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The most forward-thinking organizations are making strategic investments in artificial intelligence (AI), especially machine learning, using location data as the connective thread to automate processes, improve predictive modeling, and gain operational efficiency. Public works organizations already use a geographic information system (GIS) to uncover hidden patterns, gain crucial insights, and provide the best government services for citizens. Now, the benefits of GIS can be accelerated with artificial intelligence and machine learning. This session will provide an overview of GeoAI and show examples of how public works agencies are using it to optimize snow and ice management, automate data collection, prioritize maintenance of infrastructure, identify areas of blight or homelessness, and allocate resources based on the greatest need.
The objective of this session is to facilitate a technology exchange among international public works officials and to discuss and promote innovative public works technologies, operations, and best practices in the field of public works. The expectation is that APWA chapters will have a better understanding of international issues and approaches the international community has used to meet various public works challenges. These challenges have placed new demands upon implementing sustainable and resilient solutions. In engineering, construction, and maintenance, resilience has been defined as the ability to absorb or avoid damage without suffering complete failure. But a more comprehensive definition is that it is the ability to respond, absorb, and adapt to, as well as recover from, a disruptive event. Resilience is about how systems perform, not just about how they are or remain safe.
The UPROW committee will present lessons learned in implementing electronic permitting systems. This is an opportunity to showcase the challenges and benefits experienced by various agencies that implemented a new…
Solid waste and recycling collection services are broad and vary from community to community. Local governments across the United States often contract with private haulers to provide all or part…
On August 10, 2020, a derecho hit Cedar Rapids with winds of up to 140 miles per hour for 45 minutes. As a result, roads were impassible due to debris,…
Mobile observations have become an integral part of snow and ice programs. Mobile sensors have also evolved throughout the years from traditional units that only gave air and pavement temperatures. Learn about the FHWA IMO (integrating mobile observations) initiative. Learn how these sensors have evolved and what these new units are capable of doing. The speakers will discuss how they help both the operator and the agency, how the data is visualized and used, and how agencies and airports have implemented these units.
The speaker will share how bringing new ideas to his department as a new Street Supervisor were initially met with resistance, making his transition difficult. However, as time went on, with some employees leaving and new ones being hired, he was able bring new strategies from the APWA North American Snow Conference to his division. By learning how to get total team buy-in and learning from his failures, the department is now seeing great success with snow removal efforts while minimizing salt use.
To successfully handle snow management and removal, public works professionals must look to current and future equipment capabilities to operate more safely and efficiently. This session will provide insight on the benefits and implementation of current and future connected technology for snow management and removal for public roads and private lots. Examples of possible functionality include route optimization, traffic signal prioritization, object detection, lane detection and real-time traffic reporting, and customer communication and transactions.
Typical planning approaches for municipal stormwater projects often include gathering significant field data, developing complex models, and extensive documentation regarding existing conditions and potential solutions. This presentation will explore a recent pilot project executed by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Storm Water Services that employed available geographic information system (GIS) data and abridged the modeling and reporting process. The results of the effort were provided in a decision dashboard to assist stakeholders in identifying and prioritizing projects. It will also outline the advantages and pitfalls of this approach and highlight a few of the design projects developed from this study.
The City of Raleigh in North Carolina has recently undertaken an innovative implementation of a Pavement Management System using automated data collection (ADC) to identify crack deterioration for input to the pavement management system (PMS). Unlike the traditional methods, the City is adopting a new methodology to measure crack density calculated as crack length in linear feet per square yard for use in the pavement management system. More specifically, these crack densities are measured for short data collection segments (approximately six feet) per transverse zone (as defined in AASHTO R-85). This project helped in the development of the new ASTM Standard Practice for Generating Pavement Surface Cracking Indices from Digital Images (E3303-21), which will aid others in future ADC initiatives. The presentation will describe this new and forward-thinking data collection and subsequent pavement management methodology so that other interested agencies can look into adopting ADC to obtain more accurate and repeatable data in the future.