8. Sidewalk Curb Cuts and Sanding Prioritizing for the City of Sault Ste. Marie Elderly People (Over 75) Living in Own Home in 2004 with Senior Locations
19. GIS and Lead in Drinking Water Postal Codes of Pregnancies (APH) Postal Codes of Potential Lead Services (GIS) Postal Code Matches Exact Addresses of Pregnancies Exact Addresses of Potential Lead Services Priority List for Testing GIS Addresses Contact Info
30. Thank you Tom Vair Executive Director Sault Ste. Marie Innovation Centre [email_address] 705-942-7927 x. 3152
Editor's Notes
The Sault Ste. Marie Innovation Centre was formed in 1999 to serve as a catalyst for growth in the IT and knowledge based sectors.
The three main departments of the Innovation Centre include business incubation, small and medium enterprise support and market development projects.
In 1999, the City and PUC of Sault Ste. Marie were each about to hire southern Ontario companies to come up and implement GIS solutions for each organization. With the creation of the Innovation Centre, a different idea came about concerning GIS. The City and PUC combined their efforts and agreed to implement a shared GIS solution for both organizations under the umbrella of the Innovation Centre. Southern Ontario consultants would be hired for a year or two to do knowledge transfer to locally hired Innovation Centre staff. The jobs and most of the money would stay local and a municipal / utilities core expertise would be seeded in Sault Ste. Marie. This was completed during a five year five million dollar GIS project. EDS, ESRI and J.D. Barnes were all involved in the knowledge transfer. The solution now serves the City, PUC, EDC and Conservation Authority of Sault Ste. Marie plus several health related partners. The costs and benefits of the multi enterprise solution are shared by all partners.
Until recently all sidewalks in Sault Ste. Marie ended at an intersection with an abrupt drop off. With an increasing number of seniors and handicapped citizens, these sidewalks became a huge issue. City Public Works now spends $15,000 a year ramping existing sidewalks. This was done at random across the city. For the last couple of years, Public works, through the CGC, uses GIS to prioritize where to ramp sidewalks. Data used includes: current non ramped sidewalks, Parabus client pickup and drop off database (postal codes only), senior locations, hospitals, pharmacies, retirement homes, chiropractors or any other location where a senior or handicapped person may live or visit. From all this data the GIS now is used to prioritize where best to spend the $15,000.
A density map of bear calls crated using Spatial Analyst. This slide and the next one were created as posters in public education meetings to educate the public to reduce the number of bears coming into urban neighbourhoods.
Density map of 2005 bear calls.
The trap containing 100% Culex mosquitoes is specially designed to catch only Culex Mosquitoes -Trap sites are selected for location, site availability, sampling history, and previous activity. -The absence of traps in any specific area does not indicate an absence of Culex mosquitoes. -The centre of the circle reflects the trap location. -The size of the circle reflects the total number of female mosquitoes trapped.
The CGC assists the Sault Ste. Marie Public Utilities Commission Inc. reduce liabilities related to tripping hazards.
It has recently been discovered the PUC submersible transformer vaults may be possible West Nile Virus mosquito breeding grounds. These underground vaults have an open screen flush with the surface. The vaults are generally always full of water. These underground transformer vaults were very popular in the 1970s but are not used much any more. Using PUC data, all submersible transformer vaults were plotted on a map and supplied to Algoma Health Unit. Many of these vaults will be tested for West Nile Virus mosquito larvae.
