The Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association held its 67^th annual conference and trade show from September 13^th to 16^th, 2009.  Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities provide potable water, sewage treatment and waste management services to municipalities across the State.  I attended the conference on September 15^th to learn more about current trends for GIS in the water, sewer and stormwater management industries, and to evaluate the conference as a possible future venue for Sajara.

You might already be familiar with the use of the Sajara software framework in the popular PhillyHistory.org and MuralFarm.org web applications.  Sajara provides an excellent means of managing and geographically displaying historic documents that had previously been languishing in file drawers, or celebrating the City’s unique collection of architectural murals and local artists.  Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities and other infrastructure management organizations often have historic documents as well, and they have a very specific set of management needs that the Sajara software framework can help to address. 

Much of the water and sewer infrastructure in the United States was built between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.  For water and sewer management purposes, infrastructure includes things like pipes, manholes, fire hydrants, water mains, wells, pump stations, water storage tanks, and sewage treatment plants.  For stormwater management purposes, infrastructure includes things like inlets, outfalls, drainage basins and culverts.  The original plans and blueprints of these facilities provide invaluable reference when repair or replacement is needed.  Unfortunately, finding these archival documents can be difficult, since they have often been haphazardly stored over long periods of time and may not even be accurately indexed.  It can be very frustrating to manually search through hundreds of original hardcopy infrastructure drawings in order to find the one critical piece of data that is really needed, particularly in an emergency situation when time is of the essence.  The Sajara software framework can geographically reference these important documents and make them instantly searchable by address, date, type of infrastructure and other criteria.  The plans can be made available specifically to authorized personnel over the Internet and through various mobile platforms to provide field access when and where it is needed. 

Next time you turn on the tap, drain the bathtub or watch the rivers of stormwater pooling in a drainage basin after a heavy rainstorm, think of the infrastructure people behind the scenes that make it all possible.  We hope that by applying the Sajara software framework to their historic infrastructure data, their work will become a little less challenging. 

Using the Sajara software framework for an infrastructure application might look something like this. Water, sewer and stormwater management documents will be easily accessible in relation to their geographic locations or other search criteria important to infrastructure management personnel nationwide. The Sajara software framework will provide a much more efficient means of searching for historic data than rummaging through stacks of hardcopy drawings, particularly in the event of a water main break or other emergency situation.