Mason Matthews, the city of Athens Geographic Information Systems coordinator, returned at late week from Montgomery with news that this city is “ahead of the curve” when it comes to mapping and record keeping.

Matthews said officials of the Department of Transportation Pipeline Safety Division that sets the standards for the Gas Department, were impressed with the system that the department has had in place since 2003.

The city’s GIS is shared by what Public Works Manager James Rich calls a “consortium.” As well as the Gas Department, Water/Wastewater, Electric Department, Public Works, Limestone County Water and Sewer Authority, firefighters, police, E-911, county engineers, and Revenue Commissioner’s Office use the system. When state agencies, such as the Department of Transportation, need data, they also take advantage of the technology.

“The consortium shares in the cost of the base maps, aerial photography, roads, creeks and buildings,” said Matthews.

For example, the Gas Department pays its share according to the number of meters mapped.

Gas Department Manager Steve Carter said that a GIS is more than a mapping system. The underlying map of the county’s terrain is shot by aerial photography. It is not satellite images, which tend not to take in the curvature of the earth or other facets of the local terrain.

The only drawback to the system is that all the photography was shot five years ago and with the amount of development that has gone on in the past five years, it doesn’t include all of the buildings.

For instance, an aerial image of Canebrake subdivision shot five years ago shows most of the streets and some of the houses. The gas lines superimposed on the image give an accurate location of connections, but many of the connections are indicated by dots rather than houses that would have been built since that time.

Carter said that while consortium members have up-to-date software for their particular uses, the aerial photos need to be re-shot.

Carter has expanded GIS use from his office to most of the vehicles in the field. As well as software showing location of all customers, mains and valves, it also tracks the whereabouts of all the service vehicles.

All vehicles have a built-in console with a miniature version of the GIS in the Utility office.

“If we have to shut off a valve they know exactly where to go because the guys in the field have the same thing as we do,” said Carter.

Knowing where trucks are located at any given time allows supervisors to dispatch the worker who is nearest to the problem. The tracking system stores the locations and times where a truck is at any time it is out.

“This also gives us a backup if there is a misunderstanding between the customer and the Gas Department,” said Carter. “We can look at the record and tell if our man was where he was supposed to be.”

The Water/Wastewater Department uses the GIS for modeling.

“This is extremely important as the city grows,” said Matthews.

The Electric Department uses the system for outage management.

“When you call in to report an outage and we know where you’re at and then your neighbor calls in and then there are more calls and we are able to put the pieces together and see what is in common, whether it’s a fuse, breaker or substation,” said Matthews. “It pinpoints where the trouble is.”

For E-911, the GIS pinpoints locations based on cell towers from which the calls are relayed.

The Revenue Commissioner must know where everyone’s property is.

“When the people from Volkswagen were looking they wanted to know how a particular piece of property was zoned and what was around the property,” said Matthews. “When a lot is split, that must be reported to the tax assessor so he can program it.”

Carter said for his workers it’s a much faster way to detect and shut off a gas main leak.

“An example was a line was hit Wednesday night. We knew who had gas and on which side of the highway,” said Carter. “Especially if it’s raining, it really slows you down if you’re walking around looking for a meter.”

Carter said one of the regulations to which his department must adhere is periodically informing residents living near a pressure main of the danger of natural gas.

“The system will generate a report on which people live near the pressure main,” he said. “This system also takes over a lot of paperwork. We can scan reports into the system because the DOT Pipeline Safety Division requires records.”

“Mapping is just 50 percent of a GIS’s value,” said Matthews. “The other is the information that is stored in the system.”