Local governments are responsible for managing several different asset types, from vehicles to landscape planters, which all require some sort of annual or bi-annual maintenance to ensure they continue to operate correctly and to increase the asset’s longevity. One of the assets that requires constant maintenance or, in some cases replacement, is trees managed by the local community. Since these assets are organic, they are susceptible to diseases, damages, poor health, and other ailments that affect all organic material. As a result, there is often a need to replace or remove trees that are sick or damaged, which can be both an expensive and logistically challenging process. To assist with a recent tree replacement effort, the City of Des Plaines Public Works Department asked the city’s Geographic Information System (GIS) department to create a map showing the replacement locations that could be used to help coordinate efforts between city staff and a third party tree management contractor.
The first step in this project involved the Public Works department collecting an inventory of which trees needed to be replaced, along with the address closest to each tree, and providing that list to the GIS staff for mapping. Once the tree locations were mapped based on their closest address, a sequential numbering system was established and a unique number was given to each tree so that number could be displayed on the map in conjunction with a symbol representing the tree location. As a supplement to the map, a list of the tree addresses, and the number associated with each location, was created and provided to both internal department staff and the contractor so they could both have a detailed address list and a visual tool to reference when out in the field.
Having a common set of resources used between both internal staff and the tree contractor allowed for better coordination and understanding of the work that needed to be done. Through the use of GIS, the time needed by the Public Works staff to coordinate with the contractor was significantly reduced, thereby making the process more efficient and freeing up staff time for other projects.
With the winter coming to a close shortly, the excessive season of main breaks is almost over. Water main breaks take away from resources and time that could be put into improvement projects. The easiest way to calculate the number of main breaks on a village street or water main line is to simply count each break and add it up; however, this data collection method only will give you the number of main breaks, it doesn’t account for the significance of those breaks to the integrity of the line as a whole.
This new method used in the analysis uses Geographic Information Systems to normalize the number of water main breaks on each segment by taking the number of breaks on a line and comparing that with how short that line is. As you can see in the map, the higher number of main breaks on a segment has a darker shade of blue. If two different water main lines have the same number of breaks in a given year, the water main line that is shorter will have a higher normalization of breaks. Based on this information, the shorter water mains are prone to higher normalization scores. Finding the water mains that have multiple breaks over short distances, will help Public Works and Engineering identify the water mains that need improvement the most. This analysis will save funds, by highlighting to Public Works the main problem areas of the Village’s Water Main Network.
All municipal governments face the challenge of how to prioritize infrastructure maintenance work. Everything from road repairs to sewer lining to water main upgrades have to be itemized in the annual budget, and as such tend to be managed as unrelated projects. Unfortunately, this method can result in inefficient project planning because a particular component might be repaired in one year, only to be dug up again the next year to complete a different project.
GIS is well-suited to assist local governments with this challenge, as the Village of Lincolnshire can illustrate. First, the Village paid outside contractors to collect data on its road infrastructure and a portion of its sanitary sewer. Next, it used GIS to conduct an in-house analysis of the spatial distribution of water main breaks. Finally, GIS was used to combine all of the findings to pinpoint locations where multiple problems are occurring. Some clear patterns emerged, which made it easy for the Village engineers to prioritize their project plans for the coming year.
This analysis led to a larger discussion with the Village board about infrastructure management. Using maps and statistics, Village staff members were able to demonstrate to the trustees how the road and sanitary surveys augmented their decision-making abilities. Further, the presentation justified the planned studies on storm water retention and more of the sanitary system. Once all of the studies are completed, GIS will be used to aggregate the data and look for spatial patterns throughout the Village. The findings allow for a holistic approach to infrastructure management, avoiding needless waste of time and resources in areas that have multiple issues to address.
The Village of Morton Grove’s engineering department recently called upon its geographic information system (GIS) to support its 2013 street light bidding project. This year the Village is looking to contract out more than 300 of its street lights along Dempster St, Waukegan Rd, Ferris Ave, and Lincoln Ave. GIS was used to provide supporting materials to contractors bidding on the project.
To assist in the bidding process, GIS first inventoried all of the street lights within the contract boundaries on each respective street. Each boundary is defined by a street light controller that provides power to all of the street lights on its grid. Additionally some Village owned parking lots were included. The next step was to assign a unique identification number to each street light based off of original plans as well as the physical address of the controller. This provides a way for contractors to easily distinguish which light they are performing work on and will assist in managing the plethora of street lights in a given area.
Without the use of GIS there would be no quick and efficient way to not only display the street lights spatially but to maintain a multitude of attributes for management purposes. Keeping these two paired together is where the strength of GIS really is.
The State of Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) requires all water utilities to collect monthly samples for coliform testing. Although coliform itself is not necessarily a lie threatening bacteria, the presence of coliform could indicate a contamination issue in the water system. The number of sampling stations required for each utility is dependent on the number of customers served by that water utility. The IEPA also requires information on the location of Stage 1 Stage 2 Disinfectant Byproduct Sampling stations.
The IEPA requires an annual map or report of a community’s coliform testing site, storage facilities, and water entry points. Every winter the Village of Mundelein updates their water sampling and asset location map. This map has several purposes. The first being a visual display of the water entry points for each of the three pressure zones and the location of storage tanks for each of the pressure zones. The second purpose is to show how the coliform sampling locations are evenly distributed throughout the Village and that the Stage 2 Testing sites are located as far away as possible from each pressure zone entry points.
Because the Village maintains it’s utility information in a GIS system. It is easy to quickly create a map the entry points, tanks and other infrastructure. The coliform sampling stations are listed by address and easy to overlay on the map. Without GIS the Village would not be able to efficiently create a this map for the IEAP.
In local government, preparing a department’s budget for an upcoming fiscal year can be challenging considering all the unknown variables that determine the available funds for both operational and special project work, such as tax revenue and unexpected capital expenditures. This planning process can be complicated further if information on the quantity and quality of the assets being budgeted is incomplete, unknown, or inaccurate. To assist with developing a more accurate supply budget for pavement marking maintenance, the City of Des Plaines, IL Engineering Department asked the city’s Geographic Information System (GIS) to assist with developing a database that could be used to track the actual location of the pavement markings that the city is responsible for maintaining in order to more accurately track the amount of materials needed to conduct maintenance on each marking.
The city did not have an existing inventory to work with, either in digital or paper form, so the GIS department was free to develop a solution that could be tailored to the information requested for collection by the Engineering Department. To this end, a file geodatabase was setup which contained information on the type of marking being collected (i.e. stop bar), the color of the marking (i.e. white), and the length of the marking, which was measured automatically within GIS. To collect this information, internal Engineering Department staff already familiar with how to use the desktop GIS software was trained on how to enter information into the database, while using resources such as the city’s aerial imagery and recently updated Google Street View imagery, to determine where each marking was located and what type of marking it is.
By systematically going through the city and drawing in these markings, the Engineering Department staff was able to develop a comprehensive marking inventory that could be easily analyzed and reviewed in a spatial environment. Viewing and managing the information this way gives context to where the marking is located, allowing for better coordination between marking maintenance and other department projects, such as road reconstruction or utility system improvements.
Sidewalks are an important part of any neighborhood, especially one that is heavily urbanized. Residents need to have a safe option of getting around locally without always relying on something that has four wheels. At a recent Village Board meeting, the issue of some local streets not having sidewalks was brought to the village’s attention. A study was then requested to locate areas of the village that were missing sidewalks, and GIS was the tool selected in order to locate these sidewalk gaps.
For this study, only village owned streets were used. Carriage walks were considered existing sidewalks and treated as such. Using a variety of spatial queries based on existing GIS data, locations were found that contained sidewalk gaps on these local streets. The data was then broken down into three possible categories; The street could have sidewalks on both sides, a sidewalk on one side, or no sidewalks on either side. There also was a pattern of sidewalks existing in front of one house but not the next. Intermittent sidewalks seemed to be common throughout much of the community. Finally, the total number of linear feet of sidewalk gaps was calculated and a map was created for use at the next Committee of the Whole meeting. By using GIS, tedious and time consuming work by village staff of going block by block looking for sidewalk gaps and then calculating the total number of linear feet of those gaps was avoided.
The Village of Morton Grove’s public works department recently called upon its geographic information system (GIS) to assist in planning its 2013 tree trimming program. Beginning in 2012 the Village has utilized GIS to provide location maps to contractors when the trimming project has gone out to bid. The trimming is performed from east to west in the project boundaries depending on the amount of funding available.
In 2012 a total of 840 trees were trimmed in an effort to provide clearance above street and sidewalk right-of-ways. For 2013 a whopping 923 trees are in the plans for trimming. Candidate trees are selected by measuring the size of the diameter of the tree at four and a half feet off the ground. That measurement is then used to derive a price to trim each selected tree.
Moving forward with the program this year, GIS has also begun tracking the street segments that have gone out to bid. This will ensure no duplication occurs in the future and will enable the Village’s public works department to better track their tree trimming efforts. Without GIS the project areas would need to be tracked manually and inefficiencies in tracking the program through history would be sure to arise.
Lake Cook Rd and Waukegan Rd, two of Deerfield’s busiest roads, will be undergoing construction this year as part of the Lake Cook Road Construction Project.* The Waukegan Rd portion of the project will feature three stages of construction, with alternating lane closures and changing traffic patterns. Likewise, the Lake Cook Rd portion of the project will feature lane closures and changes to traffic patterns during its four stages of construction.
Due to the high traffic volume and abundance of businesses along these roads, the Lake Cook Road Construction Project will affect many motorists and business owners alike. Thus, the Village has asked the GIS (Geographic Information Systems) Department to create a series of maps depicting not only the extent of construction, but also the lane closures and temporary traffic patterns that will take effect throughout each stage of construction. The creation of these maps through GIS allows the public to have a better understanding of how they will be impacted throughout the duration of the construction project.
*Construction is slated to begin in the spring of 2013. At this time, all phases of construction are proposals and subject to change.
Regular hydrant flushing is essential for maintaining and the water system and ensuring the safety of residents. Hydrant flushing can detect pressure issues in the water system; remove sediment build up, and identifying malfunctioning hydrants. The City of Lake Forest recognizes the important of hydrant flushing by ensuring there are flushed every year.
Public Works uses GIS for tracking hydrant flushing as well creating an end of the year report. Every Spring, the GIS Office copies the hydrant features and base map to laptop that is used by Public Works to track which hydrants have been flushed. To update a hydrant, the employee selects a hydrant and records how long it was flushed and the date it was flushed. At the end of the year, the laptop is returned to the GIS Office and they collect the hydrant flushing information The GIS Office uses the hydrant flushing information to create two reports. The first reports list each hydrant and how long it was flushed. It shows notes that employees wrote in the field noting any issues they noticed with specific hydrants. The second report show the amount of time spent flushing each size diameter of pipe. The second report is especially valuable because it allows the City to estimate how much water used during the hydrant flushing process.
By using GIS the Public Works Department has an efficient to track hydrants during the flushing program. It as has a great way to create summary reports of hydrant flushing for the current year.
Every community is faced with the task of tracking and maintaining a complete tree inventory within its municipal boundaries. There are a variety of reasons that an accurate inventory is important. With the emerald ash borer causing mass destruction of the ash tree population within the Chicago area, it is very vital to have a detailed inventory in order to monitor the spreading of this disease, or any other disease for that matter, as well as take the necessary steps to prevent the disease from spreading even further. Keeping track of the variety of species is also important not only for disease spreading but also for replanting purposes. Too many of the same species planted too close together causes disease to spread rapidly. An accurate inventory also proves beneficial in budget planning and answering individual resident’s questions regarding trees on a particular property. The Village of Lincolnwood has had all this information locked up in databases for years, but it never had an easy way to access this valuable information. GIS was chosen to be the most efficient solution to address this problem.
The tree data from the databases were tied into their respective addresses and then entered into GIS. A new custom layer was created and added to MapOffice Advanced where any community employee can access the data instantly. All the relevant attribute information is retrieved by clicking on a tree on the map. Currently, the inventory is updated through January 2009 with any additions or removals since then being updated when that data becomes available. Having this at their disposal, a village employee can access a variety of information just by searching by an address, rather than sifting through countless rows of a database looking for a certain tree. The time saved alone makes this a valued addition to MapOffice Advanced.
There are countless historical documents and records lying around local government offices these days that contain valuable geographic information but are difficult and time consuming to locate. Whether it is an old annexation or de-annexation agreement, road dedication, variance card, easement location, or vacated alley document, all this information is important enough to hold onto but their current format leaves a lot to be desired. The Community Development department has a binder full of historical vacated alley documents that date back to the 1930s that are only organized by date, leading to massive time consuming searches being that most inquiries would be based on an address and not the date. GIS was sought as a viable option to finally organize all this important data into an easily accessible digital format.
Using these old vacation documents, vacated alleys were drawn in on the existing alley custom layer in MapOffice Advanced. The ordinance number was entered in for each location as attribute information. Most importantly, each historical vacation document was scanned in and linked to their respective alley. Currently, every alley vacation from 1972 to the present has been uploaded, but previous years are still being added on a consistent basis. Now, the user can locate a vacated alley by querying an address and have the vacation information populate instantly. Without GIS, the current system of keeping everything in one giant binder that a user would have to flip through manually searching for the document in question would still exist. Having these alley vacations in an easy to use MapOffice custom layer replaces a time consuming task with a quick, instant result.
In 2010, the Village of Glenview started subscribing to a foreclosure data-delivery service from Sullivan’s Law Directory. This information is loaded into a GIS database, which is then used to generate reports and reference maps. Village officials have used these weekly reports to dispel myths about the community’s rate of foreclosures, monitor properties proactively for code violations, and keep an eye out for any patterns in criminal mischief.
Recently, GIS mapped this data in new ways to get different perspectives on the impact of foreclosure rates. One project came from Economic Development, which requested a map that symbolized foreclosures according their primary usage. This map gave the Village planners a snapshot of how foreclosures have impacted the local business community. The map also provided a breakdown of percentages in each category, showing that the proportional impact was low.
Another recent project was a spatial analysis of foreclosures for the entire three-year period. By using an advanced tool called “kernel density analysis,” GIS was able to simplify a large amount of information by darkly shading areas where foreclosure rates have been the highest. This analysis helped to pinpoint specific multi-unit residences that have been particularly hard hit since 2010. These ongoing projects highlight the power of tracking information with GIS. Within minutes, the same information was analyzed from different perspectives according to the end user’s needs.
Spatial patterns that are not apparent in a text list become obvious when displayed on a map. While everyone hopes to see foreclosure rates drop significantly in the near future, it’s great to know that the Village has a versatile tool for proactively managing the ongoing impact.
Winter operations for local government Public Works departments involve many different tasks, from snow and ice removal to decorating for the holiday season. Often times these operations can require a significant amount of resources and man hours from department staff to complete, which can be further complicated by personnel turnover, illness, or some other event that impacts staff availability. To assist with better documenting their sidewalk snow removal routes for an easier transfer of information between staff members, the Village of Winnetka, IL Public Works department asked the village’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) department to help develop a series of maps showing the different routes and highlighting certain areas that may require additional attention during a snow event.
In addition to information provided by department personnel on the location of each snow removal route, the GIS department was also provided with a series of old Computer-Aided Design (CAD) drawings to use as a starting point for developing the requested series of maps. Using both these sources, and existing sidewalk data that was already available, the GIS department staff was able to extract out the necessary sidewalk features that are associated with each removal route and develop a series of color coded maps that highlight each removal area as well as areas of additional concern (i.e. areas of steep incline, etc). After a thorough review of the maps, the Public Works staff approved the new products and implemented them into a snow removal map book that is now available in every department plow truck and snow removal vehicle.
Having this resource moving forward will make it easier and less time consuming to communicate removal routes to new staff or existing staff that needs to fill in on a route they are unfamiliar with. By transferring the sidewalk snow removal information to a visual medium, the Village of Winnetka Public Works Department now has a more efficient and standardized resource for communicating information between department personnel.
Having the largest business park in the nation provides Elk Grove Village, IL many benefits as a community and initiating improvements to make it even more desirable to current and future business owners is an ongoing objective of Village staff. In 2011 the Village began planning for a major drainage system improvement program. In many ways they have utilized their geographic information system (GIS) to support those efforts.
With GIS the Engineering and Public Works staff was able to identify the location of existing storm sewer infrastructure and open ditch locations, generate statistics and measurements, trace the flow of runoff from any point along the system, map the connectivity and extent of each drainage basin, and produce maps for the business park as a whole and each basin within that area of town to its exit point. Using the GIS gave staff the tools to thoroughly understand the existing conditions and plan a program budget to prepare future improvements and to maintain the existing system.
The Public Works Department tasks the GIS Office with maintaining several maps related to snow removal. The first set op maps are 8.5” x 11 inch plow zone maps that are kept in the truck as a reference to the assignment area for their truck. There are maps for specific trucks as well, such as one shows showing arterial route plowing, cul-de-sac snow removal, and main salting routes. In addition the GIS office creates large wall sized maps of snow removal zones, arterial plowing routes, and slating routes to assist the foreman with managing the trucks during a snow event.
Based on changes in personnel and equipment as well issues that might have arisen in the previous year, the maps are reviewed and updated every Fall. Updating the maps is easy because the map layout remains consistent from year to year. The dates on the map are dynamic text and are automatically updated every time the project is opened. All the maps reference the same data set, so an update to a snow removal route in one map will automatically display in the other maps as well.
By using GIS, the Public Works Department can quickly have new maps that show updated information. Thus the snow removal drivers will have the most accurate information to complete their task efficiently.
In 2001, the Village of Norridge switched from manual water meter readers to an automatic meter reading system that sends usage information through a secure, long range wireless network. Each meter has a module called a Meter Transmission Unit (MTU) that reads each water meter and forwards the meter usage data to the Data Collector Units (DCU). The DCUs receive, process, and store all the information from the MTUs, then forward the information to a Network Control Computer at Village Hall. This allows the Village staff to run reports and create water bills using the information gathered. Eventually, the MTUs have to be replaced and one of the indicators is if the unit had not read for prolonged period of time. The Village of Norridge wanted a way to map out which MTU units had not read for a period longer than five days, so that they could start to keep an eye on them to see if they would eventually re-sync, or would have to be replaced.
A link was created between the water meter database and the database used for the Village’s in-house mapping software, MapOffice™ Advanced. This link allows the mapping software to display data from the water meter system in real time, removing the need to clean up and post the data each time there is an update. Because the data is shown in real time, the water department can use MapOffice™ Advanced to see what meters have not read in the past five days, which allows them to make decisions on replacing the meters. By seeing the locations on the map, the can see if there are any patterns to the outages. By using GIS, the water department is able to monitor MTU readings to make sure they are all working correctly.
The City of Highland Park now tracks the Lined Manholes along with Lined Sanitary Sewer. Originally, the information on which manholes in the city are lined was in a database with no visual display. Public Works would need to manually check if a manhole was lined, which was taking up valuable time and resources. This process has now been drastically improved using GIS.
Now through MapOffice™ Advanced, Public Works can easily access the “Lined Sanitary Sewer” layer and visually see what is lined. This data was attained from a Public Works Access Database and brought into GIS by matching the manhole Structure ID’s. Once these were matched up, data such as Date Lined and Material became accessible in GIS. Once this conversion was completed, it was loaded into MapOffice™ Advanced for Highland Park staff use. Now there is a tool where they could turn in on and click on a Lined Manhole and a window will pop up with information pertaining to that manhole.
Without access to GIS software, Highland Park staff would still be manually looking at each manhole to find if it is lined. Through using GIS software, it has drastically cut work time by easily turning on one layer in MapOffice™ Advanced for all the needed Lined Manhole information.
In 2012, the Village of Glencoe and the Glencoe Park District kicked off a shared services pilot program to reduce internal costs. The two entities agreed to work together to accomplish routine maintenance tasks in-house rather than hiring contractors when equipment or human resources ran short. For example, the Park District has taken over grass mowing while the Village handles routine tree maintenance.
GIS was asked to support this initiative by creating a database of tree locations that the two entities could share. Using the new custom overlay for public option in MapOffice™, GIS was able to share the Park District’s tree inventory and associated data in an easy-to-use format. Each tree’s unique ID number is displayed on the map, which gives staff members an easy way to communicate about a specific location without having to do a site visit. To view additional information about a particular tree, such as its species, overall condition, or planned maintenance work, the user simply clicks on the tree to bring up an information box. As trees are pruned, removed, or replaced, this data is updated to show the completed work. If a supervisor needs to send a crew out to do work on a particular tree, he or she can mark up and print out a map to send out in the field for reference.
The shared services initiative has already saved the Village roughly $100,000 in maintenance expenses. Thanks to its membership in the GIS Consortium, Glencoe didn’t have to turn around and spend any of that money on new software to share data with its new partner.
For the past few years, the Village of Wheeling has been in the process of updating their village utility systems and maps. The Village has taken a proactive approach to making sure that there is a complete and updated inventory and map system of all three utility systems: Water, Sanitary, and Storm Sewer. The water and sanitary systems were the first to be completed. With those out of the way, the Village then moved on to updating the storm sewer system.
The Public Works Department has come up with a process that ensures that they get the most accurate utility locations possible with the equipment they have. First, the department sets up GPS control points for whatever neighborhood they are working in. Second, the department makes sure it captures GPS data when the weather is clear and the most satellites are available, when using handheld GPS data collection devices. These steps ensure that the point locations will be as accurate as possible. After obtaining the point locations, the Engineering Department receives the data from Public Works and begins putting together the utility line work in AutoCAD using a combination of as-builts, engineering diagrams, and aerial imagery. After the line work is completed in CAD, the information is passed along to the GIS department who then updates all the location and attribute information using the information provided by the other departments. The data is then added to the village’s in house mapping program, MapOffice™ Advanced, which allows village staff to view the most up-to-date utility information on their computers and print out sections of the utility system to bring out into the field.
By using GIS with a combination of other programs, such as AutoCAD and GPS, the Village of Wheeling can easily and accurately update its utility system records, therefore giving its staff the most up-to-date information to work with.
The City of Lake Forest recently decided that they wanted to reevaluate and possibly reorganize their storm drainage upkeep procedures. Currently, the City of Lake Forest is divided into 10 rainfall zones. A streets crew is given responsibility to maintain and oversee all storm drainage features within their assigned rainfall zone. Storm drainage features include manholes, inlets, and catch basins. To ensure that the street crews have similar amounts of features to be responsible for, the water foreman requested that a map and table be created to illustrate the amount of features in each rainfall zone. If the feature are counts substantially unequal then the water foreman may decide to reassign storm maintenance responsibility.
In GIS the storm drainage utility features (manholes, inlets, and catch basins) were displayed over the rainfall zones. All utility features not maintained by the City of Lake Forest were removed. These included all private and IDOT maintained structures. The Identity tool in GIS was then used to calculate a count of each storm utility drainage feature and determine which rainfall zone that feature fell within. The counts were then organized into a table as well as displayed onto a rainfall zone map.
The results of this project revealed many disproportioned feature counts within the rainfall zones. GIS enabled storm drainage features to quickly and reliably be calculated. The water foreman can now take this information and reallocate maintenance responsibilities where necessary.
There is a constant need for road improvements and upgrades throughout a transportation network. However, there are usually insufficient funds available for a community to complete most of these projects. One potential solution to this problem is the Surface Transportation Program. The Surface Transportation Program provides federal funding to state departments of transportation. A portion of this funding is redistributed by IDOT to various Council of Mayors. Lincolnwood is a member of the North Shore Council of Mayors, which is currently accepting project requests for 2013 thru 2017. The one criterion for use of these grants is that the road must be a federally eligible road. There are two road improvement projects that the village is applying for that fall under this realm: adding a dedicated left hand turn lane on Central Avenue at the intersection with Pratt Avenue, and resurfacing Pratt Avenue from Lockwood Avenue to Crawford Avenue. It was determined that GIS would be utilized to prepare the necessary maps for the application process.
Maps were created for both site locations showing the extent and scope of the project. Regional maps were also created showing the location of the project in relation to the surrounding geographic area. These maps will then be used as part of the packet for the grant application that will be submitted by September 30th. If the grant application is approved, then the village will only be on the hook for a fraction of the construction costs rather than having to fund the project independently if it undertook these same projects without the grant.
Lincolnshire is a picturesque village in Lake County, well known for its mature trees, numerous parks, and attractively landscaped open spaces. One of the best ways to enjoy the scenery is to walk or bike around town using the wide local streets and recreational paths that connect them. To encourage non-motorized traffic in the Village, GIS was asked to update the hiking and biking trail map to highlight existing routes as well as key points of interest. In addition to showcasing area parks and retail shopping, visitors to Lincolnshire can also quickly identify free parking and public drinking fountain locations. Local schools are also marked so that parents can identify safe routes for their children to use.
The end product is provided to the public in two formats, print and interactive. The printable version is an 11-by-17 inch map that visitors and residents can print out and keep as a general reference. Anyone looking for greater detail can access the interactive version online to determine precise locations of particular attractions or the proximity of their homes to existing facilities. Both products can be viewed on the Village’s website at http://www.village.lincolnshire.il.us/village-maps.
At the beginning of the 2012 fiscal year, the City of Lake Forest had been delivering new recycling carts to all of their households. To accurately determine the number of recycling carts that were needed; a list of all non-commercial addresses in the city was generated and excluded from the recycling cart delivery list. The remaining residential address list was used as a reference to the Sanitation and Public Works departments to determine who was in need of a bin.
City resident addresses were then mapped to appropriately display the status of their recycling cart, either received or not received. With the cart delivery process still underway, the City of Lake Forest is now offering the option of choosing between a 64-gallon recycling cart or a 35-gallon cart. By completing an online request form, residents had the opportunity to request a smaller cart. The addresses of the residents who requested the 35-gallon recycling cart were then extracted from the master list and composed into a separate list. The recycling cart information was then added into an interactive mapping interface (MapOffice Advanced ™). MapOffice Advanced ™ allows city employees to quickly search an address, view the address spatially, and know the status of that resident’s recycling cart. Without integrating the recycling cart information into MapOffice Advanced™ city employees would have to refer back to an address table. If a resident calls Public Works requesting the status of their recycling cart, the recycling cart layers within MapOffice Advanced™ can be used as an efficient and effective resource.
Communities everywhere are tasked with providing water samples to the EPA to meet public health compliance standards. There are various elements the water is tested for and some are tested for more frequently than others. The Riverside, IL Water Department has utilized its Geographic Information System (GIS) to highlight the distribution of the sample sites throughout the community with the water system shown in the background. Alternative locations for each site are mapped as well to be used for additional samples or as a substitute when needed. The samples provided are tested by the EPA and reports are distributed to the public every year.
Every year the City of Lake Forest requests a map to illustrate roads that are being planned for resurfacing. These maps help manage the spatial distribution of where these resurfacing projects are occurring. Poor road conditions are an issue for all communities and by ensuring residents that these conditions are being recognized can assist in exceling the government-public relationship.
The requested map illustrates the proposed 5 year pavement resurfacing program ranging from 2012 to 2016. The engineering department provided a spreadsheet defining all road segments that were planned for surfacing along with their proposal data. Line features were then created based on the spreadsheet specifications. Being able to visualize areas with a high resurfacing occurrence allows engineering staff to determine if their past replacements were effective, as well as to target new resurfacing areas in the coming years. The proposed pavement resurfacing routes were grouped together by fiscal year, each year being symbolized by a different color.
The City of Lake Forest hopes to continue their resurfacing initiative to help ensure the yearly CIP funds are meeting the needs of the residents and city infrastructure.
The Village of Glenview approached GIS to collect the locations of outfalls throughout the Village for the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit program. NPDES controls water pollution by regulating sources that discharge pollutants.
The Village decided to use a new method of collection, called Open Data Kit (ODK), using cellular phones. ODK allows the use of GPS on cellular phones along with the creation of forms to collect attribute data. Collected during the process were the GPS locations, photos of each outfall, and a unique ID of each. This data was then transferred off the phone to a staging location on the internet that allows exporting of the data to be used in GIS. GIS then used this data to create a series of maps to show the locations of the outfalls.
The Village found this process to be very cost effective while maintaining the accuracy that they were seeking.
Joint Utility Locating Information for Excavators (JULIE) is a not-for-profit corporation that provides homeowners and professional excavators with one place to call for safe digging. JULIE serves as a message handling notification service for underground facility owners, taking information about planned excavations and distributing this information to its membership. It is then the responsibility of each facility owner to mark the location of their underground facilities at the excavation site. In Norridge, this means that every time JULIE receives a call, the Public Works department has to go out and do all the locating. JULIE bases the calls (and the facility owner) off of a series of boundaries that are based off of Township Quarter sections. If an underground facility is just barely within a quarter section boundary, the facility owner receives a phone call every time utilities need to be located within that quarter section, even if the location is not near the owned facilities. JULIE allows communities and other facility owners to submit their own boundaries to reduce the amount of calls each facility owner receives.
To create a new JULIE boundary, the GIS department took all the village utility data and created a 300 FT buffer around the utility dataset and the village boundary. This made sure that all the utility information within the village boundaries was included, and allowed for any unaccounted utility information just outside the village limits. The new boundary was then approved by both the Engineering and Public Works Departments, and then uploaded onto the JULIE website. It was then approved by JULIE and implemented into their call system. Now, whenever the Public Works department gets a call to locate utilities, they know that the location will be within or very close to their jurisdiction.
Removal of Ash trees has begun in Elk Grove Village, IL to combat Emerald Ash Borer infestation. An inventory of Ash trees in The Village’s Geographic Information System (GIS) has been instrumental in planning removal efforts and is now being used to assist planting of new trees. Mapping the new tree plantings has made it possible to communicate watering and observation duties to be sure staff is doing what they can to ensure the survival of the new trees. Tracking removal locations where a replacement tree is desired in coming years will be much easier to manage using the GIS as well since the history of tree removal locations will always be available and the expectation that tree removals will exceed plantings for some time due to the Ash Borer threat and budgeting requirements.
Removal of Ash trees has begun in Elk Grove Village, IL to combat Emerald Ash Borer infestation. An inventory of Ash trees in The Village’s Geographic Information System (GIS) has been instrumental in planning removal efforts and is now being used to assist planting of new trees. Mapping the new tree plantings has made it possible to communicate watering and observation duties to be sure staff is doing what they can to ensure the survival of the new trees. Tracking removal locations where a replacement tree is desired in coming years will be much easier to manage using the GIS as well since the history of tree removal locations will always be available and the expectation that tree removals will exceed plantings for some time due to the Ash Borer threat and budgeting requirements.
Technology can be used to assist local government in many different ways. For the Village of Winnetka, IL, their investment in technology includes a Geographic Information System (GIS) program that provides all village departments with maps, analysis results, and data that assists with day to day operations and future planning efforts. Traditionally, access to the village’s GIS data, and the ability to analyze it, has been limited to those who are trained on how to use a high end GIS software program, which can both cost prohibitive and technically challenging to implement as a tool for all village staff. However, with the development of a web-browser based GIS viewer application called MapOffice™, all staff now has the ability to view all GIS data collected by the village, as well as conduct basic analysis of certain data to gather more in-depth information about a particular assets or process.
A recent analysis of village assets conducted using MapOffice™ involved the village’s Public Works department, which used the application to conduct a sewer system flow analysis live during a meeting with a firm that is conducting a sewer system flow monitoring study for the village. During the meeting, the Public Works Director was able to use MapOffice™ to highlight areas that the village wanted to include as part of the flow monitoring study and, using a sewer system tracing tool, trace how each area was connected within the entire system and where the flow for each study area started and ended. By conducting this analysis during the meeting, using existing village data and an existing tool available to all village staff, the Public Works Director was able to clearly display which areas he wanted the firm to focus on for the study and saved the village time and money by not having the firm conduct the same flow analysis prior to starting the flow monitoring study.
By making GIS more available through a commonly used medium (i.e. a web browser), the ability to access and analyze village assets is now possible to all village staff. Increased access to this information now allows all departments to leverage the village GIS data to make more informed decisions that are saving time and reducing the need for extra expenditures to produce the same level of results.
The Village of Tinley Park is responsible for the maintenance of approximately 167 miles of roadways within its municipal limits. This includes anything from plowing and pot hole filling to street sweeping and crack sealing. This makes the Village the go to source when a resident asks, “Why isn’t my street plowed” or “Who is responsible for filling a pothole?” More often than not the calls that are received by the village pertaining to road complaints are residents calling for one of the approximately 60 miles of roads that are in the village but, are owned and maintained by a different entity, such as the county or a homeowners association.
There are at least five different classifications of road ownership in the Village of Tinley Park; State, Will County, Cook County, Private and Village Owned. At some points along a road ownership may change 3 times. Having this many classification makes it impossible for anyone to know intuitively who owns and is responsible for maintaining a certain stretch of road. Many times when a resident calls into comment on a road, a clerk takes down the address and number of the citizen so they can research the road and call them back. The turnaround time for this process can be one or two days. This time lag can also make for a grumpy resident when they are told two days later the village is not responsible for fixing a problem. With the implementation of GIS and Map Office Advance in Tinley Park, the question of ownership can be determined with the resident on the phone. Using a custom overlay the clerk can find the address using the Find and Go tool and by simply checking a box display the ownership of a road. Thanks to GIS the process is reduced from a couple of days to a couple of minutes thus allowing village employees to better serve the residents.
In April 2012, the Village of Norridge decided, in honor of Earth Day, to hold a village wide clean up of all village parkways. The idea was for residents to volunteer their time and pick up trash and garbage along roads in the village and then drop it off at designated locations. The Public Works department would then pick up all the trash left at each drop off. The Village asked the GIS department to put together a series of maps to inform the residents where they could drop off any trash they collected.
All of the volunteers were given a map book to be referenced in the clean up process. The map book consisted of the village streets broken down into specific zones, allowing the volunteers to work in sections rather than just wandering each street at their leisure. This would ensure that all sections of the village were cleaned. Then each previously designated drop off point was added to the maps so that the volunteers could see where they had to drop off the trash collected in their specific zone. By using GIS, the Village was able to provide better information for their volunteers.
The Public Works Division is undergoing accreditation over the summer and felt that a tour of the City would be beneficial to the group of people reviewing the Department. The City covers 12 square miles and it would be difficult to people unfamiliar with the community to relate locations to the appropriate part of the City. The tour would include proposed projects and well known locations throughout Highland Park. The tour would start at Public Works, loop around the City and end at Public Works.
The Public Works Department asked the GIS create a map of the stops on the tour as well as the planned route of the tour. GIS quickly created a map showing all 14 stops as well as the proposed route between stops. This map was reviewed several times and the order of the stops were revised to make the stops more efficient.
By using GIS the Public Works Division could quickly create a map that could be easily revised to make the tour more efficient. They also had a nice graphic to assist the review team with understanding where the stops were located throughout the community. Without GIS the City would have created hand drawn maps that would have been difficult to read.
All eyes were focused on the city of Chicago in mid-May when world leaders converged for the 2012 NATO Summit. Because of the importance of this organization on the world stage, many people plan demonstrations to call attention to their causes and concerns. Unfortunately, past demonstrations at NATO meetings have turned violent, putting lives and property at risk. While the heart of security concerns rested on McCormick Place in Chicago, many of the nearby suburbs made preparations in case the activity spilled over the city’s boundaries, as has happened in previous years at other world locations.
Recognizing the value in collaboration and mutual support, the Village of Glencoe’s Public Safety department joined with a group of north shore communities to create a regional incident command center. While most of the advanced preparations and planning was kept confidential for security reasons, GIS was able to support the cause by providing the command center with a map of the Glencoe area. Recent aerial photography provided the base map, and GIS added in labels for every street, major thoroughfares, and significant locations within the Village. Copies of this map were also distributed to key personnel in the Village, and will be used for reference in future disaster management planning as well as emergency response. GIS provided Glencoe an efficient and cost effective way to share information with its neighbors, as well as create an end product for long-term use.
Last October, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) branch of the US Environmental Protection Agency instituted a new permit requirement to protect our waterways. This application requires public entities to request permission to apply pesticides, which could end up in the groundwater or nearby bodies of water. To be in compliance, the Village of Lincolnshire Public Works department had to submit for the first time an application prior to conducting its annual treatment program.
One of the application requirements is to identify the geographic locations that will be treated, as well as what pesticides will be applied in each place. GIS was able to assist the parks superintendent by generating a map of all of each treatment area, color coded by the type of treatment planned. Without this site map, the applicant would have to write out a lengthy description of each site that was detailed enough for the NPDES reviewers to identify themselves. This would have taken a significant amount of time to complete, whereas GIS was able to create a professional-looking illustration in an efficient way.
For more information on the new application process, please visit the information page on the NPDES website, found at http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/home.cfm?program_id=410.
The Village of Glencoe is home to three ravine systems that drain into Lake Michigan. The property owners along each ravine enjoy scenic views of wooden areas with free-flowing streams at the base of steeply sloped bluffs. These bluffs are at risk for degradation if careless development by a private landowner occurs. Recognizing the inherent risk to life, property, and the local ecology, the Village proposed a new ordinance in the fall of 2010 to encourage best practices in steep-slope development. The “steep slope ordinance,” as it came to be known, encouraged the use of building techniques that would reinforce and stabilize the ground. However, many property owners felt that the ordinance would infringe on their personal property rights. In response to their objections, the Village board tabled the ordinance indefinitely.
To address resident concerns, GIS is being used to illustrate the impact of the proposed ordinance on a property-by-property basis. Once the map is complete, Village staff will meet with the affected residents individually and use a custom overlay in MapOffice™ Advanced to show the ordinance’s impact on each property. This overlay will show that the proposed ordinance will not limit private property development any further than the current geography already does. Dashed lines are used to depict the approximate limits: the orange line shows the threshold for using caution when developing, and the red line indicates the point where any proposed development will be required to use specialized building techniques that mitigate the risk of landslides. This use of GIS should help educate the public so that the ordinance can be enacted to protect the local ecology as well as life and property.
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.
During the 2012 fiscal year, the City of Lake Forest has been receiving and delivering new recycling carts to all of its households. To aid in ordering the needed number of bins, a list of all non-commercial addresses in the City was generated. The Sanitation and Public Works departments were responsible for keeping track of who was in need of a bin throughout the year, with the goal of having each household’s bin delivered within the year.
In late February, GIS was asked to take the project one step further by comparing who has had a bin delivery to who is still in need of one. This was accomplished through geocoding the list of deliveries to the master address list, and then selecting those residences that have not had a delivery and creating a new list. In addition to the new list, a map was created to give a spatial reference on locations that did not have a bin. Interestingly, there was no trend found on areas that needed delivery, which made having a spatial reference even more valuable.
While this project was relatively simple to accomplish, the time saved by using GIS to generate the new table proved to be a big help to the Public Works department.
Planning for seasonal operations is a process all municipalities must go through as the seasons change throughout the year. For the City of Des Plaines, IL Public Works department, mowing grass in areas that are maintained by the city is a primary component of their summer operations plan. In past years, the mowing schedule for each field crew has been determined by the crew members themselves, based where they were and the amount of time it took to mow each area. To help create a more consistent mowing schedule, and start tracking the daily progress of each crew, the department asked the city’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) department to develop a set of mowing routes based on the mowing areas the city is responsible for and create a series of route maps that can be given to each crew for reference.
The Public Works department had two primary goals for developing maps of their mowing areas: 1. Help create a consistent record of where the city is responsible for mowing and clearly define each route for the field crews and 2. Provide a resource for tracking what areas were mowed in a route on a given day. By creating this information in GIS and having it available for mapping, the crews can now take maps out into the field and highlight the areas that were mowed, making it easier to manage the day to day workload of each crew.
Tracking this information spatially, using a visual reference tool such as map, makes the transfer of information more accessible and easier to understand for those involved in the mowing operations. It also makes tracking the progress of each crew easier for the department management and provides them with a clearer picture of how efficient their crews are and if certain areas of the city require additional crews based on how long it takes to complete each route.
Most municipal governments don’t have a local water source they can access directly to supply their residents and businesses, so, as a result, they are forced to purchase water from surrounding municipalities that do have access or regional utility management agencies who pump it in from outside locations. As the economy continues to struggle, the fees and costs associated with managing a government, including those used to purchase and distribute water, continue to rise. For the City of Des Plaines, IL, which receives its water from the City of Chicago, this rising cost of purchasing water has lead the city’s Public Works and Engineering Department to start examining alternative supply sources to ensure it can adequately supply water with the same amount of funds moving forward.
To assist with reviewing the available alternate water sources, the Public Works and Engineering Department asked the city’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) department to create a map showing both the source location of the water, as well as proposed distributions systems for supplying the water to the city and its neighbors. While the initial analysis of where the water would come from was done before the map was created, being able to visualize all the proposed sources and their associated system enhancements provided the department with a tool for presenting each supply option to the city council in an engaging and easy-to-understand format that allowed to council to better understand the options available to the city. Without using GIS to design the water source scenario map, discussing the water supply information, while still possible, would have been more time consuming for the department staff to prepare for and, potentially, more difficult for the council members to understand.
The Village of Wheeling Public Works Department is currently in the process of doing a full inventory of all the street lights in the village. This entails locating all the street light poles, assigning each light and pole a unique ID number, and then detailing all the specific information about each light such as the bulb type, bulb wattage, pole material, etc… Eventually, this information will be added into the MapOffice™ Advanced (the village’s in-house interactive map program), so that the Public Works Department can view all the street lights on a computer and then link to work orders reports in the village database.
A series of maps were created and printed out so that the field crews could travel through the village and record IDs and any other relevant information for each street light. The IDs would be then referenced in a table so that the attribute information for each light could be linked to the appropriate street light location. The data will then be brought back to the Public Works building and added to the village’s databases so that it can be viewed in MapOffice™ Advanced. Eventually, all work orders for street lights will be linked to the lights on the map (via the unique ID) so that the public works crew can view the entire history for each light just by clicking on it. By collecting all the data and then implementing it into MapOffice™ Advanced, the Public Works Department will easily be able to view all the street light information in one centralized location.
Being able to get access to useful information at a moment’s notice is something of a common trend these days. The only problem that really arises is when the information you are searching for is not yet created. As technology advances, so do the amount of portals that are created to store mass amounts of information. One type of portal that has been around for a long time is a Geographical Information System (GIS). This type of information portal does not only store tabular data but it also represents this tabular data in a spatial environment so that correlations can be made between the different types of data on the ground.
The City of Park Ridge, IL has been using a GIS for many years now but they always seem to find new information that is worth adding to the system in order to answer everyday questions or conduct detailed analysis. One of the newer additions of data to the GIS is the collection of relief sewer locations. This data is important to the Engineering Department in order to understand where these relief sewers are located in relation to other sewer lines as well as how they are helping the overall flow of storm water in a certain area. Older methods would have usually required the City Engineering Department to dig up and review old as-builts and document where these lines are located. Now the information is stored in the GIS and is as easy as looking at a map for their review and analysis. A once labor intensive process has now been made more efficient with the help of GIS.
Until recently the City of Highland Park maintained a records based tree inventory within an Oracle database. This application was great for querying information records but it was not good for locating trees within a mapping interface. The Forestry division recognized the need to migrate the database to application that would allow them to use a mapping component. Therefore, they contracted with Davey to purchase TreeKeeper.
There were two important components that required GIS. First the existing tree inventoried needed to be geocoded located. The tree inventory data was geocoded and cleaned up with ESRI ArcGIS software. Ninety-three percent of the over 30,000 tree records were matched automatically. The remaining seven percent were matched to their locations manually. Manually matching the locations as helpful to Forestry as Davey had offered to geocode the records but they would have placed the seven percent in a random location outside of the City boundaries. This meant that Forestry would have had to move 2100 points by themselves. The second step was to export selected layers out of the GIS database to create a base map within the TreeKeeper application.
Without GIS Forestry would not have good locations for seven percent of their tree inventory. They also would not have a good base map for referencing the location of trees. At this point the trees are located on address points, but there are plans to manually move the trees to their real world coordinates.
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, ensuring yearly CIP funds are meeting the needs of the residents and City infrastructure.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When repaving village streets after maintenance or a repair, the Village of Wheeling typically has to take in account the amount of curb that has to be rebuilt or repaired. The price of the repairs depends on the length of the curb and the different types of aprons that feed into the street i.e. driveway, parking lot, sidewalk, etc… The engineering department wanted to know if there was an easier way to calculate the amount of curb length for each village owned street and get a count of the number of aprons along the roadway as well.
Using the base map data provided by Ayres Associates, all the curbs in the village were split by their respective roads. The amount of curb length split by the road boundaries was added to the road data table along with a count of any sidewalk, driveway, or parking lot that intersected the original road data. With the data all divided and organized, a map was created allowing an engineer to select a section of a road and then view a table showing the length of curb for that section and the number of aprons along the road. By using GIS, the Village of Wheeling was able to cut down the amount of time it would take to manually calculate curb length as well as provide a quick way to make estimates on the cost of repaving certain streets.
The Riverside Fire Department has been working with its Geographic Information System (GIS) staff to produce updated fire hydrant flow maps due considerably to a significant water system improvement project conducted in 2010. The new configuration of infrastructure was updated in the GIS along with the new flow information for the fire hydrants that resulted from new and larger water mains. A large wall map was produced for the fire station and smaller, double sided maps were printed and laminated for use in the field. With the capabilities of the GIS and the fact that it is a repository for all village data the maps were designed to include all addresses throughout the village as well. Combining the address and hydrant locations with flow information provides a very valuable resource for the Fire staff.
Over time sewer utility pipes deteriorate and may eventually collapse causing an even bigger problem for a municipality to replace. Being able to locate these problem pipes before these bigger problems occur is ultimately the best practice. What normally happens at the local government level is a problem area is identified by the Engineering Department based on their analysis or by resident complaints. From there, the Engineering Department will usually contract a company to televise these problem pipes so they can review what is really happening underground. If the pipes are in really bad shape than a full replacement may be the only solution. Often times though, it is just a case of tree root obstruction or deterioration to the pipe that is restricting the flow of water. In these instances on e successful solution that a municipality may select is to cut out all tree roots with a small machine fed through the existing pipe and then line the sewer with a manufactured heat sensitive tube.
In simple terms, it is called sewer lining and is something that the City of Park Ridge, Illinois has recently started doing again. Additionally, the City has leveraged the use of their Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Department to help create maps depicting the locations of the pipes that are to be reconstructed. The maps are simple in nature but add to the City’s process of what they supply to the contractor doing the work. So, instead of trying to describe the scope of work, the City Engineer now has a visual to give to the contractor that shows the location of the job, the pipes to be lined or cleaned, as well as the attributes of each pipe that will be worked on (i.e. size, material, and length). All in all, sometimes it is the small things that make a contract go better and in this example it is easy to see how a simple map from GIS may help alleviate some confusion.
In an effort to maintain and enforce a standard of quality water treatment and distribution amongst local governments, the EPA requires municipalities to provide a map displaying their water system monitoring stations. Specifically, the EPA requires a map displaying the water distribution system along with: coliform sites, booster chlorination stations, pressure zones, storage tanks, entry points, water sources, and stage 2 sampling sites. The map is not only used by the EPA to locate these sites, but it is also used by the village’s water department when determining the best areas to setup sampling sites. Because the EPA prefers samples from areas along the water system that aren’t used as much, the map gives the water department a visual aid while determining which areas of the system are least exercised.
The water department asked this map to me made with GIS because of its ability to not only create maps, but store the spatial data so that it can be referenced again in the future. Because most of the required information is already stored within the Village’s GIS data, all that was needed was to plot the new testing locations onto the map. The village was able to save a lot of time, money and resources by already tracking the water system in GIS because this map is mandatory and would have had to been created by another means which would not have been as time and cost efficient. In addition to being able to quickly create the map on short notice, the Village will also be able to quickly make any changes to this map when the information is requested again next year by the EPA.
When people think about moving to a new neighborhood they almost always consider the aspect of safety for them and their family. Whether it is the speed of the local streets or whether or not there is a neighborhood watch group, safety is on every families mind. One item of safety that also tops the charts is how well a street is lighted. For if a street light is out or not functioning properly people are more likely to feel unsafe for they cannot see their surroundings. Additionally, they are likely to call their community’s Public Works Department and complain about the broken light.
From here the Public Works Department is going to send someone out to the field to fix the problem. For the Village of Morton Grove, IL they decided to make sure that the employee that will report to the broken light is amply prepared by knowing what control boxes operate which lights in case there is a need to close a circuit temporarily. The Village decided to use their Geographic Information System (GIS) to publish this information on their local interactive web mapping site so that any employee can locate the street lights and their connecting parts. Additionally, having these street light locations and underground lines mapped out allows other people to be notified of their whereabouts if they are to be digging in that area.
It is easy to see that GIS was able to help by creating a centralized location to access street light information rather than digging up old paper maps. Not only is this process efficient, it also helps in times of need.
On July 23rd, 2011, the Chicago, IL metropolitan area was hit by a storm system that resulted in extensive damage across numerous communities. As a community that received heavy flooding damage and experienced utility management issues due to the intensity of the storm, the Village of Winnetka needed to track where flooding was being reported and the nature of each report to help get a village-wide view of the total damage. To assist with this effort, the village Geographic Information Systems (GIS) department was asked to store and manage the flooding location data and develop a series of maps showing different aspects of the damage accounts as needed for reporting and analysis.
The primary sources used to develop the damage assessment database were field checks by village staff and damage claims submitted to Cook County by the residents. Using these sources, an extensive list of flooding locations, and the nature of each flooding event, was compiled and made available for mapping. Some of the products generated from the data were a basic map showing flooded properties, a map showing properties with debris piles stacked on the curb, and a map showing the extent of the flooding in one of the hardest hit areas of the village.
By storing and managing this information in GIS, the village now has the ability to develop powerful visual tools for examining the impacts of the storm, assisting with the development of future mitigation strategies, and providing the village council with evidence of how extensive the damage was in an easy-to-understand format.
In the wake of this summer’s regional power outages, the Village of Lincolnwood made a decision to perform an audit on the Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) outage report with data from the entire year of 2010. The purpose of this audit was to determine the contributing factors of the power outages within the Village; specifically if equipment failure was a major contributor. The process for this project included analysis using the Village’s Geographic Information System (GIS). Using GIS, the Village could spatially reference outage location and combined with the tabular data supplied by ComEd, could summarize the elements that contributed to the outages. By looking at the data spatially, conclusions could be drawn much easier by the Village’s employees. After summarizing the data, it was found that trees, equipment failure, and weather were the largest contributing factors to the outages within the Village. The Village will now look at the areas where tree outages were prevalent and work with ComEd and the Village arborist to create a focused trimming program aimed at reducing the number of outages in these areas caused by fallen trees or limbs.
Providing adequate accessible parking spaces for local businesses is an important legal concern for many communities. Failure to meet State and Federal requirements can lead to law suits or having fines accessed against the City. The City of Highland Park Intra-City Parking Committee was concerned that some the parking lots might not contain enough spaces designated as accessible parking spaces.
The GIS Office was contacted to create a series of maps showing the location of accessible parking spaces in the Central Business District and the Ravinia Business District. Using existing data, the GIS Office quickly creates aerial and base map showing all the designations of parking spaces in both business districts. The maps were used to identify parking lots and on-street parking areas that did not have enough accessible parking spots. During the review it was determined that two parking lots required additional accessible parking spaces.
By using GIS the city could quickly review the number of accessible parking spaces with minimal amount of field work. The maps were used by the Committee to make the case that additional accessible parking spaces were needed. Once the additional spaces were created in the field, new maps were created displaying the updated field conditions. Without GIS this parking study would have taken much longer. Each parking lot and on street parking area would need to field surveyed. The information from these field surveys would not be as easy to use or as cleanly displayed as the information in the GIS maps was.
During the cleanup from damage caused by emergency events, such as severe storms or flooding, there are often numerous issues that a local government needs to deal with in order to successfully recover. After a recent storm that occurred on July 23rd, 2011, the Village of Winnetka, IL was hit hard by residential flooding and other water related problems. This forced the village’s Water and Electric Department to take an inventory of all properties in the village with electric meters installed in basements to help identify areas where restoring power service might be difficult in the future if that same property floods.
Using an existing database containing all the basement electric meter addresses, and a list of flooded properties collected during the July 23rd storm event, the village GIS (Geographic Information Systems) Department was able to map out the locations of each meter and spatially compare that to the flooded property locations. Doing this helped to identify where homes with both basement electric meters and potential flooding issues were located, allow the Water and Electric Department to assess the potential risk for these meters being inaccessible during a similar storm event.
Without GIS, analysis would have been very time consuming and would have required significant man-hours to complete. Comparing the flooding and electric meter locations spatially allowed for a quick and efficient analysis of the data, which provided the Water and Electric Department with an easy-to-use tool for assessing future risk.
The Village of Skokie started maintaining street signs over 30 years ago. Over time, the inventory evolved from strictly paper/mylar based to eventually incorporate an Excel spreadsheet with ID’s of signs on the paper maps. While this has worked in the past, current technology provides a much better solution for managing the Village’s signs. By using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the Village can utilize a technology that is already used throughout the enterprise. This is especially helpful considering the Federal government has set dates for compliance for three (3) major traffic sign maintenance requirements. The U.S. Department of Transportation requires the following:
January 2012 All agencies will have to establish and implement a sign maintenance program that addresses the minimum sign retroreflectivity requirements
January 2015 All agencies must comply with the new retroreflectivity requirements for most of their traffic signs they have installed, including all red and white or white and black “regulatory” signs (such as STOP signs and Speed Limit signs), yellow and black “warning” signs, and ground-mounted green and white “guide” signs (except street name signs)
January 2018 All agencies must comply with the new retroreflectivity requirements for overhead guide signs and all street name signs
Source: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration
In order to meet the requirement for January 2012, the Village began conducting a sign inventory in August, 2011. Once the inventory is complete, the Village will maintain the data using GIS and will publish the data internally for planning, analysis, and maintenance purposes.
To provide a reference for village staff and contractors alike, the Riverside Geographic Information System (GIS) has provided maps of tree planting locations. By mapping this information staff can evaluate the work conducted by the contractor and inspect the condition of the trees going forward. Similarly tree removal products have been generated to identify where stump removal and restoration activities have taken place. This information can easily be integrated into the tree inventory that is also managed using the GIS to obtain accurate assessments of village owned and managed trees.
The Village of Deerfield has plans to run fiber optic line to connect Village Hall and Public Works. This will improve the speed of moving data between the locations. GIS was used to create a series of maps that showed the location of the utilities and proposed fiber optic line with hand holes. After creating this preliminary map, Public Works went out into the field to markup any changes. The final map will be used by Public Works to install the fiber optic line while knowing where the utilities are located.
Monitoring contaminated soils in right-of-ways and a major concern of local governments. The cost of disposing of contaminated soil is significantly more than dealing with non-contaminated soil. Furthermore, if contaminated soil is accidently mixed with clean soil, the entire pile of soil is considered contaminated and thus the cost of disposing of that soil becomes more expensive.
In the State of Illinois, contaminated areas within right-of-ways are tracked through Highway Authority Agreements. (HAA) These agreements are site plans showing the business that caused the contamination and the location of the area included in the Highway Authority Agreement. The document provides a lot of information, but the document is not referenced with other spatial information. Thus there is no obvious association between the HAA areas and things such as city owned utilities. Therefore, it might be possible for the city to accidently dig up soil in an HAA area without realizing it until after the fact.
Public Works requested that the HAA be added to the existing GIS layers. This way if the City was planning to excavate an area, they could quickly determine if there was HAA area in the planned area of excavation. The GIS Office also added the layer to MapOffice Advanced to provide a quick reference layer. Now, when the City is planning to excavate an area, they no longer have to hunt for an HAA document. They can quickly reference MapOffice Advance or the GIS database to determine of if there is a risk of contaminated soil where they are planning to dig
While it may not occur as part of the day to day operations, an unfortunate reality for all local governments is the need to coordinate response and cleanup efforts as the result of an emergency event, such a severe storm or other natural disaster. To assist with tracking reported incidents as the result of a recent severe weather event, the Village of Winnetka, IL used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to store and display the incident locations during the event, as well map their locations to assist with the extensive cleanup efforts after the event took place.
Prior to using GIS to store and display the emergency event data, village staff would store the incident information in a variety of different mediums, including paper post-it notes, scarps of notebook paper, and non-standardized excel sheets, just to name a few. As a result, trying to coordinate response efforts was difficult, as post-its would get lost, pieces of paper would get thrown away, etc. In addition, without having a visual way to organize each incident location, departments would often duplicate efforts and send multiple response crews to deal with one incident, instead of distributing the available resources to maximize efficiency.
To help reduce these inefficiencies, the village GIS department provided a Structured Query Language (SQL) database with a Microsoft Access form front end that allowed staff to enter the information for each incident location as it was received in a standard format that could be easily accessed and reviewed by everyone involved in the response efforts. From the SQL database, each incident could be extracted and mapped in the village’s internet browser-based GIS application for all staff to see. Using this visual platform, the nature of the incident and its current status could be shared quickly across all departments, reducing redundancy and maximizing the effectiveness of each response crew.
The Chicagoland area was battered with storms during the morning of June 21, 2011. The strong winds and lightning wrecked havoc regionally. During the aftermath, Public Safety in the Village of Skokie was busy taking reports of downed power lines, trees, damaged traffic signals and street lights. During disasters like this storm, it is highly effective to be able to map these locations in real time so at any one moment, Public Safety can pinpoint priorities and allocate the proper manpower.
Mapping falls in the realm of the Village’s Geographic Information System (GIS). By using the GIS, Village staff can enter address or street locations and easily associate the data with an actual spatial location. For example, the Village mapped out all locations of known trees or branches down following the storm. After placing these locations on a map, staff was able to allocate manpower to the high density areas. However, by analyzing the data spatially, the GIS can paint a picture of where the hardest hit areas are located without having to analyze The future of GIS in Emergency Management is evolving, and it is more important now than ever to be able to see real time data. It allows manpower to be distributed to the proper areas as well as provides the most accurate look into the current conditions.
While it may not occur as part of the day to day operations, an unfortunate reality for all local governments is the need to coordinate response and cleanup efforts as the result of an emergency event, such a severe storm or other natural disaster. To assist with tracking reported incidents as the result of a recent severe weather event, the Village of Winnetka, IL used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to store and display the incident locations during the event, as well map their locations to assist with the extensive cleanup efforts after the event took place.
Prior to using GIS to store and display the emergency event data, village staff would store the incident information in a variety of different mediums, including paper post-it notes, scarps of notebook paper, and non-standardized excel sheets, just to name a few. As a result, trying to coordinate response efforts was difficult, as post-its would get lost, pieces of paper would get thrown away, etc. In addition, without having a visual way to organize each incident location, departments would often duplicate efforts and send multiple response crews to deal with one incident, instead of distributing the available resources to maximize efficiency.
To help reduce these inefficiencies, the village GIS department provided a Structured Query Language (SQL) database with a Microsoft Access form front end that allowed staff to enter the information for each incident location as it was received in a standard format that could be easily accessed and reviewed by everyone involved in the response efforts. From the SQL database, each incident could be extracted and mapped in the village’s internet browser-based GIS application for all staff to see. Using this visual platform, the nature of the incident and its current status could be shared quickly across all departments, reducing redundancy and maximizing the effectiveness of each response crew.
The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) provides low interest loans for the construction of community water supply facilities and utilities. This loan is used to upgrade or replace existing facilities or utilities to bring them into compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act and State Environmental Protection Act. The Village of Deerfield has decided to use Geographic Information Systems to create a series of maps that shows the locations of the utilities. These six maps that will be created are in locations of construction that is scheduled to be done. Public Works plan is to work on the water utility system while the scheduled construction is being done.
During an emergency event, the extent of the area affected and the number of issues occurring as a result of the event are just some of the factors that need to be processed, organized, and reviewed by local government staff to determine the most appropriate course of action. Perhaps the greatest challenge of any emergency response effort is controlling where information is coming from and determining which pieces of information are more critical than others. To help better organize information gathered during a recent storm event, the City of Des Plaines IL used the city’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) department to assist with mapping and prioritizing the storm cleanup efforts.
While the initial response to the storm event relied heavily on more traditional forms of data organization and presentation, an effort to streamline the cleanup efforts resulted in GIS being used to develop several mapping products that assisted city staff with visualizing the storm damage. These included a traffic signal outage map, a road closure and downed trees map, and a damaged property map that was developed using information gathered by city building inspectors during the initial damage assessment review. Using these products, city staff was able to better visualize the extent of the damage and, as a result, develop a more effective plan for cleaning up the city.
A developing problem spread among many communities in the greater Chicago area is the rapid growth of the Emerald Ash Borer, which is an insect that adversely affects the health of ash trees. Oak Brook has recently began locating and tracking all ash trees in the village owned public parkways, and noting any trees that are currently affected by the outbreak. It is important to not only know which trees are infected, but also to know where all non-infected trees are located so that mitigation can begin immediately. The village has a plan to completely replace all ash trees within the next 10 years, beginning with the trees that are currently in the worse condition. It is important to track and maintain the ash trees because subdivisions with a high density of ash trees could face mass amounts of landscape change in a very short period of time, which could leave the esthetics of the subdivision less than pleasing.
The image shown is of the ash tree locations within the Saddle Brook neighborhood, which has a very high density of ash trees in the public parkway. An inventory of trees was done by public works employees and the results were returned in order to track and analyze the data using GIS. Currently we are tracking ash trees, infected ash trees, and ash trees that have been replaced in the past few years. By using GIS we will be able to track high priority areas, plan for future mitigation and keep track of the areas and work that has already been implemented.
Besides the flood issues introduced because of the proximity to the Des Plaines River through and along the Village of Riverside’s Western and Southern boundaries, some reoccurring residential drainage issues have been identified. The Village has contracted to have drainage studies performed in these areas hoping to realize some solutions through infrastructure and/or grading changes. Through existing data sharing agreements with Cook County via its Geographic Information Systems (GIS) program, Riverside was able to provide contour and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) elevation data to the engineering consultant. Using the GIS to prepare the elevation data for the areas of issue allowed the studies to advance quickly as compared to the alternative of field data collection.
The City of Highland Park hosts many events from the running races to hosting craft fairs. These events bring many visitors into the community. These visitors will spend money at local businesses and help maintain the local economy. The City relies on GIS to provided detailed maps that allow City Staff to evaluate proposed conditions and make appropriate changes before the event.
Support from GIS can be as basic as displaying the starting area, race route, water station, and ending area for a race event. However, craft fairs and Taste of Highland Park events usually require more complex maps, which show numbered booths, barricades streets, traffic flow, and other detailed information required to plan the event. The GIS support occurs into two to three stages. The first stage is a request for a map or an update to an existing map. The next two to three steps involve review the changes and requesting updates to reflect current concerns. Another advantage of GIS is that the map projects are stored digitally and can be updated annually with a minimal amount of work. Without GIS the maps would have to be recreated each year or updates would be drawn on an older copy of the event map and sent to a graphic designer for updates. In a worst case scenario the City would have to rely on an event map provided by the organizer of the event.
The City leverages GIS to create accurate maps in an efficient manner. Thus the City can ensure events are run safely. City Staff can also quickly make updates to an event map without having to recreate the map.
On June 21st, 2011 a major storm hit the Chicago land area causing severe damage to trees, cars and homes. Winds speeds were measured near 80 mph, two F1 tornadoes were reported and thousands of people were left without out power. Many of the small municipalities in the area were left with no other options but to put their Public Works Department crews out on the streets to start the cleanup process.
Considering much of the time during this period was spent on the cleanup, it became hard for any local municipality to reflect on the catastrophic event and how much damage occurred overall. In Morton Grove, IL the Engineering Department decided to run a pilot program to track what they could of the storm’s damage and then store the data gathered in the field within their Geographical Information System (GIS). The purpose of this pilot was to see how easy or hard it would be to collect this information in the field and then map out in a format that would be easy to use by others within the Village staff.
The process was actually quite simple and consisted of the Village Engineer driving through areas that were reported as bad and recording these major damaged locations on a paper map as well as taking photographs of each site. Once back in the office, the map and photos were submitted to the GIS Department to be converted into digital data with hyperlinks to the photos that were stored on a central server. Information that may once be forgotten is now stored in the GIS and can be distributed to several users at one time. Additionally, this information can now be used in comparison with future storm events making it an excellent resource for analysis.
As the old joke goes, “There are only two seasons here: winter and construction.” As Chicagoland moves into construction season, local governments are tasked with rerouting traffic flow to make room for much needed repairs. In the Village of Glencoe, one project includes a complete overhaul of the commuter parking lots around the Metra station. This multi-week project requires Public Works staff to close different lots on different days, which disrupts the normal flow of commuter traffic.
With GIS, the Village was able to quickly create a map of the work site and include it on a poster to notify commuters well in advance of the project’s start. Once work actually began, GIS was able to quickly create maps of alternate parking sites so that commuters who missed the initial notification could find alternate parking places quickly. These maps were posted at the Metra station as well as online, providing multiple sources of information to the public in an efficient manner. Without GIS, Village staff would have to either rely on verbal explanations or create hand-drawn maps that were less accurate and showed fewer details to orient viewers.
Elk Grove Village Public Works recently initiated an inventory project for village owned trees, generally being all trees located within medians and parkways. Using their GPS equipment and seasonal labor the trees are located and their condition, size, and other useful information related to management of the trees are documented. The village GIS (Geographic Information System) is being used to process the GPS data, track the data collection progress, and evaluate the amount and location of trees in poor condition. The initial goal is to replace ash trees in poor condition with other, healthy trees of another species. Having an inventory of the ash trees will allow for rapid and effective management of Emerald Ash Borer (EAB), an invasive species, if discovered in the village. Other objectives that will derive from this information are removing stumps, replacing trees in poor condition, placement of new plantings, and realizing areas that may require more frequent trimming due to the proximity of power lines.
Retention Ponds are basins that catch runoff from higher elevations. These ponds have water in them year round and are often located near development areas. Public works tracks these ponds along with the restrictors and outfalls contained in them.
The Village of Glenview’s Public Works currently only had the location of these retention ponds on As-Builts. GIS was able to assist in the project to show the locations of these retention ponds on one map. This allows for an easier and faster way to find the retention ponds. Public Works will also be utilizing these locations on a series of map books to be used in the field.
Each year, communities flush their fire hydrants and take note of flow rate, time flushed, and condition of hydrants. For 2011, the City of Lake Forest used GIS to aid in visualizing the locations of hydrants that were found to be in need to attention.
Notes from field work were grouped into subcategories to keep repair types to a manageable amount. From here, special symbology was given to each category to make it stand out from the other hydrants that were displayed on the map. The map was then divided into sections so it could be printed out at a readable scale on 8.5 x 11 paper, and when combined, formed a book that could be used in the field.
Having a visual aid to go with normal maintenance should prove to save time in locating the hydrants and planning of what kind of repairs will be needed. In addition to this, both the water and fire departments can see areas of concern where numerous hydrants may not be functioning properly, which can cause delays in the event that a fire needs to be put out in that area.
Part of the tradition within the United States every year is the celebration of the Fourth of July; many people choose to celebrate this event in their own way. Some may host a party or a picnic while at the local government level it may be a festival or a fireworks display for their residents to attend. Morton Grove has previously used Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to help them map out and plan for such events. This year like previous ones, they have once again taken advantage of the technology to assist them in planning for the July 4th parade.
Because a parade is such a large event that affects traffic flow and public parking, it is important to have a good information source accessible to all departments involved in the planning of this event. For the Public Works Department it is matter of where the barricades and bathrooms are supposed to be located, for the Police Department its monitoring on-street parking so that the streets remain clear as well as managing vehicle traffic so that the parade remains a safe environment. To assure efficient operations a simple map for both of these departments to use as a reference during the event is provided. The more people referring to one resource for their answers the less chance that mistakes will occur and good decisions are made.
As the old joke goes, “There are only two seasons here: winter and construction.” As Chicagoland moves into construction season, local governments are tasked with rerouting traffic flow to make room for much needed repairs. In the Village of Glencoe, one project includes a complete overhaul of the commuter parking lots around the Metra station. This multi-week project requires Public Works staff to close different lots on different days, which disrupts the normal flow of commuter traffic.
With GIS, the Village was able to quickly create a map of the work site and include it on a poster to notify commuters well in advance of the project’s start. Once work actually began, GIS was able to quickly create maps of alternate parking sites so that commuters who missed the initial notification could find alternate parking places quickly. These maps were posted at the Metra station as well as online, providing multiple sources of information to the public in an efficient manner. Without GIS, Village staff would have to either rely on verbal explanations or create hand-drawn maps that were less accurate and showed fewer details to orient viewers.
The Village of Morton Grove like other municipalities receives services from multiple outside organizations like ComEd for electricity or AT&T for phone. Recently the local gas company, Nicor, delivered an address list to the village and requested that the village review this list for accuracy purposes to ensure that Nicor is properly paying tax on gross receipts as well as receiving reimbursement from their customers. Additionally, an accurate address list will help keep Nicor in accordance with the village’s municipal gas tax ordinance as well as help fulfill the village’s tax collection agreement with Nicor. The simple outline of this request comes down to Nicor knowing whether or not their address list is correct and the addresses that they have do indeed fall with the Village of Morton Grove’s village limits.
Although the task of comparing addresses from two different resources can be done manually, it is better suited for the use of a robust computer software to handle the operation. For this request the Village of Morton Grove decided to enlist the services of the Geographic Information System (GIS) Department to assist with this address comparison project. Results that could take days would now only take a few hours to produce by using the comparison tools found within the GIS. Once completed, the GIS uncovered multiple addresses that did indeed match between Nicor and the village but more importantly, also uncovered multiple addresses that the village had that Nicor did not. These addresses are now under further inspection to make sure that the village and Nicor can be true to the agreements they currently have in place.
The Village of Glencoe recently made use of GIS to map fire hydrants and their associated flow rates. Having this information available at a moment’s notice allows fire fighters to quickly locate the nearest source of the water pressure necessary to respond to a fire emergency. These maps were provided to both Dispatch and emergency responders in the field, providing multiple ways to find this information when seconds count.
Because paper maps can get misplaced or damaged in an emergency situation, this information will also be made available in MapOffice™ Advanced as a custom layer. Currently, Dispatch is able to use this tool to zoom in on a specific location and relay the relevant information to responders in the field. Once MapOffice™ Advanced is available on the internet, all emergency personnel will have direct access to this information without the need to rely on printed materials anymore.
As GIS continues to support the mission of each department in the Village, its cost savings potential increases significantly. In this case, Public Works had already collected the flow rate data for inclusion in the database, so police, fire and dispatch were able to pull what they needed in a matter of moments.
The Village of Deerfield is about to begin an inventory of village owned trees which reside in the right-of-way. In order to effectively track and record all trees in a time efficient manner, the arborist consultant asked that a series of maps be created to assist in locating and recording all trees. Their goal for the maps was to have a good size map that is manageable in the field, as few maps as possible, and staying to a scale of 1 to 100.
The map series that we decided would best suit their needs consists of twenty maps at a size of 36x38. As seen in the attached image, these maps include parcel lines, addresses, and fire hydrant for reference, all layed over the most recent available imagery which was captured in 2010. This map series allows the arborists to effectively plan what routes they will take, locate trees in relation to addresses and landmarks, and have a visual record of data when working in the office.
In partnership with the Glenview Park District, the Village of Glenview is hosting two public events on the impact of the Emerald Ash Borer beetle. By offering these workshops, the Village hopes to help its residents learn more about how their local government is responding to this pest and what residents can do to help. These types of meetings encourage transparency in government operations and also foster a team-based approach to a problem that affects everyone.
GIS was able to assist in this project by mapping out the locations of trees infested with Emerald Ash Borer within the Village limits. Workshop attendees will see how the problem has progressed in Glenview over a short period of time. The maps provide a striking illustration of the statistics, which increased from 22 cases in 2009 to the 120 already documented in 2011. By using GIS, these educational aids were created in very quickly and at little cost to the Village. Public Works staff hopes to make further use of these maps to spatially analyze where the beetle is and how quickly it is spreading.
The City of Lake Forest is planning on planting around 180 trees this year that were purchased with funding that was donated from city residents. Known for its tree lined streets, these donated trees will help fill in areas of the City from newly renovated parks to medians along major roads. The Parks and Forestry department worked with both Engineering and GIS to create a map project that served two purposes; to help plan the locations of the Oak and Elm trees, and create an online interactive map that would allow residents to click on each tree and see its sponsor.
The use of GIS and interactive mapping technology for this project will save the foresters time in planning, allowing them to see project areas and make decisions without going into the field. Likewise, residents will be able to stay involved with the project by using the interactive map that shows the location and information for each tree.
Ensuring that all the hydrants in a community are in a proper working condition is vital for the safety of residents within a community. The city ensures hydrants are working properly by flushing them every summer. Previously, the city contracted ME Simpson Co. to flush hydrants each summer. This year they decided to have the Fire Department perform the flushing of hydrants.
The Fire Department understood the technical aspects of flushing hydrants but they also understood the need for developing an organized process for tracking which hydrant flushing. Furthermore, the hydrant features within the GIS have valuable information from previous hydrant flushing programs. It was important that this information was also updated. The Fire Department met with the GIS and requested three products to assist them with implementing the hydrant flushing program. The first product was an Excel sheet listing the number of hydrants per Fire Grid District. The Excel sheet was used to assign hydrants to three teams, one from each station, who would be assigned specific fire grids. Knowing the number of hydrants per Fire District Grid ensured that each team was assigned approximately the same number of hydrants to flush.
The second and third products are used together to tracking flow rate and pressure information for each hydrant. The hydrant information will be updated in an Excel sheet of hydrants, which were extracted from the GIS. There will also be a map showing the hydrants with a unique Id and address, so that correct hydrant is identified and updated in the Excel sheet. By using GIS the Fire Department leverage resource to help them efficiently manage the summer hydrant flushing program. Thus the community will be protected in two ways. They can be confident that all the hydrants in the community are in proper working order and the Fire Department can access the updated hydrant information in the GIS to understand how well the existing hydrants work.
The Village of Oak Brook’s fire department keeps a comprehensive map of the village which incorporates all features they deem necessary for fire emergency response and planning. Included in this map are things such as fire hydrants, high pressure gas lines, highway mile markers, and many other features that assist them while responding to emergency situations. The most recent feature that they have requested is a full layout of all three golf courses in the village. This is a necessary element on the map because while responding to calls on a golf course people often refer to which hole they are on, or the fire department may need to know where the nearest high pressure water source is in the event of a fire. Having set layouts and plans for possible emergencies is what allows the fire department to do their job quickly and effectively.
The image displayed is of Butterfield Country Club, which is not incorporated in the village. Because of their overall lack of knowledge and layout of the course, the fire department requested that all features, especially hole locations and high pressure water sources be mapped. By using aerial photography and having a couple of meetings with the golf course superintendent, I was able to create all of the features seen in the image from scratch. The fire department is now able to quickly reference where every hole is located, what obstacles may be in their way, and where to connect their hoses in the event of a fire. This is all being done with the goal of eventually incorporating this data into our interactive mapping service, MapOffice™ Advanced, so that they will have interactive access to this data while in their rigs on location.
An annual water system maintenance procedure for Elk Grove Village Public Works staff is to service any fire hydrants that do not self-drain. A fire hydrant that has been used at any time during the year, if working properly, will drain the water automatically as designed so the water will not freeze inside the hydrant making it unusable. During the cold winter months when temperatures are below freezing village staff will drain or pump fire hydrants that did not drain properly.
Because the maintenance records identified which hydrants had to be serviced Public Works staff was able to plot the locations of the troublesome hydrants using available GIS (Geographic Information System) resources. Displaying that information on a map gives an overview of the maintenance performed and allows for additional statistics, tracking, and replacement planning over time to be sure these hydrants do not disrupt fire response services.
Utility asset management is a critical component of any local government’s annual operations. As part of its annual utility maintenance schedule, the City of Des Plaines performs field tests of fire hydrants in select areas of the city to ensure that they have the correct water pressure and are still operating at the expected level. These tests are conducted by the Fire Department and require significant man-hours to complete. To reduce the amount of time needed to locate a hydrant scheduled for testing, the department requested a series of maps that could be used in the field for locating.
To fill this request, the city’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) department created a map book, or a series of coincident maps that show a larger area divided into a collection of smaller areas, that could be used in the field. While a city-wide map showing all the hydrants was also developed for general reference, having the smaller, more mobile maps allows the department to use them in the field as they are conducting each test, giving them a more detailed view of the testing area and the location of each hydrant. Using these products will help to reduce the amount of staff time needed to locate the hydrants and provide more time for developing an efficient testing schedule that will ultimately lower the amount of time needed to complete the testing process.
The annual process of identifying the most critical locations for resurfacing projects is challenging. Unfortunately, there is never a shortage of roads in need of improvement, but always a lack of funding to cover the whole list. In an effort to make better informed decisions on how to use Motor Fuel Tax (MFT) funds, the Village of Lincolnshire decided to review its history for possible patterns. By comparing each year’s work, Public Works staff will be asking, “Are there any stretches of road that we have repeatedly resurfaced in a short period of time?” Rather than continuing to spend limited resurfacing funds to put a proverbial bandage over a bigger issue, the Village hopes to rule these locations out of the pool for MFT funding. Instead, these roads would be cataloged as better candidates for reconstruction.
To answer this question visually, the Public Works intern reviewed paper files and compiled a table of completed MFT projects dating back to 1980. This table was then mapped out in GIS to visually represent street segments that have been resurfaced. A graded color code was used to denote the year of resurfacing, with older projects in red and recent projects in green. While this analysis has not yet been completed for the whole Village, there are already locations emerging as possible candidates for more comprehensive repairs. By pulling these streets off of the master list, the Village hopes to make better use of public funds by identifying roads that would benefit the most from resurfacing.
One of the unique features of Riversidelinois is the design of the community centered around forestry as envisioned by Frederick Law Olmsted. Riverside is one of the first planned communities and has been a National Historic Landmark since 1970 due to the historic architecture, winding streets, gas street lights, and vegetated landscape.
The Village’s Forester, Landscape Advisory Committee, and other village staff have teamed up to initiate a landscape maintenance program that allows residents an opportunity to exercise their pride in the community by caring for green spaces in the village parks, parkways, and landscape beds. The location, size, and availability of identified areas is being tracked in the Village’s GIS (Geographic Information System). A map and spreadsheet of the adopted areas is constantly updated to reflect the program status. Also a history of forest workdays is tracked over time such as a weekend Boy Scout event to clear Buckthorn, an invasive species. Combining all of these activities gives village staff an excellent understanding of the maintenance status of each area enabling them to sustain the beautiful landscape for generations to come.
It usually seems that most people who are disrupted by construction projects would be less upset if they had some warning that a project was about to happen. Early notification of disruptions can lead to route changes by commuters, later departure times or just the common acceptance of noise. So the normal question that comes after all of this is, “How do you notify the public about what is soon to happen?
One method that is very effective is the mailing of letters to each resident in and around the construction zone warning them of the work that is about to take place. Although this may be the preferred method, there are other options that can help get the word out. For the City of Park Ridge they decided it would also be beneficial to capture the resident’s attention by publicizing these projects in the form of a map and make it accessible via a link on the home page of the city’s website. This map would be generated in-house using the Geographic Information System (GIS) software and would be completed by an Engineering Department employee. Who better to create this map then a person who is well versed in the projects that are planned for the year? This map was designed to be simple so not to confuse the residents and would be color coded by project type. And since the majority of these projects were to start in the spring, the city decided to publish this map in February so that the residents would have time to prepare for what was about to come.
Not every resident uses the internet but since the trend is leaning towards more users than less, it is safe to say that the method described above is an efficient way to get information from the city’s desk and into the minds of the public.
Residential and commercial development in flood-prone areas can be a challenge to manage for many local governments. In addition to dealing with residents or businesses for permitting, inspections, etc, the federal government is also involved to ensure all construction and documentation is compliment with regulations that limit what can and cannot be built. As part of the Community Rating System (CRS), a program that allows local municipalities to show that they’ve taken efforts to mitigate potential flood damage to properties build in a floodplain in order to help reduce residents’ flood insurance rates, the Village of Winnetka Public Works department decided to map out the locations of all permits issued in areas that are susceptible to flooding to help get a better idea of the amount of construction being conducted in these areas.
To accomplish this, the Public Works department asked the Village’s Geographic Information System (GIS) department to map addresses for permit applications issued in the floodplain from 2000-2010 to determine the level of development within these areas. The permit information was provided by the Community Development department and was restricted new construction or properties where significant renovations were done. Once these addresses are mapped, the data was loaded into an internet-based mapping application available to all village employees so it could be shared and reviewed by all departments involved in the CRS program. In addition to the spatial location of each permit, information on the type of permits, and if multiple permits were issued, is also provided.
The Public Works Department annually prepares a Capital Improvement Report. Part of this report is identifying existing facilities owned by the community. This year they wanted to enhance the report by providing maps showing the location of City Owned Infrastructure.
Thus they contacted the GIS Office to create a series of maps showing the location of city owned facilities, parking lots, street lights and traffic signals. The GIS Office created citywide maps showing the locations of all the items for one of the requested assets. Then they created maps which showed close-ups of areas of the city were assets were crowded together. These close up areas made it easier to identify specific assets in crowded locations Because the information for these assets already existed, the maps could be created quickly.
The maps were a valuable addition to the report because they allowed the reader to see where the described assets were located. This assisted the reader with understanding what was being described in the report and where the items were located.
By contacting the GIS Office, the Public Works Department obtained a series of maps which enhanced their report. Also, because the GIS Office could access existing information, the Public Works Department was able to quickly receive these maps. They really liked the maps and they plan to include them in all future Capital Improvement Reports.