Masterful MowingOpen Source Geospatial Software Helps Keep City Beautiful

Project Summary

The City of Nanaimo, located on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, is known as “The Harbor City” for its location on one of the island’s eastern harbors. The city’s scenic views and picturesque streets make it a popular tourist site and a prime location for television and movie filming. With such importance placed on Nanaimo’s appearance, the city ensures that its green spaces are kept clean and tidy.

Using MapGuide Open Source, the City of Nanaimo expects to:

• Mow green areas twice as fast

• Answer customer inquirires up to 20 times faster

• Lower labor costs

• Share mowing schedules with citizens

The Challenge

Nanaimo’s Public Works department is tasked with mowing the city’s right of ways and other green areas. City workers found it confusing to manually track which areas they mowed each day. What’s more, they were tracking their progress by marking mowed areas with a pin on a paper wall map. If pin placement was not perfect, managers could not accurately assign work the next day. Because of

the confusion, some areas were serviced multiple times while several city streets or parks were not mowed all season – prompting complaints from citizens.

“Our Public Works department needed a web-based geospatial solution that let us track the mowing progress online – directly from the field,” says Matthew Dunstan, Senior Systems Analyst, City of Nanaimo. “We wanted to empower our field managers to record each day’s work on a laptop. Then, accurate information would automatically upload into our geospatial system. It would really help to ensure we covered the entire city.”

The Solution

Dunstan and team worked with Autodesk reseller DM Solutions Group to find technology that met their requirements while still being easy to use. They reviewed options such as custom desktop GIS software, but decided on web-based MapGuide Open Source as the most cost-effective solution.

Field managers now input their crews’ progress on mobile computers in real time. The information is automatically integrated into an easy-to-use

City of Nanaimo, British Columbia, CanadaMowing Management Application Customer Success Story Autodesk Geospatial SolutionsMapGuide Open SourceOracle®

“While low implementation costs played a large part in our decision, we also liked that we are free to thoroughly customize the MapGuide Open Source interface to meet our requirements. We’ve tailored the application to gather the exact information our end users need. For example, we can gather the date a particular street was mowed.”

Matthew Dunstan,Senior Systems Analyst,City of Nanaimo

map interface. Officials back at the office have an up-to-date picture of the day’s progress while monitoring crew locations and suggesting nearby areas that need service. The Public Works department can also monitor contractor performance and use the system as a tool to determine which contracts to renew for the next mowing season.

Complete Customization “While low implementation costs played a large part in our decision, we also liked that we are free to thoroughly customize the MapGuide Open Source interface to meet our requirements,” explains Dunstan. “We’ve tailored the application to gather the exact information our end users need. For example, we can gather the date and time a particular street was mowed.”

Now, when citizens call to inquire about service, Nanaimo’s Public Works representatives can open the map and give callers the exact date the area was last mowed. Before implementing the application, it was often difficult or impossible to answer inquiries. “Fielding service calls before implementing the solution disrupted the representatives’ responsibilities and lowered their effectiveness. They can now have an answer in minutes rather than hours,” says Dunstan.

FDO Data AccessThe lawn-mowing application is completely synchronized, making it user-friendly for the Public Works department’s front office. Another Autodesk reseller, SL-King, wrote an application that enables users to simply click on a desktop icon and synchronize all data between the Oracle database and SDF files. Both sets of information are instantly displayed on the application map. Using FDO Data Access technology, another open source software tool that provides seamless data integration for multiple proprietary GIS formats, employees have a single view of their information and save time by reviewing and updating data directly from the map.

“It doesn’t matter if an asset is housed in the database or saved as an SDF file, it is displayed on the map. Even our users with little technical

expertise can help to update the map,” says Guillermo Ferrero, Nanaimo’s Manager of Business Applications. The Result

Maximizing Schedules To Lower CostsOne of the project’s main goals was to streamline work schedules to make field crews more efficient. The mowing budget for 2007 is $247,000, which Nanaimo’s Public Works department feels is more than enough to adequately service the city. “When we set the project goals, we wanted to service each green area twice during the mowing season.” Ferrero explains. “While it is still too early to tell if we will make the goal, it is already clear that we have the tools and resources to make it happen.”

By maximizing schedules and accurately tracking serviced areas, the crews will be able to cover more ground in much less time – significantly lowering costs. “Essentially, we’ll be servicing twice as many areas using the same amount of money,” Ferrero adds.

The early success of the application has the city anticipating next year’s mowing season. By reviewing the progress and timelines of work tracked in the system, managers can better create work schedules for crews and contractors. They will know how long it takes to mow each area in the city and can generate the best routes to improve productivity.

Schedule SharingNanaimo plans to extend the application to both internal clients and citizens using Autodesk MapGuide® Enterprise internally and MapGuide Open Source externally. “The public will be able to visit our maps online and see the mowing schedules,” says Dunstan. “They’ll be able to see when their street was last mowed and when crews will mow it again.”

To learn more about how MapGuide Open Source is helping organizations quickly develop and deploy Web-mapping applications and geospatial Web services, visit www.autodesk.com/mapguide.

“Fielding service calls before implementing the solution disrupted the representatives’ responsibilities and lowered their effectiveness. They can now have an answer in minutes rather than hours.”

Matthew Dunstan,Senior Systems Analyst,City of Nanaimo

City of Nanaimo, British Columbia, CanadaMowing Management Application

Customer Success Story

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