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Glossary

This glossary defines key terms used across the Municipality Management Platform.


Platform terms

Module / Vertical

An independent functional area of the platform (Occurrences, Equipment, Occupancy). Modules can be enabled or disabled per deployment.

Municipality

A geographic authority boundary. Records are attached to municipalities based on location or assignment.

Department

An organizational unit within a municipality (e.g., "Public Works", "Parks"). Used for routing and permissions.

Dynamic Form

A configurable intake form that can be created without code changes. Can be mapped to create records in any vertical.

Hydration

The process of mapping dynamic form data to create or update model records.

Feature Flag

A configuration setting that enables or disables specific functionality without code changes.


Occurrences terms

Occurrence

A citizen-reported issue managed by the municipality (e.g., potholes, streetlights, graffiti).

Category / Occurrence Type

The type of issue (e.g., "Streetlight", "Road damage"). Used for routing, priorities, and permissions.

Workflow State

A municipality-defined label describing where the occurrence is in the process (e.g., "Scheduled", "In Progress").

Status

A broad classification of progress (open / in progress / resolved / closed). Often derived from the workflow state group.

Response Template

A pre-written message that staff can apply to an occurrence (public or internal).

Auto-response Rule

A rule that automatically applies a template when a specific event happens (e.g., on create).

Priority

Urgency level. Can be used to set SLA targets.

SLA (Service Level Agreement)

A target timeline for responding to or resolving an occurrence.

Escalation

An automated notification when an SLA is close to breaching or breached.

Routing

Automatically sending occurrence details to an external system (email / Open311 / webhook).

Duplicate Detection

Finding similar reports near the same location within a time window.


Equipment terms

Equipment

A physical asset managed by the municipality (vehicle, IT equipment, machinery, etc.).

Equipment Type

A category of equipment that defines default lifecycle settings (warranty periods, maintenance intervals).

Serial Number

A unique identifier for an individual piece of equipment.

Equipment Condition

The current state of equipment: Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor, or Out of Service.

Maintenance Record

Documentation of maintenance, repair, or servicing performed on equipment.

Preventive Maintenance

Scheduled routine maintenance to prevent problems (e.g., oil changes).

Corrective Maintenance

Maintenance performed to fix identified issues.

Inspection

A formal assessment of equipment condition with checklist and scoring.

Reservation

A booking request for shared equipment with a defined time period.

Warranty

A guarantee period during which repairs may be covered by the manufacturer/supplier.


Occupancy terms

Point of Interest (POI)

A monitored public space such as a parking lot, beach, trail, or viewpoint.

Sensor / Sensor Equipment

A physical device that captures visitor data (AI camera or infrared counter).

Gate

A detection zone within a sensor that tracks specific movements (entry, exit, flow).

Gate Mapping

The configuration linking a sensor gate to a POI monitoring function.

Sensor Reading

Raw data from a sensor including timestamp, count, direction, and object type.

Occupancy

The current number of people or vehicles at a location, calculated from entry/exit counts.

Capacity

The maximum number of people or vehicles a location can accommodate.

Flow Rate

The number of people or vehicles passing through a location per unit time.

Occupancy Alert

A notification triggered by capacity thresholds or sensor issues.

Ingestion

The process of importing sensor data from external sources (lakehouse, Trino).

Trail Duration

The expected time for a visitor to complete a trail, used for occupancy estimation.


Technical terms

PostGIS

PostgreSQL extension for geographic data. Used for location-based features.

WebSocket

Protocol for real-time bidirectional communication. Used for live updates.

Celery

Task queue for background processing. Used for scheduled jobs and alerts.

Camunda / Zeebe

Workflow engine for process automation (optional integration).

Open311

Standard API for civic issue tracking. Used for external routing.

Unfold

Django admin theme used for the backoffice interface.


Role terms

Operator

Staff member who performs day-to-day work on records.

Manager

Staff member who configures policies and monitors operations.

Administrator

User who configures the system (municipality or platform level).

Superuser

Platform-level administrator with full access to all municipalities.