Photo by Barbara Scott, Scott Summers, GIS Coordinator for the City of Brentwood.
By MELISSA WEBB
Correspondent
courtesy of Brentwood Life (www.brentwoodlife.net)
About two years ago, the City of Brentwood embarked on a huge project through its technology department to create a GIS – Geographic Information System – for the entire city. The ultimate purpose of the mapping system is to improve the city’s ability to make practical, informed decisions.“The GIS takes institutional memory and puts it on paper in a very accurate way,” said Mike Walker, Brentwood City Manager. “The information provided by the GIS will allow us to keep up to date and accurate records among various departments. Basically, all of our utilities are on the mapping system, which provides easy access to accurate data.”
“The benefit is in knowing where everything is and how it all interrelates,” said Kirk Bednar, Assistant City Manager, who was involved in the creation of the system. “Now we have this information readily accessible to everyone in the city to use and view; it is not just in someone’s head. GIS is all about the information and the ability to access it.”
In the last fiscal year, the City of Brentwood invested about $125,000 in one-time capital costs to get the GIS operation up and running. The investment included purchasing two plotters to print the large maps, various software licenses and computers and GPS units for use in the field. The current operating budget of the GIS division is $310,000, which includes three full-time employees and several part-time employees.
Scott Sumners is the GIS Coordinator for the City of Brentwood. He has been involved in the GIS development from the ground floor of the operation. The department’s first priority was to map all of the water and sewer lines in the city. Other city infrastructure is being added to the system as well.
“The water and sewer mapping is about 95-percent done,” said Sumners. “That means we have GIS positions on all of the sewer manhole covers, pipes and grinder pumps as well as the water valves, backflows and fire hydrants. We are working on the meters and storm water features as well.”
GIS maps for the entire City of Brentwood are currently available on the city’s Web site (www.brentwoodtn.org). Anyone can pull up four different interactive maps through the link for GIS mapping. The city is currently in the process of updating its Web site. Making the GIS information even more easily accessible through the site is a priority.
The GIS is literally a life-saver when it comes to emergency services. The city fire and police departments, which formerly used only the mapping systems in city vehicles, now have access to the most accurate data through the GIS.
“Before, with all of the growth occurring in the city, the maps in the city police cars were not kept completely up to date,” said Sumners. “It is very important for emergency services to know exactly where they are going and be able to track distances. With the GIS, they can calculate the exact footage of distances between points. Within seconds, they can access an accurate picture of the city. The system enables us to update addresses and street center lines in house as soon as a plat is finalized.”
City residents can utilize the GIS to get information on the locations of all the tornado sirens in the city as well as call boxes for emergencies. Zoning information for every city property can also be accessed through the system. Each city park is mapped as well, including the trail systems and locations of amenities.
“Part of our ultimate goal is to have one asset management database and we will be proposing that soon,” said Sumners. “Input wise, there is still a bit left to do, but it is an ongoing process. The new city Web site will make all of this information as easy to access as possible for everyone in the city. Most importantly, we now have a way to make institutional knowledge available for everyone to use in making plans and decisions.”
To access the GIS for the City of Brentwood, visit the city’s Web site and click on “GIS mapping” from the home page. For more information, contact Scott Sumners at (615) 371-7002 or scott@brentwood-tn.org.
Artwork Submitted, City residents can utilize the GIS to access maps of city parks. The maps detail each ammenity of the parks.
If you have not figured it out from the picture or the title, we are talking about Richard Duncan, GPS Sales/Support and Vice President of GEO-Jobe GIS. Thats right, this is Richard flying about 6ft over the head of one of his wakeboarding buddies. We are guessing at Richard’s vertical based on the height of his buddy and the amount of space between them. Maybe next time we can get him to wear a GPS unit on his head so that we know exactly how crazy he is. I think there is a video of this action somewhere. I will post it when I find it. Enjoy!
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I have been waiting for this ever since I started using ArcGIS 5 years ago! The ability of the mouse scroll zoom to zoom to the cursor location (yes, just like CAD)! I stumbled onto this little gem while working on a coworkers computer, who had the zoom in/out reversed. He wanted it changed and right under the reverse zoom in/out option I find an option for “Wheel Zoom Centers On: Display or Cursor” To get there click Tools > Options > General Tab, down at the bottom.
Day 2, and for the rest of the conference there are technical sessions. Many, many technical sessions. From getting started with ArcMap to Building Models with Python. There is almost too much to choose from. The key is planning out your day.
The exhibit area opened up this morning and it is amazing. There are hundreds of exhibitors here: Google, BAE, USGS, Trimble, Topcon, HP, ITT… (full list here) I’ll get some more pictures today!
I heard from an ESRI representative that the subscription for the imagery and base maps from VE will cost $200/person/year. Incredibly affordable! One catch is that for now it will only be available as streaming information so you’ll have to be connected online to use it for now. They are working on a hosted solution, but no word on pricing for that just yet.
14,000 GIS users converge on San Diego, California’s Convention Center. This event is massive! One Plenary Session today led by the president of ESRI, Jack Dangermond. The topic of today’s talks – GIS: Geography in Action. Jack began this morning with a welcome and proceeded with some yearly awards. Next, began the showcase of technical demonstrations. One of the best demonstrations I’ve ever seen was given by MIT and their use of 3D modeling to map out the entire campus, including each room of every building by use. Then analyzed the data to show the impact of transportation upgrades in proximity to sensitive labs.
For the first time ever, ESRI demonstrated a preview of ArcGIS 9.4! The user interface looks like it may borrow some styling and functional cues from Bentley’s WaterCAD with dockable and pinable windows (the TOC for example). The editing interface looks like it will be greatly improved, removing the “target layer” and introducing a type of “legend” of features to pick from which determines the features you are creating or modifying. The tag line for that demonstration ended up being, “editing is as easy as drawing on a map”.
The final speaker for the plenary session was Dr. Peter Raven of the Missouri Botanical Gardens on
Biodiversity – The Foundation of Life. His talk was very moving, encouraging each GIS user to imagine the world as they would like it to be and strive in daily life to make the world as close to that dream as possible. Dr. Raven congratulated ESRI on its efforts to promote GIS in early education. While he never mentioned this phrase, it resonated with me throughout the entire speech, “Think globally, act locally.”
Finally, the Map Gallery… Hundreds of submissions this year for public display. 
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