Mapping Alaska

I am the Senior Project Engineer for the OFC and presented at the largest geospatial technology event for federal agencies, the Federal ESRI conference on February 19th. The session was Geoenabling Web Applications to Support Open Government and my presentation can be found here (PDF). As government strives to deliver greater transparency to the public, its web applications continue to incorporate more spatial intelligence. I focused on how GIS and geographic services bring richer, dynamic, and more collaborative mapping to government websites.

For years, Alaskans have discussed the need for better mapping and many of our project agencies identified a need for a single reference system for information collection. There is not a consistent, standard set of maps detailing the pipeline route in Alaska. Each state and federal agency has data pertinent to their mission; however, sharing that data and incorporation it into one authoritative basemap is instrumental to expedite permitting. We selected a 20-mile stretch of the pipeline route at Atigun pass as our prototype. We then used LiDAR for our basemap and flew the 20-mile stretch in the fall of 2009. With LiDAR we can detect geohazards, wetlands, conduct stream mapping, and ensure the engineering design meets specifications for frost-heave and permafrost construction.

Our goal is to demonstrate that the prototype is an authoritative, consistent, and integrated source of information that can be used by all parties to permit, design, construct, operate, and maintain a gas pipeline. The prototype has two separate platforms. An ArcGIS platform that the agencies will have access to and can layer their information on, and a public web platform that will provide public transparency to the project enabling more informed public comments and a value added database that can incorporate historical data.

The public transparency piece of the prototype is key and provides valuable information and visualizing to the communities and native tribes. The agency web service application provides an authoritative basemap and allows stakeholders to insert their layers and manipulate the data. This project is different in regards to multiple agency collaboration and therefore efficiency to expedite the project. Our next step is to acquire additional agency inputs and develop a data integration plan.

The OFC also participated in the Alaska Forum on the Environment (AFE) in Anchorage the week of February 8. AFE hosted over 1,700 attendees from diverse backgrounds including environmental professionals from government agencies, non-profit and for-profit businesses, community leaders, Alaskan youth, conservationists, biologists and community elders. The OFC hosted a booth at the AFE where we had access through the web to our prototype GIS for AFE attendees to try out the system. I also presented it to the group on February 9 and my presentation can be found here (PDF).