Capabilities

Muncipal GIS

GIS Database Development & Management

Through digital mapping and database development, Mapping Sustainability helps municipalities conduct their business more efficiently and effectively. Having a GIS of your municipal assets such as roads, parcels, trees, water and sewer lines, open space, and wetlands can help with day-to-day business and planning: from paving streets to tax assessment to town planning and emergency management. Mapping Sustainability assists cities and towns with designing and developing a GIS system for your town assets that is scalable, reliable, easy-to-use and able to integrate with your existing IT investments.

Our services include:

• Parcel Mapping
• Linear Referencing System for Streets
• Utility Mapping – water & sewer
• Open Space Mapping
• Zoning Ordinance Mapping
• CAD Conversion
• Geodatabase Development
• GIS Process Management
• GIS Integration with existing IT infrastructure Cartography

School Redistricting

Mapping Sustainability has specialized expertise in using GIS analysis to help municipalities with School Redistricting and School Bus Routing. School Redistricting entails balancing multiple objectives such as school proximity, socioeconomic considerations, and minimizing affected students to create reasonable district boundaries that balance student population with school capacity.

Mapping Sustainability has developed GIS-based School Redistricting Methodology. Through mapping, GIS scenario modeling and analysis we provide School Committees with the information they need to determine the most equitable school district solution. Mapping Sustainability’s GIS School Redistricting Scenario Model helps school committees test outcomes from different scenarios during school planning meetings to obtain immediate results on student counts per school. Once new districts are approved, we help with implementation by creating maps of the new districts and street listing lookup tables. We also use GIS analysis to determine the optimal bus routes. Our School Districting services help you to efficiently test out different ideas and make the most intelligent decision for your community.

Our services include:

• School Redistricting
  • School District Maps
  • Affected Student Counts by Grade and School
  • Scenario Modeling – How many students are affected by this boundary change?
  • Provide a List of Students entering and leaving a district for mailings and teacher planning
• School Bus Route Analysis

Tree Inventory

Trees are starting to gain recognition as being significant assets to urban communities, since they provide a whole suite of ecological services including: stormwater mitigation, air quality improvement, temperature cooling on warm days, and habitat for birds. Many communities have information systems, maintenance, and management procedures in place to take care of their road and utility assets, but the same is not true for their tree assets – despite investments that are often made annually to plant more trees in public areas and earn recognitions such as Tree City USA. Mapping Sustainability helps communities become proactive about managing their urban trees.

Mapping Sustainability has developed a comprehensive Tree Inventory Methodology that helps you to:

• Quickly and accurately Inventory all of your public trees
• Collect information that will enable you to be proactive about Tree Maintenance
• Integrate the Tree Inventory with existing or new IT/GIS investments
• Set Urban Tree Canopy Goals
• Develop a Sustainable Urban Forest Management Plan
• Build Community-support throughout the process

Mapping Sustainability’s ArcPad Tree Inventory application enables you to locate trees using either GPS or parcel and building data, enter pertinent tree information through easy-to-use data entry forms, view pictures to help with tree identification, and save the data into a GIS compatible format. Data is entered using either a list box or yes/no radio buttons to ensure that data are entered quickly and correctly. The application is completely customizable to suite your community’s specific data collection needs. Our ArcPad Tree Inventory application was successfully used to inventory over 34,000 trees and empty tree pits in Boston over a 3-month time frame in 2006.

Mapping Sustainability’s comprehensive Tree Inventory Methodology is what sets us apart. We use a systems approach to planning short and long-term goals for the project to ensure that future goals of setting urban tree canopy goals, developing a sustainable urban forest management plan and setting priorities for improving tree canopy can be achieved. Through carefully planning we ensure that we design the best system to leverage your existing IT investments and enable urban forest management to occur proactively. In addition, we engage residents in our tree inventory work through hands-on workshops to build urban forest stewardship neighborhood-by-neighborhood.

Our Tree Inventory services include:

• ArcPad Tree Inventory Software Customization
• Tree Inventory Field Work
• Community Workshops
• Tree Inventory Integration with Existing Systems
• Design & Development of Tree Work Order Management Systems
• Urban Tree Canopy Attainment Goals
• Sustainable Urban Forest Management Plan

Capabilities

• Public Health
• Environmental Planning & Assessment
• Sustainable City Planning
• Hazard Mitigation Planning
• GIS Process Management
• Muncipal GIS

Learn More

• Our Work:
  • Municipal GIS Database Development
  • School Redistricting
  • Tree Inventory Software
  • Remote Sensing — Land Cover Ecological Assessment