Amymarie R. Corriveau
Information Management Systems
Camp Dresser & McKee

Joseph McEachern
GIS Manager
Boston Water & Sewer Commission

Stephen Keen
GIS Manager
Camp Dresser & McKee

As part of Boston Water and Sewer Commission’s (BWSC’s) Citywide Catch Basin Inspection, Cleaning and Preventative Maintenance Program, Camp Dresser & McKee (CDM) has developed an application and data management program to support field-collection and data integration with BWSC's existing Geographical Information System (GIS) and Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS).

The field collection portion of the project consists of five field crews that have been deployed throughout the entire city of Boston to collect physical information on each of BWSC’s 33,200 estimated catch basins. Each field crew is equipped with a ruggedized laptop carrying a copy of an ArcView version 3.2 software application developed by Camp Dresser & McKee (CDM). This application consists of two components, a geographic information system (GIS) interface and a database. Field crews use the GIS interface to assist in locating the catch basin, as well as to determine if its GIS-plotted location is accurate. The field crews add new catch basins, move existing catch basins, and delete missing catch basins directly in the software application. The field application also links each catch basin plotted in the GIS to a database, where the field crews use drop-down fields to describe the catch basin and its attributes. The field database is the instrument for integration between the inspected catch basin’s spatial and attribute data and BWSC’s existing information.

CDM also developed a Data Management & Integration Plan to integrate the data collected in the field with BWSC’s ESRI GIS/Oracle databases and anticipated CMMS, CASSWORKS by RJN. CDM and Geographic Information Technologies, Inc. created an automated integration routine to facilitate the data integration and eliminate manual data processing/editing. The integration strategy developed for this project resolved complex data exchange problems such as maintaining data integrity in a tiled GIS, maintaining connectivity after moving features modeled as nodes, and providing a solution for bypassing the manual limitations imposed by GIS maintenance/editor to add/modify spatial data automatically. This plan ensures that all data collected as part of this project will be successfully integrated with BWSC’s information systems and will provide value for future projects.

This paper will discuss the customized ArcView application that was developed to assist the field crews as well as the integration strategy used to transfer data to BWSC’s three information systems.