Odour management across a large region in New Zealand

In many communities throughout the world and no less in New Zealand, odour nuisance is an important issue in the community that requires managing by local or regional authorities. A Regional Council on the South Island regularly receives odour complaints and it is often difficult to determine the cause of these issues, given that there are multiple odour-generating activities, some of them quite close to each other. By the time a complaint is received and investigation begins using traditional approaches, the cause of the issue may no longer be active.

The Regional Council originally had a complaints management system that allowed it to register community complaints in parallel with their location. However, this system did not provide any analysis or any evidence on what the likely source was. Although it could register complaints, the Council was unable to readily provide details on what caused them to concerned members of the community.

The Regional Council implemented Envirosuite software as a complaints analysis tool. The Incident Intelligence solution provides the Council with advanced backtracking technology, based on real-time, fine-scale meteorological modelling.  This allows staff to instantly visualise the likely source of a complaint, reducing the time taken to act on the complaint.

The Regional Council now has Envirosuite integrated with its previous database that records all complaints and now has a comprehensive solution that allows staff to more confidently manage odor issues throughout the region. Council can now visualise the likely source of the odour complaint, communicate this to the community and take action much faster than ever before.