Dewberry/Merrick Partner for Water Management District in Florida

Team Provides Remote Sensing, LiDAR and Ground Surveying

Tampa, Florida/Aurora, Colorado – May 11, 2009 – Dewberry (Dewberry) , in association with Merrick & Company (Merrick & Company), has been retained by the St. Johns River Water Management District to provide topographic data collection and processing  for the Central Florida Coordination Area Surface Elevation Dataset project. As an agency of the state of Florida, the District is responsible for managing groundwater and surface water in all or part of 18 counties in northeast and east-central Florida. During this project, the first task order under Dewberry’s  three-year contract with the District, the team will use the latest in light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology to provide accurate information for a 320-square-mile area. When completed, the data acquisition process will provide new topographic data in support of water surfacing modeling and other engineering projects at the District. 

The joint survey covers approximately 3.6% of the 7.8-million-acre St. Johns District. The collected data will be used to support the District’s core missions of effectively managing water supply, surface water resource protection, and flood protection. By using the latest technology in LiDAR, the team will be able to provide a higher level of accuracy in data than is typically found with traditional surveying technologies. This increase in accuracy provides a higher level of quality in the base information the District uses, thus allowing the District to derive improved water and surface models.

 “We are excited about expanding our great relationship with Merrick to serve the District,” said Brian Mayfield, CP, GISP, GLS, director of remote sensing services for Dewberry. “Together, Dewberry and Merrick have performed over 11,000 square miles of services using the exact same specification as required by the District in the past 18 months. No other team is better prepared to serve the needs of the District than the Dewberry/Merrick team.”

During the project, breaklines will be collected for all significant hydrographic features, including closed water body features, linear hydrographic features including hydro connectors, coastal shorelines, island features, road features, bridges and overpasses, and seawalls. The final deliverables also include contours at 1’ and 2’ intervals, as well as a comprehensive set of reports and metadata. 

About Dewberry
Dewberry is a 2,000-person professional services firm with one of the largest and most comprehensive commercial geospatial practices in the United States. The firm also specializes in engineering and architectural design; program management; planning; and environmental services. Established in 1956, the firm has more than 40 locations nationwide, with headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. For more information, visit www.dewberry.com.

About Merrick & Company
Merrick & Company (www.merrick.com), an $85 million geospatial mapping, engineering, architecture, design-build, and surveying firm, serves domestic and international clients in the government, energy, life sciences, infrastructure, and mapping markets.  With a focus on the highly technical field of geospatial surveying and remote sensing, the firm’s most recent work includes providing mapping services for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; Cook County, IL; Xcel Energy; and the U.S. Air Force Space Command.