In its quest for a more strategic approach to noxious weed management, Liverpool Plains Shire Council has developed the Tr@ceR Weeds Mobile Mapping program.
It recently won the prestigious National Local Government Initiatives Award for Innovation in Natural Resource Management.
The Tr@ceR Weeds program has delivered savings of around $13,000 per annum in administration costs and an estimated $15,000 per annum in efficiency gains.
Council’s IT staff and weed officers developed the program inhouse after trialling a series of off the shelf mapping products. But these failed to deliver the functionality and integration required.
Council wanted a program that incorporated measurable outcomes and enabled performance monitoring and the benchmarking of the property inspection and weed control process.
Tr@cer Weeds integrates with Council’s property data and Google Earth, which provides officers with an exact location of weed infestations. It uses an exacting process of mobile GPS satellite navigation, combined with the power of ‘Smart Forms’.
The program provides weeds inspectors with specific information at their fingertips, enabling them to record specific data on weed infestation.
“More importantly, the integrated cadastral map also allows inspectors to determine the property’s owner details, address details, Lot/DP and global position,” said Council’s Weeds Inspector Mike Whitney.
“The program captures data regarding the type of weed, infestation size and geographic infestation trends, enabling inspectors to pinpoint areas having potential risk on the environment.
“Inspectors can now print reports in the field, unlike the previous manual system, where the processing of inspection reports was a duplication of the work already conducted in the field.”
The Namoi Catchment Management Authority (CMA) in northwestern New South Wales has now implemented the Tr@ceR program to assist with weed control around catchments in its six Local Government areas.
Invasive Species Coordinator, Andrew Schweitzer, said the program enables officers to make better informed decisions and provides a visual perspective as to where weeds have spread, what is stopping them, and so forth.
For further information on Tr@cer Weeds, contact Mike Urquhart or Mark Daly at Liverpool Plains Shire Council on (02) 6746 1755.
