Miami-Dade County Shows How GIS Supports Tech Efforts

During a recent Esri User Conference, Miami-Dade County’s IT department Assistant Director Jose Lopez and Division Director Jose Rodriguez recently shared how the county is using geographic information system (GIS) technology to improve access to government services.

According to Lopez, the county has worked with Esri, a provider of GIS software, location intelligence and mapping services, since 1987. It has worked with Esri on several projects, including developing a parcel layer fabric in 1994 and launching the county’s first GIS application for residents in 1997.

Now, the county has “nearly 500 business-centric applications for 25 departments, the enterprise and the community,” and an equally robust data inventory, according to Lopez.

Regarding the latter, GIS and data currently play a key role in Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s No Wrong Door community-focused initiative by helping to connect residents with government resources and community-based organizations.

The initiative includes eight government service categories: central government, public safety, transportation and mobility, neighborhood and infrastructure, health and safety, economic development, recreation and culture, and non-mayoral departments.

During the conference, Lopez demonstrated how No Wrong Door can be used: “As seen here, this is one of our business-centric digital twins, which is integrated with BIM (building information modeling) and other sources of information. Enterprise GIS is at the foundation of what we do in the county for our county departments. Users experience ArcGIS through these business systems maintained by our IT professionals.”

Another Miami-Dade GIS initiative is an application to assist county departments, municipalities and state agencies working on community infrastructure projects.

“This application is part of our road management system, and it facilitates the collaboration between these entities,” Lopez said. “There are thousands of infrastructure projects planned for Miami-Dade County. This application aims to reduce disruption and save money by identifying collaboration opportunities.”

For example, one app use case shared during the conference involved one county department and state agency.

“The Miami-Dade water and sewer department and the Florida Department of Transportation have projects that coincide at the same time, but the reality is that infrastructure projects can lead to road closures,” Lopez said. “To address this challenge, we’re using Esri’s new road closure solutions. We will share this data with Esri, who will make it available to leading consumer mapping applications to help drivers arrive at a destination more efficiently.”

Two other notable GIS initiatives include the county’s indoor management system and a pilot of ArcGIS Urban to help the county’s public housing department.

Regarding the county’s indoor management system, residents can now use wayfinding kiosks or a mobile app to help navigate Miami-Dade’s 28-floor Stephen P. Clark Government Center, which includes several municipal offices.

As for ArcGIS Urban, Lopez said, “As a county, we manage more than 9,000 housing units and provide assistance to more than 90,000 families. To help current and future generations, our county is expanding the inventory of affordable housing. Following a similar suitability analysis model, our planners will be able to review and identify locations in our county that will be available for new housing projects.”

More information about the county’s GIS efforts can be found online.