| City of New Orleans-Auditing Solid Waste Collection
One of the many consequences of Hurricane
Katrina in the City of New Orleans is
the transformation of the solid waste collection
landscape. Given the shift and
movement of population, the City needs
to get a verified house count to ensure
accurate and fair invoicing and payment
for residential and small business solid
waste collection. With that in mind, the
City hired GBB, as a subcontractor to the
PFM Group, to perform a house count audit
under an aggressive schedule.
Project Underway – Information Technology Talking Trash!
Over the years, GBB has conducted numerous
collection routing analyses, both
manually and using computer routing
software models. For this New Orleans
assignment, two things are critical: first,
the house count must be transparent and
fully defendable; second, because the
house count is changing rapidly due to
return of residents, it must be easily and
economically updated. GBB is using
Global Positioning System (GPS) units to
produce an audit trail that documents visual
inspection of every residence and
small business.
GBB, in association with GCR & Associates
of New Orleans, developed a master refuse
collection database, which will be
referenced for house counts in the field. Postal, condemned property, energy meter,
and water meter databases were utilized
to ultimately generate a GIS database
of prospective refuse collection
points.
GBB Team members next collected GPS
coordinates to be spatially joined to the
prospective refuse collection points. The
vehicle of each field surveyor has a GPS
with an external antenna mounted on
the outside of the vehicle and a
dashboard interface for triggering the
marking of XY coordinates for each refuse
collection point.
GBB will then develop an accurate, verifiable,
and transparent “Update Procedure”
methodology for the master collection
database that the City can use in
the future to update the waste set-out
database.
Finally, GBB will produce a report including
descriptions of the survey and verification
methodologies, the number of
residences and small businesses in each
contract area that require service, and
instructions for updating the electronic
database. The end result for New Orleans
will be an accurate, updatable database
of locations receiving waste collection
services that will ensure fair and proper
billing.
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