Tribal mapping partnership receives award Dec 14, 2014 - From staff reports BILLINGS, Mont. -- A partnership of five reservations in Montana and Wyoming has been awarded an Engineering Excellence Honor Award for surveying and mapping technology by the American Council of Engineering Companies of Montana. This is the teams second award in three years. The award recognizes the Shoshone and Arapaho Department of Transportation in Wyoming and Montanas Blackfeet, Crow, Fort Belknap and Fort Peck reservation departments of transportation for implementing Phase 3 of the tribal mapping project. The tribal mapping team has been working with a geodesist to standardize the surveying process. Engineering and surveying projects covering large areas now can be included in GIS systems with survey grade accuracy. Phases As part of Phase 3 of the mapping project, Amy Darlinton with Northern Engineering and Consulting Inc. worked with Carlson, Leica, Topcon, Trimble, and ESRI to implement the use of the coordinate systems to ensure they are easy to adopt by the survey, engineering and geographic information systems communities. Phase 3 also created a handbook and user guide that includes the history, theory, tools and data that can be used by all surveyors and GIS personal working on or near the reservations. The tribal coordinate systems will be part of the next release of ESRI which will allow the survey and engineering projects done using the tribal coordinate systems to be viewed easily in the GIS platform. The handbook is an essential component to fulfilling the vision of associating all surveying, engineering and GIS projects onto one simple mathematical base. Municipalities, GIS departments, public works departments and all development and mapping agencies now have the ability to consolidate data into one common base. The participating tribes recently began Phases 4 and 5 of the mapping project, which includes a minimum of 13 new continuously operating reference stations. Funding has been budgeted for three CORS on the Wind River Indian Reservation. After the CORS are installed, the foundation will be in place for a real-time network (Phase 5) to broadcast GPS corrections via the web. Users with an app and access to cell service will be able to locate points within inches in real time. The agricultural industry has been a major user of GPS technology, but currently users must rely on single base stations located close to their fields. Reservation work Winslow Friday, with the support of Big John Smith and Howard Brown, has been driving the project on the Wind River Indian Reservation. The team is looking forward to the possibilities of Phase 7, which will collect region-wide high quality LiDAR and orthorectified photogrametry. This was just talk and a wish a few years ago, (so) to have this type of survey and mapping tool become reality is extraordinary, said Howard Brown with the Shoshone and Arapaho transportation departments. I give a lot of credit to Northern Engineering for their help and foresight in the putting this project together with the tribes. The five tribes transportation departments consulted with NECI in Billings, Mont., and Havre, Mont., to work on the project.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 04:53:41 +0000
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