Keeping Up With Cloudpoint
“It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.” - Scott Belsky
Every Fall the Illinois GIS Association hosts its annual conference. This year the event was at the Hilton Lisle/Naperville Hotel and Conference center from October 17-19. It was a fantastic event which started with the Monday night social which was sponsored by Cloudpoint Geographics and featured a rousing game of Trivia.
Roanoke, IL- Cloudpoint Geographics recently celebrated its 5-year anniversary on August 25, 2016. We've come a long way from back in the day with a one room office borrowed from the local realtor and an old Lenovo laptop (which we still have in our possession now bearing the label Cloudpoint-LAP 1).
Janna Baker, Tazewell County GIS Coordinator, is a great proponent of applying GIS at the county government level.
Janna Baker is the GIS Coordinator for Tazewell County, Illinois. Here is a little bit of information about Janna, how she got to where she is today, and what GIS has done for her.
Janna has been with Tazewell County for over 2 years. She was an intern with the County from April to November of 2014, and then took over as the GIS Coordinator.
As part of her duties, Janna is responsible for administering GIS databases through SQL Server software and ESRI software, managing GIS websites/services hosted on-site, creating new GIS websites/services, handling map/data sales, distributing map services and policy development, troubleshooting hardware/software issues, and identifying data needs, quality, accuracy, and standards,
When asked how her and her staff currently use GIS on a daily basis, Janna says, “GIS is used to increase efficiency in managing spatial data and serving it to the public. An example being parcel data in the Assessor's Office. GIS allows for quick access to parcel information by both staff and the public. Web access to the parcel data reduces the number of public calls to the Assessor's Office, freeing staff for other work. GIS provides staff with the ability to visually identify errors with ease and to correct them quickly. Through the enterprise database platform, these corrections can be immediately served out to GIS users in other departments, like Zoning, who rely on the parcel data to aid in their decision making, and to the public through GIS Web Maps.
Janna knows that GIS will play a large role for Tazewell County moving forward. She emphasized that by saying, “GIS is a very effective method of relaying information both between government entities and to the public. The ability to display tabular data as a model of the real world, and to visually display analysis of that data, is a benefit to government decision making in all areas. GIS will continue to integrate into more departments as it provides a fast, centralized way to manage and share spatial data, both internally throughout the organization and externally to the public."
Cloudpoint would like to thank Janna for her commitment to GIS technology and use of the Esri platform in helping her organization to succeed with providing detailed geographic data to the citizens of Tazewell County. Because of Janna’s insight, the County is tracking their information and infrastructure like never before, allowing them to build upon her work for years to come.
It's never been easier to maintain an accurate and up-to-date inventory of your culverts using GIS and mobile technology. Another example of the effectiveness of using mobile apps for inventories is shown during our ongoing project in LaSalle County, IL where Cloudpoint is completing a culvert inventory on all of the county highways.
Here, Joe is using Esri's Collector app to complete a culvert inventory for LaSalle County, IL.
While climbing into and out of the work van, then up and down ravines, through thick thorns and briers to locate the culverts under county roads, I can not stress how beneficial it was to only have to carry in an iPad. Often times the surfaces I was traversing were slick from water, mud, or moss. Having to carry in limited material, freed up my hands for a safer approach and handholds. Once I was at the culvert, I could pull up the exact location, drop a point and begin the inventory. In addition to having drop down menus for various features of each culvert, I was also able to take a quick photograph and attach it to the point, which gives even more detail about the infrastructure.
I can rant and rave about the greatness of this tool, but the best way to understand how powerful it is is to see it in action. We at Cloudpoint would be happy to give you a demonstration and work with you to see how your organization could benefit from implementing Esri's Collector app. It's a great way to manage your infrastructure while streamlining your workflow, and we'd be thrilled to help you accomplish those tasks!
The Town of Normal, IL is taking great strides in its GIS progress under the leadership of two highly talented professionals. IT Director, Teri Legner and GIS Coordinator, Cassidy Killian are currently working with the water department to update all of their old maps. The water distribution system is currently all mapped out in CAD however it is not exactly to scale, causing a huge challenge when trying to convert to GIS format. Normally a simple georeferencing process can stretch or rotate the old maps to fit, however in this case it was not a practical approach due to the scale variance.
Cloudpoint was brought in to help with this process consisting of referencing old records such as pdf valve cards, construction drawings, and CAD data to reconstruct the data in a GIS environment. The newly converted data will be in Esri's local government data model and can be easily integrated into all of the latest Esri tools, maps, and apps including the Water Utility Network Editing and Reporting tools which are freely available to the Town as part of their current Esri licensing. Soon the GIS department will be able to use this new GIS layer for water distribution applications such as valve isolation traces, reporting, and customer outage notifications or boil orders.
As-built record drawings were scanned to pdf and used for reference in constructing the GIS layers
Water main details are incorporated into the GIS which can later be used for system-wide analysis and reporting.
Having Trimble GeoXH units on hand will allow the water department staff to further "fine tune" their data and collect GPS information with greater accuracy. The professional staff at Normal has displayed great insight in migrating their data to the GIS environment and using the resources they have in place.
