GITA. We Are Infrastructure.

If you own, manage, operate, or maintain infrastructure related to the public sector, you can’t afford to miss the innovative and ready-to-implement ideas presented at this event. Register now to check out these targeted sessions, and much, much more!

Utilizing GIS for a Stormwater Drainage Utility Implementation
Track: Public Sector
Marikka Williams, City of Highland Village

In response to the 1987 amendments to the Clean Water Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency developed the NPDES Stormwater Program. In order to respond to the requirements of this program, it was necessary to implement a fee to fund a stormwater drainage utility. This presentation outlines the GIS methodology created for a stormwater drainage fee implementation and discusses how GIS can be used to serve as a support system for stormwater drainage utility management.

Mobile Mapping Devices: An Embarrassment of Riches
Track: Mobile Applications
Charles Marlin, Graphic Technologies, Inc.

It used to be simple to pick mobile hardware: you had a choice of rugged or non-rugged laptops. Then hand-held devices came along that were powerful enough to run mobile mapping applications. Then tablet computers were introduced. Now Smartphones. And in between phones and laptops lies a profusion of new devices with enough different features to overwhelm anyone. This presentation will try to make some sense out of today’s embarrassment of riches.

Mobile Forms and GIS for Underground Damage Prevention
Track: Mobile Applications
Jennifer J. Nieland, Integrys Business Support, LLC

Imagine combining several tools in such a way they create a powerful new tool that can be applied to other processes, rendering them more efficient, effective, and less costly. This was the case at Wisconsin Public Service Corporation when locating tickets from state One Call systems, the mobile GIS viewer and electronic forms were combined and applied to Damage Prevention, or Locating. These “old” tools, used in a new way, transformed Locating from a paper process to an electronic process, improving data, saving hours and reducing costs.

Implementation of a Fully Integrated Web GIS System in Arlington County, Virginia
Track: Public Sector
Dr. William E. Roper, Arlington County Government

Arlington County, Virginia, has implemented a new single-front-end GIS application for both interactive mapping and application development. The system creates an easy-to-use consistent look and feel to Arlington’s Web presence. Through this system, the public has direct access to a variety of preset standard products that are available on the Web (both data and maps). Presentations will summarize an example application for best management practices in a recent storm water project.
Copresenter: Mary Beth Fletcher, Arlington County Government

Enterprise GIS—Powering the Utility of the Future
Track: New Technology and Market Directions
William J. Meehan, ESRI

Increasing challenges from customers, employees, regulators, and investors require utilities to transform themselves. GIS is a key technology of the transformation. Utility of the future involves automated interaction with customers, self-healing smart grids, enhanced use of automated metering, optimized use of resources, predictive methods for maintenance and capital improvements, more security, and more integrated technology and processes. This session will examine the role that enterprise GIS plays in powering the utility of the future.

3-D Land Use: Applications and Challenges
Track: Public Sector
Dr. William Gribb, University of Wyoming

This research focuses on the development of a 3-D land use database for downtown planning. 3-D land use is defined as the land use in each building on individual floors and the segments of the floor of multistoried buildings. The analysis and display of 3-D land use is a challenge because of the multiple dimensions of the information. Laramie, Wyoming’s downtown district is used as an example.

Evaluating the Effects of Development on Water Treatment Operations
Track: Public Sector
Amy Atamian, Malcolm Pirnie, Inc.

The Birmingham Water Works and Sewer Board is concerned about forthcoming development in its watersheds, the impacts to the raw water quality, and subsequent treatment costs. A step-wise decision-making approach was designed to focus on specific board goals for water resource protection that maximized the use of existing information. Unique aspects of this program include modeling treatment plant costs based on inputs from watershed models and development of the Reservoir Overlay Protection District Ordinance.
Copresenters: Jerry Jones and Cindy How, Malcolm Pirnie, Inc.

A Positive Return on Investment Case Study: The Energy Australia Digital Cadastre Upgrade Project
Track: Return on Investment/Business Case
Greg Oaten, Energy Australia

This presentation will show the business imperatives and challenges, the technical solutions, and the operational issues encountered during implementation of the project, which has recently delivered a better landbase that meets Energy Australia’s business requirements and delivers real productivity and network data quality improvements. The all-important return on investment (ROI) of the project is examined and presented in terms of tangible benefits to one of Australia’s largest gas and electricity suppliers.
Co-presenters: Walter Hesse and Justin Eldridge, we-do-IT Pty Ltd

Information Pipeline: A Geospatial Approach to Pipeline Management at the Tarrant Regional Water District
Track: Work and Asset Management
Jeffery Coffey, Tarrant Regional Water District

The Tarrant Regional Water District is developing a comprehensive pipeline management strategy that depends upon an accurate, manageable GIS database of information that supports all pipeline operation and maintenance activities. This presentation will examine the development of the pipeline geodatabase at TRWD and discuss how the organization effectively acquired, developed, and migrated disparate sources of data into the pipeline geodatabase, developed access for non-GIS users, and how that supports our operation and maintenance activities.

State of the Art Command and Control at Hawaiian Electric Company Inc.
Track: Operations Management & Damage Prevention
Shari Ishikawa, Hawaiian Electric Company, Inc.

Energy Management and Distribution is a delicate matter at Hawaiian Electric Co. Inc (HECo). Experience how HECo moved from manual operation to command and control in the digital age. HECo delivers power to about 300,000 customers on the densely populated island of Oahu. With tourism as the primary industry, keeping a balance between generation and delivery is paramount. Unlike mainland utilities, HECo must be self-sufficient in all ways. This places emphasis on load balance and command and control. This session focuses on the evolution from manual operations to digital command and control, featuring a 48 x 8 ft high resolution wallboard with interfaces to SCADA and OMS. A wallboard application was designed and implemented, which is used to troubleshoot and restore HECO’s system when a sub-transmission line trips open. The wallboard application also features an interface to HECO’s Energy Management System (EMS). The wallboard application will be automatically updated based on the SCADA conditions from the EMS allowing real-time representation of the system. In addition, HECO developed a load shed application that provides dispatchers and managers access to critical information on the impact of load shed scenarios; combining network intelligence, customer and spatial data.
Co-presenter: Volker Elste, Intergraph Corporation

Regional Watershed Management System
Track: Public Sector
Durmus Cesur, San Antonio River Authority

The presenter will describe the use of geographic information system (GIS) as a framework to manage water resources modeling information—as well as to facilitate business processes and workflows that rely on this information—through the integration of hydrologic, hydraulic, and environmental modeling systems, enterprise databases, and the Web portal technologies. The GIS-based data models and application extensions are used to integrate hydrologic, hydraulic, and environmental models of interest on the GIS platform.

The Nac-4 Pack: A Proven Set of Essential Maps for a Successful Emergency Response
Track: Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Response
Darrel McDonald, Stephen F. Austin State University

This presentation will describe a critical set of maps that support an effective response to incidents. The four essential map types include tactical maps for response planning and operational maps to visualize activities over geographic space. The third map series is the strategic map that includes spatial analysis for emergency management coordinators among others in key decision-making roles. The fourth map type is the media map, which provides information on public consumption.
Copresenters: Paul Blackwell and James Kroll, Stephen F. Austin State University

Beyond Mashups: The Enterprise Geo-portal
Track: Internet and Web Services
John Nelson, IDV Solutions

Organizations have made significant investments in geographic information systems. The presentation tier of this investment, however, has been typically limited, static, and labor intensive. Enterprise portals are increasingly popular for organizations that wish to visualize geographic data in a more current and collaborative sense. This presentation will identify options, barriers to entry, benefits, and technical challenges to the process of building and implementing a geographic enterprise portal. Specific examples will be cited.

Virtual Earth-enabled Computer-aided Dispatch
Track: Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Response
Brady Hustad, Idea Integration

Recent natural and political events have put pressure on small and large municipalities to implement effective computer-aided dispatch (CAD) and emergency routing systems. New technologies, including Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, are opening up methods for cost-effective solutions for municipalities. This presentation is designed to investigate methods for implementing these systems in a way that is cost effective and useful for municipalities. The solution will include integrating varied technologies for a cohesive result.

Community Tree Mapping Project—An Open Source Solution
Track: Internet and Web Services
Amber Bieg, Green-Ideas

The Community Tree Mapping Project is an open source geospatial application built to manage urban forest data. It also works with a cost-benefit analysis tool that gives urban forest managers information ranging from location to dollar value of carbon sequestration of each individual tree or the entire urban forest as a whole. It is a community project, driven by the vision of community volunteers taking tree planting and data collection into their own hands.