NEW ORLEANS—The city of New Orleans launched a new Recovery Projects Information Website—neworleans.iprojweb.com—to help current and displaced residents track the progress of the city’s recovery projects. The site, developed jointly by the city and MWH, uses GoogleMaps technology to display each project on a map of New Orleans. Users can see all active projects loaded on the site or enter their home or business address, select the search radius, and track the progress of projects in their own neighborhood. The website also provides citizens with a contact name, phone number, and e-mail address for project related questions.

Project information is updated automatically from data sources that feed project schedules and internal reports. "This means that people in New Orleans and throughout the United States and abroad can view the same data as the project managers," said Lisa Cookmeyer, program manager for MWH. "While data can still be manually uploaded into the website, we plan to schedule automatic uploads on a weekly or daily basis. This ensures that information viewed by citizens and others is the most recent data available."

The website is part of a comprehensive public outreach and communication plan being developed to keep citizens informed. A summary of the data on the website will be downloaded monthly into a hard copy report that will be distributed to local community centers around New Orleans.

This is the first phase of the Recovery Projects Information Website. Future plans for the site include the addition of street projects from the Department of Public Works, as well as traffic advisories specifically related to each project, and public outreach events such as community meetings, groundbreaking ceremonies, and ribbon cutting ceremonies.

In late February, New Orleans announced more than 50 new projects that will be undertaken by the city’s new Project Development Unit (PDU), bringing to approximately 200 the number of projects currently under way as part of the recovery effort.