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Project Goal

City staff from GIS, Engineering, and several Public Works Divisions defined specific criteria necessary for an application to sort utility locate requests and store all processed data on a local server. The program should:
• Have the ability to read the tickets (text files) sent to the City’s FTP server by the South Dakota One Call Service.
• Deposit the ticket data into a table record format, a table in the GIS ArcSDE Database (SQL Table).
• Address match (address geocode) the tickets and create a point for every ticket.
• Buffer the existing utility locations to create one zone for each utility.
• Intersect the ticket locations with the buffer of each utility to determine which utility should receive the ticket.
• Create a separate view of the data for each utility to allow them to access only the tickets in their specific utility buffer zone.
• Have reporting capability to query or tabulate data statistics.
• Provide the ability for the locators to respond to the tickets and store their response in the ticket table.
• Be accessible from computers out in the field, or in other words, implement a mobile mapping and work request system.

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Business Problem Solved

The rapid growth of the City of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, made it difficult for city utility personnel to keep up with the large number of one call requests (tickets). As the workload increased the City had to either hire additional staff or find a more efficient way to handle the work-requests.

The project team, including staff from the City of Sioux Falls and Pro-West and Associates, developed a process to geocode the tickets, buffer utility locations, select tickets within the utility buffers, and forward information to the appropriate field personnel.

Technology Implemented

A ticket monitoring application reads the ftp tickets from one call and creates a record of each in an ArcSDE table housed in SQL. Every 15 minutes a scheduled task starts ArcView, reads tickets in the tickets table, geocodes/filters the tickets, and creates points in a ticket feature class. A buffer of each utility is created using several geoprocessing tools in a process automated with the ESRI Model Builder. Geoprocessing tools used include merging, buffering, and dissolving. Points are created for each separate utility based on the proximity of proposed excavation to underground utility features. ArcIMS was used to create a Web interface for each utility. An ArcIMS interface provides a map view and data view of the tickets intersected by the buffer of each of the City’s utilities. Each utility locator only sees the tickets within a buffer of his/her utility they are responsible for. The ArcIMS interface provides the ability for locators and office personal to respond (mark/clear) to the tickets. A scheduled ArcView session removes cleared ticket points but leaves the data in the SQL ticket table.

Development Team Biography

City of Sioux Falls:
• Noel Ahl - Technical Support Specialist
• Shannon Ausen - Assistant City Engineer
• Lori Sohl, GISP - GIS Analyst
• Steven Van Aartsen, GISP, - GIS Supervisor
• Randy Waits, - ROW Coordinator
Pro-West and Associates, Inc. - Walker, Minnesota
• Rose Erickson – Programming Unit Manager
• Galen Neste – Senior Programmer
• Kendis Scharenbroich – Consulting Manager