"Knowing where assets are down to the sub‑meter level helps you plan more effectively and understand how to make better use of the space."
— Becki Pembleton, MGIS, GISP
City of Evans GIS Administrator
Background
The City of Evans, Colorado, with a population of approximately 23,000 is a thriving city located in the Front Range of Northern Colorado. Located strategically at the crossroads of the South Platte River and Union Pacific Railroad, Evans is ripe for future economic growth in the energy, agriculture, health care, and construction sectors. It is also well positioned at the intersection of US Highway 85 and 34, providing a corridor between Evans and Denver to the south, and easy access to Interstate 25 to the west.
Purpose: City of Evans GIS Department Cemetery Project
Participants: City of Evans GIS Administrator, Becki Pembleton, MGIS, GISP and team. Sam Buck, MS, GISP-E - GIS Analyst, Richard Morgan - Intern, Alli Woodward – Intern, Madison Tucker – Intern.
Past Mapping/GIS Workflows
Before getting our Flex Mini, we had to rely on phones or tablets to complete field work and field verification of points. We have an RTK locator specifically for utilities, but for GIS workflows, we didn't have a reliable or accurate device. Usually, our field crews would inform GIS what needed to be changed based on visual observations in the field and give an approximate location. Really, there wasn't much of a workflow for field mapping beyond what our utilities locator does.
Geospatial Solutions Deployed Today
For this specific project, we’ve been wanting to update our data for the city cemetery and come up with an easier solution for both in office and field personnel. Since we’re a small department with 1 full time GIS Administrator and part time analyst + interns, we us a lot of premade Esri Solutions to provide a whole package approach. We’re using the Cemetery Management Solution to update our schema for our cemetery data and have a better in office workflow that will show metrics via a dashboard for what plots have been sold, who owns them, etc. and a web experience for easier, non-GIS professionals to navigate through. The solution also comes with an Instant App so when they take their work to the cemetery to show plots, the team can easily search, and fill in information about plots, ownership, and even suggest location changes. This is also helpful for our Operations Department who performs maintenance on the cemetery, giving them an easier in the field experience.
We’ve used our Flex Mini to field verify plot locations, locations of other markers such as signs, flag poles, and monuments to better visualize where everything in the cemetery is located. Before, we just had a “rough” idea, now we can get accurate locations.
Improvements — Accuracy, Efficiency, Field Workflows
This change is still in the works, previously, data wasn’t mapped with topology, so rectangles weren’t square, or touching so after cleaning up the data, we’ll have a better picture of where landmarks, and plots in the cemetery are located. This will improve our Operations Department’s maintenance of the cemetery, keeping trees and other landscaping away from plots and monuments. Our cemetery is almost 100 years old and filling up fast. Knowing where assets are down to the sub‑meter level helps you plan more effectively and understand how to make better use of the space.