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A snowplow tracker that shows a graphic where plowing is underway is among the GIS services available on the City of Kearney website.
KEARNEY — Geographic Information System — it’s a mouthful of words, so it’s no wonder most people refer to it simply as GIS.
It’s also no wonder that GIS is so widely used, frequently by motorists who fire up their smartphones and use GIS to help find unfamiliar addresses.
Jon Reiter has been working 2 ½ years to develop the city of Kearney’s GIS system. As the city’s GIS coordinator, he possesses the technical training for his work, but he’s handing off a lot of what he knows about GIS to empower other city staffers and residents of Kearney. He’s training others how to map GIS information and put it to work.
Reiter reported during Tuesday’s Kearney City Council meeting that the city’s GIS applications are growing, and the product of that growth is a city staff equipped with more data to make better decisions, operate more efficiently and provide the public access to interesting and useful data.
As a result of Reiter’s work, residents of Kearney have access to a broad range of GIS-related information.
Plumbers know where to safely dig for underground mains; park maintenance personnel know where sprinkler heads are buried, and — owing to Kearney’s overheated real estate market — home buyers have a better idea what they might pay for properties in various neighborhoods.
“I’m a data geek,” Reiter said about his work.
He said that GIS is a system that creates, manages, analyzes and maps all types of data.
“GIS helps users understand patterns, relationships and geographic context,” he said.
Among Reiter’s goals is to share the city’s wealth of GIS information with people who need it and can make good use of it.
Using park sprinklers as an example, he said charting sprinkler systems gives staffers detailed maps that helps when the system springs a leak. Armed with GIS data, most parks staffers will be able to fix the problem because the system helps them pinpoint problems.
City of Kearney GIS: http://kearneyne.map.beehere.net/
Buffalo County GIS: https://buffalo.gworks.com/
Assistant City Manager Eric Hellriegel said there are many seasonal employees on the parks staff, but GIS equips them to do more even though they may be less experienced or knowledgeable.
“Having this information helps our junior staff so they can address problems,” Hellriegel said.
Reiter said the city has been developing a snowplow tracker service so that Kearney residents can follow the action as the city digs out after a winter storm.
“The only thing I was disappointed in was that we didn’t get much snow last year,” he said.
Home buyers can virtually pass through neighborhoods to view properties, and they can log onto the Buffalo County Assessor’s Office GIS website to collect addresses, ownership, tax valuation and other information, Reiter said. Soon, Kearney residents will have sharper, more detailed images as they virtually tour neighborhoods. Rather than standard Pictometry images, the city ordered Pictometry’s certified product for enhanced images.
Reiter said his work is evolving. “It’s more about putting the data in other people’s hands.”
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A snowplow tracker that shows a graphic where plowing is underway is among the GIS services available on the City of Kearney website.
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