COS Hydrants
As part of the ECGISAB I will be trying to post periodically about the projects that I have underway here at The City of Sandusky.
Today I would like to put forward the second largest GIS system that we have currently up and running within the city. The hydrant inventory began as a Fire Department project during my stint as a part-time employee here at the city. 3 guys from Fire agreed to take their phones and a collector app out and pick up as many hydrants as they could. In three days they collected everything you see below:
The above image is where the hydrant inventory stayed until about a week ago. Water Department came to me and said that they were going to start hydrant flushing soon and would like to utilize the GIS capabilities we had talked about months ago. Today we have a beta system in place that is being used in the field as I type this. The workflow looks something like this:
- Water Department field dude takes a Juniper Geode unit and tablet into the field with him as he does hydrant flushing.
- He begins flushing
- While the hydrant is actively flushing he checks the collector map to see whether the hydrant has been tagged (tags it with the Geode if it has not) verifies the specs (hydrant number, model, make, ect.) for that hydrant and makes necessary changes.
- He then checks the map to verify whether the associated water valve has been located and tagged. If not he tags it and fills out the information about that valve.
- Finally either during the flushing or after the hydrant is closed he follows the link in the hydrants pop-up to the Survey123 app and fills out the flushing form.
All of this takes under five minutes. The Geode unit connects to the tablet via blue tooth, and is rugged enough to take a beating in the field if surviving a fall off of a truck bumper into the roadway is any indication (my guys are pros at field testing tech, very thorough). The tablet handles all of the apps; Collector, Survey123 and GeodeConnect.
So far it is working remarkably well, and the guys in the field aren't too inconvenienced by it. The first run will be the hardest, there is lots of data to collect, but the consensus is strong that once it is finished it will be well worth it.
I'll dive a little deeper into the inner working from here out. Mostly pictures below:
Collector map view
The Survey123 Form is linked directly from the hydrant pop-up. There is a nifty bit of formatting you can do that will auto populate fields within the form to reduce data entry and error. For this form the hydrant ID number auto populates to tie the records.
I will eventually need to restructure the hydrant point file schema to better reflect the workflow for the guys. There has also been a request for a maintenance ticket related table. Just goes to show that a health application/system is always evolving to fit the needs of the user.
I am happy to answer and questions about the structure or share resources with anyone who might want them .
Thanks for reading!