Program helps municipalities enter digital age
Oct. 22—Several municipalities in Niagara County, including the Towns of Lockport, Wilson, Newfane, Hartland and most recently the Town of Somerset, have decided to adopt GIS, or Geographic Information Systems with Wendel Engineering as their consultant.
According to Heather Lewis, a senior GIS analyst with Wendel, the project has many benefits. She proposed the project to the Somerset Town Board last week.
Upfront costs for the system, including training, setting up an environmental system research institution (Esri) and buying a Trimble GPS unit, are $7,300. Yearly costs are a little more than $1,900 for the Esri subscription, $2,000 for hosting on the Wendel server and $1,500 in administration fees.
At its core, Lewis told the board, GIS is the digitization of former hard-copy information. What once was tucked into a notebook, can now be visible on a phone or computer. Information is layered, so several attributes of a site can be displayed on one device.
Lewis said the Town of Somerset could start their journey with GIS by resolving to put their data into the online GIS system, the first step in using GIS, which could eventually result with custom-made applications of the data by her and the rest of the team at Wendel to suit the town's needs. The resolution drew unanimous support from the Somerset Town Board.
"Think of hydrants, mainline valves, curb boxes valves, manholes, ditches, light poles, easements, etc. — all of this information can be a layer in GIS where users can turn on several assets to see how they relate to one another," Lewis said of the system in an email. "And of course, all of those layers can have photos or documents attached to them."
The purpose of the technology is to save time, and labor, at the site, as well as in the office, he said.
"A great example of GIS reducing the time to do laborious tasks is when a municipal clerk or code enforcement officer needs to send mailers out for public notification of a re-zoning," she said. "Historically to perform this task, hard copy tax maps would be used to measure a specified distance from the subject parcel, and then all parcels within that buffer would need to be noted."
With GIS, Lewis said the mailers can be generated, "within seconds."
Another aspect of the system is the ease of which the public can find out information for themselves, though, most of its applications are primarily a municipality's tools.
"Typically data in a public GIS consists of parcels, school districts, fire districts, floodplains, wetlands, etc.," Lewis said. "This public GIS also allows users to create maps and download them. We bring data into the GIS from several sources, so it minimizes the need for residents to have to go to the FEMA's website for floodplains, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for federal wetlands, etc."
