YMD Selects Simple GIS Software to Help Manage Water Permit Boundaries

Yazoo Mississippi Delta Joint Water Management District (YMD) recently selected Simple GIS Client, desktop GIS, to help manage its water permit boundaries. After a drought in 1988, the YMD was created to develop local, non-regulatory solutions for the growing water resource challenges in the Mississippi Delta. Since the early 1990’s, YMD has been managing permits for ground and surface water used for agricultural purposes. Part of this process involves mapping and managing the more than 27,000 permit boundaries as well as over 20,000 well points. As Hendrik van Riessen, the IT Director for YMD explained, the agency maintains its permit boundary data in shapefiles. The shapefile format, an industry standard for years, is an easy to use and inexpensive choice for Geographic Information System (GIS) data. In addition, because the shapefile format is so widely understood by multiple programs, it easily facilitates data transference across systems. In the case of YMD, the shapefile format can be natively transferred into its interactive web mapping application. However, traditional GIS programs only provide single-user access while editing shapefiles, which can create a bottleneck in data editing and maintenance. This was the issue facing YMD. According to Hendrik, YMD was looking for an inexpensive solution that would allow simultaneous user access to edit its GIS shapefiles. This function was one of the primary drivers for YMD to consider Simple GIS Client as the solution for maintaining its data. Unlike most traditional GIS applications, Simple GIS Client provides the capability for a team of users to access and modify shapefiles without file corruption. This feature has allowed Hendrik’s team to use Simple GIS Client on their local workstations to simultaneously access and edit the shapefiles hosted on the YMD fileserver, relieving the maintenance bottleneck and backlog.

According to Hendrik, another feature that has proven very useful is the customization of projects in Simple GIS Client. With Simple GIS Client, users can create their own custom scripts and menu/tool button items in their project file. Users can easily add to or remove standard menu items and tool buttons. This functionality allowed Hendrik to design a customized project for use along its existing permit database. This custom project file was saved to the YMD fileserver as well, allowing users to access this single project file for maintaining the permit boundary information. As Hendrik explained, many users involved in maintaining the permit information are not experienced GIS technicians. Therefore, the ability to create customized projects with only the menus and tool buttons necessary became beneficial to aid in user buy-in. This allows the user to only see the needed menus and tools required without being overwhelmed with additional menus they would likely never need. All in all, this solution provided the lightweight, inexpensive solution YMD was seeking to help manage its water resources permitting data.

About Simple GIS Software

Simple GIS Software, LLC is the maker of Simple GIS Client and provides easy to use and lightweight GIS applications for Windows. Our mission is simple; provide quality GIS software at the lowest price. Simple GIS Software is headquartered in Pineville, Louisiana. For more information, please visit our website at: https://simplegissoftware.com/simple-gis-client.

About YMD

Yazoo Mississippi Delta Joint Water Management District (YMD) is a Mississippi state governing authority created in 1989 to develop local, non-regulatory solutions to the growing water usage issues in the Mississippi Delta. For more information, please visit https://www.ymd.org/.