1. RMOW Fire Hydrant Database: April 2nd 2015
Bises Bikram Shahi
Resort Municipality Of Whistler (RMOW)
Abstract
GIS is one of the antidotes for aging assets,
especially when working around public asset
management. GIS has become a critical element
in visualizing problem area in utility systems,
peculiarly water and wastewater system. The
Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) seeks
to have a clear understanding of the assets it
owns and manages. Therefore, the municipality
has made a decision to upgrade and maintain
their fire hydrants system through the use of
extensive GIS technologies.
Objectives
• An updated fire hydrant database
• Create a digital form and rename (.pdf) files of
2014 Hydrant Maintenance Checklist
• New layer of fire hydrants using GPS
coordinates
• Configure Canadian Municipal
Data Model (CMDM)
Hydrant data model
Methods
Results
• Sandra (Ande) Brown, GIS Coordinator,
Engineering RMOW (Project Sponsor)
• Karl Kliparchuk, BCIT GIS Program Head
• Mike Hill, BCIT GIS Project Head
• Josh Castanier, Project Partner
Conclusion
The bottom line is, a municipality needs to have a
clear understanding of the assets it owns and
manages.
• Infrastructure assets such as fire hydrants
are stored in the GIS as the municipality’s
authoritative repository of asset information
that is shared throughout the organization
• To fully maximize the benefits of a utility-
wide GIS, data must be accurate,
descriptive, updated and meet the needs of
the utility.
• The fire hydrant database is the focal point
of this project for quality assurance and
quality control to insure that their GIS data
truly meets their needs and also critical
when using GIS to perform spatial analysis
and for reporting purposes
• The newly updated fire hydrant database
would ensure fire hydrants to be at their
prime optimal conditions
• The next GIS implementation in my opinion
would be to secure cloud computing, with
its ability to lower costs by managing
application use and data sharing.
• GIS is the right tool in preparing for our
future
Acknowledgements
• Adobe Acrobat Pro utilized to create and
rename checklist
• Visual Basic Scripting in Microsoft Excel put
to use to create digital forms
• ArcMap to create a geodatabase to set up
attributes as required by CMDM
• Feature Manipulation Engine (FME)
employed to re-map new GPS coordinates.
1. By creating a form in
Excel, we increased
efficiency which will aid in
rapid collection of the
maintenance data of about
900 sheets.
2. Using the vertex creator transformer (FME),
we were able to reposition all of the points with
Easting and Northings by their designated
Easting and Northing fields locations.
3. ArcCatalog was used to set up the CMDM by
adding required fields and creating domains and
sub-domains.
4. Once the data model was ready, data was
loaded into the geodatabase from the existing
shapefile. Loading data and performing schema
mapping was done using ArcGIS Data
Management Append geo-processing tool in
Model Builder, which
created a file geodatabase
that conforms to the
CMDM with all fire
hydrant data loaded.