Downtown: Energize Kentlands Case Study

Client: Kentlands Downtown Working Group

Challenge: The Kentlands development in Gaithersburg, Maryland, located north of Washington, DC, offers residents a high density of services, restaurants, and entertainment. From a residential perspective, Kentlands has been a success, with more than 8,000 inhabitants living in the development and its sister community, Lakelands. But the town has had challenges on the retail side, including assembling an ideal group of businesses that will have long-term success.

Solution: To help amplify a local initiative to energize Kentlands’ retail businesses and boost economic development, SymGEO developed Downtown: Energize Kentlands. The web-based community engagement platform, built on ArcGIS Hub, is designed to inform the public about future plans for Kentlands and provide a feedback mechanism for residents to express what kinds of retail offerings they would like to see. Featured by Esri in an ArcNews publication entitled “ArcGIS Hub Gets Mixed-Use Community Involved in Retail Decision-Making“, the solution is now available for configuration in the ArcGIS Marketplace.

Client Feedback: “Downtown Energize! is an innovative digital tool that provides mapping of business locations to potential and existing customers in a format that is fun, easy to use, and flexible enough to accept updates and even track current events. It’s a win-win for our community by empowering residents to engage with our local businesses and to energize our downtown!” – Local Business Owner, Kentlands

Read the full story here.

Capital Bikeshare Community Survey

| Kevin McMaster

With 6000+ bikes covering 180+ square miles of the region, Capital Bikeshare is a great way to explore Metro DC and travel to and from various destination points. The network of 600+ bike stations is constantly expanding, and community feedback is an important part of deciding where to locate new stations. To facilitate the presentation of proposed locations to the general public and gather community feedback, SymGEO was honored to help build the Capital Bikeshare Station Request Tool using Esri’s ArcGIS Online technology. This work was featured in the Esri case study “GIS-Driven Initiatives Promote Active Transportation in Washington, DC“.

“The SymGEO team helped DDOT quickly implement a complex, public facing tool with a simple user interface to help us gather a high volume of public input data, which is extremely useful for Capital Bikeshare planning purposes. Their knowledge of GIS and ESRI products helped make a challenging project with many stakeholders simple and quick to turn around.”

– DDOT Project Manager

The tool leverages an ArcGIS web map and ArcGIS Web AppBuilder for the application as well as Survey123 for the gathering of comments on proposed bike stations, and it is hosted on ArcGIS Hub. Sharing feedback for a selected station opens a survey page for that station using URL parameters so that the comment is connected to the appropriate station.

If a resident would like to suggest a location for a new site, an alternative survey is launched with additional data capture fields.

The Request New Capital Bikeshare Location survey was constructed using Survey123 Connect and offers the ability for a user to suggest multiple sites in the same submission.

“This is great stuff. Thanks again for pulling this together so quickly!”

– DDOT GIS and Applications Manager

Talk to SymGEO today if your agency or organization is interested in community engagement with the power of Esri’s ArcGIS Online platform – we are certified experts and here to help.

Capital Projects Dashboard Case Study

| Kevin McMaster

Client: DDOT Performance Office

Challenge: The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) manages millions of dollars’ worth of capital projects on an annual basis. However, keeping track of individual project budgets and construction statuses required frequent exports from an internal project management system and lacked visual or spatial information.

Solution: To facilitate the communication of budget and schedule status, SymGEO helped configure a Capital Projects Dashboard solution for internal use, powered by ArcGIS Dashboards technology.

Client Feedback: “This is so good! I love it and it is a game-changer. I am really impressed and could not be more thankful for this. This is a great tool for the agency to get things straight in the system and then use it as a tool for tracking.” – DDOT Chief Performance Officer

Read the full story here.

Capital Projects Dashboard

| Kevin McMaster

The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) manages millions of dollars’ worth of capital projects on an annual basis. To facilitate the communication of budget and schedule status, SymGEO helped configure a Capital Projects Dashboard solution for internal use, powered by ArcGIS Dashboards technology.

“This is so good! I love it and it is a game-changer. I am really impressed and could not be more thankful for this. This is a great tool for the agency to get things straight in the system and then use it as a tool for tracking.”

– DDOT Chief Performance Officer

The configured solution builds on an Esri-provided template (below) and provides insight by budget year, construction status, and project phase. Summary statistics are provided as numerical indicators, and map symbology is used to visually communicate project status. The Arcade expressions, used to determine project status, were configured to fit DDOT’s capital project data schema using data provided by DDOT’s internal project management system.

Talk to SymGEO today if your agency or organization is interested in managing capital projects using the power of Esri’s Capital Project Dashboard solution – we are certified experts and here to help.

Arborist Workload Optimization

| Kevin McMaster

DDOT’s Urban Forestry Division (UFD) is the primary steward of Washington, D.C.’s ~175,000 public trees and has a mission of keeping this resource healthy, safe, and growing. At the front lines of this work is a team of almost twenty Urban Foresters who have district boundaries within which they provide tree services, inspections, special tree permit processing, and work order generation for tree planting, pruning, and removals as well as other daily responsibilities. As the tree canopy composition and jurisdictional boundaries change over time, workload optimization between arborists is key to keeping the process flowing smoothly. To help provide visibility into current workloads and explore proposed re-districting options, SymGEO worked with DDOT to build an Arborist Workload Dashboard using ArcGIS Dashboards technology.

The dashboard leverages Arcade expressions to aggregate workload components by arborist teams and proposed arborist boundaries, as well as display the proportional work per boundary sub-area.

Information is also aggregated to geographic boundaries, including Wards, Advisory Neighborhood Commissions (ANCs), and Single-member Districts (SMDs). Interactive charts allow exploration on a local, neighborhood-scale level as needed.

To facilitate the exploration and balancing of workloads, the final component of the dashboard allows interactive boundary area selection and workload summarization by individual components. With a balanced target in mind, the Supervisory Urban Forester can explore scenarios and then update the online information to reflect the preferred boundary scenario.

“This is really slick, thank you! I have already been editing in a webmap, and watching things balance out on the dashboard. Very cool, thank you again!”

-DDOT Supervisory Urban Forester

Talk to SymGEO industry experts today if your agency or organization is interested in leveraging ArcGIS Dashboards to re-district boundaries and optimize workloads – we are certified experts and here to help.

DDOT Capital Projects

| Kevin McMaster

The District Department of Transportation’s (DDOT‘s) mission is to enhance the quality of life for District residents and visitors by ensuring that people, goods, and information move efficiently and safely with minimal adverse impact on residents and the environment. To accomplish this goal, many transportation capital projects are being funded, designed, and constructed throughout the city. To help organize and communicate capital project status and information, SymGEO collaboratively built an interactive engagement portal called DDOT Capital Projects using ArcGIS Hub technology.

“The SymGEO team has helped DDOT transform our digital presence into a highly engaging, well-organized platform. They leverage GIS best-practices and Esri technology to produce visually informative and actionable solutions.”

-DDOT Chief Performance Officer

Projects are organized by Ward for easy access and discoverability by citizens or stakeholders.

Selecting a Ward will show which projects are currently underway or recently completed in the area.

Selecting an individual project unlocks a wealth of information about the project and provides a convenient one-stop-shop for all data and narratives about the project. SymGEO transferred existing content from legacy capital project websites, and project-specific contractors are now responsible for building and maintaining new project websites.

Project features and benefits are presented along with the expected project timeline, history, and associated public outreach material.

As this platform is relatively new to most consultants working on individual projects, SymGEO also produced a “how to” hub site that explains the process for Project Managers and Web Developers. Each project starts from the same standardized template, and branding guidelines are presented to help keep the sites consistent throughout the platform.

The main DDOT Capital Projects website also features citywide programs of interest to residents.

Events and updates are aggregated from individual projects and citywide programs to give a comprehensive picture of all that is happening throughout the city.

A custom footer provides important accessibility information and additional resources to discover.

Talk to SymGEO today if your agency or organization is interested in community engagement with the power of Esri’s ArcGIS Hub – we are certified experts and here to help.