Fort Saskatchewan monitors city assets with RFID technology
12 May, 2011
category: RFID
Just North of Edmonton, Fort Saskatchewan is attaching HisTREE.net RFID tags to trees, park furniture equipment and other city assets. Earlier this year, the Canadian city installed hundreds of HisTREE.net tags on its trees. The solution began as a way to track the city’s trees, to ensure they are properly maintained with such services as watering and pruning.
The city is now also attaching the tags to playground equipment, bolting them to garbage cans and burying them underground at city parks. Without the RFID system, the city conducted visual inspections of trees, checking whether they are being maintained as expected.
City workers are able to update and maintain city records regarding the park sites, trees, locations, maintenance activities and inspections as they happen in real time. The city has a permanent electronic record of its maintenance and inspections activities, which can be view via web browser to indicate when a piece of equipment has not been inspected or maintained. In addition, the reports can be used to make decisions to upgrade, replace or repair the equipment.
In the future, the city envisions using the system to track city signage and fire-hydrant maintenance to keep a record of when they have been inspected or replaced for safety reasons. HisTREE.net is also supplying handheld readers and a cloud-hosted software application.