AIC's 46th Annual Meeting

Keeping it Vertical: Use of GIS to create a streamlined survey and work order system for a historic landscape Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery is home to over 200,000 historic monuments and over 7,000 trees throughout its 478 acres. As Green-Wood’s landscape ages and evolves, the need for more technologically advanced collections management software became apparent, a need which resulted in the creation of a unique ArcGIS-based collection management system. In Collector for ArcGIS, management and field crews input survey information such as date, material, dimensions, and conditions of a historic monument or caliper, condition, and taxonomic information of a tree. Managers also create work orders in Collector, which thanks to a first-of-its-kind script which links the two, automates the creation of a work-order in WorkForce for ArcGIS. Work orders are assigned by the Manager, and analytics related to executed work orders and efficiency metrics are reviewed in an Operations Dashboard. The link between Collector and WorkForce allows staff members to geotag work orders to specific trees and monuments while tracking their progress and saving survey information along the way. By utilizing the power of GIS, our software analyzes our landscape’s varied assets simultaneously and streamlines the implementation of the work necessary to maintain those assets, thus offering an enhanced, multi-faceted portrait of Green-Wood. Software such as this could be used across other large historic cemeteries, large archeological sites, city and state park land, throughout museum environments, and scores of other cultural landscapes. This presentation will guide viewers through the inception of the software and its application in the field. Founded in 1838 and now a National Historic Landmark, Green-Wood was one of the first rural cemeteries in America. By the early 1860s, it had earned an international reputation for its magnificent beauty and became the prestigious place to be buried, attracting 500,000 visitors a year, second only to Niagara Falls as the nation’s greatest tourist attraction. Crowds flocked there to enjoy family outings, carriage rides, and sculpture viewing in the finest of first generation American landscapes. Green-Wood’s popularity helped inspire the creation of public parks, including New York City’s Central and Prospect Parks. Green-Wood is 478 spectacular acres of hills, valleys, glacial ponds and paths, throughout which exists one of the largest outdoor collections of 19th- and 20th-century statuary and mausoleums. Four seasons of beauty from century-and-a-half-old trees offer a peaceful oasis to visitors, as well as its 570,000 permanent residents, including Leonard Bernstein, Boss Tweed, Charles Ebbets, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Horace Greeley, Civil War generals, baseball legends, politicians, artists, entertainers and inventors.