Towns overhauling infrastructure maps
The GIS Consortium was established in 1999; it enables police, fire, and public works employees the ability to bring computer-based mapping applications onsite, and allows mapping and updating of towns’ infrastructure — everything from sewer and water lines to the location of valves, fire hydrants, street lights, trees and signs
Riverside is small community near Oak Park, Illinois (the architect Frank Lloyd Wright was a long-time resident of Oak Park; he once, uncharitably, described Oak Park as a place where “the boulevards are wide and the minds are narrow”; but this was a hundred years ago). When Riverside Public Works employees need to pinpoint exactly where a water or sewer pipe is located under the streets of the village, they have to travel back in time. The information they are looking for is among the pages and pages of utility maps drawn in 1936 and then updated in the 1950s and 1970s. The information, though, is sometimes incomplete or inaccurate. Longtime employees are counted on to provide institutional memory in cases where the maps fail to deliver, but that method has its obvious limitations. “We rely a lot on staff and institutional knowledge,” said Nathan Thiel, the assistant to Riverside’s director of public works. “When they retire, the knowledge goes with them.”
Sometimes the institutional memory can be fuzzy as well. Knowledge that has been passed down through generations of public works employees can sometimes be inaccurate. Many times, it is simply incomplete. “All you have to know is that if we have a leak, sometimes it’s the first time we find out there’s a pipe there,” said village president Harold Wiaduck Jr. “Over the years there have been questions about our systems, but we can’t give good answers because our records are antiquated or non-existent.”
Riverside-Brookfield Landmark’s Bob Uphues writes that as a result, the Public Works Department is pitching the village board to join a group of north suburban communities which have banded together to form the Geographic Information System (GIS) Consortium. Riverside hopes to be one of several west and southwest suburban communities to join the consortium to take advantage of the group’s ability to gather and continually update data on its critical infrastructure systems.
The GIS Consortium was established in 1999. Among other things, it enables police, fire, and public works employees the ability to bring computer-based mapping applications onsite. It allows mapping and updating of village infrastructure — everything from sewer and water lines to the location of valves, fire hydrants, street lights, trees and signs. In addition to providing a map of the infrastructure, the GIS system can provide other information such as the date a particular fire hydrant was last serviced or its water pressure reading. “It gives staff an incredible tool to do analysis,” said Village Manager Kathleen Rush.
Tapping into this tool is the cost. Over the next five years, joining the GIS Consortium and creating Riverside’s information database could cost nearly $320,000. Almost one-third of that cost would come in the first year. That $320,000 expenditure will result mainly in the replacement of the current utility maps with the GIS version. If the village wants to add more to the database in the future, the cost will increase. Simply replacing old utility maps with new versions, however, would cost $260,000 over two years, according to a study completed by the village. For that $260,000, the village would hire a consultant to complete what would be a snapshot of the village’s current utilities. Funding for that project is expected to come from the village’s water fund. By joining the GIS Consortium, “we’re not buying a product, we’re buying the capacity to use a GIS system,” Rush said, adding that the reason Riverside has never contemplated a GIS system on its own has been the cost. “This is like going from no ambulance service to ambulance service,” Rush said. “It’s a huge step forward.”
While still expensive, Riverside can benefit from an economy of scale if other municipalities currently contemplating joining the GIS Consortium — Hinsdale, Westmont, Willowbrook, Oakbrook, Burr Ridge, Glen Ellyn, and LaGrange-also come on board. “This could be a beneficial instrument, and we can get more bang for our buck than by just having a [snapshot] drawing,” Thiel said.
