A city manager’s job is continuous and complex. Whether it’s zoning, new construction, taxation or disaster planning, citizens depend on their city manager to understand their community, past and present, in great detail to prepare for future needs. In an environment of decreasing budgets and limited resources, geospatial technologies are an invaluable resource for better understanding and anticipating a community’s needs.
With geospatial information, such as satellite imagery, city managers can monitor and foresee where the bulk of problems, such as disaster response coordination or infrastructure issues, might occur. Geospatial technologies provide an important foundation for enabling efficient disaster recovery and continuity of operations. They also play a crucial role in everyday city operations, such as transportation, infrastructure inspection, wastewater management, utilities and zoning efforts.
City managers are under constant pressure to address various shocks and stressors, both manmade and natural. Geospatial technologies provide insight into what is happening in communities and enable managers to allocate resources efficiently. That could mean the number of people they decide to send into the field or the amount of money they allocate to maintain roads and other infrastructure.
This industry perspective explores how city managers can use imagery and geospatial technologies to make their communities more resilient, so that day-to-day operations minimize the inevitable costs of disaster response and recovery. Through geospatial technologies, cities can move past just responding to shocks to appropriately adapt and make long-term, sustainable progress.
