My final week as a City of Delaware Public Utilities Employee, I can not believe its already over, it truly doesn’t seem real! Monday was my last day and Janelle had my spend it putting the finishing touches on my final paper. In order to do this Janelle got the chance to teach me one more awesome feature of GIS. She helped me to use the program to create my final maps that will be reflected as a part of my  final paper. I created a total of 5 maps that depicted two of the locations I worked on in GIS over the course of the semester. The two locations I choose to include in my paper were the Ravines at Olentangy as well as the Communities at GlenRoss. I choose these two because I felt the were a good representation of the major skills I learned over the course my internship. Each location included a before map, indicating what the GIS map looked like before I added any of the utility infrastructure to it as well as an after map, which illustrated all of the things I added, edited, or moved. Like all of my previous maps, the Ravines at the Olentany included the addition of the storm, sewer, and water infrastructure. The communities at GlenRoss only included the water infrastructure because that is all I had time to work on, however I wanted to include it because it was by far the most complex map I created. It was a great feeling seeing these maps finished, and in my opinion they turned out beautiful. They included a title, a legend, a north arrow, and of course all the work I put into them. It was great getting to see these as a part of a finished project and it was an even better feeling turning in the final paper. Although I am said my internship has come to an end, I am so thankful for the experience, the lessons I learned, and most importantly the people I meant. I owe Janelle a huge thank you, she was the best supervisor anyone could ask for and I am forever in debited to her for all she did for me!

Again, another exciting week as a Delaware City Public Utilities Intern. This week began with Janelle assigning me to work on a new cul de sac that is currently under development. This assignment was similar to the previous ones I have had and included the usual adding in the water, sewer, and storm infrastructure as well as editing anything that was already drawn in but not correct. Although the general task was the same as previous weeks, this assignment was quite a bit more difficult. This map, which we received from the engineers was sent in a different format then normal and thus made it impossible for Janelle and I to query out some of the unwanted or unneeded drawings and material. This left us with a very crowded and hard to read map. So in order to draw in the structures which we needed we had to be very detail oriented and pay very close attention to ensure we were following the correct lines. Clearly this task was a little more advanced then what I have been doing, however once I got started I got comfortable with it and I am glad Janelle trusted me to give it a shot. Due to the complexity though I only managed to draw in about 75% of the water features, with storm and sewer having to wait.

Unfortunately on Friday I could not report to my internship due to illness. My first sick day I have ever taken! So I am hoping to feel better and be able to continue my assignment on Monday!

I also spent a good amount of time this week working on my final paper reviewing my internship. Its fun and interesting going back and reading my old post to compile them into one concise paper. Looking back I see all the great lessons and skills I have learned!

first off I want to apologize that I missed the Friday deadline for my blog post, completely slipped my mind! However, here it goes. This week was different then others, but still good. Monday Janelle was still in Florida and I had an interview with August Mack so I did not come in. However, I used all the things Janelle helped me with in my interview so hopefully it pays off 🙂 Friday we spent the day examining the new stormx debris collector that will put in the Delaware run (I’m not sure what it’s officially called). It was really cool though! I learned a lot about it and how it will be used to study stream quality and litter amounts. Monday Janelle plans on starting a new project with me and I’m very excited!

I know this post is short on words, but it was kind of a short week! And again sorry it’s late!

Monday I again spent the day working on a GIS map of a Delaware suburb. In this map I was tasked with adding and editing all of the utilities, much like last week. I first put in all of the sewer lines and other associated structures. I then wanted to move on to the storm infrastructure, but unfortunately Arc didn’t want to cooperate. For some reason when creating a new feature it would not snap to the location we needed it too. I took some time and played around with Arc trying to diagnose the problem, however I had no luck. Being unsuccessful, I called over Janelle to see if she could help me come to a conclusion and resolve the problem. She too searched around and tried a few different things but none worked. This was extra strange because this same problem happened last week and it only occurred when we tried to use create or edit the storm lines or infrastructure.  So I’m intrigued to see if Janelle finds a resolution to this problem and discover what the issue was. After this detour, I went ahead and started to add in the new and edit the existing water infrastructure. This was very time consuming, as the water has the most of all the other utilities. However, I managed to get almost completely finished by the end of my day. With about thirty minutes remaining, Janelle needed to use her computer so she had me continue the job search. During this time I found some great opportunities and applied for a handful of jobs!

Thursday, I got to attend the Delaware City Town and Gown event which was really interesting. Although it wasn’t a very long experience it was still cool getting to be inside the meeting and see where these things take place. Also, being in the photoshoot was pretty fun, lol!

This week Janelle taught me how to import CAD files into Arc and how to use these drawings to update the maps. These CAD drawings are great to work with, they are fairly straight forward and very accurate. I began this project by comparing the CAD drawings to the drawings we made from the geo-referencing last week. The drawings from the geo-reference were close but not exactly in the correct locations as indicated by the CAD drawings. In order to correct this I simply had to move my previously drawn figures into the corresponding locations based off the CAD drawings, which was pretty straightforward. Once this was finished, I used the CAD drawing to input the rest of the utilities onto our Arc map. Monday I put in all of the water infrastructure, including water mains, laterals, junctions, laterals, fire hydrants, and water meters. There was a lot of water structures within this new sub division and inputting them took the entire afternoon. Friday, since I was finished with the water infrastructure, I got to move on to the the easier storm and sewer utilities. Like, the water I began by correcting the previously drawn in structures from the geo-reference map and put them into their correct positions based on the CAD map. I then moved into inputting the new structures. For storm I input mains, inlets, outlets, manholes, and inlets with manholes. As for sewer I only needed to put in the manholes and the gravity lines, insuring they were headed in the correct direction. Janelle also taught me how to input different layers as well as create a query. The query was very interesting and I can see how useful / helpful it can be. Creating one is relatively straight forward but I would like to do some more in order to ensure I know how to use them. Another thing I would like more practice with is inputting layers into Arc. But overall, another great week with a lot of new information learned!