From the Back Room to the Corporate Data Center: Lessons Learned in Migration to an Enterprise GIS

The City of Aurora, Colorado, is a dynamic, fast growing community struggling to keep up with the demands of a booming economy and rapid development. Fortunately the City began developing a GIS in the mid-1980s and now has a mature system with hundreds of users. The transitioning from a paper map based GIS to a real-time data-centric GIS has been a challenge to the developers and users. The City's Strategic GIS Plan has provided a vision for users and managers to follow the development of new technologies. This paper will document the obstacles and the solutions that the City has implemented in the quest for distributed spatial data.

As far back at 1978 the City of Aurora investigated the potential of automating the ink on Mylar mapping system that was in place. It wasn't until 1983 that a formal proposal to Council was presented to purchase a purchase $500,000 Intergraph mainframe system. This proposal was rejected by the City Manager due to the lack of coordination between the departments. It was realized to gain the benefits from such a large investment an enterprise implementation view must be established. When key departments opt out of the implementation then the value to the organization is diminished. This was the case in the early 1980's and the City Manager wisely requested that all parties "get there act together."

The next steps involved the process of gathering user requirements, researching the state of the technology and making specific recommendations for proceeding. Detailed study of Automated Mapping and Facilities Management Computer system conducted in 1985. This was followed by a 1986 Justification Report submitted and approved by City Manager. By mid 1987 a Request for Proposal was released for Geographic Information System Configuration. The budget limit was set at $200,000. This was quickly followed by the formation of an advisory committee and benchmark tests of proposed systems. In November of 1987 Hewlett Packard and Genasys were selected for functional leadership in GIS and distributed workstation computing. It would be a year before the system was installed and operational. Initial project participants were Utilities and Public Works.

From the start it was realized that to be continually supported GIS products would have to be produced as quickly as possible the show that the investment was paying off. Several digitized products were produced that became what were called "Wall Maps." These are E size or larger small scale maps and are usually put up on a wall for reference (see figure 1).

Figure 1. Planning Department "Wall Map"

In 1989 a Five-year plan for development of an accurate coordinate base map started. High precision field control surveying utilizing GPS technology was initiated. Public Works GIS personnel placed on coordinate geometry base map development project full time. The key support was in place as well as the champions of the project. As the benefits of the GIS were promoted the Planning Department realized that it would be an invaluable tool to provide understanding of complex land use and development relationships. The Planning Department purchased a workstation in the middle of 1989 and began using the GIS during the Census count of that year.

Several high profile products were produced by the GIS in the early 1990's that raised the awareness of the system within the organization. A Council redistricting was conducted as well as several strategic planning maps that management came to rely on. While daily mapping products were being produced the process of subdivision and lot conversion continued. This involved using coordinate geometry (COGO) to enter in the subdivision boundaries while a conversion vendor digitized me majority of the lot lines. This was being conducted in conjunction with the establishment of the quarter section control. By 1994 the cadastrial, street centerlines and address point layers were complete.

The key to the acceptance and integration of the GIS mapping products in the day-to-day operation of the City was the development of two tiers of standard products. The first are the "Wall Map" products that are generally small scale(1"= 2000' or 1"=4000'). The second are the large scale products (1"=200') that are composed from the COGO data elements. These may be combined with aerial ortho photography and display multiple layers of spatial information (see figure 2.)

Figure 2. Example detail from a digital ortho photo and cadastrial buffer.

By 1994 the limitations of the existing GIS software were becoming apparent. A review of the existing GIS software vendors resulted in the selection of Esri as the preferred provider. This was an organizational challenge since eight trained professional GIS users had become familiar with the existing Genasys program and were producing acceptable mapping products. Training and a migration lasted for well into two years as the users became more familiar with ArcInfo and ArcView programs. There was reliance on using out of the box solutions so ArcTools has been the preferred interface to ArcInfo. Since most of the ArcInfo products produced are custom maps, AML capabilities have been developed on a selected application and data processing basis. The City is a heavy user of ArcTools GUI interface.

Along with the HP UNIX version of ArcInfo several copies of PC ArcView were made available to the users. This opened up a broad new segment of users to digital spatial data. With the base map and numerous thematic layers in place, ArcView applications using the Avenue programming language could be developed that provided specific functionality. Initially there were 25 copies of ArcView which as grown to over 60 since this has become the current best method to access GIS data.

By the mid 1990's the City's GIS had become distributed both among various departments and between digital and mapping products. Due to the departmental cooperative structure of the GIS it was necessary to have an individual responsible for overseeing the various components. The position of GIS Coordinator was created in the Information Technology (IT) Department to facilitate cooperation between the various departments and users. As a part of IT, this position plays a vital roll in communicating the requirements of spatial data systems to the rest of the systems, networking and application development staff. The GIS Coordinator also plays a key role in communicating to management the status of the GIS and requests for resources.

While most casual users still look at the GIS as a replacement for manual mapping the digital component is just as important though not as well understood. In any municipal GIS the situs address becomes one of the primary features by which users locate facilities. The City of Aurora realized this early in the data conversion process and has worked very hard to maintain an accurate and timely address database. This centralized address database is used by the Utilities Department, Police, Building and others in there applications. With all the "eyes" on this database errors are spotted quickly and corrected. The GIS data is also used by the Finance Department to provide reporting of special taxing districts by address. These separated database systems are being populated by the GIS data on quarterly, weekly and daily basis depending upon the system.

The City of Aurora has implemented several applications that bear mentioning. The first is the integrated voice recognition data collection system called "Vocarta." This application was developed in partnership with Locheed Martin and now Datria to provide field data collection using GPS and voice recognition technology. The Streets Department uses it extensively to inventory and maintain pavement. In addition the code enforcement officers use it to track and assign violations. The system uses ArcView as the GIS platform in the field (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Vocarta field data collection

The "Plan Smart" program developed by the Planning Department is an advanced ArcView application that helps planners and decision makers understand the impacts of proposed developments. It uses the existing base data as well as digitally submitted data. The program calculates an indicator score for the development based on multiple criteria. It is current in the testing phase but has great potential to assist with development review and understanding the cost of sprawl (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. Plan Smart ArcView screen showing block size indicator

The GIS based crime analysis program (GCAP) has been developed to assist the police department in studying crime patterns and trends. Crime analysts and patrol officers use pull down menus to query crime data records by criminal codes and combinations of geographic locators, calendar days, days of week and times of day. The resultant displays, maps and tables are used for a variety of analytic functions and has provided more effective police resource deployment (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. Uniformed officer using GCAP

The City of Aurora's GIS is entering into a new phase. The GIS will become the central source for spatial data and will feed the various databases that require spatial data. A new program is being implemented at the City called Plans Tracking. This will allow users to track a development process from inception to final Certificate of Occupancy and beyond. As a part of this program having timely and accurate property data will be necessary. The union of GIS and database technology will provide better delivery of spatial information to the users. We will be evaluating Spatial Data Engine (SDE) technology over the coming months to see how it will fit within the structure of the organization.

Migrating several desktop GIS applications to a intranet/internet environment will become a priority in the near future. The ability to serve spatial data from one source and maintain individual applications has a great appeal. Also, the number of users will greatly increase once web applications are available.

The new geodatabase data model holds quite a bit of promise for providing intelligent data to the users. As with any mature GIS system, the maintenance of separate metadata files is a constant battle. With the new data model, metadata is a part of the data. Also building intelligence into the data will provide the benefit of using data as it was intended to be used. The professional GIS users have gone through a major software change just six years ago, the introduction of the new Arc 8 technology should be a smooth transition given the proper planning.

The City is currently engaged in an Information Technology Strategic Plan initiative that will provide an updated direction for technology systems. GIS will be an important part of this plan and one the has broad implications for process improvement.

The evolution of GIS in a municipal organization is different for each site. The City of Aurora has benefited greatly from the persistence of the staff in developing a mature system. The future holds many opportunities and more and more spatial data is used on a daily basis.

Dave Murray, GIS Coordinator

City of Aurora, Info. Tech Dept.

1470 S. Havana St, Ste 722

Aurora, CO 80012

USAPhone: (303) 739-7482Fax: (303) 739-7547

dmurray@ci.aurora.co.us