For municipal officials, maintaining an accurate and up-to-date inventory of critical assets is an essential task. This is especially true of fire hydrants, upon which the safety of the city’s residents and their property depends. Knowing the location of every fire hydrant and subsequently, knowing the coverage provided by the current hydrant network can reduce the response time in an emergency situation and ultimately save lives. Furthermore, as suburban neighborhoods expand, it is vital that new subdivisions are accurately mapped and that the required hydrant coverage is identified and measured. An easy-to-use GIS solution is what’s needed.
Solution:
XMap 5.0 GIS Enterprise offers tools for building and maintaining a GIS database from the ground up. By offering access to existing data in both vector and raster format, it allows readily available GIS data, such as MrSID image files, to be used a basis on which to develop GIS layers. A hydrant layer can be easily created using field-collected GPS points from virtually any GPS receiver. For sub-meter accuracy, city officials use DeLorme’s GPS Post Pro 2.0 in conjunction with an Earthmate Blue Logger GPS receiver. By creating a 300ft buffer around each hydrant, they are then able to see at a glance which areas have insufficient hydrant coverage and can map possible locations for new hydrants. The data sharing tools in XMap 5.0 GIS Editor allow the newly created data layers to be distributed to municipal field workers who use XMap 5.0 Professional.
Built With:
XMap 5.0 GIS Enterprise
BaseMap:
High-resolution aerial imagery in MrSID format
User Additions:
Hydrant locations mapped to sub-meter accuracy A buffer layer showing the coverage for each hydrant
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