2013 urisa track, reading retroreflectivity, an inventory of street signs in gillette, wy by chris...

In the summer of 2011 the City of Gillette, WY initiated a program to inventory all city owned street signs within its jurisdiction. This project was driven in part by the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) regulations on sign retroreflectivity. Equipped with a Delta GR3 Retroreflectometer and a GeoXH GPS unit a city sign technician and I inventoried nearly 5,000 signs over a four-month period. This presentation is a brief narrative of the sign inventory project. It begins with an outline of the initial data structure that was built to collect the sign data. Then, the field methods used to GPS the signs are covered. Next, the process of restructuring of the data to incorporate it into the GIS SDE database is discussed. Finally, the ongoing data maintenance of the inventory is reviewed. Thanks to hard work and cooperation between departments Gillette has meet the FHWA deadline to implement a management program for street sign retroreflectivity. It is hope this program can prove to be an example to other organizations that have yet to initiate a sign inventory. Investing in the technology, training, and people can bring spectacular results.