maps that clearly indicated the differences between short- and long-term parking. Plus, with the data in GIS, it was easy to create custom maps that appealed to different audiences, ranging from commuters to local business customers. To see the finished products, please visit the Village of Glencoe’s website at http://www.villageofglencoe.org/about/villagemaps.aspx.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) was utilized while reviewing the On Street Solicitation section of The Village Code of the Village of Elk Grove Village to determine which lighted intersections throughout the community permitted on street solicitation. Based on the current specifications of The Code it was determined that there is only one intersection where this is permitted. Having a map highlighting not only the permissible solicitation location, but also other factors that affect the permissible locations such as zoning and lighted intersections gives Administrative staff a clear picture of the situation at hand and a resource for Police staff to enforce the regulation. GIS is a tool for them to consider all of the factors pertaining to on street solicitation and decide if revisions need to be made to their policy.
The Village of Oak Brook regularly experiences a large number of drainage complaints during the rainy seasons. As a result a lot of time and man power is allocated to researching and resolving the cause of drainage complaints. In an effort to stay ahead of the complaints, Village engineers and the GIS specialist came up with a method of mapping out overland flow paths on private property, along with identifying low lying areas that may potentially gather and hold water accumulation.
As shown in the image, the GIS specialist used a digital elevation model (DEM), along with 1 ft. contour lines to determine the direction in which water will potentially travel through residents’ back yards. By following the contours of the earth, the water will most often lead you to the street, a water body, or a low lying area. By pre-determining the most likely direction of travel, engineers can plan new installations of storm sewer utilities or advise a resident on possible solutions for low lying spots within their yard. This information is valuable to Village engineers because they can not only plan for future capital improvements, but can also research and resolve drainage issues much easier and sometimes without even having to go into the field.
In 2011, The Village of Wheeling hired MDS Technologies to drive around the village and collect data related to the village streets and sidewalks. Pictures were taken of each village street using a special vehicle and each street was assigned a Pavement Condition Index (PCI) Number. The numbers range from 1, which is the lowest and correlates to the street needing a lot of work, to 100 which is the highest and means that the street is in perfect condition. The village received a report giving a PCI rating to each street, or section of street that they owned. Although the ratings are helpful to see what individual streets are in most need of resurfacing, the engineering department wanted to see which neighborhoods needed the most work.
Using village subdivisions, the streets were clipped and then combined into different groups based off the subdivision boundaries. Instead of just taking the average of all the PCI ratings in each subdivision, the engineering department wanted to get a weighted average based off the area of pavement for each street within the subdivision. This would give the department a better idea of which subdivisions would have the most pavement to resurface as opposed to one small street with a very low PCI rating bringing the average down. By using GIS, the Village of Wheeling was able to compile a lot of data from an outside source and turn it into a way of determining which subdivisions in the village need the most street resurfacing.