GIS Group Meeting

Today started out amazing then in the afternoon went to total frustration. I had to leave very early this morning to meet a co-worker for a GIS meeting of IMAUG – Illinois Municipal Arc Users Group. If you are into GIS, this is a great group to get involved with. Today's meeting was in Vernon Hills so pretty far away from Geneva where we work. But it was well worth going to. I was scheduled to speak first thing about QR Codes. Not sure it was a subject many were interested in, but hopefully I was able to offer some insight into their use in our industry. Below this post is the presentation I gave.

The other presentations were much more amazing! Will Rockwell from the village of Vernon Hills explained to us how to use Google Fusion tables and maps to make incredible GIS maps. Wow – they turned out great looking with very little work. Here is a link to more information from Google about using this tool: http://www.google.com/fusiontables/Home/

We also heard from a few other speakers who talked about applications for checking properties with liens, ESRI certifications, and a county web map service.

Parking Lot Project

After lunch and after we returned, I went with a couple other engineers to meet with a few people to discuss the design of the alley that will connect our proposed parking lot with one of the main streets through our downtown. This was a good meeting, and we look forward to getting a landscape design from the person we met with.

Water Main Project

My primary frustration hit when one of the engineers gave me a copy of the easement plats we had arranged to have prepared for our water main project. We had purposely hired a local firm to provide the surveying services because they have always produced such good work for us in the past. Imagine my surprise when the engineer gave me the plat and said, "we have a problem – they left off part of the property." Sure enough they had missed the fact that the property owner had acquired additional property over which our easement should have run. And as the engineer pointed out, the surveyor had actually shifted our easement over from where we had shown it to be because of missing this additional parcel. Well, when I looked at who prepared the plat, it was not the firm we had hired but another that we had specifically chosen not to use exactly because of problems like this. So I called the firm we had hired to ask why they hired another firm to do the work we hired them to do. All they said was sometimes they do that. No apology – no "I guess we should have asked if we could sub out the work." Nothing. I am not even quite sure how to respond at this time because I have never even heard of a firm doing such a thing. We are supposed to meet on Monday to discuss where to go from here.

As I had mentioned yesterday I took a vacation day on Thursday so I could attend the student-parent day at my daughter's middle school. But back at work today! And after today, I'm ready to say lock me in a dark, lonely room and hang a sign on the door with a big "IT!" Wow, did we ever get into running down some IT-related issues today. Read on to hear our problem, and how we went about discovering the solution!

First, some background!

Our engineering division oversees the GIS for the city. And we are in the process of structuring GIS so that we are primarily responsible for the geospatial part of  GIS and each city department is responsible for the data side of it.  We have set up a GIS team for the city, and each department has identified someone who is their team member and GIS liason. That person most likely will have GIS software on their computer and will be responsible for representing and managing the GIS data for that department.

And, now the problem

In addition to managing the geospatial side of GIS, we also manage the server and the web applications. And yesterday, my supervisor emailed me to let me know the web map was down. This had happened once before, and the GIS technician had to create a new web map to fix the problem. This time, she tried to just edit the existing map rather than create yet another map, but she could not save her changes. So I tried logging in and editing the map discovering that the software allowed me to do so. But it would not take my changes because it said it was locked out by another account. She mentioned that the only thing she could think of that was different was that our Windows system had required her to change her password recently. So I told her to ask our IT department to change it back so we could see if that was it. 

The research

In the meantime, I started researchig the error displayed when I had tried to edit the map. It appeared to have something to do with the user and permissions. It seems that when a user creates a web application, a config file is created that tells the app how to perform. Because the app must access data to display on the map, it must do so by "pretending" to be one of us. So the user name and password of the map creator is captured and stored in encrypted form in this config file.

And of course, the trial and error phase

So to test this, I made a copy of our map and edited the config file as directed in these instructions adding in my username and password. And although this sounds easy, the instructions are not as straight forward as they need to be for someone doing this for the first time. It took me longer than I liked to figure out on my own exactly what to keep or delete in the original file. Also, the fact I had copied the text from the instructions to paste into the file messed me up until I realized the quote marks had not copied over as quotes even though they looked like it. Once I got everything as it needed to be, the map worked!

The root of the problem

At this point, I found out from the GIS tech that the IT person told her he didn't need to change her password back because there was no way it had anything to do with our problem. But based on what I had found and tried, it appeared it has everything to do with the problem. And it seems to have explained some other issues we've seen over the past year with files being locked out. Apparently certain functions in the software lock in that username and password so when it changes, the file locks up for any other user.

And finally, the FIX!

Finally, the GIS tech remembered she could go in and change her password back from the log out screen. So when she did this, the original map came back online. Yay! It might have taken most of our day, but we solved our problem and in doing so learned more about how everything is connnected.

Whenever there is a problem like this, it always makes me think of the funny video, "The Website is Down." I embedded it below although I have to add the following – please read before you view:

WARNING: If you choose to view this, you should be over 18 and not offended by foul, risque language or comments and violence that could be found offensive by some.

Coding payouts

I started the day going through some emails. Then the other engineers and I went over some recent pay requests and the budget line items to make sure we were coding everything correctly. We wanted to do this because our finance department has gone though and organized our funds into a better structure so this year we have some new codes to work with. This is one part of the job that I think is only learned through on-the-job training. Everything we do has to be paid for and accounted for in some way, so it's important to track it all through the use of account numbers. Having worked for a consultant for a while many years ago, I realize this also happens in the private sector. However, in government, we seem to have more rules and restrictions placed upon the accounts. So we need to make sure only certain expenditures are paid for by certain accounts. For example anything coded to the Motor Fuel Tax account must be an IDOT-approved expenditure. (There's actually a lot to learn about MFT accounting that I couldn't possibly cover in one paragraph!)

GIS – Address and Building Layers

Most of the morning was then spent meeting with staff from fire and police. We discussed some GIS issues and worked together to figure out how to best handle addressing and building footprint layers and updates. Right now we don't have a program to track our address assignments or changes, but we are finding we really do need something that allows everyone to know about a change in an address. And we need something that allows certain people to "sign off" when they perform an address-related function or allows them to "acknowledge" that they've received a change. The staff person for the police department came up with an excellent and easily implemented suggestion to handle this: an Adobe Acrobat form that we can all edit. So later this week, I am going to work on setting this up. Then we'll discuss it at our next GIS team meeting and finalize the format.

Road Resurfacing

This afternoon we went back out to look at the roads. Most of the sections we drove today were in good condition, but we did find a few that look like they will need to be resurfaced next year. 

Parking Lot Planning

This morning a couple of us discussed the parking lot we are planning to build in our downtown. The project engineer for the job submitted the necessary documents to our planning department for the planning commission hearing we will have Sept. 8th. I also talked to a landscaper who will put together a preliminary landscape design for the lot and set up a meeting with him on site for this Thursday. The project engineer touched base with our lighting consultant to make sure we would have a preliminary lighting plan done in time for the hearing. And finally I reviewed the revisions we had all made to the agreement with one of the property owners from whom we will be getting easements for a portion of the lot.

Road Project

The contractor has been in this week finishing up some minor work on this year's road project. And the project engineer and our technician have been measuring quantities like crazy. But now is the time when our thoughts begin to turn to next year's road project. So today I set up some times this week for us to drive the roads. During this "road trip" we rate the roads, note the ones that could possibly be crackfilled, and check out any other issues or problems. It's the one time of the year we can really take a comprehensive view of all the  roads at once. I also updated the ratings in our GIS for the roads we improved this year and printed out maps to use during our drive.

Permit Review

I finalized the review of a small project someone had proposed for a commercial development in the city. Then I sent out the approval letter to the developer and a few staff members. Tomorrow I will work on another permit we have in that includes a stormwater permit application.

Water Main Project

During the morning, I also researched the property ownership for a parcel through which we would like to place a new water main. Then I contacted the business to set up a meeting with them to discuss the possibility of the city getting an easement.

Street Sign Upgrade Requirements Rescinded

Our city administrator also sent out a letter today that indicates we will probably not have to upgrade our signs to meet the new retroreflectivity requirements by the date that had been set by the FHWA. Instead we can upgrade the sign at the time of replacement. This will save a significant amount of money for many agencies. Here's a link to the press release by the U.S. DOT: 

http://www.dot.gov/affairs/2011/fhwa4311.html

Another GIS day

Today was another day primarily spent on tasks related to GIS. Several of us discussed the structure and vision of GIS for the city. This has been important not only because our city is working on a succession plan, but also because GIS is changing so much as it evolves and is integrated with new technologies. (By the way, if you're interested in the evolution of GIS, you can read a recent article of mine on Acronym Online related to this topic: When Tools Converge to Help Cities Monitor their Entire Water System)

A couple of us spent our afternoon at the fire department meeting with the person there who will be handling all their GIS work. It was very interesting to learn more about the software they use to interface with the city's GIS data. And we talked a lot about how we can work together to make our datasets better, not only in accuracy but in how they help us do our jobs better. We also looked at a Flex application they would like to see developed to view some of the data.

The never-ending email challenge

Other than that, I did spend more time than normal trying to minimize the e-mails in my inbox. With us being so busy over the last few months, I had way too many in there and really needed to file them. So I made great progress today, and now only have just a little more to go before it is down to an acceptable level.

Internships

At the end of the day, I also met with someone who will begin an internship with us next week. He will be working part-time as part of his curriculum to learn more about engineering and what an engineer does throughout the day. Our city is a strong supporter of internship programs. Our department has had four this year so this will be our fifth, and there are about four other departments with interns working this year.

GIS Maps

Yesterday at the very end of the day, our IT staff added a link on our Intranet site to the web map we had created. This is an online map of our GIS information that's accessed through a browser. Unfortunately we still haven't been able to make the web map in the Silverlight Viewer, so we instead put up the one we made with the default ArcGIS web map application. The map we published is only a beta version, and we are using it to find out what everyone thinks of the format and information. Over the next few weeks we will get feedback from users and incorporate their ideas into a new map. We've already had some great input!

The other task that our IT was able to take care of was getting us access to the county's internal GIS map. We added that link also because it will be a great resource for our users. We are so lucky in Kane County to have a great GIS staff at the county level. They are never too busy to talk to us about their GIS or data, they hold regular meetings of GIS users in the area, and they are so helpful when we have questions about anything.

Storm sewer project

I reviewed the storm sewer project design that our interns finished up. And because we need an easement from the property owner, I wrote a legal description for the easement. Now, we'll give it to the homeowner for his attorney to check and if ok, prepare the necessary documents. We ask homeowners to get the easements drawn up for us if they are the ones requesting a sewer to alleviate their drainage problem. And the city has only done this if the problem is significant and affects multiple properties. In this case the problem meets this criteria so if they can provide the easement the city will install the sewer.

Intern's Last Day

Today was the last day for one of our interns. He is returning to school next week. So we took both interns out to lunch. They both have done a great job helping us with numerous projects. I think they learned a lot of things that they normally would not pick up in school.

Research Property Records

The city is considering selling some of its property so we are researching the legal documents and making sure there are no restrictions on selling the property. Today I went over some more of the documents, verified our ownership, and went to the courthouse to get copies of some of the deeds. 

Grant for Road Work

The city has also received word that we are going to get a grant. So today I was able to talk to our grant liason at DCEO who helped us understand what we could use the property on. Now we need to fill out the paperwork and submit it for approval. This is something I plan to work on next week.

Plan Review

Last week, I received a re-submittal of plans for a development project in our community. So today I started going back through my comments to make sure they had addressed everything. Because I didn't have a chance to finish, I will work on them again next week.

Another GIS Day

Today ended up being another day primarily spent on GIS. I successfully was able to start a web service for some of our data. But when I went into the ArcGIS Silverlight Viewer Map Builder and put my URL into that data, it could not connect. I tried to look through the documentation to figure out why it isn't connecting, but could find nothing wrong. Our other GIS person is going to look it over too. If we both can't figure it out, I guess we'll try asking the person in our neighboring community for some help. Or maybe we'll end up calling ESRI support.  

We also worked on populating data and planning the organization of data in a few of our feature classes. This has been an ongoing task for us as we move through each type of data collected and managed by the city. Eventually I want to capture it all in a data catalog so we have a better idea of just what we have an how it is organized and who maintains it. But that's a huge project that we only have time to work on every now and then.

Grant Meeting

Today we also met to discuss a grant that was awarded to our city by the state. We needed to look through the forms that must be filled out, and we wanted to further discuss the project related to the grant. I contacted the grant administrator to get more information before we get too far into filling out everything that we must submit. But I did not yet hear back so hopefully will tomorrow so we can get going on submitting the information.

Storm Sewer Project

Our interns are still working on the CAD drawing for the small storm sewer project they are designing. It's been great experience for them to take a project from the start to finish. They have done all the field work, communication with the residents who will be impacted, the design, and the drawing of the plan. Eventually, I will have them figure out some quantities even though we will probably build this in-house.

Manhole Frame Demo

We also sat through a demo of a new type of frame and adustment system for manholes. This company was out of Canada, and their product is made entirely of rubber. Of course, being a conservative engineer, I am always skeptical at first with new products. Sometimes I find something new that does look worth trying. But in this case, I was mainly turned off by the cost. Purchasing the frame and adjusting rings was almost the same cost as buying a whole new manhole structure with the metal frame and concrete adjusting rings like the one shown in this photo. So it would be hard to justify. Plus it looked like the installation could be time-consuming which might make the total construction cost even more. It's still good to evaluate new products just to make sure we are making the best use of our funds.

It's all about GIS

Today was one of those days when I try over and over to work my way through a problem. Following up with how I ended on Friday, I went back to the ArcGIS Silverlight Viewer and tried to make a map. One of the first items I attemped to do was add some of our data – after all what good is the map if there's no information on it. So to do this, I had to go into our ArcGIS Server software and create what is known as a "service." Basically I think of this as setting up a pipeline between the map and some specific data that allows the data to be displayed on the map. That is a very simplistic view of it, but hopefully it gives an idea of what I was attempting to do.

The software makes it fairly easy to go through the steps. The problem was it didn't work when I was done. Another GIS person in our office tried to with different types of data, and it still would not work. We suspected it was a permission problem with the folder where the data was stored. We thought sharing the folder might help make this work. The only problem was we could not get access to the ability to set it to a shared folder. So we let our IT people know about this – they couldn't understand why we could not do it because they thought we were set as administrators on the server. But by the end of the day, they had fixed our access issue and now we are true admins on the system! So while I was excited about having the administration thing all worked out, I could not go back and test it on the map. All I had time to do was to go in and share the folder so tomorrow, we will try again publishing the service.

The other major task I worked on today was hosting our GIS Team meeting. This is a meeting we hold once a month where all major GIS users from all city departments come and share what they are doing, the challenges that have come up, training they attended or know about, or problems they need help solving. It's always a great meeting, and everyone offers great ideas.

So the day was completely devoted to GIS with the exception of a few engineering-related issues that came up. Based on all the work I'd like to get done related to GIS, I could use about 6 more months of days like today!

Today was a great day – well most days are pretty good, but a lot of really good things happened today! There were some minor tasks I took care of like arranging for our interns to help out the water/sewer department by shooting some elevations for a sump pump line they were repairing and working a little with the interns on the small storm sewer project they are designing. But the main focus of the day were the following items:

Inspection of Storm Management Activities and a Quick Explanation of Special Service Areas

For some time now many urban areas have been requiring new developments to address stormwater management to minimize flooding and improve water quality. So developers installed features such as detention and retention basins, wetlands, or other facilities to meet these goals. Although they have worked well over the years, the challenge that has evolved over time is the maintenance of these areas. Over the years, weeds grow up and cattails take over. Eventually the facility may no longer function as intended.

We have one large stormwater facilitiy within a subdivision in our city that over the years was increasingly neglected by the property owner. Fortunately our city requires all developers to either create special service areas (SSA) for these facilities or agree that in the future an SSA could be set up. The SSA works by allowing the city to assess real estate taxes on the parcels lying within the SSA for the purposes stated in the document creating that area. In most cases management of stormwater facilities is an approved use of the funds collected through an SSA. If no management is needed because the property owner or homeowner's association is taking care of it, then no taxes are assessed. However if no maintenance takes place, as in this case, the city begins assessing and managing the facility.

So earlier this year we began assessing taxes for this area and secured a contract with a design/build firm to design and implement a management plan for the area. Today our consultant took us out to inspect the work that has been done. I took many photos of the area, and you can see these on the city's Flickr site at this URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cityofgeneva/sets/72157627294641145/

I did add one photo here that was taken by Karen Kase, one of the employees with the consulting firm. (I asked and received permissoin to use her name and photo in this post.) She is an amazing woman – she completely understands this type of work, works hard to achieve results, and does a great job communicating to clients what has been done and what is planned. Anyway, she took this photo one day while she was working on site. She said it is a hummingbird moth. I just had to include it here in this post because it is one of the most incredible photos I have ever seen. She took it with her iphone!

Public Works Staff Meeting

We also had a public works staff meeting today. This is a meeting we have every month that includes all the superintendents and managers in our department. It's interesting and helpful to get together like this to share what each of us is doing and it helps us better coordinate our efforts. We learned that the Emerald Ash Bore has had a devastating impact on our community with thousands of trees left dead. Our street department has a forestry division, and they have been taking down all the trees in the right of way. So far they have removed 225 trees just since May of this year. The superintendent figured he could have about 2,600 more to go. Another interesting bit of information shared is that he was asked to put a sign up at the pay station for our commuter parking garage that says "US Currency Only" because people are paying with coins from Chuckie Cheese and Disney. I figured our dollar was devalued but didn't think it had gotten that low!

ArcGIS Viewer for Microsoft Silverlight

Today I also signed up for the ArcGIS Beta Community so I could get access to try out this awesome application for making web maps. The GIS person in our neighboring community who is just outstanding at creating GIS applications showed us a demo of it at our last group meeting. This application allows you to create a web map through a very easy method. And the resulting map is presented in a very nice user interface. I would highly encourage anyone interesting in creating web maps to join the Beta Community and try out this application. Anyway, I was able to get it installed by the end of the day and look forward to trying it out next week!

Night Meeting for the Downtown Master Plan

I'm late getting this post up because I attended a meeting of our Downtown Master Plan Committee. We are in the process of having a plan prepared for our downtown area which is a big deal for us because we have such an awesome downtown and want to make sure it stays that way. My main input to the plan is more on issues related to engineering such as traffic and infrastructure. Tonight we discussed the 33 areas that were targeted for potential redevelopment within the study area. But at the end we also talked about one of the main routes through our downtown. It's a four-lane state route with approximately 20,000+ ADT and diagonal parking on both sides. We have sidewalks on both sides that are about 10 feet wide abutting buildings constructed to the street line. The point of discussion was that our planners have gotten feedback that people feel uncomfortable walking along this road. However our records show minimal accidents in this area, (see photo on left) particularly related to the parking or pedestrians. But the planners felt they had to address these concerns and suggested some alternatives to the section. One of the designs had some of us concerned about the possible result of losing major amounts of parking for the sole purpose of picking up a few more feet of sidewalk with no proof of an increase in safety. 

Based on my experience with walking these routes regularly at night, people can't feel too uncomfortable because this busy route is always filled with people walking or congregating on the sidewalk. And that's one of the things we really like about the area. There's always so many people walking everywhere downtown – even on this busy route. As someone who has not lived here long, I think the reason people say they don't like the busy route as much is because the other main route through our downtown is a unique and charming roadway with five-foot sidewalks, a grass parkway, and buildings set back about 25 feet or more (see example of this part of our downtown below). It's hard for any other downtown road to compete with that one. And adding a few more feet to a traditional downtown sidewalk is not going to transform it into this other type of street environment. But the planners are convinced it will make all the difference in the world. While for us engineers we cannot justify negatively impacting the traffic to increase the perception of a nicer looking road.

And in a way, taking that stand is a little ironic for me because if you read my blog regularly, you know I am somewhat anti-car. Not that I hate them or anything; I just feel they are in their decline as a mode of transportation. The more I read and the more I consider the future of transportation, I am convinced we are on the brink of beginning the transition to a new system – one made up of something along the lines of PRTs co-existing with rail, bicycles, and pedestrians.  And I start to wonder each time I design and build something for cars, just how long a life it really has. So part of me wants to plan for something beyond a reliance on cars as the primary mode of transportation. But as much as I am ready to ditch my car for a pod tomorrow, the engineer in me understands that's not the reality of today. So for now I accept the fact that people still love cars and want to use them and my job is to provide the infrastructure for that in the best, safest, and most economical manner. Of course the engineers are only one voice in the entire process – many more have to weigh in before the draft plan is prepared. 

The rest of the day

Today was really busy; well most days are busy, but for some reason today seemed even more so. I started out again trying to keep up with emails but had to pull away to work on finalizing the property owner information for the parking lot we are constructing. I wanted to send the map and legal documents over to our city attorney at the end of the day, but will have to wait because I decided to have the interns check over our work one more time to make sure it is correct. Too often, I notice people get so busy and need to push work out the door that mistakes are made. I hate when I do that. So I've been trying to make a concentrated effort to have everything in our office checked by someone if possible. This is how it used to be when I first started working in engineering, and I think over the years this quality assurance check has been neglected more and more in our industry.

Road Project

In the morning, I ran out with the project engineer for our road project. He wanted to show me the condition of the concrete pavement that had been under the asphalt we ground off. One road was unusual in that it seemed to have no cracks. Most older concrete pavements I've seen have cracks so it was interesting to see one that did not. The other road we looked at was cracked in a typical fashion. Over the years, the city had been using an area reflective crack control before placing the asphalt. But last year the contractors told us in the future we will pay more for grinding if there is crack control material under the asphalt. So this year we did not use it. The engineer discussed using a crackfililng material. I was hesitant to do so because another engineer had shared a negative story with me about paving over asphalt that had been crackfilled. So I called him to again hear the story of his experience. He said the hot asphalt will cause the crackfilling material to bubble up through the new asphalt and damage the new pavement. Instead of using crackfilling material, it's best to use a type of sand mixture if you must seal the cracks. We discussed the matter a little more in our office and decided not to fill the cracks.

Annexation Inquiry

A person who lives nearby but not in our city called to see if it was possible to hook up to our water and sewer. This is a common call most engineering departments get every now and then. In our city, we require a property owner to annex into our city if they want to hook up to our utilities. So I explained this and how they could run utilities to their home. They said they would look into it more and call back if they decided to go forward. Fortunately in this case, I had already looked at how to serve this area. But if you get these calls and have not done this, it can be time-consuming because you have to look at all the maps and sometimes the elevations of the area to figure out how someone can get to utilities and how much it will cost.

GIS problem

One of our GIS users had a problem with their map that unfortunately I was not yet able to figure out. We have a line feature class that in my map shows up as a line. However, in their map, it is showing up as a polygon. I could not find this problem talked about anywhere online so will have to keep looking into it tomorrow.

Miscellaneous Tasks

• The frames I had picked out last week for those inlets on our road project were delivered today.
• We met today with members of other departments to discuss the project I talked about above where we are designing a new parking lot in our downtown.
• And finally I had arranged for several engineers in our office to listen to the webinar on PROWAG that was hosted by AccessibilityOnline. It was very good and informative.