CEDRA

The CEDRA Corporation's work with the City of Edmond, OK involves the data collection and data maintenance of the City's (a) parcels, (b) easements, (c) streets, (d) zoning and planning districts, (e) wastewater sewer system and ancillary facilities, (f) water supply and distribution networks and ancillary facilities, (g) storm water sewers, and (h) annotation GIS databases.

In maintaining the utilities, field GPS survey work is performed by a local surveying firm to locate the features in the field after which the survey data is imported into City's GIS, which is in a local state-plane coordinate system. Once the field information has been imported, as-built information is assigned to the surveyed features and introduced into the database. In addition, any features that could not be field surveyed (pipe bends, tees, water and sewer lateral connections, etc.) are introduced by geometric means into the database with their appropriate attributes updated. A partial list of the as-built information that is entered into the GIS includes: pipe diameter, inverts, material, length, slope, project number, update date, asset type, asset identification, a unique facility identification value, and others. The GIS database which CEDRA maintains is also utilized in developing the City's utility work orders.

As part of this project, CEDRA also developed an ArcGIS Server web based mapping system for the City which enables City staff to produce atlas and utility maps. The City's Utility Line Maintenance department uses these utility maps in their maintenance operations.

Additionally, CEDRA developed a JavaScript ArcGIS Server based data editing/maintenance application for the City which has been incorporated into several City applications for displaying and editing feature attributes in a Web based environment. This application enables the user to display custom multi-line map tips and single and multi-column data editing dialog boxes with no programming.

The maintenance project described above has been an annual project since 2003 and is a follow up project to the project which CEDRA performed which involved the initial development of the City's parcel, easement, street, sewer, water and storm water databases. In this previous project The CEDRA Corporation assisted in the design of the databases as well as the conversion of the City's paper system and micro-film drawings into the City's GIS.

This project involved the conversion of the County's parcel database from an ArcView 3.3 environment to an ArcGIS 10.3 environment. In transitioning from the old environment to the new, the County wanted to take advantage of Esri's File Geodatabase format and annotation featureclasses. In the ArcView 3.x environment, annotation was represented by a point feature with an attached graphic text element. As such, in addition to generating the File Geodatabase featureclasses for the non-annotation shapefiles (lot lines, parcel polygons, etc.), CEDRA created various annotation featureclasses for the County's parcel lot numbers, area, blocks and street layers.

As can be expected, the transition from ArcView 3.3 to the 10.3 environment involved quite a bit of re-education on the operators' part. CEDRA, as part of the project, provided training and assisted in the development of workflow procedures enabling the County's GIS technicians to get up-to-speed in an efficient and timely manner.

Additionally, CEDRA assisted the County in establishing a Master File Geodatabase that resided on the County's Server. Rather than implementing an Enterprise based GIS, which was cost prohibitive for the County, CEDRA worked with the County to create an environment where the Master File Geodatabase, containing the latest version of the County's parcel and annotation layers, resided on the County's Server while local versions of the Master File Geodatabase resided on the various operators performing the parcel mapping. Various County staff would perform edits on the local version of the Master File Geodatabase. Once the edits are complete, the Master File Geodatabase on the Server is updated. A custom Update button was developed by CEDRA for the County which enables the County operators to update the Master File Geodatabase with a single button click.

This type of editing environment enabled the County to save more than $30,000 annually. Furthermore, the Master File Geodatabase residing on the County's server provides the data that is published on the County's GIS Map Data web page.

This work involved the development of a 3D street network dataset for New York State and a GIS web based routing application tailored for routing heavy and wide load freight vehicles. With over 200 bridge strikes occurring in New York State annually and over 2,000 nationwide, the need for a routing application specific for freight vehicles is essential. Using USGS Digital Elevation Model data in conjunction with NYSDOT street, pavement and bridge data, a 3D state-wide street network dataset, accounting for vertical clearance, posted weight limits, speed limits, roadway grade, in ArcGIS format was created. The NYSDOT data was obtained through the NYSGIS Clearinghouse under its Data Sharing Cooperative program.

As part of this project an ArcGIS Server JavaScript web application was developed enabling routes to be generated based upon the 3D street network and user-specified route parameters such height limit, weight limit, desired speed and type of cargo, if appropriate. The web application consisted of a custom user-interface that integrated Esri's Network Analyst extension with the 3D street network. Routes with turn by turn directions can be exported to Keyhole Markup Language (KML) format providing users the ability to download to mobile navigation devices. Furthermore, the application enables the user to generate multiple routes with each route appearing in a different color. The application also provides the user the ability to display various cartographic and orthoimage basemaps, including Google based Maps.

This project involved extensive use of Esri's Spatial Analyst and Network Analyst extensions, the ArcGIS Server software, Esri's JavaScript API and HTML programming.

Under this project CEDRA assisted Wayne County staff in developing the County's E911 street database. Specifically, the work involved acquiring the NYS Street Address Mapping (SAM) data, extracting the street data for Wayne County, and working with the County in verifying and updating the street centerline database for use in the County's E911 system.

In performing this work, CEDRA staff was on-site at the County's office performing the work and training County staff in the process. A workflow was developed and adopted by the County. Additionally, a training guide was developed enabling County staff to maintain the street centerline data.

In addition to establishing the street centerline dataset, CEDRA assisted the County in developing the EMS, Fire and Police polygon layers which are utilized by the County's E911 system. Extensive polygon editing and topological verification was performed in developing these three polygon layers.

This project involved the development of an ArcGIS Desktop application that, given a well pad surface with an initial control elevation and well pad side slopes, could compute a final well pad elevation such that the cut and fill earthwork volumes would be balanced within a user-specified tolerance. Additionally, a final surface or TIN that merged the well pad with the existing ground surface was created. In construction projects a major emphasis is on limiting the amount of earth that is brought in or hauled out of the construction site.

Using Visual Basic and ArcObjects, a custom application was developed to accommodate the requirements specified above. The application was written in such a manner that the computations were based upon processing 3D polygons rather than an ArcGIS TIN dataset. This enabled the user to create the surface without using the Spatial Analyst extension, although the application could easily be modified to operate off an ArcGIS TIN dataset.

This project involved the development of an ArcGIS Desktop application that given a text file containing metes and bounds could generate point, line, curve or polygon features. The City was in the midst of converting literally thousands of land lease documents from Excel tabular format to a spatial representation within ArcGIS. As such, CEDRA was asked to develop a custom command that would parse the Excel tabular information and create the appropriate ArcGIS features representing the parcel.

Using this command, the City literally saved hours of transcription time on a per parcel basis. Some of the parcels that needed to be converted into ArcGIS format were comprised of several hundred courses. The City employs an enterprise geodatabase. The custom command developed for the City enables the City to store the resultant features directly in the City's enterprise geodatabase.

This project involved the development of a water network model for the City of Laramie, Wyoming that was entirely based in ArcGIS. Using CEDRA-AVwater, this project involved the creation of a water distribution model that was based upon information stored in the City's enterprise geodatabase.

Comprised of approximately 5,000 pipes a model was developed and analyzed using EPANET. Using the CEDRA-AVwater software, the City is able to analyze steady-state, extended period simulations and perform fire flow analyzes all within the ArcGIS environment.

CEDRA worked with the City to define the water model schema which the City adopted and has incorporated into their enterprise geodatabase. As such, when new subdivisions and projects come along, the City is able to perform a quick analysis to determine adequacy of the proposed project.

This project involved the development of an ArcGIS Server web application for maintaining the City of Edmond's tree inventory system. The City's Urban Forestry department utilizes the application to mark completed maintenance work and work completed for trees near power lines.

The application is JavaScript based and offers the user: (a) navigation, (b) editing, (c) identify, (d) measuring, (e) exporting and (f) printing functionality. Embedded in the application is the CEDRA-DataEditor software which enables the user to maintain the data associated with the trees.

The application features a Find Tree Species command which enables the user to enter a particular type of tree species. Given the name of the species the application searches the database and upon completion displays in table form the results of the search. Clicking on a record in the table causes the application to zoom to the location of the selected record. The table also provides functionality for creating a file, containing the displayed records, that can be viewed in Excel or any text editor. When displayed in Excel the data appears in columns just like it did within the web application.

This project involved the development of a custom ArcMap command to assist the City of Edmond in updating their Traffic Sign Inventory database. The focus of the command was to take GPS survey data and update the City's Traffic Sign Pole feature layer and Traffic Sign table.

Prior to utilizing this custom command, the City had to go through a series of steps that was prone to potential user error. Utilization of the custom command streamlined this workflow to a couple button clicks. In addition to updating the Traffic Sign Pole feature layer and Traffic Sign table the custom command produces a formal report describing the updates that were performed.

The City maintains an inventory that is comprised of approximately 8,000 traffic poles and more than 14,000 traffic signs. The City began building the inventory in 2012 and after approximately 2.5 years had the bulk of the inventory place. The City currently has a maintenance plan tracking the addition of new signs as well as sign replacement.

To download a PowerPoint slide show "right-click" on this link (5.28 MB) and select the Save Target As... menu item. Note that you must have PowerPoint or the PowerPoint Viewer to display the slide show. This presentation was created by CEDRA and the City and presented at the GIS/SIG 26th Annual Conference in Bushnell Basin, New York. The presentations describes the Traffic Sign Inventory Database Design, Traffic Sign Inventory Collection Process and the Maintenance and Updating Process. This is a very informative presentation for those who are thinking of developing a Traffic Sign Inventory database as well as those who have an inventory and are thinking about how to keep the database updated.

GIS Administrators have long been dealing with how to get their GIS data into CAD environments, be it AutoCAD, Bentley or some other CAD system. PECO Energy Company faced this issue with their ArcGIS and Bentley systems. Headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, PECO services about 1.6 million electric and over 511,000 natural gas customers. PECO is the largest combination utility company in Pennsylvania and has a franchise utility service area of 2,100 square miles with a population of 3.8 million people. Much of PECO’s electric and gas data resides in their ArcGIS enterprise GIS for visualization and analysis, while their gas construction drawings are produced in their Bentley CAD system by their Designers. Having been GIS users for over 10 years, PECO’s GIS is extremely robust, up-to-date and contains information that appears on their construction drawings. The issue of how to transfer GIS data to their CAD group was important because it made no sense to have their Designers duplicate existing digital information.

To facilitate the transfer of PECO's GIS data to their Bentley CAD system, PECO contracted with The CEDRA Corporation to provide their CEDRA-DxfExport software, and to assist in the integration of the software with the ArcGIS Online Web Mapping application that PECO’s GIS department would be developing. Work for this project began in late December 2016 with a scheduled deployment of the application set for late January 2017. A tight time schedule to say the least.

Working together PECO and CEDRA were able to develop an ArcGIS Online based application that enabled their designers to identify the area of work, a desired filename, a drawing scale and whether or not a PDF file was to be created in addition to the DXF file. Once this information was specified and confirmed, this data was transferred to the CEDRA-DxfExport software. The CEDRA-DxfExport software processed this information to create a DXF file, and a PDF if specified, that maintained the ArcGIS layering names, symbology and line styles. The preservation of the symbology and line styles was of the utmost importance to PECO.

Shown in the figure below is an image of what PECO's designers would see upon import of the DXF file. As mentioned above, key factors in using the CEDRA-DxfExport software to create the DXF file was its ability to maintain the layer naming convention employed within ArcGIS, preservation of the ArcGIS custom symbols PECO had created, preservation of the dimensioning that being the arrow head display and positioning of the annotation. The CEDRA-DxfExport software's ability to preserve colors was also a key factor in PECO's decision to utilize CEDRA software.