In the Spring of 2016, the Town of South Windsor, Connecticut contracted with Mid-West GIS to create a comprehensive Traffic Sign Inventory. While the town used GIS technology, they had no existing sign database, and they realized that the effort to create one in-house would take years, as well as resources they did not have available.
South Windsor is located in Central Connecticut, just north of the City of Hartford. It has a population of over 25,000 and was incorporated in 1845. The town has approximately 192 miles of road, and the project encompassed collecting all signs on roads the town maintains.
Data collection was done using a combination of handheld GPS data collectors, as well as mobile GIS technology using tablet PC’s with GPS capabilities for navigation and attribute collection. The handheld GPS was used to collect the GPS point and assign a unique identifier, and the tablet PC was used to collect the attributes for the sign and post, as well as collecting and hyperlinking a digital photo of the face of the sign to the GPS point. Tablets are used for the attribute portion as they are easier to type multiple attributes quickly, and have the digital photo capability.
The project had a very tight schedule, as the town was anxious to receive the data and put it into use as their official Traffic Sign Inventory. Data collection took under a month, including Quality Control and delivery. Over 4,200 GPS points were collected, as well as one photo for each sign. The project was delivered on time and on budget, and the client proved to be very happy with the final product.
I wanted to take a minute to thank you for your services in the collection of our street sign inventory. I was skeptical that you could meet the timeframe that you set to collect all our signs town-wide. But to my dismay, you were right on target. Your aggressiveness in getting the work (collection) done but with the attention to detail made for a great finished product. I have yet to find a report that I cannot produce to get the answers I am looking for. Our police department uses the program for incident investigations as well as determining locations where signs, such as speed limits, were never installed are warranted.
We couldn’t have developed a program such as the one you delivered using our in-house staff, we tried. It was too time-consuming.
Again, we thank you for your willingness to work with us, customize what we wanted, collect, analyze and test the data which allowed us to get to work the day we received the finished product. I am so glad we made this decision!!!
Scott Yeomans
Associate Manager
South Windsor Public Works
Street Services
It took Mid-West GIS approximately three months to Collect, Quality Control, and deliver the data to the city. There were over 13,000 signs collected, and 22 different attributes documented. In addition, one digital photo was taken of the face of each sign and hyperlinked to the GPS point.
Mid-West GIS was contracted by the Hannibal Board of Public Works in 2012 to do a complete field inventory and update existing GIS data for their Electric Distribution System Utility Database. This included over 350 miles of line and 9,455 utility poles. The data had already been converted into a geodatabase, but needed field verified as well as additional data added that was missing.
