Issue link: https://resources.esri.ca/i/732798
ArcNorthNews SPRING 2013 | 5 Enjoying Canada's first national park The Town of Banff created a similar service for residents and visitors. To promote transparency, the Town launched Banffmaps.ca: an online gallery that makes more than 20 maps and apps publicly available. The Community Maps Program was leveraged, along with tools and templates available on ArcGIS Online, to develop the site both quickly and cost-effectively. "The Community Maps Program serves as a vehicle to make our base data publicly accessible while essentially eliminating risk," said Steve Nelson, GIS Coordinator, Town of Banff. "We're able to serve up rich basemaps while keeping all of our applications lightweight. At the same time, we get to be both the authors and publishers of our own data." The Town signed an Enterprise Licence Agreement (ELA) with Esri Canada that allowed for unlimited deployments of ArcGIS for Server. From there, they launched ArcGIS for Server on the Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) Web service where their data is hosted. All of their data was then routed through ArcGIS Online so that they could take advantage of ready-to-use templates. Leveraging the Story Maps template, the Town created a Heritage Walking Tour Map that provides suggested routes to get around town using scenic trails and pedestrian walk-throughs. As tourism is the town's main economic driver, with more than four million visitors every year, the app allows visitors to explore Banff like a local. "ArcGIS Online provides a combination of high quality data and useful templates that make it easy to communicate our information with the public in a way that offers a consistent look and feel," said Steve. "Since we have no developers on staff, we really benefited from the fact that only minor customization was required." The Local Government template was also used to create a map that allows residents and visitors to easily access government services. Users simply type in their address and click on the map to be routed to the Town Hall, transit stops, hospitals or local police stations. Users can also find local bicycle paths and truck routes, monitor the progress of snow removal throughout the town, research civic property and infrastructure information, report street light issues and more. "Our involvement in the Community Maps Program allowed us to use one consistent basemap to publish a wide range of apps," explained Steve. "All we needed to do was publish datasets for each themed application and add two to three layers for each app, which greatly reduced demands on our internal servers." Because the Banffmaps.ca homepage integrates directly with ArcGIS Online, changes are automatically reflected in the apps when new layers are added. The site further promotes collaboration by inviting the public to submit their own maps and apps developed using Town of Banff data. Since the launch, the app has received approximately 1,000 unique visits per month. To further encourage civic engagement, the Town of Banff also created a number of apps that allow residents to communicate directly with their government. For example, the Banff Pet Connect app allows residents to identify and connect with owners of stray pets. They can pull up an online map through their smartphone, enter the pet's tag number and view the location of the pet owner's home on the map. They are also provided with the owner's phone number so that they can contact them directly. Developed using the Citizen Request template from ArcGIS Online, the app was created, tested and deployed within only a couple of weeks. Running a leaner, more efficient operation With an ongoing need to do more with less, the Community Maps template allows local government organizations to create custom internal apps with limited resources. For example, the City of Peterborough leveraged the tool to create a unique traffic sign app. They simply imported a CSV file into the template and represented traffic signs as points on the map. Using iPads, staff can access the basemap through ArcGIS Online, click on a point and edit the condition rating for each sign. Updates are then automatically synched back to the corporate geodatabase. "It used to take two to three summers to update the traffic sign inventory," said Nicole Schleifer, City of Peterborough. "Leveraging ArcGIS Online allowed us to complete the inventory in only four months, resulting in a huge time and cost savings for the traffic department." The app also made it easier to complete database verification to ensure the accuracy and quality of data. "Limited resources used to mean that we simply couldn't bring mapping into the field," said Nicole. "With the Community Maps template, we were able to overcome these limitations and build a high-functioning app in only three weeks." Online basemaps were also deployed on all Senior Administrative iPads in just three days. These maps are used by city staff to locate addresses and conduct measurements using the Community Maps toolbar. For example, staff can measure the distance from an