13 MINUTE READ
The world’s first Community Information Utility: Big benefits of data-smart solutions
Building Data-Smart City Solutions
Consultant: STEERING
Copyright: SSMIC
Acorn has over 19 years of experience providing data-smart city solutions to over 200 clients in communities across Ontario. Below are some examples of successful outcomes that demonstrate how Acorn leverages the intersection of government and integrated, cross-agency data to pre-emptively address civic issues and reinvent how services are delivered to the community in which they operate.
Making Place Matter: Health & Human Services
The place where people call home has a huge impact on their wellbeing.
Health Services
Sault Ste. Marie’s Community Information Utility is instrumental in transforming the health of the community. Organizational partnerships, aggregated public data, intelligent mapping and solution-based analysis helps drive more informed decisions about public health and improves service delivery to where people work, live and play.
Efficiencies created in public health assessment, surveillance, health protection, health promotion, disease prevention and emergency preparedness can be attributed to the collection of health-related data and cross-organizational data expressed visually so that it’s readily understood by all stakeholders and actionable.
Through the CIU, Sault Ste. Marie has achieved significant breakthroughs in the mitigation and control of public health issues that include reducing the spread of the West Nile Virus and saving lives by controlling the outbreak of C.difficile.
Shared data between the health sector, school boards, municipality, police and social services allow the city to perform data analysis capacity to address urgent situations like the rapid spatial analysis of opioid overdoses in communities or emergent situations such as alcohol swamps or food deserts. The CIU and cross-organizational data generate valuable asset maps to support efficient and accurate service planning of public health initiatives for tobacco cessation and optimize the deployment of public health staff in areas such as mapping public health inspector boundaries and school assignments for public health nurses.
"When you’re in public health, the population is your patient. You’re looking at people, place and time and the CIU has the power to bring this all together."
– Dr. Jennifer Loo
Associate Medical Officer of Health, Algoma Public Health
“We [Algoma Public Health] leverage this shared data and the tools Acorn provides for descriptive disease visualization and mapping, for population health assessment, surveillance – that’s the diagnosis and monitoring of our population,” says Dr. Jennifer Loo, Associate Medical Officer of Health, Algoma Public Health. “Add on that to the creation of data products which leverage local data infrastructure. Uncovering the sources of lead in drinking water is a great example. Standalone public health doesn’t have access to this infrastructure data that we do. It’s because of all the time and effort over the decades that created those community partnerships.
So, lead pipes? Yes. We have access to pipes, as the data is really important to public health. More recently we’ve seen improved service delivery to the public through the creation of asset map products that support stakeholder engagement, service planning and optimization. So, using maps to identify things like alcohol swamps, food deserts, tobacco cessation support. These maps are visually compelling and we find
that they’re a helpful tool to bring stakeholders together to work on solutions for common problems. As soon as people visualize the issue it’s very compelling.”
Human Services
Similar to public health agencies, the goal of social service organizations is to protect and improve the wellbeing of the community, especially its most vulnerable citizens. Sault Ste. Marie’s CIU is instrumental in helping local social service agencies determine where they can do the most good in the region they operate.
The District of Sault Ste. Marie Social Services Administration Board (DSSMSSAB) understands that knowing there’s a need for social service programs is only a first step to addressing community issues. Determining where this need is in the community is the essential piece for developing solutions that make the greatest impact.
Through their partnership with Acorn, DSSMSSAB leverages the CIU to conduct needs assessments and program planning within the region. Family income data from the Census of Canada, Marginalization Index data, and Socioeconomic Risk data provide the social service agency with a broader, detailed picture of the community and where certain needs can be more effectively addressed. Using multienterprise data, DSSMSSAB can identify the demand for new service locations and track the viability of existing community hubs; identify staffing needs based on program use and population density; inform service providers of Building Data-Smart City Solutions 20 where new programs like Indigenous language or childhood development programs will make the most impact; and perform targeted outreach to vulnerable populations by identifying services available and effectively engaging more families.
Early Development Instrument data and EQAO results also aid in the planning of EarlyON Child and Family Centres that provide opportunities to families to give children the best start in education and child development while providing support for additional community initiatives to help families prosper.
The result is increased accountability to be proactive in creating better outcomes for the community. The CIU allows social service agencies to provide equitable delivery of services based on fact-based decision making while realizing organizational performance through administrative savings. Other benefits include the early identification of community issues, efficient service delivery planning, evaluation of program performance, reporting on service use that can be used to access funding for projects, eliminating the duplication of effort collecting and maintaining data across multiple organizations, reductions in municipal liabilitiesand more effective use of budgetary resources.
A municipality that puts community first
Effective use of data and digital services can transform how cities deliver basic public services.
The SSMIC built, operates and maintains one of the most pioneering community data infrastructure databases in the world. Beyond leveraging public data to develop a truly smart city, Acorn and the Community Information Utility (CIU) sets a greater standard of excellence in government when it comes to service delivery to its citizens.
In the CIU central data warehouse lives critical data sets used by both the municipality and local utility to create solutions that address important public problems. All departments of both organizations share geographic information, technology, knowledge and skills to enhance operational efficiencies that generate significant returns in cost savings year over year. By compiling the city’s inventories of administrative, water, wastewater, electric, transportation and telecom data into a single system, the CIU has improved asset and facility management, land use planning, road maintenance, health and safety of staff, network design and infrastructure planning.
“There was a point when snow removal routes were getting so large that staff had to work overtime to complete them. We used the shared GIS to find ways to balance our routes so that existing staff were more efficient or we would have to buy more equipment valued at over $100,000 plus staff it.”
– Larry Girardi
Deputy CAO, City of Sault Ste. Marie
Some examples of how these municipal departments are changing the way services are delivered through the CIU’s shared data resources and data management are:
Public works and Engineering
The CIU and its shared service model are valuable in improving efficiencies, reducing costs, mitigating liabilities and ensuring the equitable distribution of services to the community through data-driven decisions. The CIU helps Sault Ste. Marie’s Public Works and Engineering Services by using spatial data to overcome operational challenges. One of these challenges is balancing operator workloads when it comes to public services like snow removal, street sweeping, pothole maintenance, and refuse collection. The ability to accurately map route boundaries for field staff using GIS technology, municipal data and tools not only ensures equal distribution of workload but confirms that work is being completed efficiently. The result is cost-savings and adherence to operational budgets through less accrued overtime by staff.
Data tells the story. “Using the route data stored in the information utility, we’ve run stats for public works,” says Larry Girardi, Deputy CAO, City of Sault Ste. Marie “These numbers show that the kilometres of roads keep increasing as the city builds new centres. The number of kilometres of sidewalks keeps increasing. Cost of fuel and labour go up. But the budget to service municipal roadways stays relatively unchanged. Our data and tools help public works still do what we do with the same kind of money.”
Using the CIU for resource and asset management also allows municipal officials to make smart, informed decisions when it comes to the allocation of resources, budgetary amendments or proposed changes to operations. Data-driven solutions attempt to take the politics out of public works so decisions can be made based on what’s best for a community. Tangible data and intelligent project modelling can deliver promised outcomes by transforming theory into actuality before a project begins.
Here are other innovative ways public works is using multi-enterprise data to improve operational efficiencies and delivery of services:
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Serving populations in need: The analysis of demographic data allows staff to prioritize sidewalk sanding and snow removal in areas where there are higher densities of seniors and students.
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Delivery of equitable solutions: Health and human service data are used to perform an impact analysis on where residents will benefit most from accessibility features like curb cuts.
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Improved safety of staff: Availability of electric utility data to public works staff mitigates the risk of snow removal teams hitting and damaging above-ground electrical infrastructure.
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Improved risk management: Detailed infrastructure data is used to identify water pipe diameters and boundaries. Access to this data allows public works to perform storm and sanitary flushing in a logical order and speed to mitigate pipe damage and residential home flooding which could cost millions to repair.
For city engineers, the CIU’s shared data warehouse is used daily to quickly answer critical design questions the engineering department or design consultants have. Before having access to aggregated infrastructure data, seeking out the necessary information to complete municipal projects was labour intensive. “The data in the GIS are all transferable to the city’s design consultants or city design staff for the municipal project,” says Don Elliott, Director of Engineering Services for the City of Sault Ste. Marie. “You can see what everybody else has out there from electrical infrastructure, water and natural gas. It makes our job easier and we’re more efficient because we don’t have to spend time tracking down information. Our time is more effectively used doing value-added work instead of administrative tasks.”
Utilities
The consolidation of water, electrical and municipal infrastructure data managed within the CIU provides huge operational benefits for PUC Services Inc. (PUC). By having access to multi-enterprise data through a single source, the local utility can visualize all assets and the surrounding environment when building, upgrading, testing and repairing electrical infrastructure. Access to this level of detail not only creates efficiencies and cost savings in planning and asset management but improves service delivery to the community.
The CIU gives PUC employees controlled access to almost every piece of electrical infrastructure including geographic reference points and total quantities of assets like poles, transformers and conductor lengths which were not readily available in the past. Through wireless connections, tablets and laptops, field technicians can retrieve drawings, field records along with pole photos and other visual references accessible by hyperlinks in the CIU, reducing the number of field checks required
by PUC staff, saving valuable time and resources. “From a design perspective, on the electric side of the business, it’s the foundation of all of our designs,” says Claudio Stefano, Vice President, Operations and Engineering, PUC Services Inc. “It minimizes the amount of time that we have to spend in the field to verify assets and it’s available for a designer to immediately act upon so it’s a huge operational efficiency.”
Having an accurate, clear picture of the project helps the PUC and the municipality better understand infrastructure maintenance needs while mitigating costs and environmental impacts. For the PUC and City of Sault Ste. Marie, relying on the reams of shared infrastructure data available for smarter city planning is the essence of intelligent design.
Public Safety through data-smart city solutions
Turn on the news. The reported frequency and size of public emergencies and disasters today are unlike anything experienced in modern society. Natural catastrophes, crime, terrorism, and drug epidemics are impacting communities more than ever. This is creating new challenges for emergency response teams and public safety organizations.
Acorn is an important collaborator with emergency services and emergency response teams to improve community safety at all levels. The CIU and shared public data allows emergency management to become more informed on all points of emergency response efforts from fire, police, disaster management and evacuation planning, and community service planning.
Through shared municipal infrastructure data, census data, and local utility data, Acorn can answer important questions for emergency response planning. For example, using weather data like wind speed, humidity and temperature and infrastructure data, Acorn can perform toxic cloud plume dispersion modelling and identify evacuation routes, what the best locations are for emergency shelters and the provisions needed for the anticipated volume of residents.
Acorn can also provide detailed information on pipelines, electrical distribution, sewer systems, hyperlinked building layouts and more using the CIU. This saves valuable time in having to collect these resources and allows emergency responders to make life-saving decisions based off of real-time data.
The CIU provides a mechanism to centralize and visually display critical information during an emergency. This pivotal data can be quickly identified, layered and mapped to pinpoint hazards and design response plans that reduce risk for the community and first responders.
For day-to-day operations, Acorn manages up-to-date addressing information to the emergency dispatch system of the fire department along with traffic flow mapping and analysis to ensure the fastest emergency response times for fire and EMS teams.
Data-driven insights and real-time analytics are central to preparing and responding to emergencies and communicating with the public.
Economic Development and making cents of place
It’s no secret that geography and economic development have a close relationship. Choosing the right location for any new business can mean its ultimate success or failure. It’s important for economic developers to have the right tools and data to create informed business cases to attract new investment.
The CIU has been a critical tool to attract new investment into the City of Sault Ste. Marie. Acorn’s data warehouse and its layers of relevant data including; municipal and utility infrastructure data, zoning requirement information, traffic flow analysis, proximity to public transit, access to third-party topographic maps and aerial imagery, census information, demographic data and historical population growth modeling can be quickly overlaid to create a vivid picture of a site’s viability and constraints. In fact, Acorn was able to leverage the capabilities of their advanced GIS solution and shared data to generate the information necessary to successfully attract a $400 million renewable energy project investment in a matter of hours.
Economic developers in Sault Ste. Marie also rely on the CIU to perform a proactive analysis of lands that are ready for outside development. By creating a detailed inventory of suitable land, developers can focus in on parcels that have merit and eliminate options with restrictions. With this inventory, targeted development opportunities can be promoted across specific sectors such as manufacturing, renewable energy, tourism and hospitality or retail, for example.
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