27 November 2014

Rubbish And Recycling Route Changes Collects Third Award

Palmerston North’s award winning changes to rubbish and recycling routes has collected its third win at the ALGIM 2014 Annual Awards.

The Association of Local Government Information Management’s annual awards ceremony celebrates innovative solutions to challenges faced in the Local Government Sector, and to improve the level of service to ratepayers.

Palmerston North City Council beat nine finalists for the ‘Excellence in Innovation’ award for its use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to develop a faster, safer and more efficient route for rubbish and recycling collections across the city.

GIS analyst and programmer Lucas Mostyn says GIS is all about using technology to analyse geographic information to help solve problems.

“The old routes needed updating as they had become unworkable in an 8-hour day” says Lucas.

“It’s really exciting that our solution has been so well recognised. We were approached by the rubbish and recycling team and asked to find a solution. That solution made our collections faster and more efficient, as well as not letting the trucks overlap, reducing right-hand turns for safety, and limiting the number of streets missed during rubbish collection”.

Judges commented that they like the fact that other councils could implement the same project to improve efficiency. They also noted that it was the first time in quite some time that a GIS project had won at the ALGIM awards.

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