Brian VanBockern (US Navy Southern Division NAVFAC)  

Defense installations are faced with a myriad of data types and formats. Innovative techniques have to be developed to process this data with limited software in some cases. Through trial and error, ArcView GIS has been found to accomplish many tasks that used to be the sole realm of ARC/INFO. This paper will present several techniques for various data processing issues that regularly come up at Navy and Marine Corps bases with beginning and intermediate GIS systems in place. The techniques will be focused on the use of ArcView GIS and Avenue to accomplish the processing of scattered data into the GIS.

Navy mapping has been in a perpetual state of disarray in terms of true GIS capable mapping data sets. The vast majority of Navy mapping still lies in the realm of unprojected CAD data sets or commonly referred General Development Maps-GDM. These maps are extremely difficult to use accurately in a GIS with other projected data sets. Various methods have had to be employed to massage these data sets to arrive at a usable GIS data set. ArcView 3 and the use of scripts and extensions has been the quickest and simplest method to modify the CAD. ArcInfo is employed in a few cases where the ArcView methods proved inconclusive. We at Southern Division NAVFAC have found ArcView to be the primary data tool as very few of our data sets are large enough to justify the use of ArcInfo as the data manager. The ease and the shallow learning curve allow for quick integration and ready expansion of the skill base for non-geographic types that are prevalent in the Navy. This paper explains a few cases of data manipulation and documents script/extension sources used on the data sets that led to a usable GIS system.

The general Navy mapping program has been a slow and cumbersome program up until a few years ago. It still has a ways to go but several new committees and some new skill bases at the field divisions have begun to change the way the Navy maps its installations. Southern Division (Southdiv) or NAVFAC (Naval Facilities Engineering Command) South is one of four large field divisions tasked with providing installation support services to Navy and Marine Corps installations by geographic region. Southdiv has spent the last 2 years vastly improving its in-house GIS and mapping capabilities especially in the Esri software arena.

Hats go off to the Marine Corps and their unity to pursuing a common GIS and mapping methodology that will lead to greater use and applicability of their individual base GIS programs. The Navy system of old GDM’s and vast volumes of unprojected and merged CAD files has led to a system stuck in the old ways of paper maps and a general misunderstanding of the power potential of even a simple GIS system in the hands of a trained user. The next millennium will see the Navy strive to acquire a better handle on GIS as an enterprise solution to installation, regional, and global mapping distribution and use. We have had many failures but the success stories we have had are enough to build a solid foundation of GIS and remove CAD from mapping realm and relegate it to its true use of design related digital data like floor plans. CAD mapping for the Navy has done little more than produce a standard looking paper map that an engineer has come accustomed to viewing. The increase in discipline diversity at the regional and installation level has finally led to the infusion of GIS as the primary mapping program. The changes have been led by the environmental branches with the facilities departments following in their wake. Our best successes have come when both departments combine their resources to execute the GIS implementation. When as department goes it alone only a partial success can be attained at the local level. Approximately one year ago NAVFAC formed a Mapping/GIS team from all the experts at the higher echelons of the NAVFAC community. This group has come a long way to write standards and discuss the path for Navy mapping and GIS initiatives. Esri and NAVFAC have worked together to create IMS sites, base level implementations, and a few other special projects. Through innovative data editing and good old fashioned crunching several installation's dead data has been revived to a usable GIS system.

Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort represents a typical Navy installation in terms of the state of their mapping system. The air stations maps were composed of large single file base maps that were annotated and unprojected. The maps were essentially useless to a GIS except for some rudimentary viewing purposes. Our in-house personnel were tasked with transforming various data sets of Beaufort into a usable and simple GIS system to get the air station started down the path towards enterprise usage.

In order to get the CAD maps into usability we had to perform several major transformations of the data sets. The CAD files were internally layered Autocad 13 files that were orientated west and unprojected. Through the use of Shapewarp, Cadtools, and several other minor scripts we were able to place the maps correctly in a state plane coordinate system and align with some new aerial photography acquired from the county. The whole process took about 2 weeks of trial and error as each CAD data set must be handled differently depending on the original authors techniques of file management. Once the base map was made GIS ready we proceeded to incorporate over 30 layers of other environmental, utility, and natural resource data in to the system. Along with the new maps we have begun the incorporation of several large databases that are linked to certain feature attributes. GPS will be collected and incorporated as needed. The GPS points will also provide a dense network of points that the sub-meter accuracy maps will be reregistered onto in order to reduce the error to the sub-foot range. This whole project, which is still underway, has been accomplished in less time and with less money than any other Navy routine to date in our Area of responsibility. The successes and lessons learned have now translated into our new projects that have made our in-house GIS team very efficient and fully capable of handling most mapping issues.

The Chief of Naval Education and Training (CNET) is our organizations primary working partner and we take care of all of the planning and mapping of all of their bases. The SOUTHDIV GIS Team has been for the last 6 months conducting GPS/GIS/Mapping surveys of all of CNET’s Outlying Fields (OLF’s), 15 in all. The surveys consist of the field gathering of all runway, utility, AICUZ, and any related cultural and natural features. Using the existing base maps from a 1997 fly-over we have created a simple ArcView GIS that works independent of the ALFA (Activity Land and Facilities Assets) system. Future plans include integration with the ALFA.

Once again the data for these installations was CAD but in much better shape that the Beaufort files. The problems incurred on this project were simpler but required the use of several extensions and scripts. The 3D CAD contour files all had polylines, as polylineZ, which causes problems in data editing in ArcView. The use of the StripZM extension solved this problem in minutes. In addition the Xtools and Edtools extensions provided numerous merging and shifting tools to get the CAD file properly adjusted. In addition to these problems the Cad files had badly segmented lines that were to choppy for use in our GIS. Several scripts were run to convert them to a continuous line except in the case of some utility lines where vertices were added for our Network applications of water and electricity. Some of the other extensions and scripts used were Spatial Tools, Cadtools, GPS Import Wizard, Hot Potato, Lat/Long Readout, Shape Edit, Stuff!, and several other minor scripts. Once again all of these scripts were obtained from free third party sources and several were modified internally for our own use.

Naval Training Center Great Lakes is the Navy’s only recruit training installation. Just this year SOUTHDIV personnel have been involved in a comprehensive planning and redevelopment/capitalization study for all the recruit training areas at this installation. Great Lakes has plans to replace close to 500 million dollars of facilities and look to acquire new land adjacent to the command. Large portions of this new land had significant elevation and adjacent land use constraints that needed to be analyzed with greater scrutiny. The existing ALFA and APMM were out of date and provided limited land planning analysis tools so I chose to use ArcView and convert the entire ALFA and APMM from the Microstation/Fopro format to ArcView/Access.

The elevation constraints on and near the base required us to build elevation models and TINS in order to perform our analysis. All of these were constructed from the 1-foot contour files using ArcInfo and then editing the sets in ArcView. With the TINS completed we proceeded to analyze the selected sites for possible site preparation which included large-scale earth removal. The use of 3D and Spatial Analyst provided some quick volume estimates of the elevated portions of land that required excavation and identified any potential impacts on the micro-scale drainage patterns. We also had to take at the Line of Sight (LOS) impacts on the adjacent residential land use from the new higher structures. A 3D model was also constructed showing future construction and other modifications and exported to a VRML project to be used in a browser. The VRML project allowed for the non-users to view the output dynamically and navigate the site 3 dimensionally. This planning project could not have been completed as smoothly without the use of the GIS.

The state of the Navy’s GIS program has been fraught with seemingly insurmountable lows only to rebound to great highs. SOUTHDIV’s state of mind is that Navy use of CAD as a mapping tools is nearing the end of its life with GIS replacing AutoCad and Microstation as the only mapping and GIS tool for planning, environmental, and natural resource analysis. Our engineering field division is the main bastion for the Navy of Esri specialized users for ArcView and ArcInfo. The Navy is following the Marine Corps lead in creating groups and standards that will facilitate the easy transition from CAD to GIS. The Navy’s Base Mapping Guide is currently in draft form and should be final very shortly. This document will provide a tool for the installations to complete a successful mapping project. The 3 example's, provided above, of advanced ArcView data editing proves that ArcView with scripting can accomplish many of the tasks that were once the property of ArcInfo. This is good news as many installations have neither, the money or time for ArcInfo and ArcView ease of learning facilitates GIS growth for smaller departments. A list if free script bearing web sites will be provided at the end of the paper that shows the majority of free source code that has immeasurably helped our data editing problems.

http://www.Esri.com/industries/defense/dsig.html

http://www.csc.noaa.gov/metadata/text/download.html#readme

http://www.absc.usgs.gov/glba/gistools/index.htm

http://www.gic.csuchico.edu/tools/ware/prod1.html

http://www.primenet.com/~piersen/arcview/arcview.htm

http://home.earthlink.net/~rcreed/av.htm

http://www.ifas.ufl.edu/~bts/gis/symbols.html

http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/mis/gis/tools/arcview/extensions/extensions.html

http://www.adelaide.net.au/~pguthrie/arcv2cad.htm

http://www.blm.gov/gis/narsc/faq-1.html

http://www.odf.state.or.us/sfgis/

http://warden.www.cistron.nl/geo/

http://www.ike.uni-stuttgart.de/~www_wn/leute/Kopetzky/arciso-e.html#DOWNLOAD

http://www.rowekamp.com/free.htm

http://www.co.seminole.fl.us/gis/extents.htm

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Haven/2295/

http://www.mppdc.com/gis/toolbox.htm#av

http://keithmassie.home.mindspring.com/avenue/extensions.html

http://www.cares.missouri.edu/cares/projects/MK.html

vanbockernb@efdsouth.navfac.navy.mil