New Jersey Meadowlands Commission
Since 2001, the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission (NJMC) has used CityView to automate Land Use Management functions, overseeing application reviews for planning, zoning and building code. Automation of standard procedures, such as Violation Notices for Code Enforcement being automatically populated with text, fines, and citations, has helped streamline and simplify permitting processes. Since their initial purchase, the NJMC has developed several of their own forms and workflow automation to meet their exact needs.
The NJMC GIS department uses CityView to track mapping requests and to automate the generation of data distribution agreements, documents that legally restrict external use of NJMC GIS data. Thanks to CityView, the GIS Department has accurate records of inter-departmental requests as well as external agency and company requests. Since records also calculate time spent on projects, the GIS Department can substantiate the need for funding for additional hardware, software and staff to accommodate documented workloads.
Hydrology Engineers at the NJMC use CityView forms to log and track public telephone calls, letters and applications pertaining to flood incidents in the District. The CityView forms are a direct replica of standard flood incident templates. Reports are automatically generated that provide data on flood incidents, incidents requiring inspections, and public requests for pamphlets on FEMA flood insurance.
In addition, the information logged into CityView forms is set to export out as GIS shapefiles. Using location analysis along with CityView’s flood incident data, Hydrology Engineers can analyze patterns of flood characteristics. For example, numerous flood incidents pertaining to basement flooding on a particular street may not be as apparent when looking at an on-screen form. However, when layered on a map, engineers can see patterns that were not initially obvious.
The NJMC’s use of CityView is a perfect example of how the flexibility of the complete CityView solution allows a municipality to be flexible in its internal processes and evolve over time.
Today, each inspector’s pen tablet contains a replica of the village’s main permit database. In the morning, when the field inspectors pick up their pen tablets and set out on their rounds, every tablet contains a copy of the database with the exact same information. During the day the inspectors make changes to the database on their individual pen tablets out in the field and then at the end of the day they return to the office and re-synchronize their database with the central database.
CityView allows the Village of Glenview to run more efficiently. Since installing it they have been able to eliminate more than 25 different permit and inspection forms and use one form for almost everything.
