Eagle Scout Helps Johns Creek Finish Map Project

JOHNS CREEK, GA — A local Eagle Scout provided assistance to help Johns Creek wrap up its Complete the Map project. Karson Greenburg, along with a group of volunteers, captured images of about 70 miles of private roads in the city.

In 2016, the city partnered with Mapillary, an imagery analysis and mapping company with a companion smartphone app, to collect street-level photos of roadways. The photos were uploaded to Mapillary, whose technology analyzes pictures and the GPS information within them to automatically find and map street signs. This sign information is then transmitted to the city, where it helps staff determine the number and type of signs on each street.

Greenburg and his volunteers captured imagery of nearly 70 miles of private roads that added to the more than 277 miles of public roads that Johns Creek and other individual volunteers have already documented.

“Capturing comprehensive imagery of all roads in Johns Creek helps staff to quickly see any area in the City from their desktop,” said Chief Data Officer Nick O’Day. “For example, if a resident reports that a stop sign is knocked down, city crews can refer back to the photos and data captured by Mapillary – which saves money and time – and can potentially fix the issue in one trip.”

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The city’s Geographic Information System team realized that collecting imagery for nearly 350 miles of roads in Johns Creek was too big of a project for only two staff people to handle and launched an initiative to “Complete the Map” with the help of the public. With help from the public and staff that initiative is now complete.

"There’s no way that we could have done this without the public getting involved, and Karson in particular,” said O’Day. "Now we switch from the crowdsourcing effort to using all of the data that Mapillary generates to help staff respond faster and more efficiently."

Images via city of Johns Creek