Hardscape Damage Locations

City of Lakewood

The City of Lakewood first implemented GIS in 1994. From the beginning, the city's Public Works Department recognized the power of GIS and quickly began to leverage its capabilities to help administer some of its programs. Hardscape management was a long-standing program that, until the mid-1990s, had "lived" only within a nonvisual, proprietary database. GIS gave Public Works staff the ability to visualize hardscape inventory data for the first time. That process revealed new patterns that empowered staff to make better-informed decisions. This map is an example of how GIS helps track hardscape damage within the city. Using this map, staff is able to monitor ongoing hardscape repair activities as well as plan future ones.

Unexpectedly, this map has also proven to be a valuable tool in the management of the city's urban forest. For years, the city planted only one tree species per city block. By overlaying the tree inventory GIS data on this map, staff was able to see a correlation between hardscape damage and certain tree species to easily target neighborhoods eligible for a replacement species.

Courtesy of City of Lakewood, California.

Map Book Page [PDF]

State and Local Governments Maps

< Previous | Next >