GIS Analyst Chris Poshek uses a new GPS unit in Calumet Park to capture infrastructure data for mapping.
GIS Updates By Dennis Latto
1. We would like to welcome two new members to the SSMMA GIS Consortium! The Village of Alsip and the Village of Thornton’s boards have recently approved the resolution to become SSMMA’s 17th and 18th members of the GIS Consortium. We are very excited to work with these communities by using GIS to help with data inventory, creation, and analysis of their municipal information to assist the day-to-day operations of all of their departments.
2. SSMMA’s GIS department has recently purchased a new GPS unit. This brand new, state of the art, unit will link up to your smartphone and provide down to 2 inch accuracy on data collection. Many of our communities have old infrastructure atlases and are in need of updating their information. With the current state of our regions aging infrastructure along with the impending federal mandates and policy recommendations from agencies such as the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD), SMMA has put together a GPS program where we will work with communities to GPS all aspects of their current infrastructure, signage, and other facilities needing accurate level mapping. Communities can either rent the unit from us and we will come out and train your public works employees how to do so, or we can perform the data collection ourselves. From there, SSSMA’s GIS staff will QA/QC all of the data points and integrate into the communities’ already existing GIS environment. SSMMA is already in works on a GPS project in Calumet Park where we will be GPS’ing the community’s storm, sanitary, and water valves as well as their signage in one of their TIF districts, with the goal to GPS all of the communities assets going forward. We see this as a tremendous opportunity for communities to be proactive in their municipal infrastructure inventory in a cost-effective manner.
If you are interested in learning more about SSMMA’s exciting GPS program, please contact Dennis Latto for more information at 708-9224677 or dennis.latto@ssmma.org.