The Sidwell Company was selected for the MAPPS Geospatial Excellence Award in the GIS/IT category at the MAPPS Geospatial Products and Services Excellence Awards competition for its work in the City of Storm Lake, Iowa.

After many years of relying on other agencies to produce their maps, the City of Storm Lake decided it needed GIS as a resource to enable efficient and effective responses to geospatial information requests from the various city departments.  Sidwell developed a comprehensive geospatial inventory of critical municipal infrastructure, and a robust information deployment solution. The city was also able to work with Buena Vista County to satisfy all their background data needs, as well as utilize students from Buena Vista University’s Biology Department for the tree inventory (efficiently and accurately identifying tree species) and road sign inventory portion of the project.

• High-accuracy Trimble and Ashtech GPS/GNSS products for data collection
• Trimble and Esri field data collection software
• Comprehensive geospatial inventory of critical municipal infrastructure and robust ArcGIS  geodatabase
• Trained staff to successfully view, analyze and maintain the city GIS
• Portico website

According to Justin Yarosevich, City of Storm Lake assistant city manager, “This project has enabled the city and its staff to become more efficient and provide a more timely response in everything from police calls for service to fire calls, water main breaks and zoning requests,to name a few. We also know that the robust and comprehensive system that we are building will be a resource for our community for generations to come. We are pleased with the partnership we have had with Sidwell, and look forward to continuing our partnership as we move forward with additional enhancements to our GIS.”