The Center for Dirt and Gravel Roads maintains
and utilizes a Geographic Information System (GIS) to track
projects completed through Pennsylvania's Dirt and Gravel Road
Maintenance Program. This page will explain how GIS is used
as both a record keeping and reporting system. Reference Documents:
For Districts:
Download the most recent
DGRoads here (Ver 4.0.8) (24Mb)
save the "DGRoads4.zip"
file to your desktop, unzip and run the self-installing file
GIS Quick Reference
Guide (299kb): Quick reference guide for DGRoads
GIS program
Guide for
installing GIS on a New Computer
(250kb): Guide for Conservation Districts to install the DGRoads
GIS program and all necessary data onto a new computer
Annual
Summary Report Guidelines (90kb): Guide to commpleting
and submitting the Annual Summary Report due Janurary 15 each
year.
GIS Data: These
are shapefiles; you will need knowledge of GIS software to view
them.
Unpaved
Roads (2.6Mb): PA unpaved road GIS coverage (3/20/09)
Worksites
(11.4Mb): PA worksite GIS coverage (3/20/09)
GIS
Data Projection Information:
Projection: Albers Metric Custom
1st Std. Parallel: 40; 2nd Std. Parallel: 42; Central Meridian:
-78; Reference Latitude: 39
Overview of the DGRoads GIS program
What is GIS?
GIS is a powerful computerized mapping system
and informational database. GIS allows you to map features and
store information about these features for easy analysis of
any topic on a geographic basis. There are several companies
that have versions of GIS available to the public. The version
used by the Dirt and Gravel Road Maintenance Program is ArcView
GIS from ESRI Inc which can be run on most personal computers
(www.esri.com). For more information about GIS in general visit
http://www.gis.com/.
How are we using GIS?
The Dirt and Gravel Road Maintenance Program
is administered locally by 65 County Conservation Districts
throughout Pennsylvania. These Districts use GIS to keep track
of their program and to annually report activity to the program's
overseeing body, the State Conservation Commission. Please click
here for more program background.
Customized GIS Interface
To create a system where 65 individual county
conservation districts could use GIS to keep track of road projects
in their particular county, a customized GIS application was
developed at Penn State University. The customized application
was designed to allow districts to enter and track road project
information by adding features that did not exist in standard
ArcView. By simplifying the GIS interface, district personnel
with no knowledge of GIS were able to learn the Dirt and Gravel
Road application with only one day of training. The image to
the right is a sample of the customized interface for Clarion
County.
District Assessment
Each of Pennsylvania's 65 county conservation
districts involved in the Dirt and Gravel Road Maintenance Program
was given all necessary GIS data for their county. Using their
customized GIS on portable computers, district personnel inventoried
and assessed over 17,000 miles of unpaved roads throughout Pennsylvania
from 1999 into 2000. Over 11,000 verified pollution sites were
found on those unpaved roads.
District Use
Conservation Districts are currently using
the customized GIS interface to keep track of road projects.
Figures such as cost, contacts, and rankings for each project
are all entered with user-friendly dialog boxes like the one
pictured to the right. This data is then stored by ArcView
in a master database where each data entry is linked to the
location of that work site.
Statewide Reporting
The real power of the Dirt and Gravel Road
Program's GIS is that it allows districts to report the progress
of their road projects to the State Conservation Commission.
Since all data for all worksites in a county is stored in an
ArcView database by the conservation district, compiling a statewide
summary of this data is very simple. By simply sending their
worksite files in to the Center for Dirt and Gravel Road Studies,
a summary report can be generated with no transfer of actual
paperwork.
Every year, conservation districts send their
GIS files in to the Center for an annual summary report. Staff
at the Center compiles and analyzes the data and presents it
to the State Conservation Commission as a report on the status
of the Dirt and Gravel Road Maintenance Program.
If you have any questions about the program's
GIS, please contact Steve Bloser at smb201@psu.edu.
