Debris Management Solution
City of Del City, Oklahoma
In 2020, a mid-winter ice storm left central Oklahoma with piles of fallen tree limbs and debris. The City of Del City contacted Meshek’s GIS team to create a solution to improve the efficiency of the debris removal process.
Overview
Complete city storm damage assessment completed in 16 hours
7,214 debris piles recorded, categorized, and photographed
Only three employees and a single vehicle needed to complete assessment
Photo gallery viewer allowed city staff to plan work efforts
Collected data provided accurate information for contractor cost estimates
Web portal provided key information for residents and business owners to ensure storm debris was positioned properly for efficient removal efforts
Survey123 application provided accurate and critical data collection for FEMA reimbursement requests. Data collected provided contractor info, employee identification, vehicles used, and total tonnage removed.
Operations dashboard provided data for planning purposes to assist contractors in route management and real-time monitoring and tracking of removal efforts.
QuickCapture
The first stage of the debris removal process was to assess the volume of debris to be collected. For this step, the team used QuickCapture, a rapid assessment tool that allowed city staff to collect information about 7,200 piles of debris in only two working days. The city deployed a three-person team — one driver to follow the collection route and two passengers who sat on either side of the vehicle, capturing pictures of and collecting information about debris piles by address in realtime.
Survey123
During the debris collection phase, the city staff traveled with each debris collection crew, recording information including the vehicles used, the crew members, the type of debris collected, method of disposal, and the total weight removed per truck load. The total weight removed was calculated based on each trucks full and empty weights obtained from the weight scales and weight tickets provide at the final dump site.
ArcGIS Hub
The web portal Home Page provides general information regarding the purpose of the site as well as high-level indicators that track the progress of the debris removal process. As show in the example (in the gallery below), at this point in the collection phase nearly 7,000 tons of debris have been collected, from 7,147 debris piles out of the 7,214 piles identified during the rapid assessment, with a remaining 62 debris piles left to be picked up to complete the debris removal for Del City.
Operations Dashboard
As the centerpiece for monitoring activity, the operations dashboard is the executive and community window into the overall status during the debris collection phase. The dashboard delivers near-real time data (30 second refresh intervals) and transparency to both city staff and the community. Using the dashboard, city staff were able to monitor the number of debris piles needing to be removed from the initial assessment, the number of debris piles that had been removed, and the remaining debris piles awaiting removal.
The dashboard also allowed the city staff to view how many debris piles were observed to contain a hazard which needed to be corrected before the contractor could/would pick it up. These hazards were noted in the initial QuickCapture collection process as any potential obstacle or infrastructure keeping a pile from being collected, items such as fire hydrants, mailboxes, or parked cars.
