We are pleased to announce that the Village of Tinley Park has joined the GIS Consortium. The Village becomes the 18th member of the Consortium and our first in the Chicago South Suburbs. We would like to welcome Tinley Park to the GIS Consortium and look forward to an exciting and collaborative partnership.

On June 21st, a powerful storm with wind gusts as high as 81 mph swept through Chicago and its surrounding suburbs. The severe weather prompted tornado warnings, stopped air and train travel, and caused extensive tree damage along with widespread power outages. Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) estimated that almost a quarter of a million customers lost power. Another equally violent storm struck the area again on July 11th. The severe winds and heavy rains left more than 700,000 ComEd customers without power. GIS played a large role in the response to these events. Here are several examples from GISC member communities:

Last year the GIS Consoritum (GISC) conducted a survey of the member Fire Departments. Among the topics was the use of wireless in the field along with the type of records management systems used. The goal was to set the vision for future MapOffice™ Advanced development to assure its continued support of Public Safety. The results from the survey reinforce the notion that more and more local governments are turning to technology to improve the efficiency of business processes. More than half (63%) of Fire Departments covering GISC communities have wireless in the field right now with an additional 3 communities providing wireless in the field within the next two years. That said by 2013, 80% of GISC members will have access to MapOffice™ Advanced in the field to use for emergency response.

GIS Specialists Erik Voight, Jason Sphar and Mike Falkofske of MGP Inc. along with former City of Des Plaines Economic Development Coordinator Jennifer Ganser recently published an article regarding local government and information transparency in the February 2011 edition.

In June of this year it was requested by a Public Works Director that MapOffice™ Advanced provide the functionality to trace up and downstream flow of sewer and sanitary utility lines. The user identified that they would like to be able to click on a point and see all of the storm sewers that are tributary to that point. This month the "Sewer Tracing" task was added. This provides the ability of a community user to click on a utility line that is either part of the combined, sewer or storm system and trace it up or downstream with a single click. Along with visually seeing where the utility line flows there are two tables displaying information related to your query. The first is a table showing some high level summary information and the second details all the infrastructure from the affected pipe. This task puts a complex GIS process behind a single click of a mouse for local government users.

The GIS Consortium (GISC) Information Technology Technical committee met this week to review and discuss the upcoming business intelligence functionality for MapOffice™ Advanced. For years the GIS Consortium has been working to provide authoritative community data on demand in a spatial context. Until now the mapping of community enterprise data relied on Specialists to geocode. Last year Tom Thomey, MGP Inc Executive laid out the vision to be able to map real-time community data in MapOffice™ Advanced at the 2009 GISC Annual Board of Directors meeting. With the roll out of business intelligence this month this has become a reality. Business intelligence allows community staffs to interact with a wide variety of data from their community enterprise systems. Users have the ability to create custom on demand requests. These queries or searches can be saved and run daily. With business intelligence community IT departments are able to setup this service securely in MapOffice™ to give staffs the ability to spatially analyze their enterprise system data like permits, business licenses and crime incidences on demand. In summary business intelligence, leverages the community's GIS investment, provides information on demand and improves efficiency.

In the latest update to MapOffice™ Advanced the ability for community staff members to bring up historical imagery was added. With 17 communities in all the Consortium has collected a wide variety of aerial imagery. The aerial imagery for some communities dates back to 1939. In the example above aerial imagery from 1939 and 2010 is contrasted. GISC Community members have a wealth of aerial photography information and now they can easily visualize it by year. This ability allows for staff members to see historical uses of property. The next step for the development team is the creation of a slider that will provide additional functionality and make the comparison of land use over time easier and more intuitive. Development will continue to add years as photos become available.

The GIS Consortium (GISC) over the past several months has been developing online, on demand tutorial videos for MapOffice™ and MapOffice™ advanced. These videos are found on the GISC website under the video gallery page (http://www.gisconsortium.org/gallery/video/) and available to anyone.

Last week the GIS Consortium released the ability to display National Weather Service Advanced Hydrological Prediction Service data for the region. With a series of clicks real time flooding information can be displayed in MapOffice™ Advanced for use by decision makers.

Bob Irvin, Village Manager of Lincolnshire and I will be presenting as apart of the educational series at the International City Managers Association (ICMA) 2010 annual conference on October 17-20th.

The organization of MapOffice™ you may have noticed has changed slightly. What was once just tools has been separated into two categories. Tools and tasks are now available at differing levels of functionality depending on the version of MapOffice™ you are using.Tool and tasks have been separated as a result of feedback from the user community.

Finding the nearest feature is something that local government employees do everyday. It might be finding the nearest hydrant in event of a fire, nearest water valve for shutoff, or nearest schools and medical facilities in event of an emergency. With the nearest feature tool this search can be customized for as many features as you want and what feature you may be searching for.

With the building of a new village hall and an updated police station, the Village of Wheeling took the opportunity to put in a new sprinkler system for the outdoor areas of both buildings. The sprinkler system consists of roughly 600 sprinkler heads varying in size, flow, and type tied into a computer system. The Village of Wheeling requested that a map be created showing the location of all the features within the system overlaid on aerial imagery.

The Village of Oak Brook hosts the “Taste of Oak Brook” annually during the fourth of July weekend. The event features fireworks, live entertainment and food from local vendors. Since the event draws in a large number of people, the Village wanted to make sure that there was adequate parking so they enlisted the help of GIS. In GIS, parking areas were designated using aerial photography and existing parking lot information. Parking spaces were drawn for field parking based on the village parking regulations and the number of spaces in these areas was determined. Parking spaces were also determined for paved parking lots.

The Village of Norridge requires that every residential property within the Village limits to have at least 65% green space on the property. This means that the homeowner can only have 35% of the property consist of impervious surface areas such as the building, garage, driveway, and patios. Any resident in violation of this policy can face fines and may be forced to make changes to their property. In the past, the Village would calculate the green space percentage by measuring the area of the parcels and the features using a ruler and a pencil. The Village asked the GIS department to come up with something that would aid in their analysis.

Springtime in the Chicago land area in some cases can mean more noise from construction then the sounds of birds chirping. And although the nice weather at this time of year allows for field crews to work with little disruption, local residents would often disagree that they are not disturbed. When streets are suddenly closed or traffic begins to build, residents of a community can certainly become irritated and thus complain to the community staff. Even though it is impossible to stop these complaints completely, a community can do their best to notify the residents where and when these big construction projects will be occurring, this is exactly what the Village of Morton Grove did.

Every year the City of Park Ridge contracts with a photogrammetric firm in order to collect important planimteric data such as buildings, driveways, sidewalks, etc. in a computer usable digital format. This data is fundamentally important as it provides a backbone for a Geographic Information System (GIS) and allows for in-depth analysis that can help a city understand the scope of what lies within their city limits. Whether it is counting how many homes are within a floodplain or estimating how many sidewalk squares a community must review each year, this planimetric data has its use. For without it, local governments would have to resort to alternative methods such as laborious field checks or manual counts in a Sidwell parcel map atlas.

As a new member of the GIS Consortium, the top priority in Lake Forest has been getting data ready for New World. New World used in some of the other Consortium communities, is a CAD software that uses GIS to map out the location of where calls are coming from.

A recent development in the Riverside Geographic Information System (GIS) has been the creation of a street inventory. Information captured includes the type of surface material, road base material, cross section type, curb and gutter information, last improved dates, planned improvement dates, and other statistics that can be derived from the GIS such as the length of roadway and even surface area could be calculated quickly.

A recent development in the Glenview Geographic Information System (GIS) has been the creation of the landscape site locations. Information created includes the site description and which group the site is associated with. One other statistic that can quickly be calculated using GIS, is the total area for each site.

The Elk Grove Village GIS (Geographic Information System) recently assisted an evaluation of outstanding tickets which to date has recovered tens of thousands of dollars for the village.

The Tyler Edens application is an important financial and permit enterprise system that allows the city easily track finances and permit status. The application will only function efficiently if it has good base information such as zoning districts, addresses, and owner information. This information is readily available but requires the tools within the GIS to combine this information into one table. The GIS tools also clean up the County provided assessor owner information to assure owners within the city of Highland Park has correct street names. The GIS office annually creates a flattened import file that is used to keep the Edens data current.

Directions magazine is an international magazine and leading source of information, news and commentary in the fields of geospatial and location-based technologies. Today they published an article related to the GIS Consortium recieving the 2010 GITA Excellence Award. This award is not possible without the hard work and collaboration of the GIS Consoritium communities and Board Members. The is great recognition for all the hard work and innovation that the GIS Consortium represents.

The isolation of a water main is an important function of local government. Isolation of a water main needs to occur for a variety of reasons. Typically it is done to allow for maintenance or inspections, but it can also be done in the event of a spill or leak to prevent something from getting in rather than to stop something from getting out. Water main isolation can also used to take a piece of a plant out of use for a short or long period of time or to change the process stream.

Tom Thomey wrote and Kelsey Rydland contributed to an article on page six of the Illinois City/County Managers Association (ILCMA) April 2010 newsletter. The article addresses the need for GIS in these difficult economic times. While the article is not specifically about the GIS Consortium it is about how the GISC model can reduce the cost of GIS. The full article is available on the ILCMA website.

The Village of Oak Brook Public Works department performs a wide variety of services to the village including snowplowing and street sweeping. They also maintain various street lights within the village. Prior to the implementation of GIS, Public Works referenced a hand drawn street light atlas of the village. This contained the location of the street lights as well as their id number and the location of fiber optic lines within the village. While this atlas was useful, it did not contain information on each street light for bulb type, ballast, wattage, etc. If a street light needed repair, village staff would have to reference a separate table.

It is apparent that technology is getting better as new ways of using it are also on the rise. Within Geographic Information System (GIS), technology also continues to advance and allow for data to be edited in many different environments. One enhancement of technology that GIS has encountered is the ability to make a copy of a database, release it to a field crew for disconnected editing and then bring those field edits back into the original database. In GIS it is considered a “checkout database” and it is something that the Village of Morton Grove is taking full advantage of for their Street Sign Inventory.

The recent collection of planimetric data or improved features such as buildings, roadways, parking lots, driveways, etc. in Elk Grove Village has provided for some new analysis possibilities through its GIS (Geographic Information System). One of the evaluations conducted was the distance between primary building structures and also a count of the number of addresses that exist within each building structure.

An accurate inventory of sign locations is crucial for keeping roads safe for driving. Missing signs or faded signs can lead to motorists missing important warnings about road hazards.

Keeping a utility system running at high capacity is a major component of local government operations. Coordinating maintenance, capital improvement projects, and every day operations can be a challenging task that requires numerous man-hours to run effectively. Having an accurate spatial inventory of utility system components helps a community perform these operations more efficiently by providing a quick reference tool for checking the physical location of a feature and providing vital attribute information such as manhole depth or pipe diameter. To assist with a recent sanitary system cleaning effort, the Village of Winnetka Public Works Department requested that the GIS Department develop a series of maps to help the field crews gain a better understanding of the system before going out into the field.

Starting in 2009, the Village of Wheeling began using a survey grade GPS system to collect utility information in the field. The village started with the sanitary system, moved on to the water system, and is then planning to collect information for the storm system last. Collecting this information using a survey grade system provides a level of accuracy not normally seen in field collection GPS and allows the data to be integrated into GIS and CAD with minimal effort.

In early 2010 a multi-year planimetric data collection project was completed and the data incorporated into the Village of Riverside GIS (Geographic Information System) database. Information collected in this process included features such as roadways, sidewalks, driveways, recreation areas, curbs, retention walls, among many other things.

Every ten years the U.S. Census Bureau conducts a survey in order to find out how many people are living in a specific area among other things. Once completed with the survey, they then eventually release this information to the public. The ability to access this data from the Census Bureau as well as its use to answer important questions is at times invaluable. For the City of Park Ridge, they decided to use the Geographic Information System (GIS) as there catalyst for first accessing this information from the Census Bureau and second, to determine how many people are living within each municipal election ward.

Federal funding is a fundamental part of local government by helping to provide the necessary monetary assets for programs ranging from infrastructure improvements to low income housing support. While numbers and statistics related to a specific program are the nuts and bolts that eventually lead to funding being denied or awarded, including a spatial analysis of the data as a component of the funding application can help to clarify the provided information and increase a local government’s chance of receiving the requested funds.

The Village of Glenview Inspectional Services executes numerous inspections on a daily basis including all businesses and multi-story non-residential buildings for Fire inspections. Before the advent of Geography Information Systems and MUNIS, Fire inspectors used CityView software (address database) for their daily inspections.

We are proud to announce that the City of Lake Forest has joined the GIS Consortium. The City is the 17th member and largest based on square miles (17.2) and the ninth largest community based on population (20,990). The City implemented their GIS in 1997 and is one of three communities in the Chicago Metro area to have had a GIS program in the late 1990s.

MGP Inc. through it's relationship with the GIS Consortium has in-depth experience building GIS data for New World Systems (NWS) implementations. GIS data has been built for the following municipalities by MGP; Glenview, Deerfield, Highland Park, Lincolnwood, Winnetka, Wilmette*, Kenilworth*, Grays Lake* and Bannockburn.* The communities with a "*" are not members of the GIS Consortium.

Within the GIS, manmade features such as buildings, bridges, railroads, and roads are classified as planimetric data. The city contracts with Ayres Associates to update planimetric features for about twenty-five percent of the City each year. This ensures that none of the base mapping within the city is older than 5 years. Updated base map layers are important to ensure that new construction and redevelopment area are accurately reflected in the base map features.

For a 7.5 mile stretch of Dundee Rd., from Milwaukee Ave. to Green Bay Rd., the only section without a bikeable sidewalk or path is a small section within Wheeling village limits from the Des Plaines River to the Interstate 294 overpass. Without a path or sidewalk, this section of Dundee Rd. can be dangerous for any biker who attempts to ride in the grass or on the street itself. The Village of Wheeling is looking to build a bike path to connect the two sections to help provide a safe passage for bicyclists.

During an emergency event, the type of 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 is controlling where information is coming from and which pieces of information are more critical than others. Using GIS (Geographic Information System) as a tool in all stages of the emergency management process brings a spatial component to the planning and implementation of an action plan, helping to visualize all relevant information for a more efficient and successful community response.

The Village of Skokie has progressively added new users, taking advantage of the Village’s Geographic Information System (GIS). While adding users is key to the success of the GIS Program, new users have a learning curve for the new applications and software whether it be ArcView™ or MapOffice™ Advanced. Training and demonstrations can alleviate many of the questions and issues users have with interacting with the new technology.

The Village of Oak Brook police department deals with crime and burglary incidents on a daily basis. With the Oak Brook center mall and extensive business district multiple incidents can occur in a short period of time. Prior to the implementation of GIS, the police department would manually enter each incident into a database by shift, date, location and type of incident. In order to review the crimes for the month, staff would have to sort through the database to determine how many burglaries, residential theft, forgery, etc. occurred. In order to visualize where the crimes occurred, staff would use push pins on a village map.

The largest objective for initiating Geographic Information System (GIS) services in the Village of Riverside was to create a digital representation of the utility systems. This objective was realized when a Sewer and Water System Map Books were constructed at the turn of the new year. The books display the culmination of many projects that were necessary to produce such a resource. The first step was to convert GPS point data of the system structures such as fire hydrants, water valves, sewer manholes, etc. into the GIS system. Next the data needed to be connected with water and sewer main features. Additional structures were added as suggested by existing hard copy resources including as-builds and the former map books. Hydrant flow, manufacturer, identifiers, pipe material, and size information about the system was also entered as noted on plans, in other community databases such as FireHouse, and as provided by staff through their knowledge about the systems. The map books incorporate a page grid that was developed and the map design was generated utilizing the repository of other data layers that the GIS houses.

The Village of Norridge has a newsletter that they typically mail to all addresses in the village. In addition to going to all houses, the newsletters are sent to every unit in every apartment or condo building. Because of the natural turnover in apartment renting, many times the newsletters come back to the village because there is no one currently living at the address. This costs the village money in returned and wasted postage. The village asked the GIS department to come up with a map that would present a solution to the problem.

The versatility of a Geographic Information System (GIS) is usually driven by the user’s request. Although some requests can be more complex than others, it is often times that simple GIS operations help to provide the easiest solutions. For the Village of Morton Grove, the simple, quick and accurate data that the GIS could provide was all that was needed in order to help the Engineering Department complete a survey regarding the selection of the most optimal site for a solar panel installation.

The Village of Lincolnwood has been hard at work trying to secure grants that will help produce bicycle routes and paths throughout the Village. The grant, Job Access Reverse Commute (JARC), is administered through the Regional Transportation Authority. It is federally funded to help people of lower income travel to their places of employment. Providing assistance for this grant application has been the Village’s Geographic Information System (GIS). Throughout the process GIS has played an important part by providing maps and analysis. The Village is a member of the GIS Consortium (GISC) which is a Using the GIS Consortiums subscription to Business Analyst Online, the Village compiled necessary statistics for use in the grant. In addition to the statistics, locations of stoplights were mapped out to provide a list for use in field checks. Also, using GIS, the Village was able to verify that manhole covers and inlets along the proposed bike route corridors were of a certain type; openings were not large enough for a bicycle tire to become stuck.