A Walk in the Park with an Interactive Mobile App Helps Grow the Forest

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

In the state of Telangana, India, there are beautiful parks and forest areas, but the government realized that these scenic treasures were not being utilized to their fullest. There was no one source of where users could get complete information about the parks, respective themes, attractions in the parks, fees, and other details without going directly to nearby forest parks. The “Haritha Haram” project team was in search of a solution that would allow them to list the Forest parks, related information, and directions based on a person’s proximity.

They wanted a customized mobile application for the Government of Telangana’s Haritha Haram project. The initial focus for the mobile application is to allow users to find information about parks and its amenities within a specific geographic area. The specific geographic area needed to be automatically captured based on the user’s geolocation or manually searching a specific area or locality of interest.

The application also needed to have flexibility for additional park additions as well as added future application features.

SMACApps SOLUTION

SMACApps team reviewed the requirements and had extensive discussions to determine the full present and future desired functions of the mobile application, which needed to be accessible to both Android and iOS systems. SMACApps determined key requirements were:

a) As one enables the location services, the application allows a user to get information about local parks.
b) A user also needed to be able to manually enter and search locations. The application would display information about the parks in the proximity of the manually entered location.
c) The user can preview images and details about the searched park.
d) As the user clicks on the park, a detailed summary about the park services, amenities, and features, along with social media sharing options and driving directions, are displayed. Users will be able to share park details via his/her social media handles.
e) The application leverages Google Maps (Android) or Apple Maps(iOS) for directions.

BUSINESS BENEFITS

Urban Forest Parks is part of the Telangana Ku Haritha Haram, a flagship program of the Telangana government, which was conceived to increase the forest cover from its present coverage of 24% to 33% of the total geographical area of the State. Haritha Haram literally means “Green garland of the State”. 

Within the first two months, there were over 3,000 downloads of the app. Use has improved park attendance and increased revenue for the Forest department of the State. This in turn, helps the Haritha Haram team move closer to their goal of increasing the forest coverage of the State.

The success of the app has encouraged the Haritha Haram to explore additional functions for the application.