County of Peterborough Roads Patrol Software

Situated in the County of Peterborough, this study describes a project to assess the impact of increased spring and fall freeze-thaw cycles on the county’s tangible capital assets. The County owns, operates, and maintains a wide-ranging inventory of tangible capital assets including 1,430 lane kilometres of paved roadway and 156 engineered structures. As part of this project, the County of Peterborough geolocated problem locations and documented the conditions of specific assets using a mobile application built on a Windows Smart Mobile device. Advantage Data Collection was carried out by county staff and utilized to compile data on all road-based assets. The results were geolocated on a map using the County’s GIS system. The project was led in 2018 by ICLEI Canada.

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Understanding and Assessing Impacts

Given the rise of more frequent spring and fall freeze-thaw cycles, the County wanted to further investigate how assets exposed to these conditions are currently being impacted. As part of this project, the County of Peterborough is geolocating issue locations and documenting the conditions of specific assets through a mobile application built on a Windows Smart Mobile device. Advantage Data Collection (third party provider) was utilized to compile data on all County signs. County staff were used to data capture all road based assets, such as culverts, bridges, road segments, and potholes. These are geo-located on a map using the County’s GIS system.

Identifying Actions

A first meeting was held with the County of Peterborough Public Works Department on March 13, 2017, to discuss project objectives and system needs. Subsequently, a series of meetings were held with Public Works, IT, Climate Change, and Corporate Projects staff to discuss available options and to set up demos for the software. In 2017, Advantage Data Collection completed the following tasks: Inspection, inventory, and assessment of regulatory traffic control signs (including retroreflectivity and barcoding); Inspection, inventory, and assessment of warning traffic control signs (including retroreflectivity and barcoding); Data post-processing work; Final Report that summarizes results of the sign inspection; Updated sign database with current sign information and inspection results; Updated mapping software with current sign information and inspection results. Offsite data collection and verification of road and culvert conditions were also conducted by Public Works staff during this period. The project involved significant collaboration among various County departments. No formal external partnership was needed for this project.

Outcomes and Monitoring Progress

Several positive outcomes were achieved as a result of the project. These include: improved inter-departmental partnerships (the participation and support of various departments from the beginning of the project to its culmination resulted in increased collaboration; and Increased knowledge of the conditions of their assets (this will allow the County to update their Assessment Management Plan). The success of this project is currently defined by the number of geo-located issue locations. Additionally, several key challenges were encountered during the planning and implementation of the project. These include:

  1. Project growing in scope. Initially, the objective of the project was to gather data on pavement conditions (i.e. potholes). The project scope grew to include condition assessments of other assets. This proved to be a challenge as limited financial and human resources were unable to accommodate these additional goals
  2. Competing priorities. Staff and Council were faced with competing priorities. Consequently, additional human and financial resources were not made available. This has been especially challenging considering that the project was growing in scope, and
  3. Staff change. The County of Peterborough lost key staff members over the course of this project. This created gaps in knowledge, skills, and capacity, which slowed down the project for a few months

Next Steps

The public is currently able to report poor road conditions (such as potholes) using the County’s website. Presently, the auto-integration between “Report a problem” on the website and the County’s system is not yet complete, but a full integration of these two components is envisioned. The County foresees fully integrating the public portal into the data collection system through their Customer Relations Module. The County’s Asset Management Plan is currently being updated. As per Provincial legislation, it will include a risk assessment that is based on climate change hazards and impacts. In addition to this, a breakdown of the County-owned equipment and facilities will be assessed and entered into the system.

Resources

Full Link to Case Study 

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To further understand how climate information can be applied in transportation-related work explore the Transportation Module on ClimateData.ca.