For illustration, we have provided some examples below of specific uses as reported by selected City of Jacksonville departments. To go to an individual department, click the hyperlink below. You may also simply scan down the page looking for specific uses highlighted in brown throughout.
Animal Control
Fleet Management
Mosquito Control
Property Safety
Solid Waste
Streets & Drainage (S&D)
Tax Collector
Zone Code Enforcement
Animal Control
"We love the system! We use it to help dispatch officers." (an Animal Control manager) It is especially helpful when an officer is near the border of his/her "zone" and an emergency call comes in from the neighboring zone. It allows officers to be assigned based on how physically close they are so that territory management doesn't trump safety in the not-so-rare case of a dangerous animal control situation.
Future Plans – To further improve safety, the AVL system can be "loaded" with data that shows residences with known-dangerous pets on the map (for example, with a red icon of a house). In addition, officers are asked to confirm when given an assignment within 20 minutes. When an officer does not respond with a confirmation, the point on the map showing that officers' vehicle can be highlighted to alert management that he/she may be in trouble.
Fleet Management
With the massive task of managing and providing maintenance for all city vehicles, Fleet Management uses AVL as an easy, quick and surefire method of identifying vehicle location. With many agencies requesting a latest fix on individual vehicles (on a daily basis) this tool gives them the ability to quickly react with accurate information. This not only saves time and trouble, but also provides the capability to serve the public more efficiently during hurricane or other emergency events by clearly showing vehicle position. Another application being implemented currently is for department fuel delivery trucks. On-vehicle sensors will relay on/off status for the "Power Takeoff System" which would show a fuel dispensing on/off icon on the map. This allows better control and understanding of gasoline allocation.
AVL also helps conduct accident discovery. By providing information about the vehicles' speed, location, and time of day, it is easier to understand the events leading up to an accident.
Future Plans – AVL is being considered as a back up system to help Fleet Management trigger maintenance reminders and check-points for vehicle maintenance, and to track total mileage of vehicles.
Mosquito Control
Mosquito Control supervisors and inspectors plan their daily activity based largely on citizen requests for service. The AVL system shows both the vehicles and the locations of service requests on the map, enabling them to visually see the locations they must visit. This makes it easy to determine the best route to handle the needs of the public efficiently.
This system also replaces the previous process whereby supervisors had to manually cut and paste entries from the request system into forms that communicated locations and the priority to the inspectors. This has eliminated a great deal of paperwork and reduced the time and cost of responding.
Equally important is the ability to allow management to audit spray coverage by considering the route taken by an inspector. With AVL, managers can see the inspector's route through a neighborhood. In documented cases this has led to areas being revisited for additional spraying to ensure good coverage. At this time, vehicle based sprayers are also being tied to sensors that will show spray on/off conditions for each vehicle icon on the map, making it possible to identify not only where the vehicles are, but if they are spraying at any given time.
Property Safety
Property safety reports many added efficiencies as a result of the AVL system. With six Code Enforcement Supervisors overseeing a staff of 40+ Code Enforcement Officers with responsibility over six zones, routing efficiency is a major need. Like other agencies, the officers' daily activities are in direct response to customer calls. Therefore, their route and list of stops change every day. AVL allows supervisors to ensure that the officers' routes are as efficient as possible each day. This can be done 'real time' or as a review after the fact.
Property Safety also has the capability with AVL to see individual stops made. If a stop is visited on a repeat basis, or out of zone, they are able to ensure that there is no abuse of privilege by staff. Perhaps most importantly, AVL allows managers to easily locate a vehicle in an "officer-down" or stolen vehicle situation. This is a concern because officers leave their car to talk briefly with residents, which creates the opportunity for theft, and because the job is inherently confrontational. The City of Jacksonville seeks every advantage to minimize the danger to its employees.
Since safety must also be assured for the public, AVL helps the city identify vehicle driving safety abuse should a Property Safety employee be driving in an unsafe way. If a resident calls and reports a city vehicle speeding, we are able to identify the speed of the vehicle at the correct time and location and correct the behavior if it is warranted.
Future Plans – Based on the present capability of the AVL system to provide the length of time a vehicle is stopped, reports are being developed to show a list of inspector's stops to allow management to more easily analyze daily activity, improve volume, efficiency, and productivity of staff. Also, a time-in/time-out reporting feature will be added to allow inspectors to save time checking into the office before and after site visits, thereby allowing them to be more efficient.
Solid Waste
The AVL system helps to improve safety by allowing management to monitor vehicle speeds and conduct accident discovery if needed. This helps to protect the public and drivers by creating accountability and reviewability. The system also helps managers perform routing review. With increasing gas costs it is valuable to constantly evaluate that the best routes are being utilized to serve the public's needs.
Future Plans – AVL is being evaluated as a tool to identify locations and number of stops made by solid waste employees; this could help ensure that homes are not missed for garbage pick-up for example. For Solid Waste supervisors, the issue reporting system which is now viewable in their vehicle-based PC's could show citizen requests on a map, enabling them to better plan their route and reduce wasted trips.
Streets & Drainage (S&D)
One of S&D's biggest challenges is to ensure that its vehicle fleet is properly and fully utilized. Its vehicles are many and varied and include cars, trucks, several types of backhoes and other earth moving equipment, street sweepers, buses and tree trimmers. AVL allows management to identify equipment location on a map and track movement from job to job to gauge progress. This improves the value of taxpayers' investment as well as identifying personnel who may be underperforming.
Current efforts are also underway to add sensors to hydraulics systems to show on/off status for earth moving type equipment, to street sweepers to show when sweeper brushes are up/down, and to tree trimmers to show the elevation basket in operation status. These sensor telemetrics help in various ways. For example, when street sweepers go too fast in a brush down position, it substantially increases wear on the brushes. This system will help save money on replacement brushes. On all of these sensors, it will be possible to study the time in operation of this equipment allowing management to make better usage decisions.
Tax Collector
The Tax Collector is a highly stretched function with only five or six field inspectors whose job is to handle issues and tax needs for 70,000 area businesses. Just a the single aspect of their job -- responding to known delinquent tangible personal property tax violations -- is a great challenge. Anything that can help inspectors increase their visits per day is a great benefit to taxpayers and compliant local businesses.
AVL gives them the ability to plan and track daily routes visually on a map and identify how they can be improved. Additionally, knowing inspectors stop locations can help managers troubleshoot safety issues or resolve potential abuse of privilege issues.
Future Plans – Plans are in process to add routing to the AVL system. This would allow the supervisors and inspectors to click a planned-stop icon (driven by tax violation notices) on the map and select an option to get "to" and "from" directions. This improves the current system's ability to provide a visual map reference by adding an automated 'directions' function. Also, a feature is being considered that will overlay color coded Inspector Zones on the map with some form of notification if an inspector leaves his/her zone. This will make it easier to allow supervisors to ensure appropriate travel and time usage.
Zone Code Enforcement
Zoning Code Enforcement's daily mission -- to make sure land is used legally -- is customer response driven. At present, a staff of five do their best to respond to 5000 citizen requests per/yr. Each request means that the inspectors have to go to homes or businesses, inspect the issue, request changes, and then follow-up. Enabling the staff to maximize time on the road and minimize paperwork in the office make the most of taxpayer's dollars.
To help with efficiency, AVL has been used as a tool to review daily routing and to review driving and stops activity levels. Inspectors that excel stand out as having more stops, distance covered, and less engine-off time. Therefore, AVL also helps management improve and reward efficiency.
Future Plans – Zone Enforcement will benefit greatly in the future from the routing directions feature and "stops report" enhancements described above. In addition, progress is being made to allow the AVL map to show inspector's zones by color code. This would allow for notification when out of territory (for example, a flashing orange car) to add another tool to manage efficiency.