WROC EARNS‘ BEST OF STATE’
The American Council of Engineering Companies of Wisconsin recently honored the Wisconsin Regional Orthophotography Consortium project with a 2016 Best of State Award, presented to projects representing the highest degree of technical innovation, client satisfaction, and contribution to the engineering profession. Winners of this award are eligible for the Grand Award, the highest award at the state level, which will be announced at the ACEC WI Award Banquet on March 18.
He explained that state and federal officials might use the data for forestry applications or natural resourcefocused initiatives. County soils experts might want to review the data to get a detailed look at the plant types in the area or determine the type of soils present, and municipalities could use it to map and locate such features as utilities, manhole covers, and water valves.
Scott Hand, supervisor of GIS services for Wisconsin Public Service, said the Green Bay-based utility company got involved in the WROC program to more efficiently collect imagery for 16 of the 21 counties in its service territory.
“ For us, the biggest benefit is that it’ s been kind of a one-stop shop to be able to get all this data,” Hand said.“ In the past, we would’ ve had to contact all of those counties individually. We’ ve done that with some other data types, and it becomes a real nightmare because each county can have the data in a slightly different format. Joining WROC has made it a lot simpler to go to one source to get all that data. It’ s a big time-saver.”
Another draw was getting“ leaf-off” imagery, when views of what’ s below aren’ t obstructed by vegetation.
“ The majority of our service territory is very wooded, and the free imagery you get with Google Maps or Bing Maps is all leaf-on, which reduces the benefits of the imagery by not being able to see all of our above-ground equipment and facilities,” he said.
Level of detail‘ incredible’
Tyler Grosshuesch, GIS analyst and coordinator at the Adams-Columbia Electric Cooperative, was first introduced to WROC in its 2010 cycle when he was employed elsewhere. So pleased with the orthophotography and LiDAR products received, he approached his current employer to get on board in 2015.
“ One of the cooperative’ s principles is commitment to community, and we saw this as an opportunity to work with the counties to benefit our members – and get some higher resolution imagery that wouldn’ t have otherwise been possible,” Grosshuesch said.“ This is just an incredible improvement in the detail you’ re able to see and the overall information you’ re able to get from looking at the imagery.”
Ayres’ Nienow said the data’ s resolution has gotten consistently higher through the years – from 18-inch ground pixel resolution to 6-inch-pixel resolution or less – with features now more distinct than ever before. Nienow likens it to viewing an object with and without binoculars.
“ If there’ s something that you want to see out in the distance, you can tell the general outline of it, but you can’ t tell what it is. If you look again and focus those
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