“ The true value of any program can be found by analyzing how many entities continue to participate year after year,” Contrucci said, noting how some participants have been on board for five cycles – or 20 years.“ People are realizing value, and they’ re realizing substantial benefits from participating.”
Since 2013, Ayres Associates project managers Adam Derringer and Zach Nienow have conducted more than 100 face-toface visits with county officials from across the state, planning projects, answering questions, and educating them on how to use their data. Derringer met with some counties up to seven times – often through multiple administrations, election cycles, and land information council or county board memberships.
Derringer said he views regular client contact as a critical component to the program’ s success,“ especially in cases where clients have the more cutting-edge technologies and LiDAR.”
“ We make a point of training the clients on how to use their complex LiDAR to get more benefit from it,” he said.“ How can they look at it? How can they analyze it? How can they share it?”
Among other benefits of the WROC program are cost savings. Greater participation means more entities to divide costs with, reducing everyone’ s individual project costs.
But that’ s not to say that the data comes in a one-size-fits-all, take-it-or-leave-it package. Although Ayres Associates manages literally hundreds of contracts through WROC, each data set is individualized and customized – knowing that, even within a county, multiple departments might want to use that same data in different ways. Likewise, municipalities or a state or federal organization might also want access to the same data but for other reasons.
“ The versatility of the data is incredible, which fosters cooperation across different departments and organizations,” said Andy Faust, senior GIS analyst with the North Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission.
FUNDING PARTNERS UNITE
Over the years, public and private partners have contributed significant funds toward imagery and LiDAR projects in exchange for access to the high-quality spatial datasets available through the Wisconsin Regional Orthophotography Consortium. Partners include utilities, electric cooperatives, tribes, municipalities, private industry, and state and federal agencies.
More than 100 organizations benefitted from new orthoimagery and LiDAR data thanks to the members and partners that worked together through the 2015 WROC program. Ayres Associates’ Kirk Contrucci, vice president of geospatial services, said WROC’ s primary funding mechanism consists of its members, or clients completing customized projects through the program and paying for them to be completed – for example, a county paying for county-wide 6-inch imagery. A secondary source of funding is from funding partners such as electric co-ops, power companies, utilities, state, and federal organizations.
“ We’ ve developed a network of funding partners around the state that has now become a reliable, repetitive funding source for the WROC program,” Contrucci said.“ In 2010 the consortium partnership dollars primarily came from a large federal grant and some other money, whereas in 2015 it came from a number of different partners, so the number of funding partners is vastly higher. Together these partners brought $ 711,000 to the 2015 program, which resulted in cost shares to participating counties that averaged out to 13 % of their total fees. That’ s significant not only for the monetary assistance it provides, but it also demonstrates to decision-makers at the local level how widely accepted the program is around the state.”
The partnership concept of the WROC program provides refunds to participating counties. Vilas County, for example, had six partners and saw a cost share reimbursement of nearly $ 17,000.
“ Partnership funding is an important aspect of participating in the WROC program. Not only does the program reduce the cost of the products and services through economies of scale, but it also provides partnership funding which has been negotiated on the County’ s behalf by Ayres Associates and North Central Regional Planning Commission,” said Barb Gibson, GIS administrator and land information officer for the Vilas County Land Information / Mapping Department.“ I appreciate their efforts to use their contacts and skills to bring partnership funding back to the program participants.”
– Jennifer Schmidt
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