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Applied
Technology
In the world of Public Works, technology is
rapidly making an impact on the options and tools managers have at
their disposal. These technology products are all designed to
enhance productivity and communication. Of these, it is arguable,
that nothing is hotter than GIS.
GIS systems enable Public Works managers to
not only locate the assets they manage on a computerized map but it
gives them the flexibility to store additional information about
these assets like average daily traffic counts and pavement surface
for roads, or latitude, longitude and elevation coordinates for
things link signs, hydrants and manholes. Essentially, in a GIS
system you can associate virtually any type of attribute to an asset
and ask the GIS system to map it.
As some of our customers have discovered,
associating road maintenance costs to their road assets can allow
them to communicate the cost of road maintenance in a graphical way
that is far more powerful than reporting the same information is a
standard printed report. The impact of such a reporting method can
have very dramatic effects when presenting information to city
councils, county commissioners and the public.
Coming this spring, PubWorks
will possess a software toolbar that will appear within ESRI ArcGIS
(by far the most popular GIS system in Public Works). This
PubWorks GIS toolbar (similar to toolbars you see in
programs like Microsoft Word and Excel) will allow you to query and
join PubWorks road maintenance cost data to your
existing road data in ArcGIS. You will be able to name and save
these “join queries” for future reuse and modification.
The PubWorks maintenance cost
data exposed (via the toolbar) in ArcGIS will be current and live.
You will be able to create a wide variety of maps helping you
analyze and communicate the maintenance activities, history and cost
in your city or county in ways that are only limited by your ability
to use ArcGIS.
We look forward to rolling this product out
and hope that if you have any comments or questions, you’ll contact
Pete Anzalone at (970) 923-0380.
Table of Contents Volume 1, Edition 1
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