OBB, the Austrian Federal Railways, has expanded its use of CartoPac(R) Mobile with the purchase of an incremental fifty-user license agreement from CartoPac International.  ONG-IT, CartoPac’s Master Distributor in Europe, will provide deployment and support services to OBB under the new agreement. 

OBB began its investment in CartoPac Mobile technology in 2010 collecting information on park and ride facilities, drainage ditches, platforms, cables, and other field assets.  Because of the project’s success, the railway company doubled its use of CartoPac Mobile in 2011.  This latest addition of fifty licenses will be used for OBB’s extensive tree inspection project as well as for the mapping, inspection and documentation of technical assets.

The tree project employs outside experts using mobile devices to collect information on trees located on OBB’s parcels.  They document maintenance measures for the trees as well as other actions needed; for example, to ensure safety in the trees’ vicinity in case of a severe storm.

Rupert Weinfurter, Project Coordinator at OBB, said, “CartoPac uses workflow forms on the mobile devices which we can configure to meet our precise needs, without any customization or programming.  This was a key point for us.  We began to see improvements in the efficiency and accuracy of our field data collection efforts right from the start, so it was not a hard decision to use CartoPac for our new tree registration project.”

The configured drop-down menus will quickly step personnel through the tree data collection process including adding tree photographs and showing their proximity to rail lines and overhead cables.  This information is then uploaded to the central GIS database with just two clicks, avoiding any extra data entry. 

“We are excited about the opportunity to grow our business internationally and provide continued GIS mobile support for OBB’s critical business needs,” said Carl Lee, CartoPac CEO.