GIS in the City: New Braunfels’ GIS Manager Shares Some Recent Initiatives

GIS is playing an increasingly important role in providing timely and relevant information to leaders and residents alike. Neil Rose, GIS Manager for the City of New Braunfels, shared some recent projects they are working on.

The U.S. Census has been releasing Census 2020 data since August 2021, and the GIS Department has gathered and created a series of maps, dashboards, and datasets for residents to view, which can be found here. The City used this data to move forward with city council redistricting, which was adopted in early January.

Through collaboration with the Economic and Community Development (ECD) Department, GIS has been analyzing the spatial distribution of property and sales tax revenue collection against the average operations and maintenance cost of supporting public infrastructure. The analytics and maps generated from this project will help the ECD Department determine what areas of the city have been activated so they can figure out why and perhaps how to activate other parts of the city that aren’t seeing the same levels of success.

To better serve the City’s residents and visitors, the GIS Department has teamed up with Public Works and Engineering to develop a citizen-focused survey that users can use to inform the City of things such as potholes, illegal dumping, debris, street structural failures, downed signs, small-scale traffic studies, and more. This survey will use Esri’s Survey123 application and push service requests directly to Cartegraph, the City’s asset management system. While still in development, all departments involved are very happy with the successes seen so far.

The GIS Department is planning a variety of projects to commence once it receives updated LiDAR imagery. These projects include using machine learning and artificial intelligence to derive building footprints and construct 3-D building data from the LiDAR as well as provide the necessary 3-D basemap to perform flood inundation analyses throughout the city. The results of these projects will also work with a new application the City recently purchased, ArcUrban. ArcUrban will provide Planning staff with the means to perform studies and analyses based on zoning, parcels, and 3-D buildings and model how new developments might impact surrounding homes and businesses.

 

Neil Rose has been with the City of New Braunfels for over 2 years and in that time has established automated workflows, organized and migrated the city's GIS Enterprise, and is currently working toward a complete GIS data audit. He enjoys engaging and empowering his colleagues with GIS.