Case study: How to optimize grass cutting routes using network analysis

In the City of Sarnia, a municipality with 75,000 residents, grass cutting during the summer months presents a strategic challenge: given limited crew capacity, how can all the city’s parks and pathways get the mowing coverage they need? Geographic information system (GIS) technology has the answers.

The City of Sarnia, Ontario, right on the border with the state of Michigan, is a small municipality that approximately 75,000 residents call home. Spanning an area of 164 square kilometres, Sarnia has a small, four-person GIS team that supports different departments within the municipality.

Sarnia, Ontario: a small city that’s getting actionable results using geographic information system (GIS) technology.

Maintaining city parks and pathways with limited resources

Like many small cities, Sarnia has limited resources and every year has to make decisions about what to prioritize. For example, wet weather in the spring months has, in the past, led to messy medians and pathways, which in turn led to public pressure that the City had to decide how to tackle with its limited resources.

That’s how the Parks and Recreation Department came to the Sarnia GIS team. Their question: how can we optimize our grass cutting routes so that we can ensure adequate coverage of the city’s parks and pathways, using only the resources we already have?

This turned out not to be a simple question, as it required the City to consider all kinds of factors—including crew structure, existing routes, the length of the grass cutting season, availability of machinery and more. They needed a way to understand the problem that could incorporate all of these considerations while maximizing efficiency.

Troy Fox, geospatial solutions analyst at the City of Sarnia, knew the answer could be found using network analysis. “A little spatial analysis can go a long way even for small municipalities,” he says. “A small city like Sarnia can make much better strategic decisions about how to use its limited budget, if it can properly harness its spatial data.”

Deciding how to do more with less thanks to geographic analysis

To support the Parks and Recreation Department in deciding how to route their grass cutting crews in 2025, Fox decided to use ArcGIS Pro to answer their questions. ArcGIS Pro is a desktop geographic information systems (GIS) application that empowers large and small organizations alike to perform advanced spatial analysis, data visualization and information sharing. It allows users to answer complex questions about where things are, how they’re connected to one another and—importantly—what strategic insights are hiding in their data.

For the specific routing problem the City was facing, Fox used a vehicle routing problem analysis layer, available in ArcGIS Pro, to better understand their grass cutting route network as well as the capacities and capabilities of the vehicles and teams that move along it.

Using the capabilities of ArcGIS Pro, Fox was able to customize all the parameters of the problem solver to the City’s particular situation. Once the team determined how many crews would be needed, they went through and estimated how long it would take to cut the grass in each identified area. They then accounted for the shorter grass cutting times in late summer, when grass is drier. Finally, they determined how many minutes each crew would have available during the day, some crews having more time than others because they have more resources. 

From there, the team inputted everything into ArcGIS Pro and allowed the vehicle routing problem solver to determine best routes. Fox then used ArcGIS Insights to present the results in a single comprehensive report.

Using ArcGIS Pro, the City of Sarnia was able to analyze its grass cutting routes along City walkways. Network analysis found that the previous eight walkway routes were not required—only five routes in total needed to be serviced—and that, using these routes, resources were freed up to be deployed to other important work in the community. Actual data about these routes, to be collected during the 2025 season, will help refine these findings for 2026.

As part of this project, additional analyses were run to provide management with insights about how optimal crews and routes would look under a hypothetical, unlimited budget scenario.

“We have all this demand and the data can show us what is and isn’t possible. If decision makers find that resources are being stretched and they need more resources, they can use this analysis in ArcGIS Pro to support their budget requests.” —Troy Fox, Geospatial Solutions Analyst, City of Sarnia

The City of Sarnia’s analysis seeks to create more balanced grass cutting routes. By optimizing existing routes using network analysis, the City of Sarnia has been able to save more than 44 km of driving compared to the previous routes.

An actionable result: optimized grass cutting routes, more data collection

As a result of the GIS team’s analysis, in 2025 the Parks and Recreation Department will test these new, optimized routes—and they’ll be tracking the work using inspection checklists in ArcGIS Field Maps that feed an ArcGIS Dashboards app. (Crews will also use these apps to track whether anything else comes up in the course of the work—whether they find vandalism at a park or want to report on grass conditions, they’ll have the capability at their fingertips.)

By collecting this kind of real-time data during 2025’s grass cutting season, the Parks and Recreation Department will be able to actively monitor their parks this summer. Moreover, Fox and Sarnia’s team will be able to re-run their analysis based on real service times rather than estimates, leading to more accurate insights—and better decision making—for 2026.

“And it opens the door for more discussions [between the GIS team and the Parks and Recreation Department],” said Fox. “That relationship’s now built, so there can be more back and forth now.”

Want to take your field operations to the next level? Discover more about how location intelligence can open up new field operations insights. Or, see how the County of Grand Prairie increased their field operations efficiency by 60%, or how the City of Kamloops found a better way to track their snow clearing, street maintenance and mowing activities.