With more than 2,300 paved and 500 unpaved road miles, Marion County has undergone increasing growth and development in recent years, further stimulating the need for a comprehensive up-to-date assessment for county authorities.

Most importantly, the county needed to obtain a more accurate accounting of all infrastructure assets to be in compliance with GASB 34. The new AMS eliminates superfluous records, fosters intra-departmental communications and assists with GASB 34 reporting and compliance.

According to Bob Titterington, Marion County's original manager on the project, Space Imaging's one-stop shop of high-resolution imagery combined with a full GIS production capability was a key purchasing decision point. "We liked that we could get the whole project done with one vendor," Titterington said.

Newly collected 1-meter resolution IKONOS satellite imagery allowed the joint Space Imaging-Marion County team to develop a cost-effective methodology to locate, map, inventory, assess condition levels, and determine the value of the county's road and storm water assets.

In addition, the IKONOS imagery was used as the basis for new countywide maps of storm sewer facilities to satisfy National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) requirements.

Satellite imagery, coupled with higher-resolution aerial photographs, also allowed the team to determine pavement edges in order to obtain exact roadway measurements. The asset management solution utilized both field data collection and image-based feature extraction to build the required asset databases.

Space Imaging and Jones, Edmunds and Associates, Inc. have been working with the county's Engineering department to collect roadway asset data for incorporation into the integrated AMS. More than 40,000 data points with full attribution were collected and entered into the AMS in less than six months.

The map-accurate IKONOS imagery also allowed the team to determine roadway characteristics in order to obtain accurate roadway measurements. This information was vital to developing a Pavement Management System that is currently in use by the county.

The Engineering department now has the ability to monitor the overall health of its road network through proactive management techniques developed by the Space Imaging team. Engineers are also using this system to plan for future maintenance activities as well as for tracking financial information related to current construction activities.

"Marion County is leading the way in terms of proactive, enterprise-wide, asset management. Not only are they tracking all of their infrastructure assets in their AMS, but also they are proactively developing better techniques and business processes that allow for accurate and efficient daily workflow. In other words, they're increasing their level of service to their residents," said Jason Amadori, Space Imaging's manager of Southeast Operations.

From a technical standpoint, the objective was to make the AMS a complete GIS product, easy to use and simple to update. Space Imaging's Solutions group devised both components to be compatible for fieldwork on PDAs.

ESRI's ArcPad software was used to make the necessary mobile maps with full GIS capabilities for field use. Space Imaging also administered user training to Marion County officials and will continue to deploy on-site support.

To learn more about the Marion County project and Space Imaging's asset management system visit

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