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Data Development
NPDES -- Stormwater Mapping
The Stormwater Permitting Program was mandated by Congress in the 1987
amendments to the Clean Water Act. Water pollution degrades surface waters
making them unsafe for drinking, fishing, swimming, and other activities. As
authorized by the Clean Water Act, the National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System (NPDES) permit program controls water pollution
by regulating point sources that discharge pollutants into waters of the United
States.
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In February 2004, the State of New Jersey implemented the NJPDES
Program to protect New Jersey's ground and surface water quality by assuring
the proper treatment and discharge of wastewater and stormwater from various
types of facilities and activities. This is accomplished through the permitting
process to limit the mass and/or concentration of pollutants discharged into
ground water, streams, rivers, and the ocean.
Civil Solutions is currently working with several communities
within the State to implement a GIS program to support the mapping and
maintenance activity tracking/reporting requirements of the NJPDES permit to
facilitate compliance.
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Open Space
Mapping
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Developing an open space plan results in a comprehensive
document that serves as a guide for open space protection and preservation in a
municipality, a county or some other defined region like a watershed. Over the
last 15 years, efforts to buy up remaining open space as a means of protecting
natural resources, providing for recreation and shaping local development have
escalated among the counties and municipalities in the region.
Civil Solutions has helped a number of communities develop and
analyze their GIS data to aid in the purchase of additional open space parcels.
Being able to spatially represent existing open space lots, as well as
prospective properties, provides an environment for more effective selection
and acquisition. Since the overall goal is to develop a “greenway”, having the
ability to visually see the properties through the GIS environment is a
valuable resource for decision making.
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Natural Resource Inventory
(NRI)
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The NRI are usually conducted, but currently is in transition to
a continuous, or annual, inventory process. This shift helps align the NRI with
the need for timely information to support development and assessment of
agricultural and conservation policies and programs. A continuous inventory
approach also distributes the NRI workload more evenly across years and
provides efficiencies in the data gathering and quality assurance
processes.
One of the main objectives of these studies is to estimate
temporal changes in the extent and condition of natural resources. In its
simplest form, temporal change can be defined as the difference between
population parameter values at two time points for a given population. A more
complex investigation of change in an ecological system involves studying the
underlying dynamics that produce an observed net change.
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Civil Solutions is helping communities with their data gathering
and analysis tasks by both developing GIS data and using currently
available GIS sources. Some examples of data development and gathering are as
follows:
• Land
Use/Cover Interpretation
• Steep Slope
Analysis
• Digitizing
LOI’s (letter of interpretation)
• Digitizing
FIRM (Federal Insurance Rate Maps) boundaries
• Integrating
existing NWI and SSURGO soils information
Asset
Management
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Our company has a long history of mapping, asset field
collection, and related utility database design and management. With many
success stories to be told and the recent developments with GASB34 and NPDES
StormWater Management regulations, Civil Solutions has begun to more
aggressively focus on this market segment and form strategic relationships with
leaders in this industry. Services offered include aerial photogrammetry, field
inventory, data development, end user interfaces, data maintenance and
technical support.
We look forward to working with your community to develop an
Asset Management program that will meet your specific
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and often unique requirements. We take pride in our ability to understand the
individual needs and constraints of our clients and offer solutions that are
practical, cost effective and benefit-rich.
Whether your community is investigating the means to inventory
signs, pavement, sanitary or water systems, Civil Solutions has extensive
experience with data collection and analysis techniques that can then be
seamlessly integrated with a GIS program. Being a business partner with ESRI
and understanding the functionality of existing asset management programs
allows Civil Solutions to provide customized integration services to our
customers that result in additional methods of representing the ROI (Return On
Investment) by implementing an integrated approach to asset management.
GIS Data
Maintenance
Civil Solutions has provided GIS data development services for over a decade to
municipal, County, and State government agencies. Through our vast experience
working in a variety of markets, we have developed a “phased data evolution”
approach which both meets current needs, minimizes initial costs, and maximizes
the value of the data created. Not all mapping is the same, and without an eye
on future uses and the knowledge to develop and implement a data maintenance
plan, you can easily and quickly lose the value of your initial investment.
Civil Solutions produces data that retains its value far into the future as
your imple-mentation plan gains momentum, and your community grows.
It is through this vision that we have a developed a series of
production protocols that provide the road map for continued data maintenance.
These protocols range from ordinance development, means to track and log areas
that require change, to actual GIS data maintenance. Using these protocols, the
end user can feel confident that their data will remain current and accurate
while minimizing maintenance costs.
Land User / Cover
Mapping
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Over the past few years, Civil Solutions has gained expertise in
the delineation of land use/cover features based on available orthophotography.
Through a combination of data sources, Civil Solutions has successfully
completed several land use/cover updates to aid communities in developing their
Natural Resource Inventories (NRI), as well as supporting other land management
activities. The ability to analyze existing land use characteristics are
extremely important to support conservation and master plan initiatives.
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Parcel
Mapping
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Civil Solutions has provided GIS data development services for
over a decade to municipal, County, and State government agencies. While our
primary experience is in New Jersey with over 1.5 million parcels mapped, our
projects extend across the tri-state area nationally to the country’s Midwest,
South, and Northeast. With close to twenty (20) technical GIS staff members, we
have both the resources and technical capabilities to meet even the most
complex project requirements. Our technicians have vast experience in analog to
digital conversions, as well as digital file format transfers, utilizing the
most recent technologies in scanning, digitizing, and coordinate geometry.
Civil Solutions is very proud of the quality of our data
products. We employ standard quality control techniques augmented by project
specific protocols to ensure our higher standards are consistently met. Our
attention to quality starts in the early planning stages of a project since
there are several approaches to developing a parcel base map. Through our vast
experience working in a variety of markets, we have developed a “phased data
evolution” approach which both meets current needs, minimizes initial costs,
and maximizes the value of the data created.
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Digital Tax
Mapping
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Creating digital tax maps provides a community with multiple
benefits and significant cost savings, especially in future tax map maintenance
and master plan revisions. Civil Solutions, a division of ARH estab-lished a
methodology to prepare new computer based tax maps that both conform to the
State’s regulations for certification and form the foundation of the municipal
GIS. Under the direct supervision and assistance from our NJ Licensed
Professional Land Surveyors, our production team integrates tax mapping and GIS
considerations at every step of the process since the spatial accuracy and
eventual database connectivity is very dependent on the graphical features of
the tax map.
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In addition to the tax map product, Civil Solutions establishes
a GIS base that can be used in various departments throughout the community to
support a wide-range of applications. Our Quality Assurance / Quality Control
(QA/QC) procedures are established to operate in a GIS environment. Therefore,
it is through this strategic implementation of technology that we can provide
our clients with a GIS parcel base as a value added resource, at little to no
cost. The inherent ability of the GIS program to compare data sources such as
deed distances to map distances, old to new block and lot numbers, and map data
to MOD IV records is an invaluable tool in our QA/QC process. Our processes
facilitate the synchronization of the tax map source data and the tax
assessment database, and ensures the overall quality of the Tax Map well before
its submission to the State.
Utility
Mapping
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Soon after the framework layers of a GIS are developed (i.e.
parcels), the priority for additional data development usually focuses on the
utilities. Most communities have very general utility feature location maps
that contain various bits of information related to the infrastructure.
Using generalized maps, as-built plans, service records, and
other related sources, Civil Solutions can work with your community to develop
a phased approach to create and populate a utility data model.
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