Sandy Springs Wins 2024 Esri Special Achievement in GIS Award

The City of Sandy Springs today proudly announced it received a Special Achievement in GIS Award at the 2024 Esri User Conference. This award is given to user sites worldwide to recognize outstanding work with GIS technology and was presented during the Plenary Session on July 17 at the Esri User Conference in San Diego. The City of Sandy Springs was the only city in Georgia to win this year's award.

The Special Achievement in GIS Awards recognize organizations worldwide that have shown leadership, hard work, vision, and innovation using Esri's geographic information system (GIS) technology. The City of Sandy Springs stood out from hundreds of thousands of others for their work to create 3D development scenarios and an app utilized by third-party apartment inspectors.

The City used Esri's ArcGIS Urban and City Engine to visualize development scenarios in two distinct locations. The goal was to provide realistic renderings of proposed developments. The project created 3D building footprints for existing and planned developments. A 3D mesh was draped over the existing buildings and planned developments were given facades in City Engine. Streetscapes such as trees, lights, benches, and vehicles were added using ArcGIS Urban to give a realistic representation.

By providing 3D visualizations, the City can better communicate with citizens on proposed developments, and staff can better understand how developments will fit in with the existing landscape.

Additionally, the City provided a mechanism for licensed professionals to provide apartment inspection data that can be viewed in real-time by Community Development staff. Sandy Springs GIS suggested a data collection workflow that allows the City to see trends and real-time data. Utilizing real-time inspection results with dashboards, staff can quickly see which areas need focus. Moreover, the inspectors, staff, and apartment managers receive nightly summaries of the inspection results.