Adaptive Management of Municipal Street Sweeping and Catch Basin Cleaning Operations in the Digital Age

Sep 11, 2019 8:30am ‐ Sep 11, 2019 9:45am

Identification: 1448

Faced with meeting sediment removal goals outlined by Water Quality Improvement Plans (WQIPs), the City of San Diego and its engineering firm partners were tasked with developing an Optimized Implementation Plan (OIP) for the City's Catch Basin Cleaning and Street Sweeping programs. This adaptive management plan blended mobile GIS technology with holistic prioritization strategies to achieve costs savings, increased crew productivity, and improved water quality city-wide. Historic sediment removal trends and parallels between the two programs were identified and used to develop prioritization strategies. Mobile GIS technology streamlined cleanings and allowed management to assign work based on the developed prioritization strategies. After one year of implementation, the OIP resulted in an 82 percent increase in the volume of sediment removed and a reduction of 9,090 cleanings needed to meet WQIP goals. As the plan evolves, additional long-term sediment deposition trends and optimization opportunities will become apparent, cementing program sustainability and effectiveness.
  • Identify trends in municipal catch basin and street sweeping efforts to develop holistic prioritization strategies.
  • Determine software and hardware needs in order to transition from manual task delegation and data collection into an automated and efficient.
  • Utilize GIS mobile technology and database solutions to streamline daily public works operations and adaptively manage stormwater assets.

Utility Damage Investigations

Sep 11, 2019 8:30am ‐ Sep 11, 2019 9:45am

Identification: 2011

Municipalities face the continuous problem of dealing with utility damages, both from excavators striking their utility lines and their own crews striking other utilities.  This can cost the Municipality anywhere from a few thousand dollars to millions for larger cities.  Poor investigations often lead to the inability of the Municipality to recover their damages when an excavator strikes their line.  Likewise, a lack of quality damage investigations can often lead to the city paying for a claim that might not have been their fault. This session will focus on developing structured processes to properly investigate utility damages.  These processes will help to get to the true cause or causes of damages and help to assign fault and aid the municipality in collecting for damages.  It will also help in protecting the City from paying for damages when their crews have done nothing wrong. Finally, the session will deal with using the information gained from quality damage investigations to improve processes within the municipality as well as to develop training to address issues where improvement is needed.  Attention can also be focused on public awareness concerning key issues identified.  This should also lead to reduced damages over time.
  • Discover how to develop processes to properly investigate utility damages.
  • Develop processes that get to the true cause of utility damages and that help the municipality in collecting damages.
  • Discuss how to establish a training program and a public awareness program that can lead to reduced damages over time.

The Future of the Interstate Highway System

Sep 11, 2019 8:30am ‐ Sep 11, 2019 9:45am

Identification: 2020

The Interstate Highway System is the backbone of our country’s transportation system. Representing only 1 percent of the total U.S. public road mileage, it carries over 25 percent of all vehicle miles traveled in the country, including more than half of the miles traveled by combination trucks—used mostly for freight carriage. The system not only has mileage in every state in the union, but it has physically integrated the nation.

But at over 60-years old, most of the Interstate highways and bridges have long exceeded their design lives and in many places are worn and congested. Furthermore, the nation now has new expectations for the system’s condition, performance, and use. Meeting those expectations and remedying the system’s deficiencies is going to require the same forward-looking outlook and commitment that informed the system’s creation. 

Our speaker will discuss the findings and recommendations presented in a recent Congressionally mandated report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The report calls for a 20-year “blueprint for action,” which includes creating a federal “Interstate Highway System Renewal and Modernization Program” modeled after the original Interstate Construction Program. The speaker will also examine other program actions, including changes to law that the study committee recommended to U.S. Congress.

  • Identify the expectations today's users have for the condition, performance, and use of the Interstate Highway System.
  • Review the recommendations made in the recent NASEM report made to Congress regarding the "Interstate Highway System Renewal and Modernization Program."
  • Examine the the changes to law that the study committee recommended to Congress.