Working with partner Steve Fugate as a subcontractor to Whitewater Rescue Institute in Missoula, Montana, Tukman Geospatial provides GIS services to support the development of Geographic Response Plans (GRPs) for railroads carrying petroleum products in the northern Rocky Mountains. The GRPs provide an information  framework for responding to oil spilled by trains into waterways.  During the past three years, Tukman Geospatial has assisted with the creation of GRPs on numerous rivers including the Yellowstone, the Missouri, the Lochsa, and the Clark Fork.

The GRP projects begin with field data collection – Whitewater Rescue Institute staff use ESRI’s Collector App configured by Tukman Geospatial and Steve Fugate to collect information for each possible spill site. Data collected include the physical characteristics of the river at the assessment location, the equipment required to respond to a spill at the site, and site specific recommendations for how to deploy booms and other cleanup equipment. Each response site includes photos, narrative text, site evaluation and ancillary information.  Tukman Geospatial’s work on the GRPs includes the following tasks:

• Development of hosted web services and web maps to support field data collection using ESRI’s Collector App
• Python coding to automate data conversion, and to report on nearest distances from potential spill sites to nearest roads and equipment caches
• Cartography for final GRP PDF reports
• Development and hosting of multi-user database for collaborative editing of report data and maps