The Schneider Corporation is pleased to announce that Hamilton Southeastern Utilities and the Town of Brownsburg were recent recipients of Indiana Geographic Information Council’s 2011 Excellence in GIS Awards. The awards recognize organizations for creative and practical applications of GIS in Indiana. They also recognize organizations that have recently “pushed the envelope of GIS technology through the innovative development of a unique technology service or application to produce a new benefit stream for GIS users.”

Hamilton Southeastern Utilities (HSE) won their award for GIS, Engineering, Survey and Inspection Integration. The Schneider Corporation assisted HSE by using their technical expertise to design creative solutions that helped lower costs by streamlining processes that required multiple man hours and mitigating risks due to human input error. An ArcMap database to augment inspector’s information of sewer pipes was used to make sure pipes are up to standards, correct pipes are in correct locations, etc. The database coordinates with GIS to accurately populate linework and coordinates with field data. HSE also uses a Schneider application to take digital autocad construction plans, run a series of standards checks and then convert into a shape file. This application allows inspectors to take a pre-populated GIS inspection template into the field. The inspector uses pull-downs to populate fields with standardized data helping to prevent the interpretation of project data and eliminating multiple steps of manually inserting inspection data into the GIS.

The Town of Brownsburg decided to take action with their Beacon deployment : an interactive public access tool that allows users to view County information, public records and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) via an online portal. In 2010, Hendricks County and the Town of Brownsburg joined the Towns of Avon and Plainfield, which were already users of Beacon.

The Town converted records and mapping data from CAD files, paper maps, and other data sources, including their recently completed Thoroughfare Plan, as well as their sanitary sewers, storm water drainage system, and water utility network. As a result of their beacon web mapping portal deployment, the Town of Brownsburg got on-board with the County and two other Towns, enabling cost reductions in web hosting, data conversion, and data flow streamlining. The Town can now share data between departments and with the public using their own browser software and internet connections, anywhere, anytime, 24 hours a day, and 365 days a year. The Town also now has a County-based framework in place to capture future developments, track new projects, and to communicate their own new layers of information to the public.