WLIA 2025 Annual Conference Appleton

Are you curious on how you can use GIS to improve your community through grant programs? If the answer is yes, then this presentation is for you!

Outagamie County recently received a Community Connectors Grant from Smart Growth America to develop a vision for West College Avenue (just a short walk away from the conference hotel). The Avenue stretches over 2.5 miles through the Town of Grand Chute and the City of Appleton, connecting numerous commercial and residential hubs. Despite the significance of West College Avenue, it grapples with numerous challenges such as lack of bicycle/pedestrian facilities, lack of visual appeal, and dangerous road conditions. So what does this all have to do with GIS? For this grant we used ArcGIS Hub to create a website to reach residents, business owners, and visitors about this new grant program. We also used ArcGIS Online to create a variety of maps, so individuals could orientate themselves and identify areas of interest. Survey123 was also used so people could voice their opinion on the future of the Avenue. Drones were used to do an aerial tour of the Avenue to better visualize the entire study area and how adjacent properties play a role into the current conditions. Business Analyst was also used to pull demographic and commercial data for our study area. For this presentation you will learn more about the grant as a whole and how the above GIS tools were all used in tandem with one another to elevate this project. You will also learn how you can take these ideas back to your communities’ to elevate your own programs, regardless if it’s grant funded or worked into your annual budget.

There are several new federal funding opportunities pertaining to safety, such as Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) which require a significant degree of GIS analysis. To capitalize on the funding opportunity, ECWRPC has developed a Comprehensive Safety Action Plan to allow communities in the Appleton and Oshkosh MPO to apply for federal SS4A funding. Using Wisconsin’s Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory crash data, as well as environmental factors determined by community stakeholders, a High Injury Network was defined for the roadway network. With the first solicitation of SS4A funding following Plan approval, the City of Oshkosh was able to successfully apply for SS4A Implementation funding to build a pedestrian bridge over IH-41, mitigating the conflict between non-motorists and vehicles occurring at the roundabouts surrounding the interstate.

You "shell" attend this session, if you want to learn more about how four individuals came together from different backgrounds to work on mapping broadband connectivity for the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Grant program.