Whew.  Almost a month since I updated!  Not good, not good…

I decided to update because I have a few interesting things on my GIS plate.

First, I wanted to upload a few samples of the maps we had to make for Planning that I mentioned in my previous posts.  Not much, just a snippet, but they’re worth checking out if you have the time.  Get the PDF here.

Secondly, I’ve volunteered my GIS skills to the political campaign of Barack Obama. The Obama camp is looking for GIS folks to help them with voter registration programs, door-to-door campaigns, and other spatially-related information and I thought it would be a really good experience. I’ve never worked on a political campaign before, so it should be interesting.

I’ve had a few interesting projects at work lately, primarily a “land use” map for Planning that is very similar to a zoning map, showing what areas of town are setup for what type of development. There have been quite a few revisions, refinements and reconsiderations, so it’s been a fun ongoing project. I think we’ve reached the final stage, but I’m not sure if it’s the type of map I can really show off in a public forum, so you might just have to take my word for it that it turned out fairly well.

Just last week I started on an HTML-based help file for one of our in-house call management database programs that was written by our Access guru. There were a few stumbles in the first days as I had to try to remember my HTML tags, but things are clicking now and I’m almost finished.

Finally, I had to go out to our Environmental Services Department (AKA “trash and recycling”) today to teach them how to reset and reinstall ArcPad on their in-truck GPS receivers. We’ve been having a few hiccups with our Trimble units suddenly being unable to open ArcPad, which usually meant the unit would be out of commission for a few days while it made its way to City Hall, we nuked it, and then someone from ES would come back and pick it up. Well, now that the ES gals know how to nuke the units themselves, they should have very minimal downtime. The GPS units were a great idea, but even great ideas have their few quirks.

That’s about it for now. I’ll be sure to keep things updated now that I’m working with the Obama campaign. I really hope it’ll be a good experience - personally and professionally.

One of the maps I’m working on for our Planning department requires that we show the current locations of all sidewalks within the city.  Guess who’s job it is to trace over the sidewalks in our aerial photos?

While it sounds tedious - and, frankly, it is - it’s not all that bad.  I just throw on my headphones, hit “Shuffle” on my Zune, and zone out while drawing all kinds of polylines.  Things could be a lot worse, believe me.

I’ve been working my fingers to the bone as of late. We’re updating a rather large series of maps - 14 to be exact - for our Planning Department. Apparently these are maps they have to present every 2-3 years to show the general direction of the City as far as growth and added amenities. While some of these maps are made by simply rerouting old data to the new .sde database, we still have to do a little work to tweak the symbology or sometimes are forced to recreate a certain layer’s information to match the look of the old data. It hasn’t been too bad, but it has been time consuming; especially when you factor in all the other work we’ve been doing for other departments. Once we’re finished I’ll get a few nice ones uploaded for the Map Gallery.

We’ve also been continuing to tweak our giant new layer that we’ve been developing to replace our all-encompassing layers like city limits, zoning, and ward locations. It’s a really nice addition to our arsenal, though we have noticed a few issues as well. For example, the city limits are a little strange when all we need is an outline of the limits. We’re symbolizing everything based on the values of various fields and some of our lines separating the areas are making the city limits pretty confusing. It might not be the end-all solution we’re hoping for, but I think we’re trying to plow ahead for now and see if we can make it work.

I’ll try to post a few of our Planning maps in the next week or so. They’re due by the 23rd and I have a feeling with everything else going on around here we might be pushing that deadline some.

Still working on this uber-layer, so not much of interest has been going on around here.  I did have to do a new ordinance packet this week - going through the latest legislation laid down by the city council and incorporating new subdivision, annexations, and a couple of street dedications into the GIS.  But that’s not terribly interesting, either.

However, I am getting a lot of music listening done, so that’s nice.

We’ve been working on a new project at work that will vastly improve our GIS, but is also currently taking it’s toll on our sanity. Historically we’ve had more than one shapefile for our City Limits, Zoning, utilities districts, wards, etc., basically large polygon areas that mark the boundaries of various zones within our city. However, we’re working towards creating a single polygon that can then be broken up and symbolized based upon a field value created for each type of zone. Basically, there will be a “Zoning” field which will have the zoning designation (i.e., R-1, I-1, Park, etc.) and then we’ll create physical breaks in the polygon that will correspond to those boundaries of each designation. Then, when we need to show zoning, we’ll simply setup symbolization based upon that one field.

The problem has been in creating those physical breaks in the polygon. We did an intersect to combine all of the polygons into one single feature, but unfortunately there are quite a few lines that are not snapped to vertices. So there has been a lot of editing going on in our offices as of late to get all of these line segments correctly aligned. I don’t mind the work - I throw on my headphones, hit “Shuffle” on my MP3 player, and put myself into a trance while adjusting individual nodes - it’s just a long, headache-inducing process. I find I need to just get up and move around about once every hour, if for no other reason but to remind myself to blink.

But all this hard work and eyeball strain will be worth it in the end. Having one single feature to edit whenever zoning changes or a new subdivision is added will be so much easier than having to go through a battery of shapefiles one after the other. Either way it beats working for a living…

In other news, yesterday was O’Fallon’s Public Works Day. It was a perfect day for an outdoor event with the temps a mild mid-70’s and just enough breeze to keep things fresh. While our department did represent, we’re no match for backhoes, cranes, and other big trucks. So we did have some interest at our tent, but it wasn’t anything that’s going to change some kid’s life. We handed out aerial photos of the kid’s house with a bit of “as the crow flies” directions to places like the Arch, Springfield, MO, Chicago, and Kansas City. As well as my educational flyer that I displayed here a couple weeks ago. I don’t really know if you could call it a success, mainly because we didn’t have any goals to accomplish other than to be there, but it was definitely an enjoyable day to be outside and interact with the community.

Just a quick update to showcase the educational map I made for Public Works Day.

Check it out here.

It’s been fairly quiet around here lately, but we’re now deep into preparations for Public Works Day here in O’Fallon, so things are picking up nicely.

Last week I worked on a design for a vinyl sign that we can hang at this and other various public appearances. We needed something simple because we’re under a bit of a time crunch, but didn’t want plain black text on a white background, either. I was given the task of coming up with something and I’m feeling pretty good about it, all things considered.

It’s sort of generic, it’s not terribly exciting, but it serves its purpose and doesn’t absolutely offend the eyes. Again, all things considered, I’m happy with it.

I’ve also been working on some educational materials that we’re going to hand out to the kiddies. One is a map of the City’s parks and schools with all of the various parts of a map (i.e., compass rose, scale bar, legend, etc.) labeled and explained as well as we can in a few, short sentences. The other thing I’m working on is a handout that’s kind of a cool way to show how maps show spatial relationships. The first map is of the world with a dot over the U.S.A.; the next map is the US with a dot over Missouri; next is Missouri with O’Fallon’s city limits shown; next, the city limits with a dot over the location of Public Works Day at TR Hughes Ballpark; and, finally, we have an aerial photo of the parking lot with a point labeled “Public Works Day 2008″. It’s a variation on the classic “Powers of Ten” film from classic designers Charles and Ray Eames. Once I’m finished with these, I’ll post them here for the world to see. Maybe I’ll even make them PDF format so other people can use them for educational purposes if they’d like.

Not much to report, really.  I’m still working on the strip mall project, but am nearing completion thanks to a couple of nice days in the last few weeks when I’ve been able to get outside.  I’ve been working at the fire department as well, but only to input service calls, so it’s not terribly glamorous or interesting, either.  It’s been kind of business as usual lately.

In other news, I’m trying desperately to make some connections in the outside GIS world.  My LinkedIn profile (visible via the link to the right) has been updated to near completion; I’m already a member of quite a few Facebook groups; and I’ve been lurking on the ESRI forums in an attempt to get into that community a little bit.  I feel like I’m going to get stuck where I am unless I find some GIS folks who can help me learn about all of the various technologies, fields, and applications that are out there.  Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find all that many online GIS groups, so it really feels like I’m spinning my wheels.  I’m going to do a little more research, though, and see where it takes me.  Maybe my best bet is to join a local users group and see what happens.  Maybe GIS simply hasn’t penetrated the zeitgeist enough to make it something people want to discuss en mass.  We’ll see.

Ahh, the suburbs. Strip malls as far as the eye can see! And believe me, O’Fallon has plenty of them.

Recently we’ve been working on a database for the Finance Department that will help them keep better records of the business licenses that are issued in the City. The program is being designed around our GIS, including mapping the location of the business, of course, all tied to our parcel points feature by a static ID number. But on the information side, it will also keep track of business names that have occupied an address, so if someone says, “They’ve moved to the old QuikTrip on Highway K”, we can know what the address is with ease. There’s plenty more to it, but I’m not in on the database side of things this time around, so I only know the basics.

However, once the design of this program got underway, we realized that our parcel points feature needed to be corrected where strip malls are concerned. Because strip malls are built on one big parcel, rather than split into numerous parcels per address, when we ran “Polygon to Point” in ArcEditor, it only gave us one point per strip mall location. Needless to say this wasn’t a very complete picture. We manually added many points, but we were doing so from a list of addresses, rather than being out in the field and writing down their locations. So instead of actually showing where a particular address is located, we simply had an array of points scattered throughout the strip mall parcel. Again, not a very complete or very accurate picture.

Well, I’m changing all that now. I’m currently heading out into the field and taking GPS readings at the entrance to each and every storefront in each and every strip mall. It’s going to be an arduous task, but in the long run it’ll be good for our GIS and will make this new business license program a really handy tool. It’s something we might have to update once per year or so, but I think it will be worth it in the long run. Actually, it seems like the perfect job for some interns if we could ever get approval for them. Maybe next year.

Not only am I showing the location of the addresses, but I’m also noting the name of the business located there or if the store is vacant at the moment. I think it will give a pretty good idea of the economic health of our city by seeing just how many of these storefronts are empty. With a non-declared recession going on, though, I’m a little worried about what we’ll see. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.

While it is a big job taking all these points, I’m really not complaining. The weather has been semi-cooperative this week and it looks to be even better next. So I’m getting a little fresh air and sun, which is always a good thing after being cooped up in an office all winter long. Every once in a while, being a little lower on the totem pole has it’s advantages…

Haven’t been doing much of interest as of late.  Doesn’t help that I’ve been sick as a dog for the last two weeks, so I’ve had to take some time off for doctor’s appointments and Nyquil-induced bouts of sleeping.

Work has been unusually slow for our department, too.  I have two projects that are in a holding pattern as I wait for the people who have requested them to get all their ducks in a row.

To occupy my time, I’ve been doing a little research on alternative GIS software.  I really like ArcGIS for the most part, but can’t spend that kind of money to do anything at home, so I was hoping to find an open source (AKA: Free) solution that will work.  The main program I’ve been messing with is Global Mapper.  It’s a little rough around the edges, but part of that might be that I’m using the free trial version.  I’d love to know what the “industry standard” ESRI alternative is, but haven’t really stumbled upon it yet.  I’m sure there’s something out there that is to ArcGIS what OpenOffice is to MS Office.   I’ll have to keep looking.