Friday

Breakfast in the Ballroom

Morning break in the Ballroom

For decades, the National Weather Service (NWS) and public safety officials have partnered to enhance the accuracy, relevance, and timeliness of weather warnings. By integrating ESRI based weather warning information into the Iowa DOT's MACH system, public safety officials are now able to visualize the warned area (polygon). In addition to providing warning system redundancy, this provides public dispatch centers a more visual means of identifying communities to sound outdoor warning sirens. In addition, the MACH software will allow an efficient method for public safety officials to communicate reports to the NWS without burdening the dispatch centers. Finally, the MACH software provides a method by which the National Weather Service can alert and directly communicate with public safety officials in the field.

Presenter: Josh Halterman - IDOT
Presenter: Kristy Carter - NWS Des Moines
Kristy Carter is a Meteorologist at the National Weather Service (NWS) in Des Moines, IA. She has been part of the NWS Des Moines staff for almost four years, two of them in her current role as a Meteorologist. Originally from the suburbs of Kansas City (KS), Kristy has a B.S. in Meteorology with a Minor in Music Performance from Iowa State University, and a M.S. in Geography from the University of South Carolina. Kristy’s research and focus areas have varied from studying snow and avalanches in Alaska, to assessing public attitudes about energy sources, to risk and science communication and various applications utilizing GIS, namely projects involving aspects of hazards and vulnerability mapping.

Conference Wrap-up in the Ballroom

Conference review IGIC/ICIT Board Meeting

Breakfast in the Ballroom

The Agricultural Conservation Planning Framework (ACPF) is a concept for agricultural watershed management supported by high-resolution data and an ArcGIS toolbox, which are used to identify site-specific opportunities to install conservation practices across small watersheds. The suite of around 40 tools uses elevation, landcover and soils data to site conservation practices such as nutrient removal wetlands, grassed waterways and terraces in agricultural fields. The tools have default values but some inputs can be adjusted to customize the results to reflect local knowledge. This presentation will introduce the concepts and history of the ACPF, data preparation, tool outputs, and how results may be used in the future.

Presenter: Josh Obrecht, Iowa State University
Josh is a GIS Analyst with the Iowa State University GIS Support and Research Facility. As a member of the GIS Facility, one of his roles to assist the ACPF Hub with data downloads, training, data updates, and many more. Outside of this role, he supports the ISU campus with research support for students, faculty and staff as well as to provide GIS education and outreach to the ISU community and the state of Iowa. He is currently a member of the IGIC board and their current treasurer.

Morning break in the Ballroom

Esri has created a Lead Service Line Inventory Solution to assist communities develop a lead service line inventory and monitor the replacement of service lines to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Lead and Copper Rule Revisions. Learn how the City of Manchester and City of Newton have adapted this solution to maintain their lead service inventory. What challenges did they face? How did this solution work in the “real life” of a small town municipal utility? Come and find out!

Presenter: Micah Cutler, GISP – Senior GIS Consultant at Schneider Geospatial
Micah assists counties and cities with developing, implementing, and managing their GIS and related systems. She especially likes working with rural communities and ensuring they are fully utilizing their GIS resources and skills. She has served as GIS Coordinator for several Iowa counties since 2000, while being an active member of the Iowa Geographic Information Council throughout her career. She has a B.A. in Geography and Earth Science from the University of Northern Iowa and a M.S. in Geography from the University of South Carolina. Micah lives in Iowa Falls with her husband, Brad Cutler, where she is currently serving on the Iowa Falls City Council.

Spatial data redundancy is an important aspect of the GIS data maintenance workflow, both in terms of redundant systems for catastrophic hardware failure, database instances in the case of database corruption but also at the spatial feature level while performing data updates. This presentation will cover the various aspects of ESRI database replication for updating production systems from development /acceptance environments to handle the data redundancy at the server and database instance level. For feature-level data, however, this presentation will explain how the use of Postgres rules can be used on ESRI versioned data to capture an edit session's changes in a separate layer for viewing and checking prior to committing those changes back to the default layer.
Postgres rule options can be used to capture all types of feature geometry changes, including geometry creation (INSERT), geometry or attribute revisions (UPDATE) and removal of features (DELETE), so users can have a duplicate layer that captures the same changes as the versioned dataset dynamically. The benefits of this duplicate layer include:
1) Enabling the user to get around refresh issues in ArcPro, when versioned features are not yet visible in the map view until committed back to the default version.
2) Sending updates to un-versioned dataset elsewhere in the database in either ST_GEOMETRY format (to participate in an ESRI topology) or PG_GEOMETRY format (for Postgres in-database analytics)
3) Allowing review of data edits by the data checker without impacting the edit session prior to posting the edits back to the default layer.
4) Ability to set-up the duplicate layer to replicate to another database instance, such as to an Acceptance testing environment.
5) Allowing the editor to use a different feature class naming convention that that of the published dataset, thus giving the editor flexibility while providing a means to normalize the dataset to one or more data standards for publication.
6) Providing the organization with data redundancy in case of database corruption or in the software, hardware or network failure. This is especially helpful when used in conjunction with replication or editor tracking.
7) Performing data replication or feature class back-ups without the need to coordinate with the data editor, avoiding the use of the versioned feature dataset altogether.
8) Enabling different database security strategies than that of the source layer, providing addition security options for the dataset and providing a good source for a data restore.

Presenter: Tracy J. McLane - Center for Survey Statistics and Methodology - ISU

Conference Wrap-up in the Ballroom

Conference review IGIC/ICIT Board Meeting

Breakfast in the Ballroom

Title: No-cost Cybersecurity Resources from the MS-ISAC

Workshop Description: Sharing information about the MS-ISAC, who we are, what we do and our no-cost cybersecurity resources that are available to our members. How our resources can be used to strengthen your cybersecurity posture and resiliency and how to access the resources that are available to State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial governments including public education, public healthcare, and public utilities. The presentation will be a joint presentation with a cyber security advisor from CISA.

Presenters: Megan Incerto and Jim Hoflen

Presenters Bio: Megan Incerto is a Regional Engagement Manager for the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center™ (MS-ISAC®), a division of the Center for Internet Security, Inc.®. Megan manages the MS-ISAC® members in the Midwest region and works with our nation's State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial (SLTT) governments. The MS-ISAC® provides no-cost and low-cost cybersecurity resources for our members with the goal of strengthening their overall cybersecurity posture and resiliency.

Morning break in the Ballroom

Title: Navigating the Worst Case Scenario – Encrypted and Exfiltrated

Workshop Description: We recently had the opportunity to assist an organization that found themselves in a situation that nobody wants to. Their network had been infiltrated by bad actors who then exfiltrated over 400GB of sensitive client and employee data just before encrypting all the machines on their network with ransomware. The exfiltrated data was subsequently released to the dark web where it was located by a cyber security website who wrote an article about it. This situation is just about as bad as you can imagine. Our presentation is a deep-dive case study of what happened, how it happened, how it could have been prevented and how they ultimately recovered, complete with timelines, screenshots from the hackers, info from the ISP, and more. The twists and turns in this story are incredible. You don’t want to miss it.

Presenters: Kevin is Co-Founder, President and Chief Technical Officer of ThinkGard and Kasi Koehler, Program Director

Presenters Bio: Kevin is Co-Founder, President and Chief Technical Officer of ThinkGard. He’s responsible for the Design and Implementation Services and Technical Support Team for the businesses. As an MBA graduate and a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, Kevin offers a unique ability to understand business needs and the technologies that facilitate them. Over the course of his career Kevin has created and implemented Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans for companies of all sizes and has a proven ability to work effectively with both technical teams and business executives. Kevin is an esteemed technology speaker in the public sector.
Since joining the ICAP team in 1991, Kasi has filled a number of positions within the organization. During her early years with the company, she served as the Administrative Assistant; she later moved to filled roles as a Claims Adjuster, Loss Control Coordinator, and Underwriting Assistant. After switching gears and moving to the pool's marketing department, Kasi went on to assume the role of Program Director, a position she continues to hold today. in her current role, Kasi frequently interacts with both members and agents alike; she is often "in the field," which means she is familiar with the risks and exposures faced by Iowa public entities. To help better evaluate and respond to those risks, Kasi obtained her personal and commercial lines insurance license in 2000. She has maintained that designation, and continues to put it to good use today. In addition, Kasi has achieved both her bachelors degree in business administration and her masters of business administration from Upper Iowa University.

Conference Wrap-up in the Ballroom

Conference review IGIC/ICIT Board Meeting