Issue link: https://resources.esri.ca/i/747861
Challenge Like many municipalities, the City of Guelph (Guelph) is responsible for tracking and maintaining thousands of park assets such as benches, light poles, fences, drinking fountains and tennis court nets. Guelph needed to improve the way staff shared accurate, up-to-date information related to parks and open spaces with other departments and the public in a timely fashion. A thorough needs assessment of existing methods to collect, manage, map and share information revealed several gaps. For example, the existing parks layer in the legacy GIS-based map only contained park boundaries with minimal attributes and it was updated just once a year. Also, parks amenities were not included; they were maintained in a standalone spreadsheet. An estimated 37,000 city-owned trees need to be cared for and inventoried in Guelph. A severe ice storm in 2013 and a recent infestation of emerald ash borer (EAB)—a highly destructive, invasive species of beetle—highlighted the need to build a comprehensive tree inventory. The rapid rate of ash tree loss spurred the City to develop a plan to help protect the 10,000 at-risk trees owned by the City. A key component of this plan is identifying and inventorying ash trees for treatment to protect them from destruction. The City recognized the need for a more efficient, accurate field data collection workflow to advance these efforts. Improved mobile GIS workflow helps City of Guelph build its tree inventory nine times faster The City of Guelph—located in southern Ontario an hour northwest of Toronto—boasts over 1,000 hectares of parks and open space, 70 km of trails and a tree canopy that covers 20% of the municipality's 86 km 2 land area. In August 2014, the City of Guelph Parks & Open Space GIS Project was initiated to improve the park inventory system and the way information related to park assets is shared. Using ArcGIS, the project team implemented a Web GIS workflow— including internal field data collection apps—that have successfully increased the frequency and accuracy of updates to the City's parks, open space and tree inventories. 1 Esri Canada | Building Better Parks & Tree Inventories with Web GIS As a participant in the Community Maps Program, the City of Guelph accesses orthographic satellite imagery hosted by Esri in the cloud.