Virginia VanderVeen, GISP, Enterprise Solutions Engineer
In this blog post, we will explore Esri's Winter Weather Operations solution, which provides effective management of fleets, personnel, material tracking, and snow event analysis. Additionally, we will discuss the Winter Weather Outreach Solution, which enables road status communication and facilitates the reporting of snow-related issues
Winter Weather Operations Solution
The Winter Weather Operations solution serves as a comprehensive platform for managing winter weather operations. It utilizes ArcGIS Velocity to manage route status and monitor current vehicle locations. The ArcGIS Velocity add-on for ArcGIS Online allows users to leverage IoT data, perform fast queries, and analyze big data. The Winter Weather Operations Solution currently requires a Velocity Advanced license due to its heavy analytic load, which does come with a hefty price tag (read more here).
Key Features:
Vehicle Management: The solution provides an overview of the fleet, including total vehicles, vehicles in service, fleet vehicles, and contractor vehicles. Users can add vehicles through the solution interface or batch-load existing ones using an Excel spreadsheet.
Event Management: Events define active periods during snow or ice storms. Users can create new events, specifying start date, event name, and event type. An ArcGIS notebook automates the initiation of vehicle feeds and analytics in ArcGIS Velocity. When the event is finished, the user enters the duration and snowfall totals, the ArcGIS Notebook will stop all feeds and analytics, triggering a process to reset the route status so that maps and apps reflect the current state of no operational activity.
Current Activity Monitoring: The operations dashboard is utilized to display active vehicles’ speed, and status, along with their last reported update. The main map visualizes current vehicle locations and route statuses, facilitated by Velocity's big data analytics. The system distinguishes between serviced and unserviced routes based on vehicle reports, improving operational efficiency.
Season Metrics: An operations dashboard provides an overview of requests, request types, the number of winter weather events, total distance traveled, and tons of material used. This feature offers valuable insights for performance evaluation, resource allocation, and future planning.
Winter Weather Outreach Solution
As covered above, the Winter Weather Operations solution is a robust solution that requires an ArcGIS Velocity advanced license. In comparison, the Winter Weather Outreach solution is a lightweight solution that includes a road status manager and requires manual input. It serves smaller operations effectively. The Route Status Manager allows you to filter route status by time and update route status with a batch editor using filters like Route Priority, Road, District, or Snow Route. You can also get high-level metrics like Miles of Road Serviced/NotServics and Percent of Roads Serviced. Esri's ArcGIS Online platform provides various apps and extensions that can enhance the capabilities of the Winter Weather Outreach solution. Workforce can be used to assign snow requests to organization workers, while the ArcGIS Location Sharing extension enables location sharing through Field Maps or Quick Capture. This extension allows users to view vehicle locations, tracks, and create customizable dashboards for improved monitoring and reporting.
Esri's Winter Weather Operations and Outreach solutions offer tools for efficiently managing winter weather operations and communicating road statuses to the public. The Winter Weather Operations solution, using ArcGIS Velocity, provides comprehensive fleet and route management. The Winter Weather Outreach Solution serves as a lightweight alternative for smaller operations. Users can further enhance the Winter Weather Outreach solution by leveraging the capabilities of ArcGIS Online and its various apps and extensions. By adopting Esri's solutions, organizations can optimize their winter weather operations and enhance public engagement and satisfaction.