Cache Mosquito Abatement District turns to FieldSeeker® GIS and the Mesa 2 Rugged Tablet for planning, tracking, and reporting treatment sessions.
From paper to digital
Richard Rigby doesn’t miss the stacks of papers, meticulous note-taking, or guesswork that came with running northern Utah’s Cache Mosquito Abatement District (Cache MAD) in its early days. FieldSeeker software from Frontier Precision and Mesa 2 Rugged Tablets from Juniper Systems now make life easier for Rigby and his technicians.
“The early years after the district was formed we tracked our routes, inventory, and other data on pen and paper,” Rigby said. “I was finally able to go to our board of trustees and get approval to move to a digital recordkeeping setup.”
The agency now runs on FieldSeeker software and Mesa 2 Rugged Tablets running Windows 10. This has allowed them to much more accurately track routes that they have taken, control inventory, track the amount of chemical applied, and map hot-spots and standing bodies of water.
The FieldSeeker software is a cloud-based system that leverages Esri® ArcGIS® online platform. This allows the different mosquito abatement districts that run on FieldSeeker to easily implement GPS into their operation. This is what allows them to draw polygons around areas of water and calculate the appropriate amount of product that they need to use to treat those bodies of water. All of this is controlled from the Mesa 2 Rugged Tablet.
Two fronts – One device
Cache MAD takes the fight to mosquitoes on two fronts. One being larvicide control and the other being fogging neighborhoods for adult mosquitoes. Larvicide control consists of deploying various treatment products into areas of standing water such as ponds. These briquets treat the water and eliminate the larva for up to 30 days. Water treatments also consist of spraying solutions over the surface of the water to suffocate the mosquitoes that are growing. Using the GPS function of the Mesa 2 and the polygon mapping feature Cache MAD has been able to better track when an area of water was treated and when it needs it again.
“We use to have to guess as to how much product we put down in an area,” Rigby said. “Now, my technicians can use GPS to get within three to five feet of areas that were previously treated. This, along with a polygon site for a pond that will calculate the size of the pond and allow us to use the appropriate amount of product that we need to put in.”
For fogging, Cache MAD has trucks that are fitted with ULV fogging machines and fogging chemicals. The Mesa 2 sits in the cab of the truck during fogging sessions. The tablet is hardwired to the fogging machine and tracks the amount of product that is being used. The software and GPS let the technician know if they are entering an area where a citizen has made a do-not-spray request and records when the fogging machine is turned on and off. This is represented with green lines and red lines in the software. The Mesa 2 and the FieldSeeker app take real-time GPS coordinates. This is a valuable resource when someone from the community calls asking if their area was done or not.
Greater control, easy to use
The FieldSeeker software and Mesa 2 allow for these types of abatement districts to have greater control of their in-office and field operations. FieldSeeker is an all in one application. It provides not only easier management of chemical inventory and mapping features, but it also offers treatment calculators, field scouting, trap location mapping, storm drain treatment, the creation of service requests, and a variety of other key tools that allow technicians to easily get the job done all in one app.
“My technicians save time because of the mapping,” Rigby said. “We have all our bodies of water mapped and they have up-to-date notes on the treatments that have been applied. It makes it so we know when an area needs to be treated again.”
The portability, power, and rugged design of the Mesa 2 allows it to go into all environments. These features have made it the featured device to run FieldSeeker.
“We provide the Juniper Mesa 2 with our FieldSeeker GIS for Mosquito Control software with confidence,” said Linda Glover, GIS sales and service manager at Frontier Precision. “It’s proven reliability along with the power of the Windows 10 operating system, large bright display, and long battery life make it ideal for field use. Crews can use it during the day for managing and recording larviciding and surveillance activities and then at night to record truck spray sessions. If for any reason we do need help with a Mesa 2, Juniper Systems offers immediate assistance from their Utah-based facility.”
Additional reading
To learn more about the Mesa 2 Rugged Tablet visit our website. If you would like to read more about FieldSeeker and other offerings from Frontier Precision you can visit their website and blog.