Charles County, MD

DESCRIPTION
Spatial Systems Associates, Inc. has performed a wide variety of GIS support functions for various agencies of the Charles County government since 1998. We started with acquisition of digital orthophotography and the development of a street centerline file, attributed with address ranges, for use by the E911 response group. Following that, we acquired LiDAR data for the County and, from the workproduct resulting from the LiDAR acquisition, we developed 2-foot contours countywide. Upon completion of this work, we were selected by the Department of Utilities to design and build a GIS-based information system for the county's water and sewer infrastructure.

The Department of Utilities recognized the need to move to a digital data layer of its wastewater system maintenance and analytical functions—all of its operations were based on the use of deteriorating paper as built drawings (and scanned versions of these) and the manual extraction of data as needed.

The Department approached SSA for assistance in early 2007, and SSA responded with a phased approach to build GIS datasets that could be fully integrated into the Department's evolving business methodology. SSA built a map book and web application to locate plan drawing sets in the approximate area of the County represented on the drawings, pending the creation of a digital wastewater feature layer. SSA has scanned over 15,000 plan drawings at 400dpi grayscale for use in the vectorization task, and built a document indexing system that made the new scans immediately available to county staff via a web-based interface, which meant that field staff could now access the complete library of as-builts in the field utilizing ruggedized laptop computers equipped with suitable communications ability.

SSA then customized a geodatabase design for a pilot vectorization task for the Mattawoman Interceptor project (which links to WSSC facilities). The pilot vectorization was completed successfully and the Department contracted with SSA for the completion of the vectorization of the entire wastewater collection system. Vectorization has included georeferencing of appropriate scanned images, vecorization of both water and sewer features, attribution of the resulting features with information on size, material, date of installation, and other information gleaned from the as-built drawings. In addition, SSA "associated" the raster images with relevant vector features so that, by selecting any particular feature, county staff could identify and view all as-built drawings on which that feature is depicted. Further, a print capability was provided that allows county staff to print all or a portion of the image to a hardcopy device should that be necessary.

As part of this project SSA has built a project tracking web site which gives the Department real time access to vectorization work product as it is posted to the site, and it provides a mechanism for resolving questions about system features and locations as they arise. The project tracking site has the added benefit of providing an audit trail of issues and resolutions posted over the life of the project. The department is now using the ESRI-based project tracking web site as the basis for a system management application designed to be used by field crews to view system drawings and update feature information.

 

Client Testimonials

"Spatial has provided excellent service on this project. This project will drive the future of GIS and how it will be used in county government, thus revolutionizing current GIS practices."

"This project will set the course for technical communication, documentation, and data management for the county's water and sewer infrastructure, and will definitely provide a 'WOW' factor to those in county government, who have not been involved in the project to date."

—Ed Gorham, Chief of Maintenance
Charles County Department of Utilities