WAGIS2019

The Northwest Seaport Alliance (NWSA) is a marine cargo operating partnership of the Port of Seattle and Port of Tacoma and is the fourth-largest container gateway in North America. Part of NWSA’s mission is to conduct outreach and educate the public about Port activities and events. Typically, these efforts are led by our Communications Department who do an amazing job of engaging the community through social media posts, website updates, articles, newsletters etc. With the pending arrival of 8 new super-post-Panamax cranes from Shanghai, China, however, we wanted to try something different to inform and engage the community. The GIS Department partnered with the Communications Department to include GIS as part of the community engagement strategy to inform the public about the cranes’ arrival to the Port of Tacoma last February and again in March of this year.

When the first 4 cranes arrived in February 2018, we created a crowdsourcing map that allowed both internal staff and the community to track the cranes’ current location in near-real time as it traveled through the Puget Sound and add photos captured as the cranes passed their neighborhood.

For the last 4 cranes arrival, we created a similar crowdsourcing map but added the ability for the viewer to see the route the vessel traveled from Shanghai, China and view both the current and previous vessel’s position (in near-real time). We also created a dashboard with drone video footage of the cranes leaving China, information on the vessel’s position, number of days at sea, estimated distance traveled and the estimated time of arrival at the Port of Tacoma. Both applications were displayed on big screens in the Port of Tacoma’s Administration Building and shared through social media. These simple GIS solutions provided a unique and fun way for the community to participate in the event.