Proudly Serving Montana
Montana Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Since 1998
Serve business and communities with more efficiency and accuracy.
For years companies have had needs for mapping critical assets and processes across geographic maps. Municipalities are heavy users of GIS mapping systems for instance:
Montana Customers
Some information I know about Montana is I believe the state was admitted or ratified to the United States around or about 'November 8, 1889'. Montana is located around latitude '46.96526' and longitude of '-109.533691' and has a population of roughly '1,084,225 million'. If I remember correctly the capital is 'Helena' and the largest city is 'Billings'.
Word of Mouth
Take a moment to read related case studies and testimonials below around my experience with Gis.
Case Study
First Med EMS Ambulatory services needed a custom document management solution that encompassed scanning in-house ScanTron styled documents via ADF (Automatic Document Feeder) scanners. The goal was to forgo the purchase of expensive ScanTron equipment and recognize scanned OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and OMR (Optical Mark Recognition).
My solution saved First Med EMS over 100,000 the first month work began on the project with a home-grown Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) which automatically scanned both sides of pages through the Automatic Document Feeders. His scanning engine was smart enough to ignore blank pages on the Epson GT-S50 scanners tested. Resulting scans were slammed into a SQL Server Full Text search database and saved as OLE Blob Image format.
Saving images in the database resolved a huge industry problem of file pointers to disk locations which was slower on retrieval difficult when locating files where folders could have 200,000+ images or more making research painfully slow. I utilized Lead Tools Recognition engine to zone out all OCR/OMR areas for extraction of key values into the database with all appropriate key and search values filled in.
"I knew when I interviewed Eddie, he was what the organization needed. His expertise proved me to be right. He was invaluable and created a Scantron replacement system we are very proud of. Eddie also created a drivers manifest with turn-by-turn directions and built a location system for our ambulances."
December, 2013
Chris Martin | USA
CEO
Life Ambulance Services (First Med EMS)
"Eddie, great job on EDMS (Electronic Document Management System), when your back in Wilmington I will treat you to a steak dinner!"
August, 2013
Robb Stone | USA
CTO
Life Ambulance Services (First Med EMS)
Case Study
Market America hired me to manage 6 teams around their eCommerce and distributor portal platform where IBM Universe and ColdFusion developers integrated innovative features to their eCommerce site.
"Eddie has the unique ability to pull together all the pieces of the puzzle, keep them together, and make sure everyone is always on the same page and headed in the right direction. His education, experience and professionalism have brought us great results."
3/5/2009
Kim Palmer | USA
Creative Services Manager
New Breed
Case Study
When the Parks and Recreation of the City of Greensboro needed a work order system, they came to me to develop it. Once that system was developed, they came to me for a survey system for the city buses, then Housing Community and Development utilized his expertise to spec out a new system for them. Whether city or federal government we can help.
"Thanks for all the good work! The ESRI mapping component is working great!"
7/15/1998
Jane Nickels | USA
IT
City of Greensboro
Case Study
The Housing and Community Development of City of Greensboro came to me for a survey system for the city buses.
"You and Mark have shown that hiring outside consultants is definitely the way to go."
7/10/1998
Mitchell Johnson | USA
MIS Director
City of Greensboro
Case Study
In 1995 New Breed needed a Systems Administrator. In face they needed an IT Director, Help Desk and Developers. They hired me to do all of this and more. In 1995 New Breed had 6 locations nationwide. They entrusted me to manage all software, hardware and him to build the network cabling backbone over ISDN segmented lines. He also managed Progress 4GL programming on their Syman package as well as all of their HP-Unix and Novell servers.
"We really appreciate your hard work on the Progress Dump and Reload. I personally know the long hours in the past 2 weeks you put into getting the system stable. Let me take you to dinner to celebrate it being over."
5/15/1995
Dominik Dejoy | USA
Director of Operations
New Breed
Location and Tracking Services
- Determining where assets are located across a city is one need. (AVL GSM)
- Determining how work is getting done across the city is another.
- Dispatching vehicles is critical for customer service and fleet fuel conservation.
- Driving Manifests (Get Directions from address to an address) for fleet drivers
- Keeping track of EPA chemical usage across a city is critical as well.
- Managing where city vehicles are and what city assets they are loaded up with is necessary too.
- Even tracking water fire hydrants across a city is critical information when determining fire department coverage.
- The ability for utility personnel to see what switches, terminals and ground stations exist allows for determining how to stock trucks on service calls
So it's easy to see how GIS can be utilized at a city level. Now what about at the state level? When it comes to waterways and highways states need access to information for highway maintenance, new highways, bridges, overpasses and much more when making budget decisions. Information also valuable to mapping future highway projects and the impact on surrounding areas.
If at any point you decide to reach to me just know the area code I work within for Montana is '406'. For Gis assistance you will find my rates very reasonable for Montana. Now just keep in mind my time zone is 'Eastern Standard Time (EST)' and I know the time zones in Montana are 'Mountain Standard Time (MST)' in case you wish to call me. Anyway let me continue.
Why is a GIS so important? Well, it isn't always required as previ-ously mentioned, if you just have a few points on a map you can get away with using Google. Want to show the world your favorite fishing locations? Google can help with that. Want to show property boundaries, wastewater infrastructure, building footprints, contours etc. Esri can help with that. A main advantage of using a GIS is that it allows more complex modelling of your data, either online or offline. For example, using Esri technology out of the box models. Scripts can be deployed to a server environment where an end user can invoke the task right on the web app. The range of geo processing tasks that can be published online is vast.
Both Google and Esri produce some amazing base maps. In certain areas one wins over the other, but overall they seem pretty well matched. As long as you are not charging your clientele to use your basic Google map you do not pay anything to Google. Esri has countered this with ArcGIS Online, a place where you can upload data, create data and share it with anyone. Esri has also made their tiled base maps available for private/commercial use free of charge (whether you are making money from it or not). Google has also created the Google Maps Engine where users can upload data to the cloud and share maps
GIS Planning and Response
During emergencies, GIS enables emergency managers to quickly access relevant data about an affected area. GIS is also a valuable planning tool. For example, this map (in PDF), created by OEM's GIS division, shows the distribution of the top 10 non-English languages spoken in Brooklyn. This information is important in planning public awareness campaigns for emergency management. It also suggests areas where interpreters will be needed if emergency shelters or disaster assistance centers are set up.
After an emergency, GIS can help recovery workers make decisions about the priority order for demolition, plan reconstruction of an area, and determine which property owners qualify for grants or loan programs, among other recovery-related issues.
You know, I don't make it out to Montana much but I would like to see the 'Western Meadowlark' state bird. I am a little familiar with the Montana 'Bitterroot' state flower as well. However, I do not know much about Montana's state tree the 'Ponderosa Pine'. Fishing is fun to me perhaps I would like reeling in the Montana 'Blackspotted cutthroat trout' state fish. Anyway, sorry I went off topic. Let me continue.
GIS as a Revenue Stream
What the city didn't realize at the time is they were sitting a valuable asset. No, not the water. Fishermen were now anxious to get their hands on the data. Why? They data helped determine the best fishing holes and with fishing competitions this information was very valuable.
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Word of Mouth
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