GIS courses benefit Wheaton's Superintendent of Sewers
Since enrolling in his first Geographic Information System course at College of DuPage in 2007, Mike Jankovic has applied his newly acquired skills to his job as superintendent of sewers for Wheaton.
In fact, during last July's storms that resulted in severe flooding, Jankovic used his GIS expertise to produce maps that were used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the DuPage County Office of Emergency Management to assess the damage.
“I prepared maps of the flooded areas using our GIS, known flooding levels and topographical contour lines to graphically display and delineate these areas,” explained the West Chicago resident. “The aerial photography of the maps made them very easy to use. As a result, the relief personnel were able to take our maps and effectively deploy to the flooded areas. They readily found and canvassed the affected areas to talk to the home and business owners.”
Jankovic has completed five GIS courses at College of DuPage. He first enrolled because the infrastructure management system his department uses has a database and a GIS component.
“The Sewer division is responsible for the operation and maintenance of approximately 350 miles of sanitary and storm sewers, 4,000 sanitary manholes, six pump stations and 8,000 storm drains,” he said. “By using GIS with our database management system, I can create maps to evaluate spatial relationships of sewer features, illustrate work status or storm impacts for reporting to City Management and Council, respond to data requests from different departments, and plan and deliver maps for field crews that return them for input into the database.”
This is not the first time Jankovic has taken courses at College of DuPage, completing two BASIC programming courses during the late 1980s and several National Incident Management System courses.
He appreciates the high level of instruction at COD and particularly enjoyed Joe Adduci, his GIS instructor.
“Joe brings so much energy and enthusiasm to the classroom. He can make Excel beg for mercy and likely wears out a mouse a month,” Jankovic said. “His class is engaging and informative, and his enthusiasm for GIS and its multiple capabilities is infectious. Much of the coursework was quite time consuming and difficult. Joe always tried to get every student engaged, always encouraging and guiding us to improve our careers with GIS.
“My experience at COD has been great. The cost is reasonable and these GIS courses in particular have had a positive impact on my job and my future.”
College of DuPage is offering a new six-course GIS certificate. For more information, call (630) 942-3408 or e-mail quamjoel@cod.edu.