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Build a guiding coalition: A coalition for a local government might include people from corporate services, planning, engineering, fire, police, and sanitation departments. The coalition will provide the intelligence needed to understand how GIS can help their different departments improve. This type of collaboration can also get other departments and businesses engaged, so that you become an aggregator of information. Form a strategic vision and initiatives: Develop a vision and then a strategy. The vision is the adoption of geospatial technologies and the strategy outlines the specifics—who, what, when, where, and why—that's the plan for achieving the vision. Try and eliminate GIS jargon from your strategy. This is essential for overcoming the factors that inhibit change and winning acceptance from non-GIS teams. Don't ignore those who resist, as this gives them time to spread their discontent and if they have significant influence, that can be serious. Often, resistance is rooted in perception rather than reality. Securing executive buy-in will help minimize resister impact. Remove barriers: Plan for training. Engage the human resources team to create training lifestyle and demographic characteristics of the community, demonstrating the potential of new development sites and commercial properties. Kingston, Ont.'s GIS team partnered with the Real Estate & Environmental Initiatives Department and developed a GIS app, the city-owned industrial lands story map, to cut down calls to city staff and to showcase to prospective clients, real estate agents, and developers, the availability of industrial land that can be immediately developed. The Los Angeles garbage collection department was accused of underserving some neighbourhoods, so the city used GIS technology so that Angelenos can easily compare the efficacy of the garbage pickup on their street with others. People became more engaged with their neighbourhoods: now, they can easily report illegal dumping, schedule a pickup of a bulky item, or even volunteer for a community cleanup. Change is not easy and barriers to innovation are many. Common hurdles are organizational culture, complacency, and a sense of futility, since doing nothing seems easier. Here are some suggestions on how to tackle them. for employees who support institutionalized GIS use. Training plans and workforce development plans aligned with your change strategy help remove barriers for those new to the technology. Create short-term wins: Short-term wins build momentum and increase buy-in. These wins must be communicated to the guiding coalition. Story maps combine text and multimedia into a compelling narrative. It's an easy way to create a high-impact visualization of relevant data and a good way to demonstrate how to use geospatial technologies. If someone in your team creates a story map, share it and encourage others to participate. Most importantly, team effort is required to spark interest in, and adoption of, geospatial technologies. After all, collaboration and participation are at the centre, and ultimately the goal, of all smart communities. Alex Miller is president and founder of Esri Canada. ASSET SUSTAINABILITY Ameresco's unique approach to Asset Planning and our leading AssetPlanner™ suite of tools can help your organization address the full spectrum of your capital planning and asset management needs. With expertise and experience from performing services on over 60,000 buildings totaling over 280 million square meters as well as delivering in excess of 7 billion dollars in capital creation opportunities for our clients, Ameresco is committed to helping our clients realize the full value of their assets. ADVISORY SERVICES NEEDS ANALYSIS • Life Cycle / Forecasting • Condition Validation / Assessment • Utilization • Risk Measurement / Metrics • Funding Appropriation STRATEGIC PLANNING • Capital Creation Strategies • Alternative Funding Solutions • Funding Leverage / Requests • Business Solutions – Financial • Stakeholder Communication METRICS, TRACKING & BENCHMARKS • Capital & Operation Management • Budget Measurement • Benchmarking • Monitoring of Business Plans • Energy Optimization / Tracking • Holistic Portfolio Planning • Funding Appropriation • Alternative Funding • Capital Creation Strategies • Decision Development • Dashboards • Mobile Solutions SOFTWARE SERVICES AssetPlanner Software Solutions • Innovative Decision Support • Asset Planning Capital and Life Cycle planning / Decision making and benchmarking • Project Planning Funding approvals and Management STRATEGIC SUITE • Preventative Maintenance Work Order Management / Demand response management • Service Request Day-to-day field management & ad hoc requisition management and tracking TACTICAL SUITE • Energy & Sustainability Utility tracking, benchmarking, management, QSUM, Weather trending/normalization • M3 Measurement Management Module (integrating energy optimization with life cycle management ENERGY MANAGEMENT SUITE ameresco.com Smart Cities November/December 2017 ReNew Canada 33 renewcanada.net

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