Since 1986 Rick Engineering Company has been a pioneer in developing leading edge Geographic Information Systems (GIS) products and services in our industry. Today, Rick Engineering Company is recognized as an industry leader in the innovative application, efficient utilization and customization of GIS products and services for our clients.

Select from our products and application categories below for more information:

Water Resources | Digital Terrain Modeling
Environmental Impact Assessment | Utility Mapping
Assessors Parcels & Land Use | Topography Contours
Image Rectification | Remote Sensing


Water Resources has become a prime recipient of the benefits of using custom GIS tools and automation programs. This is possible through a uniquely powerful combination of the industry standard ESRI ArcGIS and ArcInfo software, and our experienced professionals, who know how to apply these tools to save you time and create better, more accurate work products.

 Our team of experienced technicians will work together with your Water Resources and Storm Water personnel to develop unique and innovative GIS programs, saving you time and money, as well as making your analysis more accurate.

GIS Programming can automatically calculate:

Hydrologic Basin Areas

Flowline Lengths

Flowline Slope

Runoff Coefficient

Soils Types within Basins

Land Use within Basins

Many, many others ....

FEMA Floodplain maps have always been difficult to use. The lack of detail on these hardcopy maps has made the important task of overlaying the floodplains over a project area extremely cumbersome and inaccurate.

FEMA floodplain mapping is now available in digital GIS format for many areas. This allows floodplain data to be easily overlaid onto color aerial imagery, or any CAD or GIS information. We can then output the floodplain delineation into any CAD, GIS or other graphics format for your use.

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Digital Terrain Modeling using GIS allows easy creation of Slope Analysis, Slope Aspect (Direction) Mapping, Elevation Mapping, Contour Creation, Intervisibility Analysis and Earthwork Quantity Cut and Fill Analysis.

To the right is an Elevation Relief map of San Diego County. Using a 3D Digital Terrain Model of the entire project region, created from USGS data, allows us to provide comprehensive and cost effective terrain modeling services.

A very effective tool is the ability to view Digital Terrain Models color coded by elevation. Shown below is a portion of the County of San Diego shown with elevations color coded in both plan view and 3D perspective views. These products can easily be created from contours or spot elevation information. The contour interval and/or point density can be adjusted up or down to facilitate modeling a single project site or region as shown below.


Elevation Relief Mapping shown in both plan view and 3D perspective

3D Modeling using GIS can be extended down to the "Building" level. The image below shows a GIS 3D model of downtown San Diego with the major buildings color coded based on building height ranges. This type of "intelligent" 3D GIS modeling is very powerful and shows "analytical" data in a format that is easily understood.


3D GIS Model of Downtown San Diego with buildings colored to indicate building height ranges.

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Environmental Impact Assessment is an absolute necessity for any project that will impact undisturbed vegetation or habitat.

Rick Engineering Company maintains a huge amount of publicly available Geographic Information Systems (GIS) information which includes Environmental GIS data required for comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessment. More than eighteen years of experience using GIS to perform Environmental Impact Assessments and Development Constraints Mapping means Rick Engineering Company can perform knowledgeable, comprehensive and cost effective GIS products and services for our clients. Utilizing the full suite of the industry standard ESRI ArcGIS and ArcInfo software suite ensures maximum functionality, flexibility and compatibility.

The layering of sensitive habitats and vegetation types with the proposed projects impact footprint, and quantifying the area of disturbed habitat is a prime example of the power of GIS.

Immediate access to existing environmental information allows comprehensive yet efficient Environmental Assessment which is crucial for successful land development projects.
   
Assessing a project's environmental impact is
crucial in today's sensitive "developable" areas.

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Utility and Facility Mapping. Rick Engineering Company has successfully managed many challenging facility mapping projects using GIS.

A project of note involved the conversion of storm drains from hundreds of conventional hardcopy plans into an "intelligent" GIS database for the entire unincorporated areas in San Diego County. This project was necessary to meet a Regional Water Quality Control Board requirement and had a very short time frame for completion.

Any existing hardcopy plan or imagery can be scanned and rectified, or "fit", into any real-world coordinate system. The plans can then be displayed on a computer monitor and lines can be drawn over the scanned image using the computer. This technique is known as "Heads-Up Digitizing" and is far superior to conventional methods of converting hardcopy information into GIS databases.

Using innovative techniques, including "Heads-Up Digitizing", helps the successful
and timely completion of utility and facility mapping projects

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Assessors Parcels and Land Use. Assessors Parcel information is available in "Intelligent" GIS format. By using this information it is now very efficient to perform property research at the Assessors Parcel level.

Initial project "Conceptual" studies can utilize the Assessors Parcels for project boundary. By overlaying the Assessors Parcel data onto the available GIS informa-tion a multitude of analysis can be performed such as allowable Dwelling Units, sewer, water and storm drain availability, school, fire, water, sewer district determinations, contiguous ownership parcels and much more.

Existing and Planned Land Use GIS information is used in conjunction with Assessors Parcels, Hydrologic Basins, Soils Types, Vegetation Communities and many others in determining crucial facts about proposed projects.

 
Existing and Proposed Land Use GIS data allows efficient determination of crucial
project aspects such as allowable Dwelling Units for residential projects

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Topography Contours can be easily created using the 3D Terrain Modeling functionality of GIS. Contours can be created from GIS, CAD, ASCII, Survey Data or Hardcopy formats at any interval that the base modeling data will support.

This elevation data can then be used for other products, including Slope Analysis, Aspect Mapping, Intervisibility Analysis, Digital Terrain Modeling and 3D Computer Modeling and Animation.

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Image Rectification. GIS software allows any hardcopy plan or image to be rectified, or " fit", into any real-world coordinate system. Shown below is an aerial image that has been "fit" to a street network. This is a very efficient method of importing documents and drawings into the GIS environment.


Color aerial image rectified or "fit" to a street network.

Remote Sensing. Shown below is an Image Rectified (IR) photo. GIS image processing software allows a special task called Remote Sensing to be performed. Using image processing tools, we can identify and delineate different types of vegetation based on the IR aerial imagery.


Image processing software allows
remote sensing and delineation of vegetation communities.