Large operational organisations increasingly rely on GPS data collected by vehicles on the field, but transforming raw GPS tracks into reliable and statistically meaningful operational parameters remains a complex and time-consuming task.

This talk presents a real-world use case developed within Iren SpA, one of the largest multi-utility companies in Italy, focusing on waste collection services. We introduce GPS Analyzer, a custom QGIS 3 plugin developed entirely by internal IT developers and currently used in production to support service monitoring, planning, and optimisation activities.

The plugin provides a semi-automatic workflow to analyse GPS tracks enriched with geospatial information and operational signals (engine status, power take-off activation, container lifting, emptying events, vehicle speed, etc.) coming directly from the vehicles. Starting from raw GPS data, the tool supports the identification of valid service tracks, the classification of service phases, and the calculation of key operational and productivity parameters. Each phase of the analysis workflow is encapsulated in a dedicated tool, allowing GIS operators to execute complex processing steps with minimal manual intervention. The parameters obtained are then used both for performance monitoring and for the design or optimisation of waste collection routes.

Before the introduction of GPS Analyzer, the analysis of a single GPS track required approximately 30 minutes of manual work by a GIS operator. Thanks to the semi-automated workflow implemented in QGIS, the same analysis can now be completed in about 5 minutes, resulting in a time reduction of more than 80%. This improvement makes it possible to analyse a significantly larger number of tracks, increasing the statistical robustness of the derived parameters and enabling data-driven decision-making at scale. The plugin has already been used to analyse hundreds of real-world GPS tracks.

Although the plugin is currently designed for internal use and tailored to the waste management domain, the overall approach is highly transferable. Any context where GPS tracks include both spatial information and operational signals can benefit from similar workflows implemented in QGIS.

The presentation will focus on the problem addressed, the geospatial data available, the QGIS-based workflow, the benefits achieved and the lessons learned from deploying and maintaining a custom QGIS plugin in a large operational organisation.