GIS Application in Water Resource Management in the USA: A Report

This memo-based report explores the application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in water resource management, particularly within the context of regulatory compliance in the USA. It highlights the capabilities of GIS in collecting, visualizing, analyzing, and interpreting spatial data to understand patterns and relationships, enabling informed decision-making. The report details the use of GIS in managing aging sewer infrastructure and addressing sewer overflows, emphasizing the creation of GIS maps, inspection programs, and maintenance strategies. It presents a case study of the City of Hampton, Virginia, and discusses the strengths of GIS in integrating data for tracking, reporting, and generating necessary documents for repair and rehabilitation. The report also acknowledges the technology's high cost and potential for errors. Overall, the report concludes that GIS is an effective tool for meeting regulatory compliance by integrating data and generating useful information.

TO: (Recipient of the memo)
FROM: (Writer’s name)
DATE: Feb 10th, 2018
SUBJECT: GIS Application
The purpose of this memo is to provide information about the GIS and its application in
water resource management occurring in the USA in order to address the issue resulting
from regulatory compliance.
The GIS or Geographical Information System is a technological tool that helps to collect
geographic data, uses it to plan and implement the various developmental activities. It helps
to visualize spatial data, analyze and interpret it in order to understand the patterns as well
as the relationship between datasets. Visualizing and analyzing data helps us to understand
what belongs to where by establishing the relationship between unrelated data. The GIS can
empower organizations and individuals to understand spatial patterns as well as
relationships. Through GIS, a digital map can be created which is much more informative
and valuable than the printed map on paper. This digital version of the map can be collated
with other datasets for interpreting and analyzing information through a graphical
presentation. The GIS synthesizes large amounts of different information in datasets thus
combining different layers of information to manage and apply the data for useful purposes.
Application of GIS
The GIS find its application in many areas. Such applications include socioeconomic,
environment modeling, topographical mapping, and education. GIS can be applied to
answer location-based questions such as what is located where or how to find the particular
features. GIS can be used to find that how much is the forest area, habitat loss, urban
sprawl, etc. on the land use map. One can combine elevation data, land use data, river data
and other information to show information about the landscape of a particular area. From
the map, one can tell which the best place to build a house, which has the river view or
where are high lands located. GIS helps to find the new information.
Apart from such useful applications GIS is also an effective tool for finding solutions to
problematic areas of water resources. Experts use GIS to collate various data and

information for useful applications such as managing water resources on a local, regional
level and assessing water quality of a region.
GIS water resource application in the USA
Sewer systems of many old cities of the world including the USA are in critical stages of
deterioration due to lack of maintenance and aging. Such deteriorated sewer infrastructure
is leading to frequent sewer overflows. In the USA, many cities are facing regulatory
compliance for such sewer overflows. In the light of regulatory compliance, the government
agencies are required to develop and implement sewer overflow control plans in order to
carry out mapping, inspection, and monitoring of rehabilitation plans. For regulatory
compliance, the government agencies are collecting, collating massive data, information on
the condition of the sewer system, and related inventories in cities. However, the challenge
lies in the cost-effective management of this massive amount of data and monitoring the
existing aging sewer system infrastructure.
Fortunately, Geographic Information System (GIS) comes to rescue which is capable of
managing, interpret & analyze huge datasets. Integration of field inspection data with GIS
enables decision support system for the development of sewer rehabilitation plan. This
helps in planning the rehabilitation required to control the sewer overflows.
There are two critical steps in using GIS for regulatory compliance: (i) creating GIS maps of
the sewer system and (ii) implementing a GIS-based inspection and maintenance program.
Currently, in the USA a GIS-based inspection and maintenance of sewer system are done by
using commercial GIS software that links the sewer inspection, defect information contained
in a database or spreadsheet to corresponding map features. Such a system provides the
Consent Order communities with GIS maps of deteriorated sewer pipe network and sewer
repair works (pipelining, bursting, replacement, manhole repair, and replacement, etc.). The
system then generates a series of reports contains the details of damage, recommended
action plan, and estimation of the repair cost of damaged infrastructure. Finally, the GIS
maps and rehabilitation recommendation reports can be combined to generate what a
project manager ultimately needs - bid documents for the repair work.
For example, The City of Hampton, Virginia which is a home for 0.15 million people has a
sewer system infrastructure with 12,000 manholes and valves. The City carried out a survey

to find out locations of approx 8,000 manholes situated in various parts through GPS. The
GIS-based software used in the city performs infrastructure assessment of manholes and
sewer pipelines, repair, rehabilitation works through the work order management system. It
also has an interface for the CCTV inspection of sewers. It is used to synchronize data from
various sources for the sewer infrastructure database management. This provides a GIS map
containing comprehensive information on inspection, repair, and rehabilitation.
Maintenance history and sewer system profile plots of specific areas are also available in
this application.
Application’s strength and weakness
The strength of the GIS-based application for inspection and maintenance of sewer
infrastructure lies in the fact that it allows combining sewer system defects and
rehabilitation data into a single database mapping. Such a single database can be used to
track and report inspection, maintenance and rehabilitation progress, generate budgetary
pricing for rehabilitation and repair works, generate bid documents for repair and
rehabilitation work, generate and update maps and reports to comply regulatory
requirements.
However, the weakness of the application lies in the fact that this technology is quite
expensive and incurs hefty investment in its establishment. There is also a possibility of
error creeping in the dataset which might lead to costly mistake designing using GIS utility
lines.
Conclusion
The application of GIS in managing sewer infrastructure system of the US city is fascinating
which gives the fact that it integrates the information from many sources to create a useful
database in real time. It can be used by the government agencies for inspection and repair
of sewer overflows. The beauty of this technology is attributed to the fact that despite the
huge set of database management, it involves in a meaningful way to produce reports and
useful information for meeting the regulatory compliance.
References
 Burrough, P. A & McDonnell, R. A. 1998, Principles of geographical information systems,
Oxford University Press, UK.

 Goodchild, M.F., Longley, P.A., Maguire, D. J. & Rhind, D.W 2001, Geographic information
systems and science, John Wiley & Sons Ltd. , England.
 Shamsi, U.M. 2009. GIS Applications for regulatory compliance. Journal of Water
Management Modeling, R235-04. doi: 10.14796/JWMM.R235-04.
 ArcNews 2001. GIS Goes with the Flow. ArcNews, Vol. 23, No. 1, Spring 2001, ESRI, 34-35.
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