2 C O V E Saves R Million per Year Philadelphia R S T O$1I E S continued from cover Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 grant. With ArcGIS, the city’s Department of Streets will track and manage the project, which will replace 87,000 incandescent light bulbs with energysaving light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs. Estimated operational savings, resulting from significantly lower use of electricity, the greater longevity of LED bulbs, and the fixed department costs to replace bulbs, are expected to top $1 million per year. In addition to saving money and field personnel time, Philadelphia’s enterprise implementation of the system provides data access to other departments within the city, resulting in a significant return on investment. Andy Mehos, GIS manager for the Department of Streets, says, “The opportunity to capture the asset data for the light replacement project, use it for other applications within the Department of Streets, and share it with other departments saves the city a considerable amount of time and money. It is significant enough to offset any cost of software development and the purchase of equipment. After observing our success in implementing this project, other city departments are considering similar GIS projects of their own.” The department employed Esri Partner geographIT to develop a customized GIS application integrated with ArcGIS that supplies a spatially enabled mobile solution for tracking street-related city assets. The application’s bar code scanning capability provides a quick way to add an LED bulb record to the geodatabase while in the field. In addition to LED bulbs, the department is capturing asset data about traffic heads, traffic control boxes, and light and sign pole attachments with the application. A video about Philadelphia’s light replacement program, The Recovery Act Is “Lighting Up” the Streets of Philadelphia, can be seen at esriurl. com/1726. For more information about Esri’s public works solutions, visit esri.com/publicworks. GPS Is Being Threatened By Joseph Paiva In January, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted a conditional waiver to LightSquared, a company with ambitions of providing wholesale mobile broadband service. LightSquared has radio spectrum licenses for use in communication satellites and now intends to install up to 40,000 high-powered, land-based transmitters that broadcast in the same band that its communications satellite channels now use. To do this, LightSquared needs approval from FCC to change the way the section of the frequency band allocated for satellite signals is to be used. The conditional waiver already granted allows LightSquared to continue development of the terrestrial network, and it can now broadcast highpowered signals in a section of the band formerly reserved for low-power signals from space. Unfortunately for GPS, the section of the spectrum, referred to as the L-band, in which LightSquared will provide broadband service is immediately adjacent to the section of the L-band used by GPS. As people listen to their favorite FM radio station as they drive, they may experience interference when another station’s transmitter is powerful, or nearby, or both. This is what researchers expect would happen with GPS should LightSquared ever be allowed to go operational. But the problem is much more severe—some estimates put the LightSquared signal at more than one billion times the power of signals from GPS as received by GPS receivers. Are there technical solutions? The fact is that any technical theory at this point is just that—a theory, untested, unproven, and unverified. The laws of physics make solving this problem very difficult. GPS has served us all extremely well for the last 30 years, in part because nearby frequencies have also been preserved solely for space-to-earth communications. Protection of the GPS service for all users has to be the numberone priority in the FCC process. FCC has mandated GPS interference research. In response, LightSquared, the US GPS Industry Council, and others, are working on this study. One problem created by the FCC conditional waiver is that LightSquared is able to move ahead with its infrastructure development assuming that viable solutions to the jamming issue will be found. For many users of GPS, theoretical fixes may not be sufficient. What Can Be Done About It? Stop FCC from issuing a Final Order in favor of LightSquared and prevent repurposing of the section of the L-band immediately adjacent to that used by GPS. What Can You Do to Help? Contact Congress. Members of the GPS survey community who are concerned by the proposal can send letters, e-mails, or faxes or call on their congressional representatives to contact the FCC chairman directly or the chairman of the Senate and House Commerce Committee. You can also voice your concerns about GPS interference by sending comments directly to FCC at fccinfo@ fcc.gov. Don’t forget to include FCC File No. SATMOD-20101118-00239 in your correspondence. About the Author Joseph Paiva, PS, PE, is a consultant to the geomatics industry—practitioners, manufacturers, and developers; educator; and writer. Dr. Paiva’s experience includes private engineering, surveying, and mapping consulting practice; university educator; developer; and general manager for two leading geomatics products corporations. Featured in This Issue 1 ON SCALE AND COMPLEXITY AND THE NEED FOR SPATIAL ANALYSIS MAPPING AND CHARTING WITH GIS 24 32 LOCAL GOVERNMENT TEMPLATES CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENTS USE GIS 18 Regular Features and Departments 6 12 21 GIS HERO—DAVID J. COWEN GIS PRODUCT NEWS “GEO LEARNING” FROM DANIEL C. EDELSON GIS IN ACTION GIS COMMUNITY NEWS GIS DAY MORE ArcNews 46 45 42 43 44 44 “CROSSING BORDERS” BY DOUG RICHARDSON “MANAGING GIS” FROM URISA URISA ANNOUNCES NEW TRAINING OFFERINGS FROM ESRI ESRI T-SHIRTS WORLDWIDE CAREER OPPORTUNITIES Kansas Signs ELA continued from cover and decision making between state agencies. “The ELA is a really good idea and makes good sense for the way that we do business,” says Ivan Weichert, GIS director for the State of Kansas. “Saving money is part of the benefit, but working smarter is even more important.” With the ELA, all requests for ArcGIS software will come through the state’s Data Access and Support Center, which will provide Weichert and his team with a full picture of GIS implementations and initiatives throughout numerous agencies. The knowledge gained from this centralized coordination will help inform the agencies about activities in other parts of state government that could benefit them. It will also help Weichert eliminate redundant efforts. “Our goal is to improve coordination of the state’s GIS resources and develop infrastructure that improves efficient service and data sharing,” Weichert says. “Those processes had been fractured, but now we have a tool that will help us achieve our goals.” GIS is critical to many business processes and workflows in a majority of the state’s agencies. The Corporation Commission; Department of Health and Environment, Division of Emergency Management; and Department of Revenue are leaders in using GIS and strongly advocated the ELA. “It supports common government functions and provides a great framework for sharing data, information, and ideas,” Weichert adds. “It is important to have strong GIS implementations throughout state agencies because decision makers want to make better decisions based on sound information.” In addition to agencies, legislators are increasingly using GIS to understand issues and make decisions. Ultimately, state chief technology officer Don Heiman would like to geospatially enable every bill, giving legislators and citizens a sense of place—the information that links what is done to where it’s done. Once a bill is enacted, its effects could be tracked by geographic reference to measure whether it has the intended impact. “Legislators have begun to see how important location is to understanding how the next bill they are going to introduce or vote on affects people in their district—with GIS, we can answer those questions for them,” Weichert concludes. “We anticipate fast growth and high demand for GIS, especially regarding legislation and citizen engagement, and we want to be ready to deliver smart solutions with efficiency.” For more information on Esri ELAs, visit esri. com/ela. 26 39 41 41 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF THOMAS K. MILLER ASSOCIATE EDITOR MATT FREEMAN GRAPHIC DESIGNER STEVE G. PABLO CIRCULATION COORDINATOR WILLIE CALHOUN ArcNews Subscription Additions or Deletions and Changes of Address To subscribe to Esri publications, visit esri.com/subscribe. To unsubscribe from Esri publications, visit esri.com/unsubscribe. Requests for back issues, missed issues, and other circulation services may also be sent via requests@esri.com; 909-793-2853, extension 1-2778; or faxed to 909-798-0560. To update your mailing address, visit esri.com/coa or use any of these e-mail, phone, or fax options. Outside the United States, please contact your international distributor to subscribe, unsubscribe, or change your address. For a directory of distributors, visit esri.com/distributors. How to Reach ArcNews Tel.: 909-793-2853, ext. 1-1660 Article submission guidelines/advertising information: esri.com/arcnews Thomas K. Miller See ArcNews Online at ArcNews Editor-in-Chief Esri esri.com/arcnews FOUNDING EDITOR 380 New York Street KAREN HURLBUT Redlands, CA 92373-8100, USA tmiller@esri.com ArcNews (ISSN 1064-6108) is published quarterly by Esri at 380 New York Street, Redlands, CA 92373-8100, USA. ArcNews is written for the Esri user community as well as others interested in mapping and geographic information system (GIS) technology. It contains material of interest to planners, foresters, scientists, cartographers, geographers, engineers, business professionals, and others who use spatial information.