City of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Hamilton Manages Infrastructure with Complete Geospatial Integration

Identifying Goals:

The City of Hamilton, Ontario, is Canada’s ninth largest city. When the city amalgamated seven municipalities into one, with more than 500,000 combined residents, it needed an integrated infrastructure management system that would help identify and manage capital spending infrastructure projects. Replacing major infrastructure assets for sewer, water, and roads was a priority. With more than 100,000 customer service requests each year and an equal number of work orders,
the system was also needed to analyze, prioritize, and respond to customer service requests efficiently. In addition, Hamilton needed a mobile resource management system to ensure data accuracy and report on vehicle locations and actions. The large volume of data made it difficult to identify any patterns or trends. City officials wanted to leverage data provided by the geospatial system for data maintenance, hydraulic modeling, asset management integration, and automated field data collection. Because the system would need to track the city’s entire transit fleet for rider and driver safety, vehicle maintenance, and governmental reporting, the new software would have to integrate flawlessly with the existing city systems.

Overcoming Challenges:

Provide a visual and networked approach for identifying and coordinating capital water, sewer, and roads projects
Ensure data accuracy and enable historical reporting of vehicle locations and actions
Identify patterns and trends with customer service requests

Realizing Results:

The city selected Intergraph® and its GeoMedia® technology to build a fully integrated, cross-departmental approach to infrastructure planning and hydraulic modeling. Hamilton selected Intergraph based on the company’s long history of cooperative system implementation, including strong asset management integration and an in-house mobile resource management solution. Hamilton first began using GeoMedia technology in 1995, and continues to use it today. The flexibility of the solution supports rapid decision-making and the efficient deployment of resources.The centralized database enables multi-departmental interaction. Built on an Oracle database, the city uses GeoMedia technology to support total geospatial integration and infrastructure management of several projects. For data maintenance, Hamilton has implemented GeoMedia PublicWorks Manager as its maintenance tool. GeoMedia PublicWorks Manager is designed to help manage many of the
aspects of complex water and wastewater projects – from initial data entry to network analysis and reporting. With hydraulic modeling, the city builds models of water availability, urban
drainage, flow forecasting, future urbanization impact, reservoir spillway design, flood damage reduction, and floodplain regulation. With its asset management integration project, Hamilton manages asset inventory, customer service, and work order forms. A simplified geospatial infrastructure management system enables data analysis that is deployed to desktop users and laptops for use in the field.

For its integrated decision support system, Hamilton uses a custom GeoMedia toolset that provides a visual and networked approach for identifying and coordinating capital water, sewer, and roads projects. It addresses the city’s capital planning infrastructure and management needs. The integrated approach ensures that all necessary stakeholders (roads, water, and sewer) review and approve all potential capital projects, and their included assets, before the projects are officially initiated. For customer service analysis, the city is able to visualize spatial patterns and put preventative measures in place.

Hamilton also uses a customized Intergraph solution for mobile resource management. The in-house automated vehicle location tracking system ensures data accuracy and enables historical reporting of vehicle locations and actions. With automated field data collection, users can quickly configure a GPS-based data collection device for a broad range of assets for many municipal departments. Users can browse the database and pick the asset and attributes they need to collect.

From day-to-day operational requirements to infrastructure planning and hydraulic modeling, Hamilton’s fully integrated approach utilizes Intergraph technology to deliver the tools its
staff need to get the job done. The simplified workflows make more information available to enable better decisions, while improving quality assurance and quality control. Intergraph
technology has also resulted in the ability to perform rapid work order assignment and resolution.

“The City of Hamilton has been using Intergraph software since the mid-1980s and has since become a spatial data and technology rich environment,” says Gerry Davis, City of Hamilton’s Senior Director of Capital Planning and Implementation and Public Works. “In partnership with
Intergraph, Hamilton’s public works department is often recognized as an industry leader for the innovative integration of geospatial technology, used throughout the operations and maintenance and capital planning infrastructure functions, with more recent initiatives in mobile workforce management.”

Moving Forward:

Hamilton plans to increase deployment of the mobile resource management solution to more efficiently track its vehicles. The city will also continue to look for additional innovative ways to
use Intergraph technology to improve its operations.

Click here for the City of Hamilton case study.

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