The city's new Geographic Information System (GIS) analyst, Shaun Karunamuni, shows how the GIS technology program works at city council's meeting this week. (Angela Brown/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

GIS technology

City plans to use GIS mapping to help with decision-making

Jul 20, 2023 | 12:01 PM

The City of North Battleford plans to use Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping technology in the future to help keep track of its projects on the go and earmark locations where work still needs to be repaired.

The city’s new GIS analyst, Shaun Karunamuni, and City Engineering, Planning, Asset Management and Infrastructure Director James Johansen made a presentation to city council this week about the benefits of using GIS. The city hired Karunamuni in May to look at the uses and future potential of GIS technology and how it can help the city.

“The work on the GIS system so far has been on items that will provide immediate use to improve city decision-making. One example of this is how the data is assisting in updating the UPAR priority list to bring the most critical and beneficial projects to the front,” Johansen said in his report.

The GIS system allows the city to get a bird’s eye view of the places in North Battleford where work is being done, for a quick overview. This mapping can help city management plan for projects and track the progress of initiatives at a glance.

One of the areas where GIS could be used is to keep track of water main breaks and pipeline and sidewalk repair work in the city.

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City Manager Randy Patrick said the GIS program is also helpful in tracking the condition and status of many of the city’s assets.

“There’s lots of possibilities for this,” he said. “Right now, we’re doing road numbers. They can go in there and they can take a look and say: ‘How busy is your road?’ They can get those numbers quick. It would have taken us days to do something like that at one time. They [the GIS dept.] will be able to do it in three or four seconds. [They can identify] where every little fire hydrant is and tell you the age of it. All the assets get classified. It makes the maintenance, that asset management, way more possible.”

Patrick said the GIS technology will allow the city to make reasonable decisions when there are certain issues to deal with.

“Sometimes it used to be a guess. So, it’s less of a guess now, because you can actually take a look at it [in more detail],” he said. “It [the technology] brings it all together and makes decisions way easier, and way better in the results I believe.”

Coun. Greg Lightfoot said it’s great to see how the city can use GIS in the future.

“I understand how this can be very beneficial for council and administration to make projections for budgets and [similar planning work],” he said. “We’ve talked in council about doing some kind of asset mapping plan for [the next] 10 or 20 years, to try to figure out what it is going to cost and what kind of dollars we are going to need over the long term. I can see where this is definitely going to make that much easier for us and future councils to be able to follow up on that, and have that 10-year budget for capital projects much easier.”

Lightfoot added, with the GIS technology, council and administration can make quick changes to budgets within a short period of time, once the assets have been mapped out and it’s easy to know where the problem areas are for an item.

“I’m excited to see this being fulfilled in a much bigger way,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to this.”

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow