Auditing and data collection — records and accountability
The Trans Canada Trail is an enormous project, spanning the country, involving hundreds of trails and thousands of volunteers. Trans Canada Trail requires you to include a signage plan with all funding applications and have up-to-date signage-inventory records. For this reason, among others, we recommend that you keep accurate records of matters pertaining to the trail.
As signage is installed, it should be recorded and the information provided to the appropriate Trans Canada Trail representative, who will then log the information for future reference. Maintaining timely, updated records prevents backlog and helps with budgeting and audits. This can be done in a variety of ways; the following offers a few examples.
Using Excel
It is important to keep accurate information of your signage inventory including details, such as the following:
- the location
- the sign types
- the size
- the pole or structure
- direction the sign is facing
- information about cases where it was stolen or went missing
In rare cases where an insurance claim needs to be filed due to damage, this inventory will be required as proof of installation.
With modern technology, data acquisition is a reasonably achievable task. While many methods exist, straightforward methods include the following:
Camera and GPS receiver
One method of collecting proof-of-installation information is by photographing the location and recording the GPS data manually. The only challenge with this method of data collection is keeping the photographs matched with their respective GPS locations. A simple method of doing this is recording a time along with the GPS location. Since cameras timestamp photos, you can easily look back after the fact and match the time a photo was taken with the time noted with the GPS data.
Smartphone
All modern smartphones are equipped with GPS receivers and cameras. Furthermore, most of the major phone brands allow you to geotag photos with GPS data. In optimal conditions, a phone can work as a complete solution. However, a phone’s GPS receiver is less sensitive and may be inaccurate in poor weather conditions, near cliffs or in mountainous regions. In these cases, it is useful to have a dedicated GPS receiver to achieve an accurate result.
Google Maps
Google Maps is a great free online resource that can be used for both planning and capturing your signage inventory. The simple pin-drop method allows you to indicate your sign’s position, as well as add its description, direction and other information into its text bubble. You can change the pin colour to indicate a different sign type. You can save this as a KMZ or KML file, and Trans Canada Trail can use it as an overlay onto its internal map to log this data and confirm trail alignment is correct.
