In 2012, Google chief scientist Peter Norvig wrote of the search giant’s successful entrée into new technologies. “We don’t have better algorithms than anyone else,” he stated. “We just have more data.”

Google’s expansion from search into office software, satellite imaging, voice recognition, and multiple other utilities exemplifies an important shift in how new technology applications go mainstream. On a platform, such as Google Earth or Facebook, for examples, individuals and organizations provide data in exchange for useful, free applications and experiences through the open Web. That user data drives the development and the reach of still more applications—many of them third-party extensions made possible when creators publicly share code.

The rise of new, free, Internet-fueled tools is changing the way businesses and public agencies alike communicate, streamline operations, and plan for the future. In the public sector in particular, where vendors compete for large-scale projects and spending is transparent to taxpayers, the dominance of free applications and scalable “plugins” is changing the way purchasers approach specialized proprietary systems as well. As Ellen Sargent, a facilities director for the Chicago Park District, says of her agency’s search for the right building automation system, “If a vendor wanted to lock us into dealing with their system forever, we said no.” (Chicago’s demands ultimately changed the software policies of three major U.S. vendors.)   

Park agencies, because they shoulder both public-sector responsibilities and private-sector revenue concerns, are seeing the primacy of data and the movement away from proprietary systems on many different fronts. Within these massive shifts, three trends in particular promise to transform the way agencies do business—while opening new avenues of influence and leadership for park professionals.

• The Expanding Reach of Mobile: In 2013, smartphones are predicted to surpass all other devices in Internet access. The growth of mobile means unprecedented opportunities for gathering patron data, engaging the public, and enhancing revenue.

• The Explosion of Public Data for Geographic Information Systems (GIS): With public national and local data set map “overlays” becoming abundant and user experiences improving, GIS is coming of age. With the new availability of public data sets come powerful new tools for improving public health, serving the underserved, acquiring land, and documenting impact.

• Energy Leadership through Building Automation: Traditionally, energy-saving technologies have been à la carte products centering on individual systems and pieces of equipment. Building automation centralizes technologies and conserves energy by connecting equipment to Internet-based software. The new automation systems also promise nearly unlimited add-ons as an agency’s goals and needs evolve.  

Smartphones Surge Ahead
Smartphones are at once the most ubiquitous and the most intimate of devices. According to the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life project, 83 percent of U.S. adults now own a mobile phone of some kind—and 43 percent own smartphones. (Among 18- to 29-year-olds, the percentage rises to 66 percent.)  The prevalence of smartphones has led to a cultural shift—a growing expectation that in the “in-between” moments of their lives, individuals will have ready access to games, social media, shopping, entertainment, education, and time-sensitive messages.

Established park software vendors like Active Network and Vermont Systems have steadily released mobile-enabled features that build upon existing registration databases to reach patrons with smartphones. The model goes something like this: Registration data enables smartphone “reach,” which in turn leads to more data—and also to increasingly detailed profiles of individual patrons over time.

According to the Mobile Marketing Association, an organization encouraging self-regulation and standards in the industry, one of the greatest challenges mobile marketers face is building trust in this uniquely personal medium. Yet, in most communities, local park agencies already enjoy high levels of trust from their customers, Choton Basu, creator of the soon-to-launch Strive community engagement platform, observes. Local parks are poised as few “brands” are to use cross-channel mobile technologies effectively. Most agencies have existing databases. But perhaps more importantly, their patrons do not need to be convinced of the value of parks and recreation—or of the authenticity of a park staff’s commitment to the public good.

And with that strong foundation in place, Basu contends, parks should take lessons from recreation movements gone viral, such as the Tough Mudder endurance challenge and Color Me Rad 5K races. These organizations not only exploit mobile marketing channels, but in doing so they offer “uniquely talkable, highly marketable” twists on generic programming. Basu adds that the most successful users of mobile technology focus on far more than streamlining transactions or optimizing websites: They facilitate community, emphasizing peer-to-peer sharing and the “co-creation” of events and experiences.

Individual agencies are also looking to mobile technology to enrich their education and health outreach. Many have developed their own apps to extend users’ experiences of parks—or simply to inform users of park locations and amenities. The County of San Diego Parks and Recreation Department has given its own creative twist to this sort of educational outreach by offering smartphone users professionally developed fitness routines customized to individual trails in the park system. Other agencies might look to existing tools to build groups—encouraging running club members, for example, to compare mileage through social-media-connected apps like Active Network’s Couch to 5K program.  

Is there a possible downside to parks launching mobile outreach campaigns? Every person interviewed for this article mentioned data privacy concerns. Parks gather much data, including sensitive data relating to children—their activities and locations. Basu advises agencies to prioritize data security in all dealings with third-party vendors, just as they would with any web database service.

Here to Stay: Mobile Internet use is predicted to overtake PC access this year. The medium—and the particular kinds of messages and channels that go with it—will only grow.
On the Way: While agencies currently rely on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter for outreach, park-specific platforms are emerging to offer community residents opportunities to collaborate with one another and with park staff to “co-create” the programs and interest groups they want.  
In the Way: Mobile technologies offer unique capabilities for leveraging existing customer data to gather much more. Without close scrutiny of privacy and data security, parks risk breaching (and losing) their communities’ trust.

Digital Mapping Goes Mainstream
In 2003, Missouri’s Great Rivers Greenway District began developing and linking a system of more than 40 greenways spanning more than 600 miles of trail. The ambitious system, known as the River Ring, spreads across three counties in the St. Louis region. Carey Bundy, the district’s GIS coordinator, says GIS mapping has been critical to the project since 2007.

“We went from a map on the wall with progression noted by marking up phases of projects to a digital system that can be modified and updated with ease.”

In the five years Bundy has done GIS mapping for the Great Rivers Greenway, she has seen their system transform from a project-specific visual aid to a multi-layered regional planning tool. The organization began by compiling its own database and using it to track progress and depict project phases visually. The database quickly became an invaluable planning vehicle, “showing exact locations and also the linkages that will occur if a project is developed.”

External data has transformed what was essentially an enriched digital map into a robust analysis and planning tool. “We can analyze specific corridors,” Bundy says, “and overlay various [data] layers from community partners to determine areas where new projects may be found.”  

But the digital maps that have had the greatest impact on the Great Rivers Greenway have not come from locally generated databases. The global GIS databases and shape files (geographic features represented by points, lines, and polygons) that Google Earth began making available in 2011, Bundy relates, have created “an even greater ability to relate district projects to infrastructure, open space, and connectivity throughout the region.”

The story of the Great Rivers Greenway project is one familiar to GIS early adopters. A decade ago, GIS represented, for most, simply a better way to map; data availability has now made it an indispensable analysis and modeling tool. Increasingly, users embrace GIS as a platform where thematically unified data sets (overlays) can be layered one on top of another, compared, magnified, manipulated, and easily swapped out for others.  The more overlays available to a user, the more robust and versatile the platform becomes.

Bill Beckner, NRPA’s senior research manager and director of the association’s GIS platform, PRORAGIS, says the valuable data now at planners’ fingertips extends far beyond Google’s releases. Data sets becoming available through federal and state agencies offer park agencies unprecedented opportunities to pair regional demographics and topography with the boundaries and assets of their jurisdictions. (See our GIS Resource Guide for a list of public data sets with special relevance for parks.)

By way of example, Beckner points to two recent federal agency releases: U.S. obesity rates by county from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and U.S. violent crime rates by police department from the U.S. Department of Justice. A locality’s use of one or both of those public overlays could, for instance, help pinpoint underserved pockets within a community—while also supporting efforts to form partnerships and obtain grants.

Beckner says the PRORAGIS system has already incorporated external data from the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Census Bureau—and more public data sets will be added for park agency use throughout 2013.  

For GIS users in general, the ease of incorporating external data varies depending on the system—with some platforms requiring file conversions or “bridge software.” But experts predict that as the field matures and systems become increasingly cloud-based, data will become “plug and play” across platforms.

Here to Stay: Information has always been the linchpin of good decisions—and GIS simplifies the “where” and “what” of spatial information. For park professionals—with their focus on land use, environmental stewardship, and public service accessibility—GIS has become an essential tool.
On the Way: Free, cloud-based GIS platforms aligned with mobile applications and public data sets will bring GIS to more users while encouraging those users to “crowdmap” their surroundings and create new data libraries.
In the Way: Despite the proliferation of GIS data, file compatibility issues can still make it tricky to migrate data from one platform to another.


Buildings Get Smarter
Commercial and industrial buildings account for roughly 50 percent of the energy used in this country.  And, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, nearly a third of that energy is wasted. While improvements in energy-efficient heating, cooling, and lighting have helped reduce consumption, those measures only partially address a larger problem faced by many public agencies. In a complex system of buildings whose use does not always follow regular schedules—public recreation facilities, for example—unoccupied spaces often end up being heated, cooled, and lit. Moreover, when a system begins to fail due to age or mechanical problems, it may be months or years before the problem is detected.

In Chicago, a city famous for its long winters and Industrial Age buildings, energy reduction has long been a priority.  And public buildings throughout the city have been outfitted with energy-saving solutions from LED lighting to tankless water heaters. In 2010, the Chicago Park Department embarked on its most ambitious energy-saving initiative to date—the introduction of Building Automation Systems (BASs)—centralized, interlinked networks of hardware and software that monitor and control the environment in institutional facilities.

While few park departments have yet made the significant up-front investment that building automation requires, BASs, according to Smart Grid News, now operate in roughly half of all buildings of more than 100,000 square feet in the United States. And they are gaining traction among municipalities looking to connect and centrally control building systems.

The Chicago department selected 37 of its 270 buildings for the first phase of the initiative.  These were “buildings that dated back to the 1880s and had the least efficient mechanical systems,” says facilities director Ellen Sargent. The $35 million capital improvement program (paid for through Illinois’s Energy Savings for Capital Project fund) has now expanded to 51 buildings. The energy savings is expected to pay for the system within a five-to-10-year timeframe—and the department expects to meet its goal of a 20 percent energy reduction by 2020.

“In three clicks,” Sargent says, a BAS operator, overseeing the Web-based system from a central panel, “can find out and adjust the temperature in the supervisor’s office or in a preschool room.” The schedules and reports the system generates assure the department energy efficiency while also allowing for quick diagnosis of problems. “And without our engineers running all over the city,” Sargent adds.

One of the most striking elements of the Chicago Parks BAS program was the department’s insistence upon open code. In a field ruled by proprietary systems, Chicago demanded that its three vendors use a common language in their programming to allow the department to add to the system over time through competitive bids. The vendors, Siemens Systems, Johnson Controls, and Ameresco, all agreed to that condition—making their systems compatible with one another and open to future third-party extensions. Additionally, as part of their effort to meet their energy reduction guarantees, the vendors have overseen the extensive staff training needed for proper use of the system.

Automating buildings, Sargent says, is as much a “cultural change” as it is an energy reduction program. And her department is only beginning to explore the myriad administrative and operating data their system is gathering from every room in every connected building.

Here to Stay: BASs, while still more common in Europe than the United States, are gaining traction as energy reduction for commercial and industrial buildings becomes a greater national priority.
On the Way: Standard features of building automation will soon include occupancy sensors to control lighting, carbon monoxide detectors, and control-panel alarms for high sump-pump levels and equipment failures
In the Way: The high capital improvement cost of BASs puts the systems out of reach for most municipalities. Retrofitting existing buildings is more difficult and costly than installing the systems in new construction.

Strive to Engage
A new, NRPA-exclusive mobile-based platform is coming soon to engage community members.  

Strive is a mobile-based platform designed to utilize Web 2.0 technology in order to build a stronger, healthier community through activities and programs:

• Community members are able to view programs, register, and notify and share events with friends, along with staying updated on schedules and locations through a mobile and Web interface.  
• Interface allows for sharing of geo-locations, “check-ins,” and tracking of events in which community members are participating.  
• Integrates with existing registration and event systems.  
• Created to be flexible, the Strive platform is a universal communicator and data integrator.

Over the next few months, Strive will be working with park and recreation agencies interested in becoming “Strive enabled.”  If you are interested in participating in this FREE member benefit or learning more, please contact customerservice@nrpa.org.

Maureen Hannan is a Virginia-based writer and former senior editor of Parks & Recreation.