Peculiarly named Winter Storm Pax is expected to unload some three to six inches of snow on Boston Thursday, with as much as a foot of powder predicted elsewhere in the Bay State. But Boston, having already experienced its fair share of snow this year, is prepared. In fact, since Mayor Marty Walsh and his administration took over City Hall, Boston’s been all, “come at me bro,” to any winter weather.
And for good reason. Thanks in part to Chief of Staff Dan Koh, who’s helped bridge the technological gap between former Mayor Tom Menino’s administration and that Mayor Walsh’s, the city has been able to take a proactive approach to any impending snow. Thanks to a piece of innovation called SnowCOP and putting to use the power of social media, Mayor Walsh, Koh and a collection of citywide commissioners have been able to zero in on the locales most in need of winter assistance and in some cases prevent treacherous situations from coming into fruition.
BostInno sat down with Koh to discuss the city of Boston’s snow removal and prevention process, among a number of other items. Though some municipal entities are often attached with a negative stigma (cough, MBTA, cough), Koh is helping to make sure that doesn’t happen when flakes do start to fall from the sky.
“You gotta get snow right, you know,” Koh told BostInno. “It’s one of the most tangible things the city can do for people and it’s important to take seriously.”
The seriousness of City Hall’s snow system is a rather subtle endeavor. While on the surface residents check the City of Boston website for torrential weather details or follow its Twitter handle for real-time updates, the symbiosis of social media and GPS technology has taken the goals of the Menino era to the next level, while helping put Boston and the Public Works Department one step ahead of Mother Nature.
“I think what’s also been exciting from a technology angle has been our use of social media that was used in the past administration … but I think there’s a specific emphasis in this administration.” continued Koh.”Working closely with Public Works, you can imagine the kind of interesting juxtaposition of a techie woman in front of her laptop looking at social media and the Public Works commissioner, it’s a pretty amazing way it all works out.”
One tool both the social media team and Public Works have been employing is SnowCOP, an internal GPS-powered system that pings back to a central server on a minute-by-minute basis allowing city officials to render and pull up a cityscape map in order to identify streets that have, and have not, been plowed.
“It isn’t an exact science of course,” noted Koh, “but it’s a really interesting use of technology; it allows us to see what’s going on in real-time, and allows us to address issues before they happen.”
But when you consider that Mayor Walsh put 500 pieces of snow removal equipment on the ground for Winter Storm Janus and another 600 on the ground for Winter Storm Nika, it’s safe to say that SnowCOP is an efficient enough method for dealing with the throes of snow.
But SnowCOP is just a single component of City Hall’s strategy. Social media and call tracking have also been put into play, and generally produce results equally favorable.
“[Here’s] an example that I experienced recently,” Koh began in explaining the potency of social media. “One constituent in Dorchester tweeted a photo of her unplowed street. I called the commissioner to get someone down there and literally 15-minutes later she tweeted the same street [plowed] and was just so excited.”
Tracking calls works in similar capacity as city officials are able to deduce high snow volume areas in the rare instance that SnowCOP’s GPS locator doesn’t ping the central server. But with all three facets running in harmonious fashion, with the adaptability to pull the slack of another when for whatever reason it’s not running up to par, Boston is able to offset any detriment the likes of impending Winter Storm Pax may have in store.
“I don’t think we talk about it enough in front of people, but using all the technology, and this is something we’ve been developing over the course of the last few years … It really helps us to take to the next level, addressing the issue of snow removal and I think in a way that’s cost-effective and efficient,” contended Koh on an optimistic note.
For more information on Boston snow removal procedures, tips and alerts, check out the snow team page here and be sure sign up for ALERTBoston for real-time weather advisory updates.
