Argis Solutions, Inc.
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Argis Success Stories

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OpenAI Streamlines Data Collection for Residential Fire Deaths

FEMA’s educational mission for residential fires 

One of the purposes of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Fire Administration is to manage disasters by providing risk reduction education. Each day via internet search, FEMA culls the previous day’s information related to residential fires with fatalities and whether a functional smoke detector was present. This daily data gathering helps FEMA raise awareness regarding the danger and frequency of residential fire deaths through its Home Fire Fatalities in the News landing page. The process was manual, requiring several hours to an entire day of Google searching by a single employee. 

Transitioning to an automated process 

Recognizing the time savings a modernized workflow could offer, FEMA enlisted Tepa LLC to develop an automated process. Tepa utilized Argis Solutions, Inc. as a subcontractor to achieve this goal. 

Working together, Tepa and Argis developed an automation of the data collection process utilizing Python scripting and web scraping. A Google custom search engine scans for any news articles related to residential fire incidents using common search terms and develops a list of reported incidents. Text from each article is scraped to collect further information such as the date, location, cause, and number of fatalities using the OpenAI API. Once the information is parsed out, the script creates an Excel report. The report sorts articles by incident date and location so duplicate stories can be easily viewed and the most accurate article chosen from the selection of duplicates. At the end of each nightly run, the program emails the report to any email addresses provided for FEMA employees to review in the morning. 

Data collection in seconds 

With the new automated process, this information takes only six to eight seconds to collect, offering considerable time savings. As OpenAI continues to learn and improve its searching ability, the results will become even more refined, continuing to improve the process. 

“Working with Argis is a real pleasure,” said Nathan Wysocki, GISP and technical project manager for Tepa, LLC. “The team we formed worked very collaboratively and seamlessly to solve a very complex and uncommon request from our client. The real challenge of this project was determining the best method for automating the daily scouring of the internet for house fire fatalities reported in news articles. Argis suggested and delivered an AI solution that significantly reduced the number of articles needed for review by a staff member, lowering the number of daily human hours required to search for and catalog results.” 

BIM and DEM Transform Structural Engineering Evaluations

A leading home warranty company transforms their structural claim evaluations using BIM and DEM, leading to a faster, less expensive, more accurate process.

A Home Warranty Company with High Standards

With almost 40 years of experience, 2-10 Home Buyers Warranty offers home warranties for homeowners, real estate agents, and builders. Their 10-year insurance-backed warranties offer protection to homeowners and builders in the event a load-bearing element is found to be unsafe or the home is determined to be otherwise unlivable. 

Previously, the determination of whether or not a structure is unlivable was subjective until the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Post-Tensioning Institute recognized an engineering standard was needed to define excessive foundation movement in a home. An industry leader, 2-10 Home Buyers Warranty adopted that gold-standard engineering criterium to determine the livability of a structure for their home warranties, offering assurance of complete coverage for their clients.

The evaluation process for a structural claim begins with an engineer visiting the home site to look for evidence of foundation shifting—cracks in drywall, sagging floors, etc. The engineer then surveys the home’s elevation to determine the foundation’s extent of movement. 

Challenge: Developing an In-House Structural Evaluation Process

Originally, 2-10 HBW used a third-party engineering vendor for these evaluations, but when their vendor began making preparations to cease operations they began to take a closer look at other solutions. Examining their options, they chose to bring their engineering work in-house due to the cost savings it would offer. However, with this decision, the evaluation process would need to be streamlined because of the limited number of engineers on staff. They opted to invest in an improved software solution.

Solution: Building Information Modeling and Digital Elevation Models with ArcGIS Pro

Recognizing the answer was in building information modeling (BIM) and digital elevation modeling (DEM) on a minute scale, Argis Solutions developed a program for 2-10 HBW using an ArcGIS Pro extension built to work on the Esri platform that, using measurements of a home’s elevation, visualizes them as a small-scale elevation model of the foundation. These measurements are then run through analyses using Esri’s ArcGIS Pro with the ArcGIS 3D Analyst extension, including kriging, to create a map of the elevations of the floor slab. 2-10 HBW’s engineering department is then able to draw lines across the elevation model to determine the worst foundation deflections and tilts, giving them the ability to quickly determine whether or not a structure exceeds L/360 deflection or 1% tilt criteria. An additional utility built into this ArcGIS Pro Add-in is the ability to automatically create the lines for the engineer.

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Result: Faster, Less Expensive, and More Accurate

The evaluation process for 2-10 HBW is now faster, more accurate, less labor-intensive, and much less expensive to implement. Paul Thomas, national risk manager for 2-10 HBW’s New Home Division, had their engineers perform extensive quality assurance testing, taking past findings from their old program and comparing them with the new Argis-designed program to see if they matched.  He said, “We discovered our results were mostly the same. When they were different, the Argis program was more accurate than the original findings.”   

With the reduction in labor, 2-10 HBW will also able to handle a higher volume of analysis, which will be important as they look ahead to processing claims from Colorado’s 2016-2019 building boom. Considering the future volume from the building boom, Thomas said, “When we start looking at future home claims, if we hadn’t switched to this process, I don’t think we would have been able to keep up with the warranty market demands.” 

As an industry leader, 2-10 HBW hopes their competition will embrace rigorous ASCE and PTI engineering standards as well as this new, more accurate structural evaluation process so that all consumers are offered the highest level of protection, ensuring safety for all new homeowners.  

Dynamic 3D Visualization: Developing a Cost-Conscious Solution for Viewing Complex GIS Data

An engineering company bridges the communication gap for clients using dynamic 3D visualization.

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“A picture is worth a thousand words” is true. Our brains’ rapid visual processing power makes images preferable to a mountain of text or numbers every time. One of the most common consulting problems Argis Solutions is asked to solve is how to efficiently communicate highly technical GIS information to our clients’ non-technical customers. We love these types of challenges because crafting custom GIS solutions is one of our specialties. 

Challenge: Upgrading Risk-Integrity Management Software with 3D Visualization Capabilities

An engineering company developed risk-integrity management software to help their clients in the energy sector effectively operate their assets. Their problem: the system they originally developed was in PHP, a widely-used, general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. PHP lacked the spatial context the engineering company needed to communicate complex, textual GIS information to clients with no GIS expertise— they were looking for a 3D visualization of their “thousand words.” Converting the entire project to a more spatially appropriate solution would be costly. They needed a better solution.  

Solution: Building a Bridge to Modernization

Examining the limitations and problem-solving opportunities that they presented, Argis developed a dynamic 3D mapping solution that would work with PHP. Experimenting, the development team found that isolating the code from PHP was the most efficient way to solve this challenge. They created a JavaScript transport layer to communicate between the modern platform they designed. The core product was coded in HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript.

Result: Consistent, Dynamic, Cost-Effective Communication

With this communication transport layer, information flows between the two platforms consistently and concurrently. This solution works dynamically, meaning it can be used over and over as new PHP is developed in the original product offering. This resourceful, cost-effective solution integrates modern technology with a HTML website making the tool much easier to operate for the end user. Equipped with the ability to offer their customers 3D visualization of energy assets, our clients can bring their now-complete product to market with 3D GIS front-end integration to customers, providing a clear, compelling view of their customers’ geospatial data.