One of local authorities' key jobs is to keep residents informed about issues in their area, flood alerts and severe weather warnings to street cleaning and the progress of planning applications. Issuing up the minute, accurate alerts to residents can be an expensive and time consuming process, costing councils huge sums in man hours as staff collect and distrubute the information.
But councils in Ireland have found a way to solve the problem - and we are now looking for local authorities in the UK to test out the solution in their own areas.
Local authorities across Ireland have been experimenting with a new technology called MapAlerter, an online platform which helps councils distribute information to those who need and want it. Members of the public can log on to the website and create an account. Basic contact information is required, along with a postal address which is geocoded. Next, councils can log into the application and issue alerts to those who will find the information useful - residents known to live in the immediate vicinity to the problem, such as a closed road or a burst water main.
Residents can recieve alerts through all the using channels, including a text message, an email, or a tweet - even a phone call with a recorded message.
Wexford county council became an "alerter" in March 2011. Wexford, a rural county, attracted more than 1,000 registered members within five weeks and has so far issued 9,000 messages. Many of these alerts were issued during summer at a time of "low alert activity" and it is estimated that Wexford will issue up to 25,000 alerts during the winter period if the weather is as severe as recent years.
There are now close to 3,000 home and work locations registered for alerts in county Wexford following a publicity campaign promoting the system through Twitter, the council website and a local newspaper feature. Roscommon county council has also recently signed up for the service while others are starting to use the service in preparation for the forthcoming winter period.
The technology will soon be available in the UK, but we know that local authorities across the Irish sea face pose a range of different challenges to the system, including a far larger number of residents in town and city boroughs. We are looking for a number of councils to to partake in an early adopter programme to trail the technology during the autumn and winter severe weather period, to see if it can save time and money here in the UK as in Ireland.
To apply to become an early adopter, apply through the website: www.MapAlerter.co.uk
Catherine Kavanagh is GIS project leader at Wexford county council. Brendan Cunningham is the director of Pin Point Alerts
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