Every infrastructure project has a geographic component. Geographic information systems (GIS) technology has a long history of supporting environmental consultants to visualize, organize and analyze project data, streamlining the regulatory environmental review process and reporting.
Freese and Nichols Inc. (FNI), a national engineering, planning and consulting firm based in Texas, creates major infrastructure. The firm recently assisted a large city in the Southwest with environmental clearance for aviation infrastructure at its spaceport by using GIS. The project, already facing an aggressive schedule, had been stymied by regulatory hurdles. Previous work had yielded an unfavorable preliminary jurisdictional determination, risking additional permitting requirements and a compromised project schedule. FNI determined that GIS could pave the best path forward.
Under the direction of Michael Lane, a professional wetland scientist, the team relied on ArcGIS, Esri’s mapping and analytics software, to visualize and manage data, as well as Ecobot’s environmental assessment platform, to rapidly execute fieldwork and an approved jurisdictional determination (AJD) package. Ecobot Collector supported fieldwork with automated calculations and built-in QA, while Ecobot Manager’s real-time access to results allowed for frictionless QA/QC and immediate report generation. Geospatial data collected in the field through Ecobot’s integration with ArcGIS Online was leveraged into exhibits for the AJD request.
“Their urgency became our emergency,” Lane says. “Ecobot enabled us to translate field data into regulatory forms with a swift turnaround, and ArcGIS Online integration addressed our GIS needs seamlessly. These tools were critical to FNI’s expediency.”
The power of these tools supporting Lane’s team accelerated the AJD process, which was immediately adopted by the Federal Aviation Association to close up the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) action and release the project to proceed. With the regulatory roadblocks cleared by FNI’s use of GIS tools, the spaceport was one step closer to launch.
