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History - Geographic Information Systems
- GIS Maps
- Public Access
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Staff Access
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- Mission Statement
- Plant GIS History
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History
The Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Department within the Western Michigan University Physical Plant has been functional since 1998. The Lab originated through a joint effort between the Maintenance and Landscape Services Departments.
In order to do this the Physical Plant purchased two Trimble TSC1 GPS Receivers (Calvin and Hobbes), and joined in University software Licenses for Pathfinder Pro and ESRI GIS software.
The Department, which is operated by students from the Geography and Engineering schools, is overseen by Physical Plant staff. Many students have cycled through the GIS Lab and tackled a host of projects which includes Maintenance issues such as updating the locations of buried campus utilities (Storm Sewer, Sanitary Sewer, Steam/Condensate, Water, Gas, and Electric). While Landscape has concentrated on project such as a tree inventory and mapping of the in-ground irrigation system. The GIS software is also used to update the snow plow routing plans for each winter.
GIS student staff with the help of a WMU Geography GPS class completed a Tree Inventory with over 4500 trees in landscaped areas GPS.d and uploaded into the GIS. Maintenance Services has completed Electrical, Storm, Sanitary, Steam/Condensate, and Water Systems. Jointly the Landscape and Maintenance students work together to obtain satellite imagery and to update campus base maps.
Currently the Department employs two to four students with one AutoCad Engineer who aides with problems in sharing data between AutoCad to ArcInfo. The Department has been principally responsible in providing internship quality experience for placing students in professional level GIS positions.
The utility information is made available on the web through ArcIMS (Internet Mapping Solutions) software with the assistance from Physical Plant Network Services. This is currently available in the GIS Maps portion of this web site.
