“This is extremely important as the city grows,” said Matthews.

The Electric Department uses the system for outage management.

“When you call in to report an outage and we know where you’re at and then your neighbor calls in and then there are more calls and we are able to put the pieces together and see what is in common, whether it’s a fuse, breaker or substation,” said Matthews. “It pinpoints where the trouble is.”

For E-911, the GIS pinpoints locations based on cell towers from which the calls are relayed.

The Revenue Commissioner must know where everyone’s property is.

“When the people from Volkswagen were looking they wanted to know how a particular piece of property was zoned and what was around the property,” said Matthews. “When a lot is split, that must be reported to the tax assessor so he can program it.”

Carter said for his workers it’s a much faster way to detect and shut off a gas main leak.

“An example was a line was hit Wednesday night. We knew who had gas and on which side of the highway,” said Carter. “Especially if it’s raining, it really slows you down if you’re walking around looking for a meter.”

Carter said one of the regulations to which his department must adhere is periodically informing residents living near a pressure main of the danger of natural gas.

“The system will generate a report on which people live near the pressure main,” he said. “This system also takes over a lot of paperwork. We can scan reports into the system because the DOT Pipeline Safety Division requires records.”

“Mapping is just 50 percent of a GIS’s value,” said Matthews. “The other is the information that is stored in the system.”