County Health and Human Services

After recent standards enacted by California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) were announced in early 2018, VESTRA performed Network Adequacy Mapping services and provided training for a number of California counties. This required county health providers to demonstrate accessibility of services for mental health beneficiaries measured by time, distance, and timely access.

The projects involved licensing and installing ArcGIS Pro, Network Analyst extension, and Street Map Premium Extension when necessary. VESTRA then performed the mapping on-site for the counties.

Mapping involved geocoding beneficiary and provider locations, generating heat map views, and generating drive-time and distance buffers using the Network Analyst extension. The projects also included creating documentation and/or providing training for County staff to enable them to repeat the process for ongoing quarterly reporting.

City of Santa Maria, CA

The City of San Maria’s Department of Utilities Water Resources Operation and Maintenance Section was interested in improving their field crews efficiency by making information on disabling/enabling customers water service connections available online. 

Information on the status of the City’s water service connections were being maintained in a legacy system by the City’s Department of Administrative Services.  The City had the capability of querying this system every thirty minutes, extracting address information for needed turn offs/ons, and sending this information to a Microsoft SQL table. 

Per the City's requirements, VESTRA developed an application that geocodes the addresses within this Microsoft SQL table and presents the results in an ArcGIS Online feature service making it available online and via mobile devices. This has enabled field crews the ability to access and edit the information from their smart phones utilizing Esri’s Collector for ArcGIS application.

Livermore Valley Winegrowers Association

Livermore Valley Winegrowers Association (LVMA) contracted with VESTRA to provide services in creating climate maps from the Prism Climate Groups data to assist LVMA with their effort to assess vineyard suitability within the Livermore Valley American Viticulture Area (AVA). The project consisted of migrating 30 years’ worth of climate data from the Prism Climate Group’s website into ArcGIS Online as feature services. Using these services, VESTRA built maps in ArcGIS Online using Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS  to asses such things as annual average precipitation, average mean temperature per month, minimum/maximum temperature per month, and average growing degree days.

M.J. Bradley & Associates (MJB&A)

M.J. Bradley & Associates (MJB&A), an environmental consulting firm based in Washington DC, contracted with VESTRA for help in developing a web application that would show pollution sources and data in the Washington DC area for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).    The web application developed by VESTRA overlays a set of power plants and allows users to identify air quality grades and natural lands by visualizing multiple maps and layers within the single web application. 

Formation Environmental / Imperial Irrigation District

Salton Sea air quality program support

Challenge: The Salton Sea Air Quality Mitigation (SS AQM) Program was developed by the Imperial Irrigation District to provide a comprehensive, science-based, and adaptive approach to address air quality mitigation requirements associated with the transfer of conserved water under the Quantification Settlement Agreement. The transfer reduces the volume of agricultural return flow to the Salton Sea, thereby exposing the playa and increasing the potential for dust emissions that could affect nearby communities.

Solution:  VESTRA worked with Formation Environmental to develop an end-user web application that allows users to download GIS layers for comparison and visualization, which includes: Emissions Inventory and Monitoring Program, Dust Control Strategy and Planning, as well as Dust Control Implementation.

The Emissions Inventory and Monitoring Program will identify the playa surface characteristics and surface mineralogy dynamics that create salt crust conditions vulnerable to erosion. It will also measure the emissions potential of playa surfaces and identify dust source areas. These activities will provide a better understanding of salt crust formation and erosion at the Salton Sea, and ultimately inform dust control planning and implementation. The SS AQM Program will also assess dust emissions from adjacent desert areas to better understand the location and timing of off-sea emissions. Visualizations include: Playa Exposure, Playa Surface Characteristics, Playa Emissions Potential, and the Off-Sea Emissions Inventory.

The proactive dust control strategy is designed to prevent exposed playa from becoming a significant source of PM10 emissions, which will help protect the public health of the communities near and around the Salton Sea. A large part of this strategy is to identify and implement dust control measures (DCMs) on emissive playa surfaces before they reach thresholds that prompt regulatory orders for control studies.

Long-term dust control at the Salton Sea is anticipated to include a mosaic of dust control measures to effectively control dust, minimize water use and maximize habitat. Small-scale dust control pilot studies provide important data regarding the suitability of various measures for the playa. Field scale pilot studies provide experience scaling, adapting, and combining dust control measures at a larger scale. A series of field scale pilot studies will be implemented in early 2017 (see below). Planning is underway for several additional field scale pilot studies in 2017-2018.

Benefit: By having all of the data available within an interactive web application, the Imperial Irrigation District is able to visualize the effects of the playa over time and how this is affecting the air quality surrounding the Salton Sea.  The web application gives the ability for users to see the affects over time utilizing a time slider and create a scientific prediction for what could happen in the future.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS, CENTER FOR REGIONAL CHANGE

VESTRA developed the Rural Opportunity Index (ROI) Data Analysis Viewer for the UC Davis CRC.  The purpose of this application was to aid in targeting resources and policies toward people with the greatest need in a community, and also help create communities of opportunity for all Californians.  This web application was based on Esri’s ArcGIS API for JavaScript and has similar functional requirements to the PYOM viewer.

View application here:  http://interact.regionalchange.ucdavis.edu/roi/

University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine (Veterinary Medicine Teaching and Research Center, Tulare)

iOS/Android Application Development for Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD) Identification

The UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, working with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Cooperative Extension and UC Davis Animal Science department (collectively referred to as “UC Davis”), has developed a disease scoring system and risk assessment for identifying Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD) in dairy calves. UC Davis contracted with VESTRA to make this system available to Dairy producers as native iOS (iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch) and Android applications.

These native applications provide a simple bilingual decision support tool that calculates the BRD score based on input from the producer with the capability to:

• Store a history of BRD scores within the applications, allowing the producer to review the history, generate a histogram and email the data in a .csv format that could be used in other farm-level data management tools.
• Generate a BRD Prevalence Estimate.   The Prevalence Estimate and 95% confidence limits is stored within the application and included in the history summaries, histogram and email.

iOS Application: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/uc-davis-brd/id1189376374?mt=8

Android Application: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vestra.brd&hl=en

State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB)

Cannabis Identification and Prioritization System (CIPS)

PROBLEM: The cultivation of Cannabis in rural parts of California has been increasing which has resulted in significant environmental impacts in the watersheds of California; such as, increased pollution in the local, regional, and state water supplies, increased soil erosion, as well as increased nutrient and pesticide laden runoff. California’s extreme drought conditions have further magnified these impacts.

SOLUTION: The SWRCB and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife were tasked with trying to regulate this activity. As a part of this effort, they contracted with VESTRA to design a Cannabis Identification and Prioritization System (CIPS), which acts both as a repository of geospatial information on grow locations and a tool for helping the agencies prioritize their regulatory efforts based on the potential impact individual grows have on water resources, fish, and wildlife.

VESTRA, along with Formation Environmental, worked to capture grow locations and developed raster datasets which include percent slope, length of slope, evapotranspiration and proximity to surface water.  These raster datasets are used along with information on the proximity of threatened fish and wildlife to model the level of threat associated with each grow, allowing the agencies to establish priorities for action.

CIPS APPLICATION: VESTRA was responsible for the design and development of the system.  One of the project requirements was that the system leverages the SWRCB’s existing Esri Enterprise system.  The development effort includes a JavaScript web interface to be used by agency staff tasked with regulating Cannabis cultivation and geoprocessing services that are used to model the environmental threat based on the factors a user wants to consider in their analysis along with the weight they associate with each factor. 

The web interface includes an operations dashboard that summarizes the number of grows that have been identified in the state, whether they’re outdoor or greenhouse grows, the number in each SWRCB region, and the estimated amount of water consumed by each grow.  This dashboard is updated nightly as data becomes available.

City of Belmont, CA

VESTRA is happy to have been awarded the contract to work with the City of Belmont on their Enterprise Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Strategic Plan and Implementation Services.  VESTRA will be working with the City to develop a three year Enterprise GIS Strategic Plan, and will then help them execute the plan.  The City of Belmont has never developed a strategic plan for GIS; therefore, with GIS integrations and needs increasing, and with a focus on being progressive and providing better service to the employees and public, there is a desire to expand the use and availability of GIS throughout the organization.

Town of Truckee, CA

VESTRA is proud to have been chosen by the Town of Truckee’s Public Works Department as the winning proposer for their Local Government Information Model (LGIM) Data Migration.  VESTRA will be assisting the Town with their GIS data migration into the Local Government Information Model (LGIM) system; assisting in the development of guidelines for storing and archiving data (including file structure and naming conventions); providing recommendations for additional GIS-related modules to improve the Town’s use of GIS; and setting up and/or reviewing proxy server configuration to facilitate integrations and publish web applications developed using LGIM.

City of Sunnyvale, CA

VESTRA is pleased to announce that it has been awarded the contract for the City of Sunnyvale's GIS Strategic Plan.  Many City departments use and depend upon GIS for operations.  The City also has a healthy GIS portal, but the City wants to provide more end-user functionality and additional information to the public.  As the City considered the future of GIS services they sought professional services to provide consulting and implementation services in a two (2) phased approach.

In the first phase, VESTRA will review the current state, provide guidance on best practices, discuss future state options, and provide a strategic report covering all aspects of the City's current and future growth with regards to GIS.

In the second phase, the consultants will provide implementation and project management services to implement the future state as identified in the report.

City of Los Altos, CA

In February 2016, the City of Los Altos put out a proposal for a Professional Services for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Update Project.  VESTRA responded and was awarded the project. VESTRA worked with the City to understand their requirements and developed an Enterprise GIS that incorporated their requirements and needs from the ground up. VESTRA designed the system architecture and implemented a central geodatabase for authoritative data, a GIS server for map services and a modern GIS viewer for end users to view the latest information.

VESTRA also developed workflows and automated processes to keep data up to date.

“You guys have been very responsive and have great knowledge in the subject. I am very impressed with all your help!”

- Vency Woo, City of Los Altos, CA

Monmouth County, NJ

VESTRA consulted with the County of Monmouth to develop an Advanced Query Widget that will allow the County to interact with their data in a more innovative way. VESTRA developed a query widget that was based on Esri’s Web AppBuilder. VESTRA developed data workflows which updated map services automatically with the latest information that the query widget could then use to filter the data based on user needs.

Tehama County Transportation Commission, CA

VESTRA is currently providing on-call GIS technical support services to TCTC under a 3 year contract. Projects under this contract included:

• Enterprise GIS architecture implementation and support.
• Schema conversion of TCTC GIS data to standard GIS models within enterprise SDE.
• Establishment of editing workflows and GIS data maintenance packages.
• Publishing of GIS services and deployment of web mapping applications.
• Geospatial data editing and management.
• Parcel fabric editing and maintenance
• Customized training on data maintenance workflows and web mapping application maintenance.

El Paso County, CO

El Paso County, Colorado Information Technologies contracted with VESTRA to supply consulting services to assist with their GIS systems upgrade.  The upgrade consisted of migrating from ArcGIS for Server v9.3.1 to ArcGIS for Server v10.3.x as well as a backend database migration from SQL Server to Oracle Exadata, configuring supported user authentication systems to work with Portal, Federating ArcGIS for Server sites with Portal, and configuring ArcGIS site as the hosting server for Portal for ArcGIS.  The Counties architecture will also be upgraded and virtualized as part of this process. 

Alpine County, CA

For the past 5 years VESTRA has supported Alpine County, California with an Enterprise GIS implementation. VESTRA prepared the Alpine County GIS Master Plan 2011 and since then has been assisting the County with implementing the GIS within planned phases.  The phased approach laid the foundation of GIS and data development.  VESTRA helped implement a cloud based GIS infrastructure (using ArcGIS Online) and assisted in data maintenance workflows. Later phases helped implement web mapping viewers for the County. VESTRA assisted the County expand their online GIS presence in the County by understanding needs related to additional applications and GIS contribution to daily business processes.  Currently, VESTRA is providing training to County staff covering the following topics: ArcGIS for Desktop (ArcMap and ArcCatolog); ArcGIS Online; a review of the Local Government Information Model (LGIM), application templates, loading data into LGIM; and a review of Collector for ArcGIS workflows.  In addition, VESTRA is developing a multi-scale fire run book grid for the County.

City of Paso Robles, CA

VESTRA is currently under contract to provide Enterprise GIS implementation services to the City of Paso Robles.  The EGIS will provide a platform for City staff to access and share authoritative GIS data and information and also integrate with third party enterprise business systems such as Accela, InfraMap, and others.

City of Novato, CA

The City of Novato (City) contracted with VESTRA to evaluate and modernize their existing GIS system and leverage the investments made by the City in GIS data and technology over the years, by implementing Enterprise GIS (EGIS) technology.  A low-level needs assessment was performed to City specifications. As per the needs assessment, the EGIS will provide a platform for City staff to access and share authoritative data and information via modern web applications that provide a robust set of tools to perform tasks.  In addition, the EGIS will consume from and contribute to, data and services within Marin Maps, thus providing City staff a robust set of GIS tools to perform work.  VESTRA’s approach towards the EGIS implementation will help the City reach its goals.  VESTRA recently upgraded the City of Novato to ArcGIS for Server 10.4.

City of Lathrop, CA

VESTRA was contracted with the City of Lathrop to provide a high-level needs assessment to determine the City of Lathrop’s current use of GIS technology, and to develop a path forward to fully leverage GIS technology in City business processes. VESTRA’s assessment included detailed recommendations with regard to GIS architecture options, Enterprise GIS database design, business process improvements and end user GIS web applications. VESTRA created the City’s first GIS viewer based on modern HTML5/JavaScript technology by leveraging Esri’s ArcGIS Online and Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS.

City of Emeryville, CA

In 2010, VESTRA initiated work with the City of Emeryville to configure and implement an Enterprise GIS. The project began with a high-level needs assessment to identify current and potential uses of GIS technology within the City. Based on the results of this assessment, VESTRA developed the system architecture for their Enterprise GIS platform. VESTRA supported the City with implementing this architecture by installing and configuring Esri's ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Server software, creating a master geodatabase, and providing training to staff on the use and management of the platform. Following the implementation, VESTRA has supported the City by providing technical support, geodatabase conversion and editing, and custom GIS application development.