Gritter Tracker coming to the rescue for snowed-in Scots

The live app monitors all of the major trunk roads to show the Scottish public in near real-time where gritter vehicles have been active, and when, via a visual ‘snail trail’ on the map.

Through the Trunk Road Gritter Tracker app, Transport Scotland aims to enhance road user confidence by showing the live location of gritters out on the road network. Esri UK’s cloud-based ArcGIS Online underpins the app by providing information on both the location of the vehicles and a trail of where they have been in the last 24 hours in an easy-to-understand way that automatically scales to the demands of the public.

“In Scotland, gritting is essential during cold weather to keep traffic flowing and reduce the safety risks to the public,” explains Martin Thomson, Network Impacts Manager at Transport Scotland. “In the age of smartphones and real-time information, we needed to go much further in providing details of our gritter treatment activities through digital means.”

“Winter treatment costs a lot of money; Transport Scotland’s Winter Service costs between £12 and £13 million per year. The additional insight provided by ArcGIS into the timing and routes used in real-life by the gritters leads to optimisations for Transport Scotland that saves money and improves safety,” adds Paul Clarke, Head of Government, Esri UK, the UK’s leading provider of geographic information systems (GIS).

Esri UK is the leading provider of geographic information system (GIS) technology, helping businesses become more profitable and public services more efficient through a better understanding and analysis of location-based information.