From the InterDev GIS Team
For most citizens, parks are a vital part of their community. For the governments that serve them, parks are one of their highest and most valuable assets.
To ensure parks provide great service to the community, the governmental entities that develop and maintain them must actively manage every one of their features. Yet, many park attributes have developed over time and been recorded in paper-based systems, making it difficult to keep tabs on their location, condition and service cycles.
InterDev recently helped a city map all of its parks through an on-the-ground, detailed effort. The city then used the GIS data and related information to develop its Parks and Recreation Master Plan.
The GIS data has conferred a huge benefit to the municipality. Not only does the city save money by planning ahead and combining work orders and equipment purchases in multiple parks for maintenance, repairs and other efforts, but it also has visibility into its assets to track their lifecycles―and know if something disappears from the landscape. Furthermore, the data has been used to develop maps, similar to the one shown in this article, that have become a wonderful resource for residents and visitors.
To accomplish this mapping project, the InterDev team handed a GIS analyst a handheld GPS device. He literally walked around every park, recording the GPS coordinates of each feature―from playgrounds, ball fields and swimming pools to buildings, garbage cans, benches and other assets.
He also walked and mapped every mile of trail and recorded the location and condition―with the number of parking spaces―of every parking lot. By the end of the project, the city had amassed an enormous pool of data that it could use for future park management and planning, and our analyst had some pretty tired feet.
To learn more about GIS and how InterDev is making it even more useful to our government and corporate customers, feel free to give us a call at (770) 643-4400 (toll-free 877-841-8069).