Public Works Takes it to the Street
With the help of an automated location tracking system, engineers in Aurora, Colo. are smoothing potholes and targeting road repairs.
By Janet Bronk Reese

What used to be a time-consuming, tedious job is now a cinch to perform. Collecting data on street and sidewalk asphalt and concrete conditions in Aurora, Colo., a Denver suburb, couldn't be much easier for Public Works engineer aid Pete George. He applies a first-of-a-kind aerospace technology, dubbed Automated Location and Tracking System (ALTS), to locate and track concrete and asphalt defects to help assess repair work needed.
      ALTS, developed by Lockheed Martin's Commercial Business Unit, combines satellite global positioning data, geographic information, voice recognition, and mobile radio frequency data communications. Aurora's Information Technology, Public Works, and Neighborhood Services departments have worked with Lockheed on this pilot project the last two years to develop and refine the system.

How it Works
Here's how ALTS works: An engineer rides through neighborhoods in a city vehicle equipped with a laptop or a pen-based computer and a rooftop GPS antenna, a portable plate-sized satellite disk. Speaking into a microphone headset, he reports street conditions by making statements with words from an industry standard "street" vocabulary such as, "asphalt, two lanes; width - 46; treatment - bare; condition - fair; repair crack seal; repair patching."
      A computer program connected to the headset recognizes and records the words, combines them with the location - tracked by the satellite - and stores them in a database. The ALTS voice-mapper field unit then digitally transfers the data to Aurora's GIS. The ALTS automatically downloads the data onto a main computer at headquarters. The report, including locations charted on a map, is available for display on the GIS computer.
      Engineers used to walk streets and manually record the data on paper. They cut and pasted map locations; now it's automated.
      "With ALTS, our hands are free, we stay out of bad weather, and we get a lot of work done," commented George.

Cost, Time Savings
"Cost and time savings resulting from this technology are significant," said Steve Reneker, Aurora's Information Technology director. "We have seen a 50 percent increase in data collection efficiencies; the data collected is very accurate due to the use of predefined database vocabularies. For example, zoning inspectors have increased their observations per day from 75 to more than 200 per inspector. The data collection time for an ADA (American With Disabilities) ramp compliance and street pavement conditions project is about 250 hours using the ALTS versus 2,000 hours using traditional methods. This time reduction equals a $70,000 savings."
      Aurora plans to use ALTS for other applications including tracking snow plows, street sweepers, and reporting city code violations.

Hardware, Software
Aurora's ALTS integrates ArcView GIS from ESRI Inc. of Redlands, Calif., voice recognition software from IBM Corp., and a radio communications PC card that broadcasts to the city's 800-MHZ network. ALTS can interface with most commercial GIS, GPS, communications, and database management systems, and with both laptop and pen-based computers.
      According to Steve Bourgeois, Lockheed Martin's product manager, the ALTS data-gathering hardware can be mounted in a vehicle or in a backpack. It consists of a commercially available pen-based computer with a GPS receiver, a communications card, speech recognition software, ALTS voice-mapper software, and a microphone.

Aurora Wins Award
In November, Aurora received the national 1996 PTI (Public Technology, Inc.) Award in the category of Computer Technology and Telecommunications for its ALTS application in Public Works and Neighborhood Services departments. The award was among one of 12 winners selected from 265 entries nationwide. Aurora is the first municipality in the U.S. to apply ALTS in controlling and managing the public's assets including city vehicles, roads, sidewalks, storm drains and outlets, street lights, signage, and others.
      The project was funded in part by a $150,000 grant from PTI Inc., a Philadelphia-based organization sponsored by the National League of Cities, National Association of Counties, and International City/County Management Association. PTI champions the use of aerospace technology in local government applications.
      Other cities using ALTS are the New Brunswick, Canada, Department of Transportation for street sign inventory, and the city of Austin, Texas, for inventorying sign, street and parking meters. According to Bourgeois, ALTS also is being applied in other GIS data-intensive industries such as utilities, transportation, telecommunications, and energy.

About the Author:
Janet Bronk Reese is a public information officer for the city of Aurora. She may be reached at 303-739-7181.

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