How One of the Snowiest Cities in America Keeps Moving: Syracuse's Innovative Use of Smart Maps

“Through these doors pass the best snow fighters in the U.S.A.” So reads the weathered blue sign greeting all who enter the Department of Public Works (DPW) in Syracuse, New York. When you work for the snowiest city in the country, snow removal operations are not only a critical service but a point of pride.

Syracuse averages more than 10 feet of snowfall each year. The city receives lake effect snow that can dump large amounts in a short time. When a storm hits, snowplow drivers and other local government teams work around the clock to keep 400 miles of roads safe for nearly 150,000 Syracuse residents.

Residents can see near-real-time status updates of snowplows via online smart maps. The maps and other solutions, built with geographic information system (GIS) technology, have become integral to solving Syracuse’s winter weather operations challenges —while providing residents with greater transparency.

Maps Strengthen Public Trust with Shared Awareness

When Mayor Ben Walsh took office in 2018, he encountered frustrated residents after the first major storm. Despite the city’s 24/7 plowing efforts, residents had no way to check where and when roads were being plowed. During one multiday storm, shortly after the new administration took over, Syracuse leaders received many calls from upset constituents. Residents wanted to know when their street would be plowed, or why their neighborhood had been missed.

The city had no way to answer those time-sensitive, critical questions. This prompted Mayor Walsh to announce a snow safety plan that prioritized proactive information sharing.

“If a resident wants to know how a city service is going, they should be able to easily find information about that service,” said Conor Muldoon, deputy chief innovation and data officer at the City of Syracuse’s office of analytics, performance, and innovation.

How could leadership quickly show city residents what streets had been plowed? The answer was simple: build a map.

Syracuse deployed a GIS-powered fleet management solution called Winter Weather Operations that incorporates ArcGIS Velocity to track plow locations and progress. This system allows for real-time monitoring of winter weather services, sharing of road status updates, and data to make informed operational decisions. As an early adopter of this solution, the city’s ample snowfall provided a valuable testing ground for the tool. City leaders worked closely with Esri to improve and refine the solution.

By integrating data from the city’s automatic vehicle location system, GIS maps and dashboards now display the current locations of the city’s 40 heavy- and medium-duty plows and track the progress of snow removal citywide during storms.

“The public map automatically updates every 5 minutes,” Muldoon said. “For big storms, we get thousands of views.” To use the map, residents simply search for their address, click on their block, and know down to the minute when a plow was there.

While roads are plowed in order of safety priority, starting with emergency routes near hospitals and commercial corridors, the city aims to have every street cleared within 24 hours—down to the last alleyway.

Now, if a resident asks why their street was missed, city employees can identify and share the reason and assure residents that the problem will be fixed. In cases of heavy snowfall, roads that have been plowed within the last few hours may appear to have been skipped. The map gives residents confidence that their streets aren’t being overlooked.

Illegally parked cars are a frequent obstacle for plow drivers. When drivers report these roadblocks, dispatchers log the information using the GIS data collection app, ArcGIS Survey123, making it instantly available on both internal and public-facing dashboards. If a resident calls to question why their road wasn’t serviced, city employees know the answer right away.

“We share the illegally parked car information with the Syracuse Police Department to target narrow streets ahead of storms,” said Joanna Bailey, data analyst for City of Syracuse’s innovation office. Visualized on a map, data captured during a storm proves valuable to identify patterns and hotspots that require more resources.

This improved transparency has also strengthened public trust.

“When you don’t proactively share information on how a service is going or how a decision gets made, people will make their own assumptions,” Muldoon said.

Winter Weather Wins Lead to Enterprise-wide Improvements

Muldoon and Bailey’s team at the innovation office act as an in-house consulting firm for the city. They help departments think strategically, using data and analytics to enhance service delivery.

When their real-time fleet management system gave the city a highly visible win that reduced resident complaints, leadership noticed.

“Our winter weather operations solution showed the ways that geospatial awareness and analysis can inform other operational improvements,” Muldoon said.

The innovation team worked with the Sanitation and Communications teams to overhaul trash and recycling routes next, reducing the number of routes from 15 to 12, and better balancing the workload across crews. This freed up three crews to carry out other tasks such as bulk trash pickups and litter removal or filling in for sick drivers. The drivers appreciated that efficiency didn’t mean a loss of jobs, it meant the city could deliver services more quickly and efficiently.

“It was a big effort, because 26 percent of our residents had a day of service change,” Muldoon said. “We worked with our communications team on a public outreach campaign.”

The city used GIS-powered public maps and apps to help residents adjust to new days of service. Similar to the snowplow map, residents can simply input their address to know when to put out their trash.

The city’s system includes GIS tools that help workers report and fix issues faster, such as the mobile app that sanitation workers use to report violations. They take photos of dangerous waste or trash placed in the recycling bin. Once a violation is logged, city administrators and billing clerks use the system to send warnings or fines.

Always Innovating, Gathering Data, and Improving

Optimizing the sanitation and recycling routes in Syracuse helped the innovation team complete a full circle. The understanding they gained of the city’s roadways led to reoptimizing snowplow routes.

Using data and analysis from weekly trash collection, the innovation team reclassified streets based on the level of service needed. Some roadways are too small for the city’s heavy-duty plows. Others are the responsibility of the New York State Department of Transportation. The location intelligence about roadway width helped the city deploy smaller snow removal equipment where needed.

Yet, as the innovation team has discovered, snow removal services don’t follow the methodical cadence of trash collection. When working against something as unpredictable and powerful as the weather, it’s important to be adaptable and set expectations accordingly.

“The chief operating officer likes to say, ‘Perfect isn’t on the menu,’” Muldoon said. “There’s no such thing as perfect in municipal service delivery…no one-size-fits-all solutions.”

Next, the innovation team is working to enhance analysis after storms. This after-action review will allow them to monitor snow removal operations and identify areas for improvement. They plan to use data to uncover service gaps and measure overall performance. Additionally, they aim to uncover potential blind spots where they need more data and to continuously add layers in GIS to understand the topography, street size, and factors such as traffic patterns.

“Our team is focused on driving digital transformations,” Muldoon said. “We’re working to set up new systems and software so that our employees have the tools available on the ground to do their jobs more effectively and communicate better.”

Learn more about how public works professionals use GIS to improve operations. Explore the Winter Weather Operations solution that cities use to craft response plans, monitor winter weather operations in real-time, share near real-time road status updates, and track vehicle locations and materials used during winter weather events.