AWC GIS Consortium Continues to Grow

The Association of Washington Cities (AWC) and FLO partner to run the GIS Consortium, an AWC program that helps Washington cities and non-city entities (conservation districts, utility districts, and more) implement or improve GIS for their organization.

Since the GIS Consortium launched in July 2016, 25 cities and non-city entities have joined, working with AWC and FLO to implement GIS solutions that improve the delivery of services, increase community engagement and data transparency, and streamline internal workflows.

Many of the cities that have joined the GIS Consortium find themselves tackling similar problems, including capturing institutional knowledge of utility assets before upcoming retirements in public works departments, converting information from paper records into digital form, and turning asset data from as-builts and AutoCAD into GIS. For many GIS Consortium members, the end goal is to have all their GIS data posted in Web maps for an entire department, or the public, to view.

FLO is helping these Washington cities with these exact issues. Here is an update on how FLO is assisting four new Consortium members with their GIS and data needs:

City of Camas is working with FLO to upgrade its stormwater and water and sewer utility network from AutoCAD and as-builts to an in-house GIS and move away from relying on its county partner to store data. The upgrade to managing data with GIS will help the city achieve its goal of eventually managing its own ArcGIS online application, as well as implementing an asset management system.

City of Omak also needs to update its water, sewer, and stormwater utility network to GIS. FLO is working with utility managers to convert their existing CAD data to GIS and to better integrate GIS with a current asset management system

City of Kelso currently has their water, sewer, and stormwater data in GIS as well  as ArcGIS Online maps. FLO is assisting the city with streamlining the GIS processes between an asset management system and ArcGIS Online, including incorporating  video from utility pipes captured by a CCTV system.

City managers at the City of Edgewood have city, county, state, and federal GIS data that they need to view quickly on an internal Web map. They also want to publish their datasets for public consumption, so citizens can easily download data and maps. FLO is helping them achieve these goals by providing assistance with implementation of both an ArcGIS Online Portal and an Open Data Portal.

Learn more about the AWC GIS Consortium and see what other Washington cities and non-city entities have joined at wacities.org/services/gis-consortium.