The Fulcrum Focus

Every year brings a different journey and uncharted experiences that drive our growth. At the start, our country grappled with a government shutdown, casting clouds over 2019. Despite this, we reached beyond those clouds and found the strength to not only begin but also to persevere. That grit and determination have carried us through a topsy-turvy year and promise to guide us in the future.

A worker is injured on the job every 7 seconds in the United States alone, according to the National Safety Council. Workplace injuries can result in lost workdays, lawsuits, and costly fines — not to mention needless pain and suffering for your employees. One way to prevent hazards that cause workplace illnesses and injuries is to conduct a job safety analysis (JSA).

Last month, we shared a video walking you through the steps of creating a custom mobile form with Fulcrum’s drag-and-drop app builder.

The birds have migrated south as the autumn air flows through our trees fashioned in bright color confirming the imminent end of 2019. We annually anticipate these changes and enjoy the bounty of Thanksgiving knowing the finish line marks the beginning of a new race. For most, it’s known as the most joyous time of the year, but for others, it’s quite difficult. Particularly those who live in areas with severe weather.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know that we’re a bunch of geography nerds here at Spatial Networks. So every year around this time we like to put together a list of gifts for people who love geography to help you with your holiday shopping! (Or to help your loved ones shop for you, whichever the case may be.) Here are our picks for this year.

How to create Fulcrum apps

Creating custom mobile forms in Fulcrum is super easy with our drag-and-drop app builder.

Last week we hosted a hands-on workshop on data collection with Fulcrum during the NetHope Summit in San Juan. As part of the joint workshop from myself and Mapbox’s Mikel Maron, we wanted to showcase how to go from the beginning to end — creating a mobile collection survey through field collection all the way to visualization (online or disconnected) with Mapbox’s Atlas server.

September will never be the same for the Bahamas. Hurricane Dorian obliterated the Abaco Islands and Grand Bahama in a matter of hours, changing the island and everyone that lived there. At the present time, there are 67 reported deaths, 777 people living in shelters, 200 reported missing and thousands of residents are displaced. In one day, the northwest region of the Bahamas was forever changed and it’s expected to take years before it returns to a livable community.

Randal Hale is a longtime Fulcrum user and the owner of North River Geographic Systems, Inc., a GIS consulting firm based in Chattanooga, TN. He was kind enough to share the details of his experience helping his client — a local 911 office — convert their GIS system to a more affordable, flexible setup using Fulcrum!

Data collection can be beneficial for just about any business. You can streamline processes and workflows by asking the same questions across your entire workforce, and receiving the information in a specified format.

Fulcrum’s record editor

Fulcrum’s web-based Record Editor is used by project managers and admins to view, modify, analyze, and export data collected in the field or imported into the platform. The Editor presents your data in an interactive table with an integrated map view and includes tools for browsing and filtering out subsets of records.

Haiti is home to mesmerizing beaches, tropical flowers, great food, and beauty reflective of the sun’s love affair with the Caribbean. Unfortunately, it is also home to hurricanes, earthquakes, torrential storms, flooding and the many issues that follow disasters, particularly in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

We received some exciting news here at Spatial Networks headquarters recently: Fulcrum is now FirstNet Listed and available via the FirstNet App Catalog!

If you’re a firefighter, you need a hose. If you’re a surgeon, a scalpel. As NetHope prepares to help assess and respond to the devastation of Hurricane Dorian, we need a full complement of digital tools to aid the work in emergency situations.

Spatial Networks is excited to announce our newest Fulcrum partner, Orbica!

The part of the world which I call home is a place in California that most people only pass through, or fly over, on their way between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Recently however, I had the good fortune that NetHope was conducting its Bay Area Disaster Response Training (DRT) right in my “backyard,” in San Luis Obispo County, CA.

It was extremely hot and dusty as the caravan of humanitarian aid workers from Team Rubicon pulled up to a farmhouse in Matarara, Mozambique – 40 miles west as the crow flies from Beira, but a nearly 8-hour journey overland due to road washouts and poor conditions. Team Rubicon had arrived to as part of the Cyclone Idai response after the storm ripped through Mozambique and caused monumental flooding throughout the country.

In 1996, I went to work for Cambric Corporation in Salt Lake City, Utah as a deputy project manager for a telecom operations outside-plant (OSP) data conversion project. The client was Bell Canada, and we had three primary subcontractors, based in India, that were responsible for the vast majority of the labor in converting legacy analog engineering design and “as-builts” drawings in to a full AM/FM/GIS for roughly 255 telephone exchanges covering the eastern provinces of Canada. I was largely responsible for managing the production schedules, operations and quality control of our Indian subcontractors. This required a fair amount of time on the ground in India providing guidance, oversight, supervision and management of nearly 1,000 project team members for more than 18 months.

Health disparities have become common conversation amongst medical professionals, politicians, and communities at large. It’s a known fact that the poorer you are, the more affected you are by the worst health indicators. Understanding this fact makes the fix sound simple: perhaps move to a new neighborhood or increase your income — that should fix these issues. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

Fourth of July in Southern California was different this year. I’m sure most were prepared to enjoy family, friends and traditional fireworks. They most likely had made their last grocery store runs and mapped out their entertainment plan, when out of nowhere the plans were literally shook up. An earthquake measuring 6.4 in magnitude shook at 10:33 a.m., causing a swift change to the Independence Day celebrations in Searles Valley and surrounding areas. In classic Cali fashion, some felt the shaking happening and kept moving afterward thinking it’s normal California stuff since they have become accustomed to experiencing these tremors.

There’s a lot more to construction work than just — well, constructing. Contractors and project managers are also responsible for meeting deadlines, construction standards, and safety regulations.

Today’s businesses have vast amounts of data, and decision-makers must use it to solve pressing problems. However, due to the high data volume and limited time for analysis, it’s crucial to cut through the noise and focus on what matters. Location intelligence streamlines this process by visually representing your data, making it easier to understand. Viewing data in a visual context, such as on a map, significantly enhances comprehension.

If your field teams are still conducting inspections and surveys with paper and clipboards, it’s time for an upgrade.

As the Fulcrum Community Advocate, I had the pleasure of attending the National VOAD (Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster) Conference in Nashville, TN. It was a life-changing and definitely a life-saving experience for me.

I just arrived back home in St. Pete after an awesome and productive week in San Diego for this year’s FOSS4G-NA conference. It’s North America’s version of the go-to event for those of us at the intersection of geospatial and open source. OSGeo and the local organizing committee hosted it at the Marina Village Conference Center in Mission Bay. Overall the event was a phenomenal week full of great content, new (and old) friends, time with customers and partners, and a chance to see what’s next in the industry.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) conducts upwards of 32,000 inspections each year, but that number is expected to rise in the near future. Earlier this month, the U.S. labor secretary said he expects jobsite inspections to increase once the new crop of OSHA agents hired in fiscal year 2018 completes training.

About Geodexy

When I joined Spatial Networks we were in the very early stages of building a data collection tool, primarily for internal use to improve speed and efficiency on data project work. That product was called Geodexy, and the model was similar to Fulcrum in concept, but in execution and tech stack, everything was completely different.

If you work in construction, you’ve probably noticed smartphones, tablets, and other new technology solutions appearing on job sites over the last few years. If you’ve been in the industry for a long time, you might even find them annoying: Why create complicated new processes when the old ones work just fine?

The systems that provide our world with power and electricity require enormous amounts of utility data and compliance monitoring to function effectively. Energy and utility companies must constantly monitor, analyze, and respond to events that affect these complex networks to ensure their customers have electricity. What’s more, the production and distribution of energy are subject to numerous regulations, making utility data and compliance requirements crucial for operations to be documented in meticulous detail. The ability to streamline and integrate data coming in from multiple sites is critical to staying ahead of these demands.

In 2016, the U.S. Census Bureau launched The Opportunity Project, “a process for engaging government, communities, and the technology industry to create digital tools that address our greatest challenges as a nation”.

The toxic red tide bloom that has plagued Florida since November of 2017 seems to finally have dissipated. Last week, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reported that the red tide organism, Karenia brevis or K. brevis, is no longer present in water samples.

Fulcrum records location data with each parent record, child record, and media attachment, ensuring high location accuracy. The collected data relies on the configured location provider in your mobile device’s operating system. Typically, this provider is the onboard GPS sensor, which sometimes works in conjunction with other sensors and radios in the device.

We’re excited to be headed out to the SaaStr Annual conference in San Jose, CA next week! This year there’ll be over 300 speakers and 12,000 attendees, all there to share ideas, collaborate, and hear success stories from some of the biggest players in B2B software.

As we look back at 2018 in review and all that the Spatial Networks team has accomplished, I’d like to share a number with you: 130,021,386.

I’ve always said: Ask me to run an office, and no worries, I got it! Then this task fell on my lap — a great combination of departments’ needs and wants, all to be managed by me. I needed to tag and inventory our assets. Sure, I think. Let’s use Google sheets and track the inventory. If only there was an asset management solution that I could use to take the information off a barcode and correlate it to an existing asset. Oh, wait — there is!

Our semi-annual Fulcrum All Hands events are always energizing and fun-filled, but last week was one for the record books. With 54 full-time employees, it was our biggest ever (there were 33 at our last Fall All Hands!) – and if you saw the barrage of photos on our social media accounts, you already know it was epic.

One of the fastest ways to prevent the spread of deadly diseases like Ebola is to catalog instances on a map. This enables emergency planners to monitor the scope of an outbreak and allocate resources to prevent loss of life. Maps also help community members and aid workers locate clean water, medical facilities, latrines, burial sites, and safe travel routes. Being able to share this information quickly between agencies is vital to coordinating an effective response to an outbreak, and apps with mobile medical forms that share data in real time or near-real time can be an invaluable tool. The engineers at Fulcrum have created apps for tracking Ebola and cholera in response to the current outbreaks in several African countries.

The good news: The current demand for new homes, buildings, and facilities in the United States is higher than it’s been in years, and the construction industry is booming. “For better or worse, business is good for us,” Goliath Construction Consulting founder Tyson Conrad told U.S. News and World Report. “They’re beating down the door.” The bad news? There aren’t enough skilled workers to keep up with demand.

Every year since 2014, the American Geographical Society (AGS) has hosted Geography 2050, a multi-year strategic dialogue among thought leaders from academia, government, business, and the nonprofit sector.

From conserving natural resources to reducing business costs, there are lots of reasons to switch to paperless fieldwork — but many companies have yet to do it. Maybe it’s because they’re attached to their familiar paper processes, or perhaps they’re simply reluctant to enact change.

Spatial Networks is once again proud to announce our support for the annual Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) conference. FOSS4G 2018 brings together the largest gathering of developers and users of open source geospatial software in the world- and this year it’s all happening in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, one of Africa’s fastest growing cities!

One of the biggest benefits of using mobile forms is the time savings. So naturally, once you’ve made the switch from paper, you’ll want to get your field teams up and running as quickly as possible. In this post, we’ll show you an easy way to get your employees trained on Fulcrum and collecting field data in no time.

Offline data collecting from the field is an essential task across many industries, and recent advances have made it easier than ever.

Professionals across many industries — utility, engineering, and construction, especially — are giving up their antiquated pen-and-paper processes and switching to mobile forms, and for good reason. Taking inspection forms that have been filled out in the field and manually entering them into a computer is a slow and cumbersome process that takes otherwise productive hours out of the workday. With mobile forms, the information is entered just once on-site and gets synced to the cloud, where it is immediately available to clients and stakeholders. Even better? Switching to mobile forms is easy! With Fulcrum, you can create a custom mobile inspection form in 15 minutes or less. In this post, we’ll show you how.

As we mentioned in a recent post, adding a spatial dimension to your field data vastly increases the value of your efforts, whether you’re collecting information for the purpose of tracking sales or fighting malaria. And all geospatial data collection starts with a basemap.

In the last few posts, we’ve talked about the benefits of collecting and analyzing field data. Information gathered from the field gives businesses and organizations a unique advantage. It provides a foundation for more informed decision-making and helps them allocate resources more effectively.

The term “data collection” may sound esoteric, but the practice is actually quite broad. Data collection is a vital process that every business conducts regularly, even if they don’t call it that.

Collecting field data can be a complex process, requiring time, money, and people. That’s why logistics are important. A successful project design will save you from wasting time, energy, and resources, and ensure the most reliable data possible.

In our last post, we explored how and why businesses gather and use information from the field. In this post, we’ll dive deeper into some of the different methods for collecting data.

As more security breaches and data thefts by hackers come to light, consumers are demanding increased transparency and responsiveness from companies that process or store their data. In response, the European Parliament approved the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to protect EU citizens and residents from privacy and data breaches.

Data that is captured in the field is some of the most valuable information available to a company. It provides a clear picture into what’s happening at a job site or point of transaction, giving managers and other executives the insights they need to make informed business decisions.