Next Meeting Presentation

Wednesday, October 24

How to Put GIS to Use:
Fargo-Moorhead Flood Forecast Tool and
Metropolitan Mosquito Control District Monitoring Tool

Brian Fischer
GIS Project Manager
Houston Engineering Inc.

1/2-PDH for this Presentation

Presentation Synopsis:

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are becoming an industry standard for managing data and aiding in the understanding of spatial relationships.  It is common to see GIS being used across many professions and industries.  Many times non-GIS professionals struggle in identifying projects that GIS would be useful in creating richer end results.  The presentation will focus on explaining how GIS was used in the two projects and how to look for aspects in projects that may warrant the use of GIS.  The presentation will also focus on using GIS to solve data management problems and data access.  The two projects that will be presented are the Fargo-Moorhead Flood Forecast Tool and the Metropolitan Mosquito Control District Monitoring Tool.  Overviews of the two projects are given below.

The International Water Institute (IWI) retained Houston Engineering, Inc. to conceptualize, develop and implement a near real-time flood forecast tool within the RRBDIN.  This project uses flood forecast data generated from the National Weather Service (NWS) River Forecast Center FLDWAV model to generate interactive flood inundation maps and graphics depicting time until occurrence of peak elevation for areas in and around Fargo, ND and Moorhead, MN.  The project serves as a working example of a private-public partnership that focuses on emerging hydrologic and web-based technologies, the use of LIDAR, and their application to the Red River Basin.

The Metropolitan Mosquito Control District (MMCD) retained Houston Engineering, Inc. to develop a cost effective Web GIS solution to give the public and internal staff access to their GIS information.  The heart of the GIS information is their mosquito breeding sites and treatments records.  This project develops a solution to put this data in the hands of the public and internal staff to save MMCD’s staff time on data requests.

Meeting Location:

 

Past Post President Bill Forsmark (r) receives the President's Plaque from current Post President Jim Mosner (l) in appreciation of his service as last year's president.  Bill has served the Post in many positions over the past decade and plans to stay actively involved in the future as well.  He currently is heading up the Operations Committee for next year's National Conference that will be held in here in the Twin Cities. Michael Costello (r) is thanked by Post President Jim Mosner (l) for the terrific presentation that he gave about the potential use of new dredging techniques for sub-surface dredging ... the dredging of underlying layers of material without disturbing the overlying material.  This has the potential to be a useful tool in a variety of habitat, mitigation, and remediation projects.  The challenge ahead is in scaling up the technology from the relatively small scale equipment currently used to large scale operations.