Location: Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN
Client: Metropolitan Mosquito Control District
Background
The
Metropolitan Mosquito Control District (MMCD) provides a variety of services to 2.7 million people living in an area covering 2,800 square miles in the seven-county Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota metropolitan area. One of their main services is to survey for and control mosquitoes, deer ticks, and biting gnats. The MMCD currently monitors and treats more than 70,000 larval breeding sites. They needed a tool to help them provide the location and treatment history of these sites to their internal staff and the public.
The Project
The MMCD contracted with Houston Engineering, Inc. (HEI) in 2006 to develop a GIS web application to aid in the operations and management of the larval sites. The project team gathered basemaps and data to publish with the web application. Two separate web applications were developed, giving the public and internal staff access to the site information.
Users can search for MMCD sites and obtain more information and details, including site type, last visited site, and treatment history. Internal users can also see additional information such as limited access, foreman responsibility, and rainfall totals. After being launched in December 2006, the application became very popular and has been featured on several news channels in the Twin Cities.
In 2008, HEI developed another application to track callers and service requests. The Caller Tracking Application was developed with PostGreSQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. In 2013, HEI continued its working with the District to update the GIS web-based mapping application.
We also developed a mobile web application using HTML5 to replace a legacy Palm OS field data collection system. The application includes inspections, treatments, mileage tracking, and other critical field operation functions.
Finally, we have developed other specific business web-based applications to track helicopter treatment activities and the display of rain precipitation. In addition to development services, HEI continues to maintain the databases for MMCD, host applications on a managed cloud server, and provide technical support as needed.