3 Insightful, Innovative Maps to Celebrate on GIS Day
Every year, on the third Wednesday of November, GIS enthusiasts and professionals around the world come together to celebrate GIS Day, a vibrant occasion that highlights the power and potential of geographic information systems. A time where we can all recognize and celebrate our collective efforts to provide insightful analysis, helpful tools, and accurate data to assist with data-driven decision-making. Oh, and make some pretty awesome maps.
Having the opportunity to work with a ton of amazing organizations across the U.S., we’re able to see on a weekly basis some truly cool and innovative applications of GIS for government. This year for GIS Day, we’d like to draw attention to three organizations: Cobb County, Georgia; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and New Braunfels, Texas. Each of these cities demonstrate creative and effective use of Esri ArcGIS and OpenGov to inform their constituents, provide easy-to-use tools for their staff, and expand the audience and increase visibility of their efforts.
Cobb County, GA Parks
This year, the team at Cobb County Parks created a perfect example of pairing leading-edge ArcGIS tools and OpenGov to deliver up-to-date fishing information on county-maintained ponds. When a pond is determined to require “maintenance,” such as re-stocking, the work is tracked in OpenGov and automatically shared to the community through an easy to use ArcGIS Hub site.
By visiting the Hub site—easily navigated to by taking a picture of a QR Barcode on the fishing pond sign with your smartphone—statuses are displayed and are updated in real time as work, such as restocking, is completed in Cartegraph. Additionally, park users can fill out a Survey123 form to share their fishing experience feedback directly with the Parks team. How cool is that?
City of Colorado Springs, CO
Colorado Springs has also embraced ArcGIS and OpenGov solutions to not only gain internal operational efficiencies, but also actively share their work and asset management activities with their residents to ensure transparency and reduce impact on those citizen.
Residents of Colorado Springs can visit a map published in ArcGIS Online that clearly shows areas where roads or lanes are closed, the presence of traffic control devices, and the status of those projects. Just to sweeten the deal, the City also incorporated a Waze integration so that users of the app could see those same “cone zones” as well.
City of New Braunfels, TX
Pavement management is a large part of any community’s asset management efforts, and one of the most visible and commented on by residents. For the City of New Braunfels, adopting Cartegraph to track their pavement conditions and assist with their pavement management planning efforts allows them to easily answer the question, “Why are you re-paving or fixing that road?” backed up with cold, hard data.
The City has also taken the extra effort to share their pavement maintenance plans on their website, as well as current road conditions with their residents in an easily consumable web app. Transparency at its finest!
As illustrated above, organizations nationwide are finding added value in utilizing two of their mission critical software solutions in tandem. In the process, they are increasing visibility into the decision-making process, sharing key information to their constituents, and in the process making some pretty sweet maps!
Take these examples with you and see if you could apply similar concepts to drive your organization forward, and if you are looking for other options to utilize ArcGIS and OpenGov together to create some “awesomeness”, the experts at OpenGov are always happy to chat. Happy GIS Day — stay mappy!
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