The District and their

new Mosquito Control

GIS Department

GIS Application
Established in 1955, the Brazoria County Mosquito
Control District was given the directive to protect
the health and well-being of residents through
surveillance, education, and measures to control
mosquitoes and prevent mosquito-borne diseases.

In the 60 years of service to the community, the

District has seen a residential growth of well over
400% to a present population of over 330,000. In
addition to the increase in population the District
has also seen an increase in technology focused on
controlling and surveillance of mosquito activity.
From mosquito traps, spraying devices, weather
forecasting, and the Internet of Things, many
advances have come into play for the District.

Brazoria Throughout the decades, the District has invested in

these technologies to keep pace with county growth
and continue their directive of protecting residents.

County
As one can imagine, the District would accumulate a
variety of tools and technologies over time: many of
those that still serve the original purpose and some

Mosquito
that would become dated as others advance.

With a variety of disconnected technologies, tools,

equipment, and techniques, the District needed an

Control
application to bring all of these into one space to
review, analyze, report and respond to the ever-
growing public. In the late summer of 2016, the

District
Brazoria County Mosquito Control launched a new
GIS application that does just that — The Mosquito
Control GIS Application.
Major topics that were addressed in the launch of the
Mosquito Control GIS Application.

Public Requests Traps & Surveyors Mosquito Counter

• Online • Strategically and • Species
• By phone randomly placed • Quantity
• Location-based
collection

Spray Trucks State Forms

• Ability to track & Reporting
where, when and • Auto completion
what was sprayed
• GEOTRACKER

Public Requests
And the public says…

The public is one of the best resources for the County to
quickly identify high mosquito activity. When welcom-
ing participation from the community, it is important
that the District provide tools to help the public submit
their requests.
The Mosquito Control GIS Application includes a digital
request form available to the general public from the
County website, and office staff when taking informa-
tion by phone. The form combines the location of the
request along with the citizen’s information. The infor-
mation captured in the process is then automatically
placed into a log queue and becomes part of the sched-
uled spraying.
To make a request visit maps.brazoriacountytx.gov/mc-
servicereq/ for spraying service.

Traps and Surveyors

Location, location, location!

The District has a collective approach to monitoring ors that visit areas across the County on a routine basis.
mosquito activity which includes 12 permanent and The combination of traps and personnel provides the
strategically placed New Jersey traps, a rotation of ran- District with the necessary numbers and information
domly placed Light/Gravid traps, and a team of survey- for forecasting activity.
Each approach produces information invaluable to the
District’s workings. Whether it is the last two weeks of
sampling from the permanent traps or the landing
counts recorded by the surveyors; it is important to
know where and when these recordings happen.

Every trap or collection method is mapped, tagged

with a date and holds a unique identifier to later as-
sign mosquito counts and environmental surround-
ings. The permanent New Jersey traps are strategical-
ly placed throughout the County in order to gain
comparable numbers based on the same location
throughout the year.

Since the Light/Gravid traps are randomly placed, the

Mosquito Control GIS Application includes mobile pag-
es that locate where the traps are placed (while in the
field) and establishes an ID that is later used to relay
mosquito count information once the trap is collected
from the field and brought back to the office for recorda-
tion days later.

The surveyors perform live counts throughout the coun-

ty to gather a variety of information. The application in-
cludes a special mobile page that establishes the location
of the mosquito survey while the surveyor collects adult
numbers, larvae counts, and surrounding conditions
(weather, ponding, and surrounding vegetation).

Mosquito Counter
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

This is a perfect example of a “do not disturb” style of

application development. For years the District used an
application built by the Brazoria County IT staff that
worked perfectly. The Mosquito Counter provided easy
tools to log mosquito quantities and genus: like Aedes,
Culex, and Psorophora. It also allowed staff to log trap
information directly into an established database.

The Mosquito Control GIS Application built processes

around the existing Mosquito Counter that automatical-
ly pushed the information entered by the staff into a
shareable database that is accessible in the GIS applica-
tion and is now usable and visible in relation to all other
data. The staff continues to do what they have always
done, but now the information is shareable across the
entire platform.
Spray Trucks
Where did it go and what did it do when it was there?

The District has a fleet of spray trucks that are used to

treat both residential and non-residential areas across
the entire County. These trucks are not only equipped
with spray devices but tracking software (GEOTRACK-
ER provided by ADAPCO) that logs the location and
chemicals sprayed as well.

By leveraging the data submitted in the Public Request

forms and captured by both the mosquito traps and sur-
veyor collection methods, the District can efficiently
schedule their daily spray routes. The public requests
are mapped and assigned to a zone and driver and areas
that show an increase in activity (data from traps and
surveyors) are sprayed before the mosquito population
increases and reaches the general public.

The drivers’ spray activities are recorded, mapped, and

permanently viewable in relationship to completing
the public request and area covered. The recorded
information becomes part of the reporting process for
both county and state required forms.

State Forms and County Reporting

Only enter it once. (Sometimes not even once).

Providing a service to the public as a county entity will
always require specialized reporting and form submit-
tals. In addition to the State of Texas G-14 Mosquito
Specimen Submission Form, the District creates internal
reports based on calls, driver activity, trap counts, and
survey zones. The application is structured in such a
way that it allows all information and data — whether it
was entered through the public request form (resident
and address), in the office by staff (quantity and genus),
in the field by the surveyors (adult, larvae, and condi-
tions), or uploaded from the spray trucks — to be used in
any combination for county and state reporting.
The State of Texas G-14 Mosquito Specimen Submis-
sion Form is automatically populated based on appli-
cation data. The test results and count information is
also tied back to trap locations. •
Client Contact
Fran Henderson | Director of Brazoria County Mosquito Control District
Phone: 979.864.1532
franh@brazoria-county.com

LJAENGINEERING.COM
LJA’s staff of over 600 professionals thrives on challenging projects
and keeping themselves informed of new solutions for our clients.
We have offices throughout Texas, as well as Omaha, Nebraska and
Jacksonville, Florida to better serve our clients.

Main Office:
2929 Briarpark Dr.
Suite 600
Houston, Texas 77042
713.953.5200