A big territory

Don Short shows the new service territory map.

It was time for a change. The map of LPEA’s service territory, which hung for decades on LPEA’s board room wall, was truly outdated, but creating a replacement was not a small undertaking. Don Short, however, took on the challenge, and developed a large territory map that would be both useful and interesting to view.

Short is LPEA’s Manager of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) services. The position is a behind-the-scenes one, but it’s vital to the cooperative for integrating hardware, software and data to manage, analyze and display all forms of geographically-referenced information.“GIS allows us to view, understand, question, interpret and visualize data in many ways,” says Short, who has been with LPEA since 1997. “GIS reveals relationships, patterns and trends in the form of maps, reports and charts.”

The new territory map, which was printed on a canvas-type material, is approximately 5' X 10' and features the LPEA board districts, main highways and municipalities, plus provides at a glance the location of all of LPEA’s substations and main transmission lines, and more. As infrastructure evolves within LPEA's territory, the map and frame can easily be taken down and the canvas replaced with a new map to reflect updates.