APA PA Originality and Innovation Award Winner

In 2019, the Bucks County Planning Commission (BCPC) won a PA APA Originality and Innovation Award for developing their Bucks County Maps and Data Portal. This portal was created to share the County Commissioners’ initiatives and planning projects completed by the BCPC staff. Some of the initiatives include:

• Open Space and Agricultural Land Preservation,
• Household Hazardous Waste and Recycling,
• Community Planning,
• Transportation Planning, and
• Trails Planning.

This portal also serves as a central hub for collaborative work being done by other county departments and affiliated agencies. These collaborations have resulted in web pages and interactive maps dedicated to the opioid epidemic, prescription medication collection, public transportation, and election polling sites. The district attorney’s office has used the portal to create maps showing the locations of addiction treatment providers, Naloxone pick-up locations, and where overdose deaths occurred in the last 12 months.

Using commercially available software from Esri (ARC GIS Online) and Hyland (ShareBase), the BCPC staff created the open data portal as a resource for both the public and county agencies. The staff has found the web portal an indispensable tool in conducting land development reviews and developing land use plans for constituent municipalities. It has also decreased phone calls related to requests for floodplain and recycling information.  

Find out more at: https://dataportal-bucksgis.opendata.arcgis.com/