The Client
Limerick County is situated in the heart of the Irish Mid–West, with a population of over 190,000 and the third largest city in Ireland. Limerick City and County Council is responsible for all the local services in the city and county regions.
The Problem
One of the council’s many responsibilities is to maintain and cut grass across various sites in the county. Operating an extensive grass maintenance programme, the Limerick City & County Council Parks Department maintains over 330 acres of greens in areas such as housing estates, roadsides, graveyards and parks.
Limerick City & County Council required all their grass maintenance areas to be digitised in support of their contract to cut and trim the grass in those areas. By digitising their grass maintenance areas, the council would be able to supply a measured area and drawing to the cutting contractor, detailing the precise grass areas that needed to be managed.
What We Did
To digitise the grass maintenance areas on to a map, Mallon used MapInfo. The areas were then digitised using the following method:
- Creation of a grass site polygon layer with 3 columns, ID, NAME and TOTAL AREA
- The area was then located on screen using the aerial imagery provided by the council
- A new layer of OSi vector data added to the map
- Polygons were then captured and traced on top of the provided vector lines
- Once the polygons for a particular site had been captured the ID, NAME and TOTAL AREA columns would be completed
- All captured sites would then be saved and exported as a Shp file
The Benefits
- Limerick City & County Council were able to successfully complete their grass maintenance contract
- The council now have more accurate measurements of the total area of grass they need to maintain
- Grass maintenance areas can now be updated and maintained by Limerick Council’s own GIS team
- The total area of grass that needs to be maintained can now be easily calculated by the council