Recently our staff have been in the City of Canton, Illinois collecting the location of each fire hydrant in town. While this may not sound too large, we quickly realized how many features needed to be collected. To accomplish this project we deployed iPads with Esri’s Collector Application installed on them. This allows users to collect data in the field with heightened accuracy. The app can work with the standard GPS of the iPad, but we were also incorporating a Trimble R2 unit to increase geographic precision.

We set up the collector application to collect hydrants (separated by cap color / rate of flow), water main valves, and any curb boxes that we may encounter. All in all, there were 643 hydrants within and surrounding the City. By using the Collector App we were able to have multiple users work on the map, and have all the previous work be visible to each user. This is a great advantage of the application. By allowing each worker to see in real time where other work is being completed, it allows crews to divide and conquer data collection.

If you are interested in learning more about the Collector application, or how Maurer-Stutz can assist in setting your organization up, please contact us today!

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