2025 Big Sky GeoCon - Mapping the Future: Innovations in Geospatial Technology

With many users across the continental US, the Terracon Data Solutions team provides tailored GIS
solutions for its many offices. A constant struggle is to maintain data standards when there is so much data being collected at any given time. Once it came time to discuss our next version upgrade, the team discussed ways to better efficiencies to speed up the process. We stumbled upon the idea that one needs to 'clean up' before moving from one house to the other. Taking inspiration from a past presentation, the Data Solutions Team and the Solutions Architecture team developed an Esri Dashboard that used Content scoring to demonstrate to users what data is worth keeping and what is not. This assisted the team in reducing content by nearly 50% in a brief period because users could see their aggregate scores and knew what needed improvement and what could be eliminated. We will discuss the creation of the dashboards, the user reception of the concept, and the lessons learned. 

Montana State University (MSU) has embarked on an exciting journey of digital transformation by implementing the preliminary elements of a utility digital twin for their water networks using the Esri Utility Network (UN) Solution. This innovative project has revolutionized their approach, moving from standalone CAD drawings and map books to a sophisticated data model that enables advanced asset management and network tracing capabilities through their enterprise GIS portal. 

Montana State University in Bozeman, MT is a 130 year old institution. In the spring of 2024, University Facilities Management launched their drone program. Combining high tech georeferenced drone mapping with past surveys, stories, drawings, As-Builts, it became clear that the old divisions of getting it right, i.e. GIS vs professional surveying could be used together to make a robust experience for contractors, engineers, planners, etc in getting it right. What is "here" is actually "here". Utility industry veteran, Adam Hallberg, Utility Coordinator describes this in detail. 

State governments in the United States are increasingly mandating that educational institutions and municipalities adopt critical incident mapping (CIM) and emergency management planning to support first responders and computer-aided dispatch (CAD) during emergencies. This presentation underscores the value of integrating Esri products for CIM, emergency management and asset management, with a focus on indoor mapping and digital twins.

Key topic areas covered include data sharing, safety asset mapping, routing, 3D GIS, best path analysis, and evacuation planning, utilizing the latest reality capture methods and ArcGIS technologies. 

Stormwater management is increasingly becoming a challenge for towns and cities that contend with population growth, aging stormwater infrastructure, and the increasing frequency and cost of storm events. Municipalities can leverage impervious surface mapping and analysis to help fund stormwater maintenance by providing an avenue to equitably assess stormwater utility fees based on the amount of impervious surface on a property contributing surface water runoff to a municipality's stormwater system.

In 2024, the City of Cheyenne, Wyoming, partnered with Pickett and Associates to advance its stormwater management program by conducting a GIS-based impervious surface mapping project. Pickett leveraged AI-based image classification using high-resolution aerial imagery to map impervious surfaces across 47.5 square miles and over 29,000 parcels within the City of Cheyenne. Pickett leveraged GIS tools, together with GIS data from the City and County, including Parcels, Address Points, Zoning, and Jurisdictional boundaries, to associate each parcel with a total impervious surface area and tie that impervious surface area to address points and, ultimately, utility billing accounts. Throughout this project, Pickett relied on web mapping applications to enhance communication and stakeholder engagement with the city engineers and city council members. This impervious surface analysis gave the city insight into each parcel’s surface water runoff potential based on its impervious surface area, which directly enabled Cheyenne to equitably assess a new stormwater utility fee based on parcel-level surface runoff potential. The city council passed the new stormwater ordinance in November 2024.

This presentation discusses the GIS-based approach and analysis that Pickett conducted for the City of Cheyenne, highlighting some of the challenges we faced and the impact that this analysis has made for the city’s stormwater program. The impervious surface mapping project not only supports Cheyenne’s Surface Water Management Program, but also provides actionable insights for future urban planning and stormwater mitigation, enabling the City to make informed, data-driven decisions to reduce flooding risks, improve water quality and better manage its stormwater infrastructure, ultimately benefiting the community’s sustainability and resilience. 

Effective asset management is essential for maintaining and optimizing parks and recreation infrastructure. This session will provide a comprehensive look at asset management from strategic planning to implementation and field operations.
The discussion will begin with a broad overview of asset management in parks and recreation, emphasizing its role in optimizing resources, improving service delivery, and ensuring long-term sustainability.

Next, the focus will shift to the implementation of an enterprise asset management system (Cartegraph) for Missoula Parks and Recreation. Lessons learned will be shared, including strategies for ensuring data accuracy, integrating GIS data, overcoming implementation challenges, and developing workflows tailored to the unique needs of parks and recreation assets. The presentation will highlight the transition to a data-driven approach to improve decision-making, streamline preventive maintenance, and enhance operational efficiency.

The session will conclude with insights from the field showcasing how asset management benefits daily park maintenance operations. Topics will include GIS integration for field staff, mobile application usability, asset digitization, and work management functionality. The discussion will highlight efforts to tailor the system for maintenance workers, ensuring efficiency and ease of use in managing park assets.

This session will provide valuable insights for organizations looking to implement or refine asset management practices in parks and recreation.

As the term Digital Twin continues to grow in popularity, how do organizations understand what it means? In this presentation I will discuss that topic in more detail to help the group get a better understanding of the Digital Twin concept and how it can be leveraged to assist with organization’s modernization efforts.

From there, I will discuss the digital twin workflow from scan to BIM to GIS and then into an ALMS. Throughout we will present different data acquisition options, the conversion efforts, and wrap it up with some current use cases that are underway.