Case Study
Automating Municipal Planning in the City of Riviera Beach
How AI reduced routine inquiries by 75% and saved planners 20 hours per week
Overview
The City of Riviera Beach, Florida, is a growing coastal community. Like many local governments, its Planning and Zoning Department is the first point of contact for residents, developers, and business owners looking to understand what they can build and where.
The Challenge: The “40-Question” Daily Grind
Before partnering with Conflation Labs, the Riviera Beach Planning Department faced a relentless volume of routine inquiries. Juan Suarez, Senior Planner, was managing approximately 10+ walk-in or phone inquiries in a week. These questions followed a predictable pattern:
“What is my property zoned for?”
“Can I open a gym at this specific address?”
“What are the setback requirements for a new fence?”
While routine, each question required the planning staff to manually open GIS maps, cross-reference PDF zoning codes, and verify Future Land Use (FLU) maps. This “low-complexity” work was consuming 75% of the staff's day, creating a bottleneck for high-value tasks like large-scale site plan reviews and strategic urban design.
The Solution: A Spatial AI Site Plan & Zoning Agent
Conflation Labs deployed a customized AI Assistant for Riviera Beach that fused the city's authoritative data—including ArcGIS layers, Chapter 31 Zoning Codes, and the Comprehensive Plan into a single conversational interface.
Key Features Implemented:
Natural Language Zoning Desk
Allows staff (and soon, the public) to ask complex questions in plain English and receive instant, map-based answers.
Automated Site Plan Review
An AI agent that instantly flags code violations (e.g., parking dimensions or landscape buffers) by "reading" site plans against municipal regulations.
GIS Integration
Direct connection to the city's parcel data, ensuring the AI never "hallucinates" property boundaries.
Ease of Use
From 500-Page PDFs to Instant Answers
See the difference between traditional zoning research and AI-powered assistance
Traditional Approach
Conflation Labs AI
The Results: From 20 Hours to 5 Minutes
The impact of the Conflation Labs platform was immediate and measurable:
75%
Inquiry Automation
Of the 40 daily questions received by the department, the AI successfully answered 30 out of 40, requiring zero staff intervention.
20hrs → 5min
Massive Time Savings
Complex manual reviews that previously took a planner 20 hours to complete were reduced to just 5 minutes of AI processing and human verification.
100%
Increased Accuracy
The AI identified "catch-all" requirements in the municipal code that are often overlooked during manual human reviews.
$150
Enhanced Revenue Potential
By automating the data collection for Zoning Verification Letters (which carry a $150 fee), the city can now process these requests faster, accelerating local economic development.
The Human Impact
“The benefit is that GIS and Planning staff get bogged down with low-effort work. This LLM-powered map frees up our resources so we can focus on the important work like the City's Strategic Plan.”
Juan Suarez
Senior Planner, City of Riviera Beach
What's Next?
Following the successful internal pilot, Riviera Beach is moving toward a Public Launch. The AI assistant will be integrated directly into the city's website, providing 24/7 “Digital Counter” services to citizens and developers, ensuring that Riviera Beach remains a “Business-First” community powered by the latest in Spatial AI.
Want to See How Your City Can Save 20 Hours a Week?
Discover how Conflation Labs can transform your planning department with AI-powered automation.