Page 3 - Alabama 811 Magazine 2021 Issue 2

from the desk of
Annette Bowman
Upon its original purpose, Alabama 811 was intended to be a “call center” and serve as a conduit between the excavating community and the underground
facility owners. Over the years we have expanded services and operational objectives. One operational area that has become
prominent over the last few years has been expertise in GIS technology.
Internally, Alabama 811 uses GIS data to build landbase information to assist our employees and remote users in finding
excavation locations quickly and accurately on our mapping system for the purpose of marking the area of proposed
excavation. This landbase includes such things as road segments, street names, railroad markers, landmark data, etc. Our member
companies can provide GIS based service area polygons that are built in as layer in our database to determine when and what
members are to be notified based for the proposed excavation area.
However, we continue to see our involvement with GIS technology extended into data analysis of looking for areas of new construction, areas with damage activity, scope of ongoing projects, just to name a few. In addition, we have assisted member companies who have expanded their own internal use of GIS data to build in links from our locate request system into their own databases and operational management systems. Many use this data set to “dig deeper” into the activity around their facilities and what impact excavation activities may have on the maintenance and integrity of their underground facilities.
US Bureau of Labor stated that in a ten-year period GIS related jobs grew about 19% which was noted as the highest growth area. As GIS becomes integrated in so many industries, in this edition, we will highlight GIS programs and their impact on the damage prevention industry.
Annette Bowman Executive Director Alabama 811
2021, Issue 2
Alabama 811 • 1