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The Maryland Highway Safety Office has awarded Washington College’s Geographic Information Systems Program a grant of $494,000 to continue its work helping minimize fatal and serious injury crashes on Maryland’s roadways.
This is the fifth consecutive year the GIS Program has won the grant, according to a news release.
“The grant renewal is part of $11.7 million in federal highway safety funds that are distributed to various agencies and organizations throughout Maryland to assist the mission towards zero deaths,” said GIS Program Director Erica McMaster.
The funds will support hiring an additional GIS statistical data analyst and will broaden the opportunities for college students who work in the lab.
“The GIS team has expanded and improved its support to the Maryland Highway Safety Office and local law enforcement,” McMaster said.
The new analyst will be responsible for quality checking the datasets and running statistical methods on the data to report the findings to MHSO and Maryland’s Traffic Records Coordinating Council.
Read full story at Kent County News…
first published week of: 10/30/2017
A computerized map that streamlines Thomas County government agencies' responses during weather disasters made its debut Monday as Hurricane Irma battered the community.
After several violent storms and tornadoes ripped through the community in late January, County Manager Mike Stephenson instructed personnel to develop a computerized map that would show where trees were down on roads. The map would show public works crews where trees required removal from roads so emergency personnel could respond to calls.
The map was designed by county government employees Brian Palmer, Derek Ogletree and Ron Kelley.
"The map is for all Thomas County departments," said Palmer, public works geographic information system and engineering technician.
Previously during inclement weather, a paper map displayed at the emergency operations center (EOC) was marked to show where trees were down.9"And as we cleared them, we marked it off. This is really a big step for us," Palmer said.
The new computerized map was displayed at the EOC during Irma. Emergency agencies needing to dispatch vehicles could see instantly where trees were down and plan alternative routes accordingly.
Read full story at Times-Enterprise…
first published week of: 09/18/2017
Geographic information systems can help members of Congress better serve their constituents by illustrating and mapping local issues.
Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), for example, used Esri’s ArcGIS to develop a set of story maps that helped pass legislation in 2015 to designate the Boulder-White Clouds area in central Idaho as a wilderness preserve.
To move the legislation forward, Risch’s office worked with the Idaho CIO’s office to share information confidentially through ArcGIS on potential boundaries for the wilderness preserve. Public presentations and discussions featuring the story maps gave community residents information they needed to weigh in on the legislation.
Timothy Petty, Risch’s deputy legislative director, said he sees tremendous potential for GIS to shape legislative policy as more congressional staffers learn how to use it. As co-chair of the Senate GIS Working Group, Petty leads quarterly meetings where staffers present some of their recent projects and share lessons learned.
Read full story at GCN…
first published week of: 11/20/2017
Saline County Assessor Jessica Goodman made several requests regarding Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping during the commission’s regular meeting Thursday morning, Oct. 19.
Goodman first asked for a continuance of service through Midland GIS Solutions, located in Maryville. The company was previously contracted to perform map changes and maintenance for the county’s current GIS system, and it also fixes issues with the system.
I know that the community has really been pushing for us to do that, and I think it will be a great service. Saline County Assessor Jessica Goodman
“I’m asking that we continue to keep up with map maintenance with them,” she said. “It’s based on an hourly rate of $65 per hour.”
She explained that most changes the company would perform take less than one hour to complete, and basic transfers can be completed in the assessor’s office.
“I would like to add their service of a GIS website,” she added. “I know that the community has really been pushing for us to do that, and I think it will be a great service.”
Midland GIS Solutions would maintain all data on the website, make map changes, and the website will be hosted off-site.
Read full story at Marshall Democrat-News…
first published week of: 10/23/2017
Drones are changing the way Richland County does its work.
Richland County’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) department now commands a fleet of four drones. Two are in operation, one is backup and they’re testing a new recruit. They’ve operated these unmanned aerial system (UAS), as they’re known on the inside, since 2015. And these flying information machines are making a lot of the county’s work cheaper and easier, according to Patrick Bresnahan of the GIS.
“You have to understand this is the Wild West,” he says of the drones’ potential.
County staffers are commanding the drones to do tasks such as their department’s most important job — mapping. Two recent missions their new squad flew had them mapping a busted dam, victim to the 2015 flood, in the northeast part of the county; and measuring the volume of waste in the Richland’s landfills.
According to disposal division manager, Alan Huffstetler, this latter job cost $22,000 when it was previously done by airplane, and it required more man hours with the county survey team. Now the job is being done by a $2,500-dollar drone that cranks out more reliable data. Read full story at freetimes…
first published week of: 06/19/2017
If you’re reading this, you’re likely involved with managing GIS pipeline data. If you aren’t, I recommend checking out an informative, relevant (and quite possibly more interesting) read on enhancing your GIS with integrations or connecting business processes to your GIS. If you’re still with me, strap in.
Why do we talk about data models so much in the pipeline space? From my years interacting with operators, vendors, and regulators, I believe it comes down to a handful of reasons:
The pipeline data model landscape can be a difficult one to navigate. Operators work with significant amounts of data and there is no shortage of models to explore.
Read full blog at Geocortex.com…
first published week of: 10/09/2017