Yuma county, AZ. Public Works Department Automated Asset Management System

The Yuma County Department of Public Works has embarked upon the information super highway by bringing computer-based technology into the County Asset Maintenance Management System. The former manual system was cumbersome and needed modernization in order to optimize expenditures for County asset maintenance. A study was performed and a “Pilot Project” was completed in 1998, which demonstrated that an off-the-shelf computer-based software package, utilized to establish a database of the current condition of all public works physical assets, will “in fact” save tax dollars over the old manual system at a Cost/Benefit ratio of at least 3:1.

Yuma County DPW Statistical Items 1500 miles of gravel or dirt roads 500 Miles of paved highway Yearly Maintenance Includes 50 miles of Chip Sealing 10 Miles of Slurry Sealing and 10 Miles of Plastic Sealing 300 Miles of Striping and Hole Patching Maintains 12,000 Signs and 3,000 Bridges and Canal Crossings, all with six Clerks, two Administrators, four Technicians, 4 Foreman, and 80 Maintenance personnel.

Project Definition
Land Base Design: In setting up specifications for the accomplishment of the “Pilot” Study, both the City and County of Yuma Mapping/GIS Units were contacted to make sure that “Land Base” integration would be accomplished as a “by product” when the entire AMS Project was completed. This integration is needed to make sure that all geographic-based information generated by one agency can be utilized by others without rigorous and time-consuming transformations between unlike systems. The land Base being used by both the City and County Mapping Units is based on the United States Public Land Survey System of Sections, Townships, and Ranges from the Initial Point on the GILA MERIDIAN AND BASELINE, which governs land descriptions in Yuma County. The PLSS is digitally integrated to the Arizona State Plane Coordinate System (NAD 1927). This coordinate system has been used due to the fact that most cadastral data now available, without doing new control surveys over the entire County, was identified earlier by other agencies of government for mapping purposes.

It is highly recommended that this project be fully integrated with the ASPCS/NAD’83 when it is adequately densified on the ground by Global Positioning System (GPS) technology.

Public Land Survey Identification: In order to utilize the PLSS, the ASPCS, and the Asset software modules (ASM) requirements, all at the same time, a digital system of numbering is being utilized to identify Section and Quarter Section corners of the PLSS that will tie directly to the ASM requirements for line segmentation and identification. The known coordinates of the ASPCS/NAD’27 are input within the ASM line segments, with node identification input fields. This is a beneficial aid in the identification of cadastral parcels on the current Assessment Rolls and located along any given road or highway. Also, current GIS software can easily be implemented within the AMS for specific spatial analytical tasks related to geography.