The Details

From the beginning, ADOT built on past efforts. To meet MIRE and other guidelines, they were starting on solid footing from previous efforts to meet state HPMS requirements. Still, they had significant work to do, since HPMS requirements have changed over time, too. Whiteford also wanted to make it easier to get data to internal stakeholders and outside parties. In addition to developing the roadway data, the project included creating workflow documentation, developing better metadata, and discovering how different teams within the agency required and used location data.

AppGeo has led the RCI project since its start in 2017. The project was broken up into four phases, with the first three phases completed between 2017 – 2021. The “meat and potatoes” of the project, Whiteford said, was the collection and extraction of roadway characteristics data on non-state federal aid roadways.

AppGeo has worked with strategic partners throughout the project. Works Consulting, specializing in linear referencing systems (LRS), has provided insight into the ADOT systems and geospatial data models. MIL Geospatial provided significant data extraction support. 1Spatial’s 1Integrate product was also key for extracting data such as right-of-way and roadway characteristics along with updates to the LRS to support ARNOLD. Developing rules for quality control and validation from feature to feature were also key for the project, which 1Integrate helped with.

RCI Project Phase 1

The first phase of the project included an ADOT data and systems review, data discovery, database modifications, data processing workflow enhancements, and data gap analysis. It also included significant data extraction, validation, analysis, and quality assurance and control, along with data lifecycle and maintenance planning.

Caitlin Schneider, Senior GIS Analysis, CSM Applied Geographics, kicked off Phase 1 with a strategic assessment and recommendations that covered database schema updates, changes to the roadway characteristics editor environment in ADOT’s use of ArcGIS Roads and Highways, and incorporation of MIRE data lifecycle management into the ADOT system.

The recommendations in Phase 1 were key to reducing redundancy and increasing efficiency for ADOT, Schneider said.

One recommendation that proved key to the project was the RCI tracker feature class. It allowed analysts to query to see which routes were assigned to them for processing. This showed routes in progress, and it allowed the management team to track progress more easily and see the bigger picture.

The analyst team was responsible for extracting 36 data items on non-state owned roadways, which they completed by examining Google Street View and aerial imagery.

“A key part of this is updating the documentation continually,” Schneider said. “As analysts come across scenarios that we’ve never seen before, we’ve often found that these unique scenarios can come up again as we extract more and more. Because we do this as we go, we’re now able to quickly and easily answer questions and point people to the right place in the documentation.”

RCI Project Phases 2 and 3

Phases two and three of the project were both focused on continuing to evolve ADOT’s processing methodologies and workflows, keeping ADOT on the front edge of MIRE 2.0 and other requirements. By the end of phase 3, the teams had processed nearly 7,000 more roadway miles.

These phases had a larger focus on MIRE requirements and included a MIRE gap analysis of the work that still needed to be done to comply with the FDEs.  This resulted in a recommendations report for ADOT to allow them to prioritize the rest of the project.

Phase 2 also included the development of a script that the team could run at any point to evaluate progress toward MIRE 2.0, Schneider said. Using the ArcGIS Overlay Route Events tool, they were able to segment each data item to find the extent of the data item along the network or discover where the data is missing the required attribution.

“We could then sum the total mileage and write that to an output table that has the data item name and those mileage numbers,” she said. “Those numbers would then tell us how much mileage was gained from the last time the script was run to now, showing how close we are to a hundred percent network-wide coverage.”

Another big focus appearing in these phases was the need to combine the efforts of the RCI project with work that the ADOT safety team already started, said Ryan Blum, Manager of Geospatial Data Operations at Works Consulting. The safety team had already begun efforts to comply with MIRE with their junctions data set, and their work had to be consolidated into the project.

“We looked at the actual shapes of the two junction sets, the LRS definitions of them, and the written definitions to try to determine where there were matches and where there weren’t,” Blum said. “We came up with a process where the analyst could take the time to review the junction, but not actually have to make the edits. We were able to use automation to help determine the matches to save on budget and time.”