«Using Technology in Winter Service» | City of St. Gallen

The cold temperatures at the beginning of the week made it clear that winter will not be far away. In a month or two, the winter service of the city of St. Gallen will also have to get back to planning, because due to the terrain, Gallus is known to regularly experience heavy snowfall.

Planning for winter service operations is one of the biggest challenges, SP City MP Chompel Baluk wrote in his simple inquiry. Whether it's for staff, vehicles or supporting third-party transport companies and companies.

Improve resource planning and save costs with big data

Paluck points out that it is announced in the “Smart City of St. Gallen” brochure that different tasks will be solved with the participation of different working groups and using new technologies. “In problems such as winter service, big data models can help improve resource planning,” says Paluck.

This would save the city high recurring costs, “particularly when awarding external contracts”. The 2023 budget has allocated a contribution of 9.4 million francs for the maintenance of roads and traffic lanes. Winter service is also included.

Flumserberg already uses a similar model.

Paluck confirms that forecasting models are already in use in certain places in the canton, for example in the Flumserberg ski area. With the help of these models, the number of entries per day can be predicted based on weather data, snow depth, day of the week or cantonal holidays.

“Because these forecasting models are intended to recognize patterns, they can also be easily applied to other questions in practice,” says Paluck. The SP politician would therefore like to see such models used in St. Gallen in the future.

Chompel Ballock asks the City Council to answer the following questions:

1. Is the city council prepared to consider introducing such a model to forecast winter service? (According to preliminary research, costs of between 20,000 and 50,000 francs can be expected)
2. How much have winter service costs increased in the past five years and how much is due to outside company requests?
3. According to the “Smart City of St. Gallen” strategy, is the city council generally prepared to increasingly use these big data models to improve its performance, especially in cost-intensive areas? Where does it see concrete applications?