Collaborating to Improve Communities with GIS

George Nikokiris, a GIS Specialist with Abonmarche Consultants, shares how his team is collaborating with communities large and small across northern Indiana to map their water supply lines to root out lead.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
From Esri, this is Engagement Matters, a show about people whose work depends on engaging

(00:10):
with stakeholders to make meaningful change.
No matter how you define your community, you can learn from the experts we talk to as they
share their stories about motivating groups of people to care about issues and take action.
On today's show, we'll talk with George Nikokiris, who is a GIS specialist with Abonmarche Consultants,

(00:32):
as he shares how critical engagement is to regional lead pipe replacement efforts.
So first of all, George, thanks for being here today.
We appreciate you taking time out of the work that you're doing to talk to us.
Yeah, thanks for having me on.
I'm excited to talk about some great stuff with you.

(00:54):
Yeah, me too.
So before we get into all that great stuff, though, could you kind of talk a little bit
about how you got into GIS and community engagement?
Yeah, absolutely.
So I'm originally from Chicago, Illinois.
My parents are immigrants from Europe, so we grew up with a lot of exposure to the multiple

(01:16):
cultures of Chicago, it being a multicultural city and that exposure to that and travel
around the world, travel to Europe, and also getting an atlas every year for Christmas
when I was six, seven, and eight years old, kind of, it destined me to pursue a career

(01:37):
in GIS and get into maps.
And that's what I did.
I studied geography at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois.
And then I graduated at the height of the recession.
And the only jobs that were available with GIS were with the Department of Defense.
So I started my career there, spent the next 15 years working across many defense contractors

(02:00):
and small mapping companies that were producing GIS data and maps for mission support, things
like that.
It was very exciting work.
And I moved after the pandemic, I transitioned into the AEC industry, which is "architectural
engineering and construction."
And that's where I work right now.

(02:21):
I work for Abonmarche Consultants.
We're a traditional engineering firm based in the Great Lakes region in Southwest Michigan,
Northern Indiana.
We have 11 branches spread out across large population zones across those two states.
And with that also, I did a lot of volunteer work.

(02:45):
I lived for 11 years in St. Louis, Missouri, and I was involved with a non-for-profit organization,
a neighborhood association making maps for nonprofit leaders, worked a lot with local
politicians, the mayor of St. Louis and aldermen.
And it really made me interested in using maps to help local government.

(03:10):
So being at my position now, it was just a natural destination for my career path.
So I'm happy to be doing a lot of the same things, working with communities.
It's always interesting to learn how people get into GIS.
You know, some people just kind of fall into it and some people were like you born into

(03:30):
it almost.
So pretty cool.
So what I'd really like to dig into a little bit more is the work that you're leading in
Southwest Michigan and Northern Indiana around the lead pipe inventory and trying to help
people understand where the lead lines are.

(03:51):
It's been in the news a lot the last five, ten years.
There's been a lot of legislation helping to push this.
So if you could talk a little bit about that, that'd be really interesting to see your perspectives
on things.
So my organization being a traditional engineering firm, we already have established relationships

(04:12):
with a lot of the local governments, public works departments spread out across the 11
branches that my company is based in.
Right.
So we work together with these local governments as trusted advisors, as consultants in working
towards these programs against lead.

(04:34):
Right.
So we have learned through time that any amount of lead is harmful to humans, especially children.
And there's two factors that have evolved with this discovery.
America's infrastructure, especially water distribution systems, they were built at the

(04:55):
turn of the century.
At that time, there wasn't a lot of knowledge about the ramifications of lead pipes and
what it does to human beings.
So a lot of these pipes were built with lead.
And now we're going around and we're discovering that we need to start replacing these lead

(05:16):
pipes.
So part of that is getting the right information and the data, getting an inventory together
to get everything in place to start that replacement.
The other factor is the optics of the crisis in Flint.
So there were large levels of lead found in Flint, Michigan, and that has inspired the

(05:44):
federal government and states to put mandates in place to start the inventory to begin the
replacement process.
I see.
Okay.
And could you give me a sense of kind of the types of communities that you work with?
I mean, you're working with a whole variety of communities from small to large and everything

(06:05):
in between, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
We have a good mixture of small towns with populations around, you know, 1,500 or so,
to big cities that are often the county seats of their respective counties.
And so that reach is pretty broad, but we're finding that many communities simply don't

(06:27):
have the manpower or expertise to do this work, especially in Northern Indiana.
So that's why they've outsourced that work to us to be their guide in this realm.
Yeah.
Makes sense that you're almost an extension to the city or county or just town governments,
helping them kind of surge, so to speak, to get the work done, because this is a time

(06:52):
limited thing.
You're trying to identify all these different assets so that the work of replacing the lead
service pipes can be done faster, smarter, cheaper.
So I guess my next question is, you're working with all these different towns.
You must be learning a lot from interactions that you have with community A versus community

(07:13):
B. I'm interested to see, like, is there a playbook or something, or is there like a
template that you typically go into with a town?
Yeah, absolutely.
So with every community that we work with, we first have a big project kickoff where
we talk to city leaders or water superintendents are in the room, and that is based on what

(07:37):
type of data do they have?
Do they have any types of records that we can start with?
Our division is the GIS division and is under the digital solutions team.
So our job is to convert anything that is in digital format and put it into GIS.

(08:00):
We'll look at things like CAD data or as-built engineering diagrams and make that digital
and eventually get that furnished into GIS standards and data.
We'll work with these communities and find records that haven't been scanned and have
those scanned and then use those, put them as attachments to the GIS data to better improve

(08:26):
the inventory.
We will compile all of that information and put it into an ArcGIS online platform.
And with the grant money that's been made available to us from these lead programs from
the state, we use that money to stand up an ArcGIS online platform or a project delivery

(08:48):
site if those communities don't have one, an existing one.
And then we'll compile all of that data and we'll store it on that platform and keep furnishing
it, making the data better, and developing that inventory as a continuous process.

(09:10):
Now there are also communities that have an existing GIS department.
So we work in tandem as consultants, as GIS specialists.
We all work together and we supply all kinds of cool apps to help with the inventory.
We'll produce things in ArcGIS FieldMaps, put them on tablets where they could do GPS

(09:35):
collection of water assets on the ground that can help improve the accuracy of the inventory.
So every community has its own setup and we work carefully with city leaders on solutions
that make sense to them to achieve these goals.

(09:57):
Yeah, that's interesting.
So going into this talk, I assumed that you at Abonmarche would just like show up to a
city and start surveying.
You know, you'd send out tons of people and just start looking at pipes.
But really what you're doing is you're starting off by collaborating with the governments
first to see, like you said, what information is already available.

(10:19):
Like let's dig in and really build a foundation by leveraging your GIS to try to make that
the repository for all this data so that it's easier in the long run to keep building the
database but then also start communicating that information out to other folks.
So that's it makes a lot of sense when you describe it.
You know, it seems like it's a much smarter way to get to the end goal, which is eventually

(10:42):
replacing all these lead pipes.
So it seems like from your perspective, that engagement, that collaboration happens from
day one.
Could you kind of talk about how you engage the public, how you talk to them and communicate
kind of what's going on and the priority of the problem?
Yeah, so anytime we approach these communities that don't have a GIS system, we try to promote

(11:09):
the benefits of engagement.
So when we set up these things in place in terms of engagement on this program with the
community, well, then we would have already stood up an ArcGIS platform.
And part of that is also utilizing a lot of the tools in the toolbox that Esri provides.

(11:34):
Now, one of those is ArcGIS Hub.
And that's sort of like a website that can serve as a repository for GIS data and also
explain the goals of the program.
That's something that we've implemented and set up for these 16 communities in northern

(11:55):
Indiana that we work with.
So when we craft that message, we're trying to identify the specific needs that the community
might have, and we're focusing on the culture of that community.
So every city or town that we work with is distinctively different from one another.

(12:15):
You have older cities, newer cities, different demographics, different socioeconomic experiences.
And so our comprehensive approach with these city leaders, when we put out that information,
we want to make sure that it speaks to that community effectively.

(12:35):
And we create things like door hangers, flyers, mailers, and inserts for utility bills to
convey this message about lead in the water.
It's a very sensitive topic.
So crafting that message requires a lot of back and forth.
What's really cool about creating these types of public outreach items is that we can put

(13:00):
a QR code in there that points people to the ArcGIS Hub site that we have set in place
for these communities.
And the Hub site has been this focal point for this whole program.
It brings everything together.
And what's great about the Hub site is that we have information about all things lead

(13:26):
service line related, you know, the dangers of lead.
We have links from the EPA.
We have capabilities for people to self-report, take a picture of their own pipes inside their
homes that's supported by a Survey123 app.
All of that GIS data then gets ingested by our GIS team.

(13:51):
And then we help build up the inventory, which is later submitted to the state.
We have videos that are embedded on the Hub site on how to do a scratch test, how to find
out if your pipe is in lead.
It's just brilliant how much these Hub sites can store all of these great solutions.

(14:15):
We have dashboards that we can showcase on there, live maps.
It just goes on and on.
And it's so exciting to work with all of these cities because every Hub site that we put
up is different.
We've built these Hub sites with the city emblems, the banners and colors that mimic

(14:40):
their official websites.
And we can embed those links into the official website.
And this is all because of ArcGIS Hub.
Yeah.
Well, that's great feedback to hear.
I think it has a lot to do with how you guys are approaching these projects and how you're
implementing them.
You know, I mean, anybody can build a website, but it takes some foresight to stop and think

(15:06):
about what this kind of stuff really means to the public and how information is received.
You could build a Hub site that scares the heck out of people and says, "oh my gosh, there's
lead everywhere.
You're going to get sick and all this stuff."
But what you guys are really doing is you're custom tailoring.
You've got a template, but then you're custom tailoring it to each individual community,

(15:28):
focusing on the things that matter to them while also communicating what you're doing
to address the problem.
And then you're kind of setting expectations around transparency around the data that's
being collected.
You know, this is how far we've gotten.
This is how much farther we have to go.
It's all very clear.
And I really like this idea of developing not just the Hub site, but very focused applications,

(15:53):
like you mentioned, like the survey that really digs into helping the residents do their own
tasks so that they can be part of the solution.
Could you kind of talk about that survey a little bit more?
I think that's really interesting.
Yeah.
So part of the requirements to submit the inventory of these service lines to the state

(16:18):
is to provide the state with as much quality data and prove that these lines are in fact
lead or whatnot.
We're trying to figure out what the material is and the best record that you can get is
a picture of the pipe itself.

(16:39):
So we built these Survey123 apps that are embedded in the sites that are very easy
to navigate.
We make them simplistic, but we also get the guidance from the city leaders on how to do
it.
So they're driving the narrative and saying, okay, our residents, they're, you know, they're
more wary of this type of language.

(17:03):
Let's craft it in a way where it doesn't sound scary.
Let's remove lead and use another term.
And so that all factors into together and we build these apps and it's really remarkable
how effective it is.
We work with some communities that are very small and there are vacation communities.

(17:25):
And so you wouldn't think that there would be much participation, but there is, and it's
easy to utilize.
We find that the city leaders, mayors of towns, council members, they'll have council meetings
where they will talk about this program and they'll mention the site.

(17:48):
So it just points everybody to these surveys and it really engages the community.
And I'm just blown away by how effective it is because so many communities are so different
from one another, but the end goal is the same.
And it's been very successful and effective and we're just continuing to drive the momentum.

(18:14):
So we just keep adding communities in Northern Indiana, utilizing the same approach and model.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's funny - full transparency -
I actually looked at the survey that you guys built for Knox, Indiana and went through it
as if I lived there.
And then it made me think like, gee, I better go out and check my waterline here.

(18:37):
So I actually followed the steps that you guys had and it was super easy.
I mean, the thing that I thought was really cool about it is you guys are taking the perspective
of let's build these applications, let's build the survey, but you're really not asking a
whole lot of the resident.
It's just name, address, when was your house built, take a photo of the waterline and what

(18:59):
do you think the waterline is made out of?
So like five things.
I mean, it takes maybe five minutes to do.
So I think that's really what was interesting to me is that you make it so super easy to
try to get that information from a resident so that they're not having to become a waterline
specialist or a plumber on their own or something.

(19:21):
Yeah.
And it makes it easier because in the past, you know, the cities would have to send out
their own staff to enter the home and take the picture.
So maybe this is a more of a like a lease invasive way to capture data.
Because as I mentioned before, America's infrastructure is old.

(19:43):
That's why Washington, DC produced a program like the Infrastructure Act or Jobs Act to
start replacing these lead pipes.
When these lead pipes were put in place, this was done at the turn of the century, mostly,
especially in the Midwest and the Eastern side of the United States, older communities.

(20:06):
So there really aren't any viable records that showcase what types of materials these
pipes are.
So utilizing this approach makes it easier for us.
It's less invasive.
But we also supplement that by deploying volunteers and staff to conduct home visits and go to

(20:33):
these homes with a tablet, with field apps, with the survey there, and they can do the
survey for residents as well.
And then we use the Hub site to showcase the pictures of our home staff crew that's going
out volunteering and asking residents if they can let them in to take a picture.

(20:56):
And that's been effective as well.
Just because the lead program is such a sensitive topic, we're finding that the Hub site makes
it easier to connect with residents to make them feel assured that all will be well, that
we're all in this together.

(21:17):
That was George Nikokiris from Abonmarche Consultants sharing the engagement work that
goes into lead pipe replacement projects that he's involved with in the Great Lakes region.
To learn more about this work and the communities that George's team is helping engage, visit
Abonmarche.com

(21:39):
If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a colleague.
And don't forget to check out the other podcasts available from Esri, including "Field Notes"
and "Reinventing Planning."
Learn more at esri.com