New features and updates related to the LOUIS Toolkit.
The LOUIS Team is pleased to announce a range of updates and new features designed to help communities work more efficiently and securely with the LOUIS Toolkit. Highlights include the new Landscape Simulation Models Connector, enabling communities using LOUIS Spatial & Planner to integrate SyncroSim landscape models for better planning and cumulative effects analysis, and new embedded data dashboards powered by Apache Superset for dynamic reporting. Security has been strengthened with two-factor authentication (2FA) and a successful third-party security review. Additional enhancements include improved text search accuracy in LOUIS Heritage, new project management features like Optional Groups, Related Projects, and Footprint Areas in LOUIS Planner, and a Data Exchange Tool in LOUIS Finance supporting integration with Sage 300. These updates continue to support communities in making informed, data-driven decisions.
We released a significant upgrade to LOUIS Assets and to LOUIS Planner.
In LOUIS Assets we've added the Maintenance Library. Communities can now define preventative and corrective Maintenance Actions. Preventative actions can be added to the Maintenance Management Plan for individual assets. Corrective actions can be used to speed the creation of common tasks and simplifies the tracking of those tasks.
In LOUIS Planner we've updated the Site Visit Tasks to present data collection forms as a single form for each site visit. We've also added the ability to configure the mobile application to start recording features by taking a photo and to automatically capture the current location. These changes simplify form management and data collection for field staff.
We released a significant upgrade to LOUIS Spatial. Now it is possible to establish relationships between multiple layers and tables for collecting and managing complex data, such as water samples, bird point counts or fisheries surveys.
We also released updates to LOUIS Field and LOUIS Planner. Now office staff can configure site visit tasks in LOUIS Planner to include selected features from project footprints to be viewable in LOUIS Field when collecting data in the field.
We are excited to be attending the 2024 First Nations Housing Professionals Association Conference, in Toronto this year from the 26th to 28th of November. We found the previous conferences in Winnipeg and Edmonton valuable and this year we happy to be are sponsoring the delegate kits you will receive when you attend. If you've not attended this conference before and work in First Nations Housing we encourage you to check it out. We will also have a booth at the trade show so please stop by to chat.
We are pleased to release an Intact Areas Report for British Columbia using the provincial Cumulative Effects Framework data from 2021. Using the 2021 disturbance data and distance metrics from the Blueberry decision in BC (Yahey v British Columbia 2021) we calculated the amount of the intact lands. In BC 39% of lands outside of parks and protected areas are within 250m of a disturbance or are disturbed. Using 500m, that number increases to 47% of lands in Alberta outside of parks and protected areas. This means in BC 53% of lands outside parks and protected areas remain intact.
Although 53% sounds like a lot, these intact lands are not evenly distributed across the province or across ecosystems so the availability of intact lands for individual Nations will vary significantly. In order to protect the ecological integrity of the land and the rights of Indigenous people both conservation and restoration is needed. For more details, click here to download a copy of the report.
We are happy to announce the release of new versions of the LOUIS Toolkit and LOUIS Field.
The LOUIS Toolkit release brings improved mobile form configuration options for LOUIS Field and new summary fields for cheque requisition templates and other minor improvements.
The LOUIS Field release brings offline maps so field staff can have visual context when collecting data in the field even when they don't have cellular coverage.
We are happy to announce the release of new versions of the LOUIS Toolkit and LOUIS Field.
The LOUIS Toolkit release brings smarter forms for Assets, Layers and Planner using conditional visibility. This feature allows for you to have questions hide or show in the web interface or in the mobile application based on an answer to another question. Used wisely this allows for more streamlined and accurate data capture.
In LOUIS Planner we've added a Tabular Summary Task designed to work with the data from the Intact Lands Report. This feature allows LOUIS Planner users to assess the impact of any project on remaining intact lands in Alberta.
The LOUIS Field release brings improved editing for point, line and polygon features as well as updates to support the smarter forms changes in the LOUIS Toolkit.
We are pleased to release an Intact Areas Report for Alberta using the Human Footprint Index (HFI) from the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute. Using the 2021 Alberta HFI and distance metrics from the Blueberry decision in BC (Yahey v British Columbia 2021) we calculated the amount of the intact lands. In Alberta 82% of lands outside of parks and protected areas are within 250m of a disturbance or are disturbed. Using 500m, that number increases to 91% of lands in Alberta outside of parks and protected areas. This means in Alberta only 9% of lands outside parks and protected areas remain intact.
Following the metrics from the Blueberry decision, this analysis suggests that there are not sufficient amounts of lands in suitable condition for the meaningful exercise of rights by Indigenous people in Alberta. For more details, click here to download a copy of the report.
We are happy to announce that our new mobile app, LOUIS Field, is now available to download and install on Google Play and the Apple App Store.
This app provides a nicer workflow and UI improvements over the previous mobile applications. To make first time configuration easier this app has the ability to enter your login credentials by scanning a QR Code from your LOUIS Toolkit profile page. To help office and field staff communicate more effectively this app will automatically notify field staff when they are assigned new Tasks in LOUIS Assets or new Site Visits in LOUIS Planner.
We are going to add more new features in the coming months, so keep your eye out for updates.
Please contact us if you have any questions.
We are pleased to be participating in the the First Nations Housing Professionals Association Conference Trade Show in Edmonton from the 19th to the 21st of September 2023. Joining us this year will be the makers of the Guardian Fire Shield to talk about our joint effort to monitor these devices and save lives and protect people's homes.
https://fnhpaconference.ca/2023/
We hope to see you there!
We are happy to announce we are in the early stages of a project with ApexRMS to integrate cumulative effects assessments into the consultation process for Louis Bull Tribe. Contact us to learn more.
We are pleased to be participating in the the First Nations Housing Professionals Association Conference Trade Show in Winnipeg from the 29th of November to the 1st of December.
https://www.fnhpaconference.ca/2022/
We hope to see you there!
We are pleased to be participating in the First Nations Housing Conference Trade Show in Thunder Bay Ontario on October 26th.
https://firstnationshousingconference.com/
We hope to see you there!
We just released the first version of a custom report framework for the LOUIS Toolkit. This is a first step to updating the report framework within the LOUIS Toolkit and look forward to hearing feedback from our users.
In this recent release we changed the way that spatial data linked to assets is managed to allow for communities to use and modify our recommended layers but also to create their own custom layers of spatial data to link to assets as needed. This new feature along with other changes ensures that communities can continue to have the same ease of use as before but with greater flexibility.
Version 2.2.1 of the My Mobile Community for Android devices has been released. This version improves speed with complex forms and improves password entry and protection.
We have released a new feature called Community Applications to deal with managing things like Applications for Housing. This new tool allows community departments to define their own application types and custom fields for those types so that they can more effectively manage these processes and get away from paper files which are hard to search and not backed up. This recent release also includes a significant improvement to the way that Issues, the deficiencies of an asset, and the Tasks that resolve those Issues are entered and managed to save users time and provide new functionality.
We've released more new features for LOUIS Planner. It is now possible to do a display simple graphical summaries of site visit or spatial analysis data. The recent release also includes a PDF Map Task to create simple PDF but effective maps directly with a project for printing or sharing.
We are happy to announce the release of some new features in LOUIS Planner in the form of new Task types. It is now possible to create form letter templates which can be created and edited in projects as needed and easily turned into PDF letters for sharing or printing. It is also possible to create integrate user defined spatial analyses into projects to identify site specific conflicts or impacts on wildlife habitat and so on.
We've now added a new Inspections tool to LOUIS Assets to provide a community configurable housing inventory and inspections that can be used offline with the My Mobile Community app for iOS and Android devices. This new tool provides an easy start for communities without a housing inventory to create that inventory and identify outstanding concerns with those assets at the same time.
We are pleased to announce the release of LOUIS Planner. LOUIS Planner builds of the work of our past work with consultation tools combined other ideas and approaches to provide a powerful, flexible and easy to use tool for consultation. Planner steps beyond other consultation tools to consider the similarity of all spatial planning and provide a tool that can also be used for internal community planning.
We are very happy to announce the release of the My Mobile Community App for both iOS and Android devices. This app lets you gather data off-line and submit to your LOUIS Toolkit account when you have an internet connection. This app also allows or records to be checked out for editing in the field. Go to Google Play or the Apple App Store to download and install them on your device. Then all you need is your LOUIS account information to start downloading forms and gathering data.
We showed our recent changes to LOUIS Assets to our First Nations advisory group on the 19th of October. It was nice to hear we were on the right track and get focused feedback to guide the next stages of the development of LOUIS Assets.
The LOUIS Toolkit allows users to connect to remote data (WFS) servers and use that data in evaluating proposals. We have now added an option, called Reference Layers, which enables users to create new geometries by selecting and copying geometries from external servers. This is especially useful for documenting site visits of areas defined in terms of legal land descriptions.
LOUIS Layers is a new module for a variety of GIS data; housing, roads, wildlife monitoring studies can all be support. With LOUIS Layers, user define fields and validation rules and community staff can collect field data with the GeoODK Collect application. This is an initial release with many more features coming in the next few months. For more information visit the LOUIS Layers page.
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