The following is a collection of quotes from producers and users of the Arkansas Centerline File program.

Dale Booker, Nevada County 911 Coordinator, Prescott, Ark.

“In Nevada County, Centerline and Point Addressing has been in service for approximately eight years, this has greatly reduced the response time of our ambulance service, fire departments and law enforcement. All of our ambulances and sheriff cars have laptop computers on board. Therefore, they can see where they are, as well as where they need to go. For our emergency responders this has been the most time saving and valuable tool this county has ever invested in.”

Tony Rinehart, Calhoun County O.E.M., Physical Addressing & 911, Hampton, Ark.

“In Calhoun County, we have just recently made our conversion from rural route addressing to physical addressing. Already we have seen a drastic improvement in response times of our responders. As we continue to improve our physical addressing we expect them to continue to improve. Physical Addressing in Calhoun County has also allowed for easier access to our residents for private delivery personnel such as UPS, Fed X and also public utilities. The future is bright for us with the implementation of physical addressing and 911, we can build on our capabilities with additional equipment such as laptops in our Law, Fire & EMS vehicles that will take the ‘guess work’ out of responding to a resident in our county. Quicker response times save lives, property & money. The efforts that Calhoun County has put forth are truly beneficial to all the residents of our county as well as the responders.”

William “Carey” Wilcoxson, GIS Specialist, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, Ecological and Engineering Services Division (GIS Section), Calico Rock, Ark.

“Where roads and highways form the boundary lines for the different deer zones (and other wildlife zones) across the state, the AGFC has traced centerline data to improve the data quality and accuracy of the Zone polygons. When zoomed in, poorly digitized data may cross the highway from one side to the other.  Now a hunter can be more accurate as to which side of the road is in a particular zone and the maps look much better. Centerline data made this data quality improvement fast and easy using the Trace tool.”

Mark Jaeger, Geographic Field Analyst, Tele Atlas, Little Rock, Ark.

“It has been a huge help to use the ACF in my 8 years with Tele Atlas.  I use the ACF on a daily basis to help find missing roads or misnamed roads that are in our database.  I drive around to every county in Arkansas and find that most the time the road in question has no street sign or pillar.  I then reference the ACF and the question is answered. Thank you for providing this data free of charge to help digital cartographers all over the state.”

Sharon Hawkins, Section Head- Mapping and Graphics, Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department, Little Rock, Ark.

“Here in the Mapping and Graphics Section, we compile all 75 County maps, 520 city maps, many special project maps and the State Highway Map.  We are of course up-to-date on the State Highway System, but the Arkansas Centerline File has been an extremely helpful tool to identify names of county roads and city streets to place on our maps and to verify names that we have had on our maps.

Three years ago, our Technical Services Section started the process of expanding our State Highway Linear Referencing System to include all county roads and city streets that we currently have in our road inventory.  We were able to capture the needed county roads and city streets from the ACF data and quickly input them into our expanded LRS.  We know that we saved a lot of time on this project because of the ACF.
There is not a day that goes by that we don’t verify or locate a city street or county road with the ACF.  We appreciate the time and effort that the AGIO, counties and cities have put into this.”

Jim Wheeless, GIS Coordinator, City of Bentonville, Bentonville, Ark.

“We use the Benton County centerline data as a crucial data set in our New World dispatch software. The software dispatches police, fire, and ambulance.  New World is very map dependent.
Every police car, ambulance, and fire vehicle is equipped with a GPS beacon.  New World uses the location of the vehicle and the nature of the emergency to determine who to dispatch and any backup agency that should be notified.
Every police car, ambulance, and fire vehicle  is also equipped with a rugged laptop, which uses the centerline file along with other feature classes to show the emergency provider where they are and where all the other emergency vehicles are located and the location of the caller.
Without the centerline file this software could not be implemented.”

Robin Gregory, Geospatial Education Specialist, Center for Advanced Spatial Technology at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Ark.

“During the last four years I have had the honor of using the most up-to-date road file that exists for geospatial data in the state of Arkansas…  The ACF provides K12 students in EAST (Environmental and Spatial Technology) classrooms all over Arkansas the availability to create address locators for multiple geocoding and network bus routing projects.  Geocoded information from the ACF has also been used to determine which citizens may be impacted in the event of a disaster; such as flooding or tornado siren placement. The ACF provides ‘priceless’ information for Arkansans.”

Malcolm D. Williamson, Geospatial Applications and Education Manager, Center for Advanced Spatial Technology at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Ark.

“My EAST support team here at CAST has used the ACF data extensively with students of the 170+ EAST programs around the state. We’ve used the data both as a teaching tool, within the curriculum of the 2- and 3-day workshops that we provide for EAST schools, as well as for specific projects in which we’ve assisted students at various programs.
Applications have ranged from simple base map use to address geocoding and school bus routing, utilizing ArcGIS Network Analyst. ACF data has made possible GIS tasks in rural areas, which were not possible with previously existing public data.”

MarySue Passe-Smith, Lecturer, Department of Geography at the University of Central Arkansas, Conway, Ark.

“I use [the ACF file] to teach my Intro to GIS and Business and Social Science GIS Applications [courses for] student network analysis and geocoding. It is WONDERFUL to have really complete and accurate data available that also has attached spatial references.”

Christine Crawford, GIS Manager, Arkansas One Call, Little Rock, Ark.

“Arkansas One Call is the call before you dig service.  Every day we get numerous calls requesting help in identifying the dig sites across the state of Arkansas. Arkansas One Call processed 256,834 dig tickets last year and transmitted out 1,083,476 ‘locate’ requests.  We use the centerline file to help identify the correct dig site and the correct utilities in the area. This helps us in being proactive in protecting the underground facilities so that those services continue to run and are not damaged from excavation.”