As more residents rely upon their smartphones to navigate ordinary life, Lynchburg’s city these days has launched 3 new apps to engage residents with their network and make life inside the Hill City greater tech-savvy. All three apps are placed…

As more residents rely upon their smartphones to navigate ordinary life, Lynchburg’s city these days has launched 3 new apps to engage residents with their network and make life inside the Hill City greater tech-savvy.

All three apps are placed out using distinct city departments — the metropolis’s Communications and Marketing Department, the Lynchburg Fire Department, and Parking Management — and join residents with a huge range of metropolis services.

The Lynchburg app’s metropolis evolved thru a partnership between the Communications and Marketing and the Information Technology departments, serves as a portal for users to discover information about the neighborhood authorities, get entry to a calendar of activities, and navigate to city parks or pay a bill.

People aren’t continually in front of their computer systems or have their capsules, but they constantly have their phones,” Lynchburg’s Communications & Marketing Director JoAnn Martin said. “If they want to get entry to statistics speedy, now we have the app for them to use.”

The app is powered via MyCivic, an organization that develops cellular packages for neighborhood governments, and prices the town $6,000 annually, Martin stated. From the primary page of the unfastened-to-down load software designed with the identical shade scheme as the town’s website, customers can discover records approximately town colleges, touch City Council participants and use Google Maps to navigate a park, path, or museum in Lynchburg they may want to visit.

Another useful feature is the “Report an Issue” web page. Users can alert the metropolis to troubles like potholes in the street, traffic sign timing, neglected trash series, a burnt-out avenue light, or a clogged typhoon drain. The app also lets customers attach a photo of the problem, and in case you send the difficulty from its genuine vicinity, Google Maps will pinpoint your region and attach it to your request. The troubles may be sent directly without delay to the Citizens First Information Center, which allows you to send it alongside to the best department to be resolved.

“Say you have got a neighbor that has overgrown grass — you may report it to us,” Martin said. “Having an image will assist our parents in seeing truly what the difficulty is and enables deliver us some context.”

Since launching the app, it’s been downloaded extra than three hundred instances.

The Lynchburg Fire Department’s new app is less approximately connecting residents with its services and extra approximately connecting residents with every different while they’re in need.

Called PulsePoint, the branch’s new app will alert customers who have CPR schooling if anyone within 1 / 4-mile radius has a cardiac arrest in a public region inside the metropolis. The app also guides the consumer to the individual in need of help, indicates the places of nearby Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) to assist in resuscitating someone, and acts as a metronome to help someone keep a steady rhythm even as administering CPR.

According to Interim Deputy Fire Chief Heather Childress, presenting chest compressions as soon as viable after someone has a cardiac arrest improves the chance of full recuperation.

“The quantity of time between that collapse and when humans obtain CPR is immediately reflective of what their probabilities are of being efficiently resuscitated,” Childress said. “The extra we can lessen that gap, the much more likely our residents will walk out of the health center — walkout, no longer [be] executed.”

When users download the app, it asks if you have any CPR education. However, no evidence of a CPR certification is vital because just doing simple chest compressions is the most crucial part of the emergency system, Childress stated.

“Our intention is to have greater people walk out of the sanatorium neurologically intact because they had CPR as early as possible,” she stated. “The compressions are the unmarried maximum crucial issue in that. That’s what gets your blood circulating and oxygenating your heart muscle groups and bounds damage.”

PulsePoint is a California-based business enterprise that has distributed its app for use using public safety organizations throughout the country. The app price $50,000 for a five-year subscription, which blanketed start-up fees. After the five years is up, the app will value $eight 000 annually to resume. The loose-to-down load app has been downloaded by way of more than 500 Lynchburg citizens so far, Childress stated.

The app’s home display screen also serves as a window to LFD’s dispatch center, permitting users to peer in which the fire department has been responding and to what kinds of calls. Fire calls offer more records. However, users best are alerted to the street of a scientific emergency and given tiny details because of Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations.

Users can also join up for notifications of structure fires, flower fires, car crashes, hazardous material responses, water rescues, or other incidents.

“If you understand that there’s a fireplace for your street or on the street you operate to get domestic, you may avoid that, so it provides some helpfulness in that manner,” Childress stated. “If you recognize something big goes on at the mall, you may need to stay far away from it. PulsePoint has discovered over and over that as opposed to people showing up and being nosy to see what’s taking place, they use it as a way to decrease visitors and hold human beings away.”

The 1/3 app newly to be had for Lynchburg citizens and site visitors is PassportParking, which allows customers to pay for their parking spots in any of the city’s parking decks that require a charge to use.

“Our whole purpose is to promote secure and convenient parking,” Lynchburg Parking Manager David Malewitz said. “Even though humans don’t like paying to park, we’re selling unique alternatives for them to use.”

To use the app, citizens enter the region variety for the area they’re parking in and then pay for the amount of time they would love to use the spot. When their time runs low, the app will even notify the person to either go back to their vehicle quickly and avoid a price ticket or, without problems, add more time remotely and hold their business in Lynchburg.

PassportParking is to be had at all the city’s parking lots that require the fee, consisting of Lot E at 1310 Main St., the Mid-Town Parking Deck at 910 Main St., the SunTrust parking deck at 1001 Commerce St., And the Clay Street Deck at 800 Clay St. Behind the Lynchburg Museum.

Since the app launched at the beginning of November, Malewitz stated it has treated more than one hundred ten transactions for a total fee of more than $350, and he expects it to grow.

“As greater humans recognize it, we’re getting extra transactions,” he said. “Usually, for the first six to eight months, you notice the usage growth as soon as the words out.”

PassportParking expenses the city no fee and is paid for with the aid of 25-cent comfort prices carried out for each parking transaction, consistent with Malewitz.