Photo By Zachary Mott | Bud Berendes, a community planner with Directorate of Public Works, 88th Readiness...... read more read more
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FORT McCOY, Wis. – Compiling all of the various data points for an Army Reserve organization spread across 19 states and supporting more than 275 facilities is an arduous task for even the most robust of teams.
For the 88th Readiness Division, that duty, as well as turning that data into something useful to the command, falls on the shoulders of the Geographic Information Systems team within the Directorate of Public Works Master Planning section.
This group of four or five when fully staffed, provides data-backed reasoning for issues the command may have about where to allocate resources to support the readiness of the Army Reserve.
“We leverage GIS to make the best decisions we can with the best data we have available to us to support the readiness of the commands, units and Soldiers that occupy our facilities in our 19-state footprint,” said Bud Berendes, chief, Master Planning Division, DPW, 88th RD.
Within the 88rd RD headquarters, the DPW is the directorate responsible for the facility and site functions that allow Soldiers to train and conduct their day-to-day duties there. Having a system in place that allows DPW to forecast and plan for facility needs is critical to supporting the Army Reserve mission.
“(GIS) answers any type of question that has the word where in it,” said Tucker Robeson, community planner, DPW, 88th RD. “Where should we? Where do we? Where will we? Where might we? Whatever comes after those words, you have to have GIS in order to answer that question properly.”
Having an abundance of data allows senior leaders of the 88th RD and Army Reserve to make informed decisions that will have long-reaching effects on Soldiers.
“By inputting those different spatial data sets that impact our 19 states we can make educated decisions on where to build a building,” Berendes said. “All of those different kinds of things help us educate where to best place things, where to best perform different tasks to support the readiness of those Soldiers.”
With so much data available, the GIS team uses a combination of trusted and verified sources to ensure the information being used to make critical decisions is accurate and useful.
“We have to make clean data,” Robeson said. “GIS allows you to be insanely specific. If you can’t do that, and do that for everything you own, then you can’t then use it for decision-making later by looking at everything later and pushing it into those data layers and stacking them on top of each other like pancakes in the software.”
Once that pancake stack of data is compiled, that’s where the interpretation work begins.
"The software and analysts we rely upon, if you assign scores to each of those criteria, can tell you a roll up or weighted score for all of your sites or projects,” Robeson said. “Because our team can create visual displays that explain a lot with a picture, we can argue more strongly for specific projects. We can justify them in ways other teams cannot.”
Another way in which GIS is helping the 88th RD be more efficient is through mapping routes for site inspection teams.
“When you use a tool like GIS, you can take things like road data and you can actually create a real model of the best way to do it,” said Peter McColl, GIS lead, DPW, 88th RD. “You can drive real decisions that help you better improve existing processes as well.”
By using GIS and the people to input and interpret the data, the 88th RD can provide best in class services for its customers and ensure they are good stewards of the Army budget.
“Having an amazing team which is capable of creating insight out of a messy pile of information, and then visualizing that data for strategy makers ... that is what allows us to justify why pennies went there and didn’t go over there,” Robeson said.
| Date Taken: | 12.08.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 12.08.2022 14:52 |
| Story ID: | 434776 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WI, US |
| Web Views: | 109 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, 88th RD Uses GIS to Make More Informed Decisions, by Zachary Mott, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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