Aspen Environmental Group is implementing a Geospatial Resource and Asset Sustainability Program (GRASP) to maintain an inventory of infrastructure assets and sensitive resources within a utility’s corridor rights-of-way and streamline environmental planning and permitting for operation and maintenance (O&M) activities.
GRASP is a state-of-the-art GIS-based modeling tool that catalogues and analyses all infrastructure and environmental resources, as well as high-resolution orthophotography, videography, and LiDAR. Based on sensitive resources in the field, a utility can develop pre‑negotiated Resource Conservation Measures (RCMs) to protect sensitive resources during O&M activities within utility jurisdictional rights-of-way. These RCMs are included in GRASP and can be used by a utility in pre‑planning to prioritize O&M activities, as well as in real-time by the crews in the field via gradated areas of continuous versus intermittent maintenance activities based on various factors, including impact on the resource type, type of maintenance activity, spatial data accuracy, regulatory audit needs, and others. Benefits of GRASP include increased worker and public safety, and significant savings of time and money from streamlined environmental reviews by the utility, land managers, regulatory and resource agencies. By developing the model in a GIS, resource specialists can assists the field crews with daily work routines and keep a utility in compliance with land management practices and regulatory requirements for the conservation of resources. The GIS-centric database can be operational and used on a daily basis by a utility’s resource managers, field crew managers and staff, land management, and regulatory agencies to identify and plan work based on sensitive resource protection requirements. GRASP was developed as a response to various utility regulatory and compliance needs and has successfully been used in utility corridors in the Western US.
