Cloud move takes city’s GIS from rough to ready
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Perrysburg, Ohio, used to map underground utility lines with a kludgy VPN and on-prem server, but a cloud-based system is more accurate, efficient and user friendly.
As it continues to add new housing and infrastructure to support its growing population, Perrysburg, Ohio, has turned from mapping utility lines in a book at the city records office and moved the data to the cloud.
Perrysburg, a Toledo suburb with just over 25,000 people, used to house its GIS mapping technology on an on-prem server. To see where gas, electric and sewer lines were buried to avoid construction crews breaking them, city employees had to use a virtual private network to connect to the server to then search for the necessary records.
Often, said Nathan Sommers, the city’s GIS and software administrator, employees would bypass the online system because it was so “burdensome,” inefficient and time consuming to go through the process of connecting via VPN and searching for relevant records. Instead, they would drive back to the city records office and use the paper maps there, which sometimes were out of date compared to the data on the server and similarly difficult to search through.
That existing on-prem server was scheduled for replacement in 2020, and Perrysburg officials had the choice of sticking with that system or moving to the cloud. City leaders decided to use Amazon FSx, a file systems service from Amazon Web Services, which allows public works employees to make real-time updates when new lines are installed and provides easy field access for GIS employees.
In the field, public works employees now can access files through an app on a city-issued iPad, which allows them to quickly view and update information about various utilities and assets.
“There's not a day that goes by that I'm not in [the app] touching something,” Sommers said. “The field crews can update information, they can't delete anything, but they can update information. If I say a hydrant is red, but it’s really yellow, they could update that in the field because they're visually seeing it.”
Perrysburg is also implementing a policy to allow contractors to provide information about hydrants, water valves and other infrastructure in a format that then can be imported into the city’s GIS system. Sommers said the desire to use GIS has now “really blown up,” especially among public utility workers.
Migrating to the cloud was a long process, Sommers said, but the city worked with GIS company Esri’s professional services team to move the data over and work out where to house it. The most time-consuming piece was changing and reconfiguring the URLs for 10,000 record locations, although Sommers said much of that was handled through scripting.
“There's a really strong desire, especially in government, to just keep on doing things the way you've always done them: physical infrastructure, paper records, pen and paper, everything,” Sommers said. “But really, this was such an easy process to implement, and we found the benefits of it immediately.”
Perrysburg is now exploring shifting more of its services to the cloud after the success of this GIS initiative, Sommers said. So far, the options include mapping calls for service to first responders and law enforcement, primarily to see where hotspots are so local leaders can better allocate resources.
The city also is exploring 3D mapping of its buildings, akin to developing a digital twin. Although Sommers noted that such a project is a few years from becoming reality, the benefits of shifting to the cloud are already clear, he said.
“It's quicker, it's easier, it's more responsive, and it allows people to make better, more informed decisions, which not only makes our operations more efficient, but it benefits the public too,” Sommers said.
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