BERKELEY, CA ─ December 1, 2010 ─ Government transportation agencies, whether at the state or local level, have the same challenges: hundreds, even thousands, of miles of road and associated assets to manage – all with shrinking resources.  Potholes, road striping, signs, signals, guardrails, drains, culverts, cross walks – all need to be managed and maintained with reduced resources and evaporating budgets. The Santa Clara (California) County Roads and Airports (SCCRA) Department has invested in 3D street-level imagery solutions and tools from earthmine, Inc., and a statewide transportation agency in the western United States is testing earthmine solutions, in order to reduce costs, take advantage of GIS technology, and increase safety and efficiency. 

            "earthmine’s data and technology provide transportation agencies an exceptional return on investment," says Gary Waters, ESRI Transportation Industry National Account Executive.  "Most beneficial is the multi-purpose nature of earthmine’s solution to replace traditional photo logs and support asset collection, asset condition assessment, unparalleled visualization, GIS integration, highway safety and employee safety.  Transportation agencies that are not looking at earthmine are missing out."

earthmine technology makes it possible to collect detailed, accurate 3D street level imagery of every street, alley or freeway in a metropolitan area. With its set of hosting and development tools, the earthmine solution offers transportation agencies a complete and efficient way to collect, process, manage, host and integrate 3D street level imagery into their existing asset management workflow.

 

Budgets Slashed, But Safety Needs Still Top Priority

Today’s economy has hit government agencies hard. In 2009, Santa Clara County in California slashed its budget by $273 million. The Western state agency currently estimates a nearly $600 million hit to its general fund. To support their needs, in spite of the reduced funding, both SCCRA and the state agency invested in earthmine’s solutions to streamline the process of gathering spatial information for GIS analysis, and more efficiently deploying field crews for site inspection and carrying out work orders ― in short, doing more with less.

With earthmine’s unique street level panoramic content, the engineers and field inspectors at SCCRA are now building, updating and extending the department’s mapping and GIS database with updated features captured from earthmine’s rich, 3D, street-level imagery.  With more 700 miles of roadway and more than 30,000 assets to manage and maintain, the department now easily connects earthmine data to their existing asset management and work order operations for immediate efficiency and safety improvements.

SCCRA also uses earthmine for ArcGIS, an add-in which integrates earthmine’s detailed, immersive and spatially accurate 3D imagery seamlessly into ESRI’s ArcGIS Desktop environment, the leading GIS software on the market.

"With reduced budgets we needed to take a really hard look at our traditional techniques and make more efficient use of time and money," says Ananth Prasad, senior civil engineer at Santa Clara County Roads and Airports Department. "We’re saving time and money by using the earthmine Viewer to reduce field trips, and the earthmine add-in for ArcGIS extends our use of our GIS tool. It integrates seamlessly with our existing GIS layers, so we have 3D visualization with measuring and mapping features in our familiar GIS environment and everyday workflow."

earthmine extends GIS use

"earthmine provides a significant improvement in the way departments visualize, measure and map – and a whole new way to populate GIS with data," says Waters. "It extends the department’s use of GIS by communicating detailed spatial information with an entire transportation department, and it integrates easily with ESRI’s Desktop, Web and Mobile GIS solutions. ESRI customers at transportation agencies are very excited about earthmine."

 

ESM Consulting Engineers Push Innovative GIS use with earthmine

            ESM Consulting Engineers consults to state and local transportation agencies, and is using earthmine to expand the use of spatial technology with its in-house GIS services.

"Many transportation agencies use photo and video logs, but these are limited by the angle of the fixed camera," said Eric LaBrie, of ESM Consulting Engineers, who are currently conducting an earthmine Asset Management pilot project with a state transportation agency. "There is no ability to pan around or zoom in to see something. This can be especially limiting if an asset is not visible due to another fixed object. With the earthmine data, a user can move forward or backward, as well as pan around to view an object from many different angles."

The state transportation agency is testing the use of the earthmine data to view detailed, accurate 3D images, with latitude, longitude and elevation in every pixel.  earthmine provides high resolution imagery, accurate measurement and maps locations, all without a field crew having to physically drive to a site. And with earthmine for ArcGIS, the detailed street data is easily shared across the department and can be deployed across the entire state.

            "Collecting and managing transportation assets across different departments is a very difficult task by any measure," says LaBrie. "Using the earthmine data, we’ve been able to provide state agencies with a solution that gets all of their departments on the same page. Everyone can see what’s going on with their assets at the street-level because it’s so much more comprehensive than video logs or 2-D maps. With earthmine, users can now geolocate their assets and populate attributes using their existing GIS software, very quickly and easily. The earthmine data is immensely useful because it is so intuitive and comprehensive. We are building a strong business around the earthmine and ESRI GIS synergy." 

            Before earthmine technology was available, departments would send field crews out with GPS units and inclinometers, and they would stand in roadways collecting data. Now instead of spending travel time in trucks and exposing employees to the dangers of standing in the roadways, these same employees can sit at a computer and collect the same, accurate information much faster and more safely using earthmine technology. In fact, in testing LaBrie’s group has been able to collect between 30 and 60 assets per hour, which was impossible in the field.

 

More information on ESM Consulting Engineers and its use of earthmine solutions can be found at www.esmcivil.com/index.php?pid=earthmineservices.

 

About earthmine                                                                                                          

earthmine’s mobile 3D mapping solution consists of vehicle-based mobile mapping systems, automated data processing, online hosting services or end-user hosted options, as well as developer tools for integration with existing data sets and information systems.  earthmine Partners provide market and customer specific solutions that include earthmine’s solution, as well as other value added products and services. earthmine technology is used by internet, mobile, mapping, GIS, safety, and security markets worldwide in the United States, Mexico, Canada, France and Australia, as well as other countries around the world. For more information, visit www.earthmine.com or follow earthmine on Twitter at http://twitter.com/earthmine.