About 1,100 miles northeast of McKinney in Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland Metroparks' natural resources and information technology staff shared how they also benefit from strong cross-department collaboration to use technology to expand data collection, land stewardship and conservation goals. The park district's Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) project provides long-range, low-power and low-cost solutions and continuous data collection for monitoring aspects of the local environment.

The development of the LoRaWAN emerged from conversations with Cleveland Water Alliance, which also desired a digitally connected watershed providing real-time data in the area of copious waterways. The project used a phased approach starting in 2022 and involved several pilot studies for different use cases. In addition, the formation of an internal, end-to-end LoRaWAN included gateways, deploying and testing sensors, and creating application servers to visualize and analyze this data. Regular expansion of the network continues to date.  

The LoRaWAN is magnitudes easier to employ than past technologies because of its low power, reliable connectivity/communication, lower cost compared to conventional sensors, lesser visibility to park visitors and in-house deployment, eliminating dependence on vendors or special software. The data quality is superior to that from standard sensors. LoRaWAN allows deployment of additional sensors across an area knowing that they can provide accurate data as funding priorities change.