ArcGIS for Local Government Solution Leverages Street-Level Photos to Simplify Survey Data Collection

Redlands, California—September 15, 2015—To eliminate blight and revitalize neighborhoods, many local governments use large teams of volunteers to evaluate property conditions and identify structures that may be abandoned or in disrepair. These property surveys may take several months to complete and are hard to maintain over time. To simplify survey data collection, Esri partnered with the City of New Orleans (NOLA) to create an ArcGIS for Local Government solution called  Photo Survey, a web application that can be used by local governments to publish street-level photo collections and conduct focused property surveys that may identify blight, damaged structures, or construction activity. Like all ArcGIS for Local Government solutions, Photo Survey is included with an ArcGIS subscription.

"Photo Survey leverages location-enabled photos produced by commercially available cameras and simplifies data processing so that street-level photo collections can be combined with relevant survey questions and used to inventory property conditions," says Chris Buscaglia, Esri local government solutions engineer. "The street-level photo collection can then be published with the Photo Survey application and shared with the general public so property conditions can be crowdsourced from members of the community."

In addition to blight inventories, Photo Survey could also be used to identify structures damaged by a natural or man-made disaster, construction activity that may lead to reappraisal efforts, and/or dilapidated buildings that pose public health and safety concerns to fire service personnel.

"We're excited to crowdsource the property survey process with the Photo Survey application," says Greg Hymel, NOLA enterprise GIS manager. "Enabling New Orleans citizens to conduct surveys for us with this app will effectively remove neighborhood bias so that, when we go live, we can make projections about the entire city instead of pockets of special-interest areas."

Photo Survey can be downloaded now from the ArcGIS for Local Government solution site. To learn how you can deploy Photo Survey in your local government, visit  solutions.arcgis.com/local-government/.

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