Case Study: SnowyLive - Spatial Vision

Spatial Vision partnered with energy company Snowy Hydro Limited to create the “Snowy Live” app for phones and tablets.

Integrated with Snowy Hydro’s data, the app enables Apple users to access lake level, snow depths and water release information in real-time, wherever they are.

Snowy Hydro operates within the iconic Snowy Mountains, a popular tourist destination and valuable agricultural region in New South Wales. They schedule controlled water releases to meet the energy needs of the National Electricity Market, potentially affecting lake and river levels. Snowy Hydro also manages a number of snow fields and provides updates on snow depths throughout the snow season.

The app provides water level information for three lakes, Eucumbene, Jindabyne and Tantangara and water release data for three dams, Jindabyne, Tantangara and Khancoban. It provides snow depths for Spencers Creek, Deep Creek and Three Mile Dam. To make the app more convenient, since most people will only be interested in one lake, dam or snow field at a time, we ensured users could select the lake(s) or dam(s) or field(s) they are most interested in and ‘favourite’ them.

Customer Profile

Organisation: Snowy Hydro Limited

Location: New South Wales

Website: www.snowyhydro.com.au

Solution

Benefits

The Issue

Prior to the release of the Snowy Live app, people could access information through Snowy Hydro’s website, however the app makes this information conveniently available to tourists holidaying in the region and to farmers planning their agricultural activities.

The app integrates real time data from Snowy Hydro into the app, meaning there is no need to re-release the app whenever changes occur. It is an immediate, cost-effective solution for people visiting or living in this region. Snowy Live was built using HTML5 technology. This means the app is built using web technologies and then compiled into native apps for Android and iOS. Using this approach, we only had to write the code once, which is both quicker and cheaper than natively coding separate apps for Android and iOS.

The Solution

Spatial Vision developed the Snowy Live app using HTML5 technology which enables a single code base to efficiently be deployed to both types of phones. Snowy Live is a user-friendly, interactive and customisable app that provides real-time lake levels, water release and snow depth information, drawn directly from the Snowy Hydro Limited web site. In addition the app provides a directory of visitor and camping facilities as well as important safety information.

Key features included:

The Benefits

The outputs of this work provide:

Works from the same data source as the Snowy Hydro website
Easy to use for a non-technical audience
Runs natively on mobile phones and tablets
Shared HTML5 codebase between iOS and Android allowed for quicker and more cost effective development
Cost effective solution – no proprietary software licensing costs