Street scene is the description of the roads, footways and verges that make up the environment we move around in, either on foot or in a vehicle. With tens of thousands of tourists each year, a vital economic contributor to the city, its imperative York minimises any adverse impact on its environment. With Exor the city council has established a holistic, targeted and proactive approach to managing the city's environmental infrastructure.
City of York Council recognizes their Street Scene is both unique and key to the continued success of the city. It is to this ancient walled city that thousands of tourists visit each year to admire the many buildings, streets, castles and museums that stand as a testament to its colorful heritage. Over the years Vikings, Romans, and Normans have all shaped this unique and beautiful city. It would be abhorrence to visitors if the street scene were considered untidy. They also recognize the community at large underpins the prosperity of the city and it is these factors that have contributed to the council's widely promoted ethos know as York Pride. Working with businesses and the community the council have strived to achieve a pride in the appearance of the city.
Keith Rowan of York Pride says, "We can't underestimate the value of tourism to the local economy and the wider area. York has to have comprehensive IT systems in place which will help us manage the complexity of reporting, co-coordinating and implementing the street scene policy."
One of the first initiatives implemented to achieve this was the establishment of the York Pride Action Line. A single point of contact service for the community and businesses to report all issues relating to the Street Scene. Currently receiving an average of 1,500 calls each week, there is no shortage of work for the team.
The action line is supported by a team of Street Environment Officers who supplement the reactive work identified via the action line, with proactive inspections of the Street Scene. York Pride officers can now carry out Best Value Performance Indicator (BVPI 199) Quality Inspection of random transects to grade areas in terms of litter and detritus.
Until the present time, the data collected from these various sources has been stored in a variety of databases. Acutely aware of the potential benefits of all this information, City of York Council sought to secure an IT solution which would offer full data integration and analysis functionality, allowing them to move from providing a predominantly reactive Street Scene service to a more proactive targeted service.
City of York officers implemented the Street Scene solution from Exor, incorporating Public Enquiry Manager, Maintenance Manager, and the fully integrated GIS Spatial Data Manager. The application is built in Oracle, and initially deployed in a client/server environment. Rowan further adds, "The next phase will provide the City with a fully web enabled implementation system. The project team and Exor will deliver a fully integrated and tailored solution founded on a National Street Gazetteer (NSG) road network and specific business rules defined by York."
Records of all properties within the city are stored in a database and located against the highway network. Hierarchical data modeling provides access to property and collection unit data from both maps and forms using simple drill down processes.
Relating wheeled bins and their attributes to properties allows the building and balancing of domestic and commercial refuse collection routes taking into account the precise nature of the highway network, the number of properties visited and the volumes of materials collected. Similarly, bin deliveries, bulky and trade collections can be scheduled with efficiency. The kerbside collection of materials is managed within Maintenance Manager, as is the management of the council's dedicated recycling sites.
The council's road network has been modelled and fully integrated with the authority's Highway Management system. Cyclic activities such as channel sweeping and gully cleaning can now be scheduled against the network, and contracts can be managed more effectively using the systems register of assets. A fully holistic approach to street scene management can thus be achieved with up to date data fully integrated from one common source
Reports made to the York Pride Action Line are now logged into Public Enquiry Manager, and automatically related to the network through intelligent addressing. Requests for service, enquiries and complaints can be related to a property or a geographical area. Using Spatial Data Manager officers can view, interrogate and analyze all types of data recorded, from multiple perspectives. Supplemented by a variety of user defined reports, officers are now equipped to identify trends in enviro crime such as graffiti, litter, fly tipping, fly posting etc, or simply identify clusters and dates of missed bin collections.
Random inspections are generated to select random transects within the city which are then inspected and graded for litter and detritus by York Pride officers. These inspections are then used for the determination of BVPI 199 Performance Indicator.
Incidents of fly tipping are recorded and categorized within Public Enquiry Manager and reporting tools output a dedicated electronic report ready for submission to DEFRA.
The entire abandoned vehicles process is now managed by the system, from initial report, to inspection, the serving of notices, and to the subsequent removal of the vehicle.
Automatic emails to individuals or organizations can be generated in response to specified issues being recorded in the system. Once a problem in the street has been identified, the process is tracked through to its resolution. Document management and production facilities allow the council's staff to automatically generate letters, permits, and reports, and also store-scanned images, photographs and video.
As a part of this growing project, the council intends to record and manage all their Street Scene assets, including public toilets, litterbins, and dog bins. Inspectors will receive map based handheld data capture instruments based on PDAs to use on site for recording and responding to problems in the street. Integration with the Highways Management system will allow Street Environment Officers to record defects both on and off highway, and download their findings into a single system for action by the appropriate division.
Street Scene contracts and contractors are managed within the system. The Contractor Interface Manager, and Financial Interface Manager again product from within the Exor suite of applications are being implemented to provide efficient data transmission to the council's contractor and finance system, entirely electronically, helping to meet eGovernment targets.
The system will be implemented in a web-based environment, offering more services over the Internet. This will also provide greater access to the system for other council officers without the need for client software thanks to the true web based design within the suite of applications.
Quelle: GISuser, 28.06.2005
