This Friday, Alex and I will travel to Fort Worth, TX, for the 78th Annual NACo Conference and Exposition. We will exhibit in booth 728, so if you’re attending, make sure to stop by and visit us. As most NACo attendees know, GIS and government data collection play a crucial role in effective county operations. GIS benefits nearly every county department, from public works to elections, emergency response, and law enforcement. Leveraging powerful GIS tools improves efficiency, reduces costs, and enhances overall productivity in various government functions. Many counties already use Esri software regularly, but they could maximize their GIS capabilities even further.
Along with GIS, there comes a need for creating and maintaining data sets; and Fulcrum has a lot to offer your county.
Fulcrum is cost effective
In my experience as an intern at a municipality, I spent a few weeks collecting data points of fire hydrants that were missing from the database. A Trimble GPS device had to be brought from the utilities campus to city hall for me to use since our department didn’t have one. With Fulcrum, every department in your county can have GPS equipment; people can use their own devices to collect data at any time. Fulcrum is also easier to use and more intuitive than a regular GPS device.
Fulcrum promotes collaboration
A Fulcrum organization plan enables multiple team members to collect data collaboratively and streamline government data collection efforts. Since the system stores everything in the cloud, data collectors can upload and sync information without returning to the office. A supervisor or administrator can monitor incoming data from their desk while the team continues fieldwork. The system securely stores all data on our servers, allowing quick access for authorized users with the proper permissions. This approach simplifies data management compared to granting database access on private servers or sharing shapefiles via email.
Fulcrum saves time
Before I left my internship, I had to help prepare for a historic resources survey. I had to create tables in ArcCatalog for someone to fill out in the field using a laptop. Their plan was to use a GPS device to collect the location of each historic house, and then tie that to the table I created after returning to the office. Fulcrum does all of this at the same time. You build your data collection form (essentially the table in this example) using a simple drag and drop interface, deploy it to a mobile device, and proceed to collect GPS measurements while you fill out the rest of the data. There is also no post processing involved with Fulcrum. Just sync your data and then export it to csv, shp, kml, or geoJSON.
Fulcrum can work with ArcGIS
In addition to the fact that you can export the data as a shapefile, Fulcrum can be linked with ArcGIS. You can skip the export step, and import data directly into ArcMap. This can even be done while data collectors are still in the field. This is possible by incorporating Arc2Earth into your GIS toolset.
If you are going to be at the NACo Conference, be sure to stop by to learn more about Fulcrum. If you won’t be at the conference, feel free to contact us at support@fulcrumapp.com with any questions you may have.