He can tell you the diameter of the water pipes that run under the town, the precise GPS coordinates of an access valve or the exact location of any of the townâs fire hydrants. He can even tell you the materials theyâre made from.
Mike Mitchell is a geomatics technician in Jasper, and he runs the joint GIS program between the municipality and Jasper National Park.
GISâgeographic information systemâis a program thatâs fundamentally changing the way the town and park are run.
âWhen people ask me what GIS is I say âwell you know Google Earth? We basically do what Google Earth does, except at a much smaller scale,ââ Mitchell explained.
On Feb. 21 he sat at his desk in the Parks Canada administration building, in front of a screen displaying a map of the Jasper townsite. It was organized into colourful blocks representing every single plot of land in town and how they are zoned.
When he clicked his mouse a few times, the packets of colour disappeared, leaving the same map, except showing a network of blue lines representing all of the water pipes and fire hydrants in the municipality.
âThereâs 1,010 segments of pipe in Jasper, and all that information is here,â he said.
Mitchellâs Google Earth comparison is useful, but it doesnât really do the GIS justice. What makes the program so powerful is its âinformationâ component.
Turning to the map of Jasper displayed on his computer screen, Mitchell clicked on one of the symbols representing a fire hydrant and a massive spreadsheet popped up, the rows and columns stretching off the screen.
He explained that each row represents one of the fire hydrants, and each column holds all of the data about it.
âWe take all the information about that fire hydrantâthe valve type, which direction it rotates to open it, the material, the manufacturer, addresses, phone numbers, when it was last checked, basically anything you can think of thatâs important,â he said.
All that information is stored in the table, and linked to the GPS coordinates of the specific hydrant it represents. Each fire hydrantâor segment of pipe, or parcel of land, or manhole coverâis also marked by a unique identification number, making individual features easier to search and keep track of.
âThereâs so much information here it just baffles me any time I think about it,â he exclaimed. And all of it is accessible with only a click or two of a mouse.
Since July of 2012, Mitchell has been plugging data into the systemâfrom old records collected by Parks and municipal staff, and even from a nation-wide network of data-gathering towersâcreating a vast database of information about Jasper.
The interactive map is the final product, and Mitchell said it is already significantly improving the efficiency of the town.
âOne of the massive powers of GIS is you can start asking questions of the data,â he said, âwhatever questions you want to ask of itâthe skyâs the limit.â
Mitchell works and thinks in tables and spreadsheets and when he talks about his work he tends to veer into the abstract.
While explaining what he does with the GIS, he used phrases like âspearing the data set,â and talked about pulling out information like coring a tree trunk. In reality, what he really does is take the wealth of data the system holds and create computer programs that analyze it depending on the needs of town and park managers.
A while ago, he explained, he used the data in the system to model the flow of water through the townâs water system. The data showed loops in the network of pipes that were operating inefficiently, and the municipality was able to go to the exact location and fix the problem.
And thatâs just one example. Mitchell said GISs can be used to find ideal routes to clear snow in the municipality, track emergency response times or keep track of land zoning.
âThis bulk of data we amass under one database to answer questions posed by anybodyâthe cost savings for managers in terms of time and resources are huge,â he explained.
Cathy Jenkins is the realty and municipal manager for Jasper National Park. She agreed that the GIS is incredibly useful, both to the park and the municipality.
âThereâs tons of stuff that GIS can doâand weâre just tapping the surface,â she said.
She explained that the system gives the municipality incredibly valuable information that helps its staff properly maintain the townâs infrastructure and plan projects, and it helps Parks keep track of the zoning for specific pieces of land in the townsite.
She said having Parks Canada and the municipality sharing the same technician has also helped keep the two organizations on the same page, preventing âa ton of redundancyâ in their records.
While itâs currently only available to town and park managers, Mitchell said the goal is to eventually make the maps available publicly online, so citizens and business owners can easily access the wealth of information.
A move like that has the potential to dramatically increase interactivity and engagement between citizens and their governments, he said.
Something like that is still several years away, but Mitchell applauds the municipality and Parks for making the long-term investment now.
âThis is the way everyone is goingâwe were going to get it eventually, but itâs nice to see a commitment to a program like this on the long-term basis.â
Trevor Nichols
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