Okaloosa County BOCC — February 17, 2015 — SimWright Contract for Professional Engineering Services for GIS — agenda request

BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS AGENDA REQUEST DATE: February 17, 2015 TO: Honorable Chairman and Members of the Board FROM: Don Vanderhoek SUBJECT: SimWright Contract for Professional Engineering Services for GIS DEPARTMENT: Information Systems BCC DISTRICT: ALL STATEMENT OF ISSUE: The Board is requested to approve and authorize the Chairman to sign a contract with SimWright, Inc. for Professional Engineering Services for Geographic Information Systems. BACKGROUND: Okaloosa County requires updated orthorectified aerial photography, elevation models, impervious surfaces, roads, utilities and other digital photogrammetry related products to support a myriad of county operations. The Department of Revenue requires counties to produce imagery used for property valuation purposes every three years. This requirement, along with detailed photogrammetric products used by County Engineering, substantiates the need for a cost effective approach to acquiring aerial photography. In addition, occasionally there is a need to complete photo projects quickly, as was the case after Hurricane Ivan, the Deep Water Horizon oil spill, various storms and TDC beach restoration and erosion projects. In the past, methods of acquiring and maintaining these important geospatial data sets involved entering into highly expensive turn-key contracts with large photogrammetric companies. Over the years Okaloosa County has leveraged county expertise, technology and local partnerships to find ways to create and maintain these types of products cheaper, better and faster. Deliverables and services from this contract and previous contracts enable the County to own and control the raw source data and processes. Therefore, we can create custom software and processes to extract useful features and data from the raw imagery product with a much greater degree of flexibility and cost effectiveness. Historically, Okaloosa County has developed strategies for capturing imagery at reduced cost from traditional turnkey photo projects. Significant cost savings have resulted in these efforts. Past photo projects have evolved from laborious efforts of targeting many control points on the ground to putting airborn GPS units in the aircraft to soft copy feature extraction on computer systems. This contract continues the effort and is an evolution of these processes. Task orders issued from this contract will evaluate, test and analyze imagery from an unmanned aircraft. This drone type technology is rapidly developing and will have a major impact now and in the future for capturing aerial photography. This contract has been through the Purchasing review process and funding is available in the Information Systems Department, GIS Division and Telecommunications budget. Expenditures should not exceed $50,000 this fiscal year unless additional funding is obtained for a special or emergency project. Additional funding is being sought via military grants. These grants will help fund mutually beneficial projects such as attempting to support environmental and forestry concerns related to the use of selected state forests by military Special Forces, and could be in the form of multi-year grants exceeding $200,000 per year more or less. OPTIONS: Approve/Disapprove. RECOMMENDATIONS: Approve and authorize the Chairman to sign the contract with SimWright, Inc. for Professional Engineering Services for Geographic Information Systems. RECOMMENDED BY: APPROVED BY: John Hofstad, County Administrator