About BRRC
Sebastien and Lilia are part of the GIS team at Belgian Road Research Centre, a private research centre that has been around since the 1950s. They have about 100 employees who are experts in many fields such as geotechnics, hydrology and road engineering. While BRRC is a private company, they do a lot of work on public projects as well as providing training and sustainable solutions to enhance road construction.
Finding the right survey tool
Many of the projects BRRC works on require field survey work to research road safety, water and utilities, the quality of pavement and environmental issues. Before using Mergin Maps, they were working with a single ESRI licence which gave them limited ability to integrate GIS into their broader workflow. As a result, most of the survey work they did was not georeferenced and data was stored on Excel spreadsheets and hand-written notes. Field workers would have to rely on nearby addresses and local landmarks to identify feature locations.
About four years ago, Seb developed a proof of concept about how GIS tools could be used to improve productivity and quality of their research. They looked at Survey 123 but decided they wanted something that wasn’t a ‘black box’ that required their data to fit the tool rather than the other way around. They also wanted an open-source solution that fit with their company’s business philosophy, but needed to be able to develop specific features that they needed in the field. Seb remembered he had seen Saber give a presentation a few years earlier at FOSS4G Belgium about Mergin Maps and decided to get in touch. Lutra Consulting, the developer of Mergin Maps, agreed to partner with BRRC to develop the specific features they needed and BRRC have been using Mergin Maps ever since.
Creating the setup for survey automation
Lilia says that they are able to use Mergin Maps with a variety of equipment and vehicles that they use to collect data in the field. On a typical project, they will use the Mergin Maps QGIS Plugin to create custom forms where technical experts can encode information about the visual degradations or damages of a road. They can classify the feature and attach photos that are linked to the georeferenced feature. Mergin Maps forms are also linked to vehicles and equipment that can detect movement of pavement joints in a road when they pass over and record the readings to the form.
They also use marXact GPS receivers to conduct high-accuracy surveys. One interesting use is one they call ‘Project Wheelchair’ where a wheelchair has been equipped with a device that records the surface quality of sidewalk pavements for accessibility as the wheelchair is pushed over the pavement. The data is recorded to a Mergin Maps form and synced with db-sync to their internal database where the information is then displayed in their own Geoportal. Photos are also taken of pavement surfaces and stored on a MinIO cloud using the Media sync tool.
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Increasing workflow efficiency as a result of Mergin Maps implementation
It took some time to change people’s mindsets in the wider company about the importance of GIS for their research, but colleagues quickly came around when they saw how easier it is to collect data and save time with more efficient data processing. Before using Mergin Maps, they would spend a lot of time organising and digitising handwritten data. Sometimes data would go missing or there would be errors in the transcription that would then have to be corrected, slowing down the time to deliver a project.
Mergin Maps allows them to collect data in the field and simultaneously record it to their database and display it on their internal portal. Managers can see how projects are progressing in near real time and they are able to automate much of the data processing. Using Mergin Maps has made their workflow more efficient and they are able to produce better results for their customers.
