The City of Falls Church, Virginia is situated a few miles east of Washington D.C. bordering Fairfax and Arlington counties. Although only two square miles in area with 9,500 residents Falls Church has a local government organization and infrastructure similar to cities with much larger populations. This paper focuses on the first four GIS applications developed on the City's GIS. In 1994, a commissioned study identified city-wide GIS needs for geographic data, hardware and software. The City contracted out acquisition of digital photogrammetric data at 1"=100' scale, and digital terrain models for 2-foot contour generation. At the same time, a cadastre was registered to the photogrammetry, using the City's tax maps as source. The City selected IBM's RS/6000 AIX platform and a network of microcomputers to utilize Esri's ArcInfo and ArcView software for their GIS. The City then contracted out the development of a comprehensive GIS database design, followed by four key applications to demonstrate the practical implementation of the design. Data layers and data flow among the City agencies were mapped as part of the logical design. The physical design implemented the logical relationships on the selected ArcInfo GIS platform with Oracle as the primary relational database management system. The design incorporated elements of the Spatial Data Transfer Standard to facilitate data exchange between federal government, the neighboring counties, and the City. Attributes for individual data layers were listed and key attributes for relational linkage identified. A comprehensive data dictionary was compiled. Many to many relationships among parcels, ownership, buildings, addresses, and tenancy were resolved. Redundancies and data duplication were eliminated through a normalized relational design. Four key applications were developed during the first phase of GIS implementation: zoning, real estate assessment value analysis, homeowner notification, and street sign inventory management. In the zoning application, City zoning codes were defined within the zoning coverage and existing zoning patterns reproduced in ArcView. A zoning map was created by overlaying the zoning and parcel coverages. The real estate application was developed by establishing linkage between the City's financial database on the IBM AS400 with the GIS. Real Property Code (RPC) number was the unique key utilized to set up linkage. Residential and Commercial property values were thematically mapped. Patters of high and low property values were clearly distinguishable for different districts within the City. Automation of homeowner notification around a 150' annulus of a targeted parcel was achieved using the same RPC linkage and them by them queries in ArcView. Homeowner names and addresses were accessed, a mailing list generated, and a wordprocessor used to merge each notification with the related mailing label. The traffic sign inventory system was developed to create an inventory map, classified by sign type. Attribute data provided by the Public Works Department were entered into the GIS and various maps and reports generated for traffic sign management. Successful implementation of GIS applications at the City of Falls Church within a relatively short period can be directly attributed to the commitment of City government to this new technology: effective management of the GIS implementation program by the City and its prime consultant; appropriate selection, support, and retention of qualified consultants throughout the needs analysis, systems selection, data acquisition, GIS database design-implementation and application development phases of the project; excellent coordination and cooperation among the various agencies involved; and the timely provision of needed information and support to the GIS Application development effort.
The City of Austin Planning Department has a long history of using GIS and other mapping technologies to deliver high-quality map products to other City departments, businesses, and the general public. Because of this experience, the City has a large inventory of geographic data sets that could be used by the Planning staff to improve decision making, if it were accessible. In August 1994 the department began an experiment with making GIS available on the desktop of planners and other frontline staff people in order to integrate GIS technology with daily operations. The department also made the technology available to the public in a limited way. While this would have been an ideal ArcView application, ArcView was not available at the time on the VMS platform. The GIS staff for the department built an easy-to-use, comprehensive GIS Viewer using AML to get this program up and running. This paper will look at the Viewer application and the functionality it delivers to the desktop, how GIS is being used and the impact that it has had on daily operations, and the challenges of translating this application into ArcView as we move to a UNIX environment.
Municipalities all over the world deal with managing urban growth and the provision of the necessary infrastructure which makes this growth possible. Keeping and running an updated database which is capable of representing the existing natural and built environment and the management system has always been a matter of serious consideration to these organizations. As data in the broad form of knowledge is not always easy to acquire, keep, or interpret as a basis for decisions affecting human interaction in the rather complicated sphere of Urbania. The most difficult part being the ability to represent the correlation between a human activity and the way it is shaping space or the form of the ecosystem. The introduction of geographic information systems (GISs) has been of great help to the designers and beneficiaries of municipal information systems. But this is only a theoretical starting point; in practice we have seen only few successes to prove the workability of such a claim. Municipal departments are keeping records of people, business establishments, and buildings. And it is not seldom that decisions, once needed, are taken without sufficient reference to these records, simply because they are not shapable into knowledge at the right time. This paper will attempt to study the nature of information needs for various municipal functions and the technical, administrative, human, and financial dimensions of establishing a working municipal information system, which will help the municipalities in performing their duties. Two case studies will be used as a basis for the elaborations illustrating the main topics of this paper: The Greater Amman Municipal Information System developed around GDS S/W and The Greater Zarqa Planning Information System developed on a PC ARC/INFO platform. Both cases are from Jordan, but some generalities could be established for countries of similar socioeconomic conditions.
The City of Sedona, a rural community in north central Arizona of approximately 10,000 people, has been slowly implementing a Geographic Information System (GIS) for a number of years. The struggles and the approaches taken by the City to finally implement the GIS were discussed in a paper presented at the 1995 15th Annual Esri User Conference by this author. This paper will focus on some of the applications of our evolving GIS to address some of the growth issues and problems facing the City of Sedona. The paper will show how the level of sophistication of our GIS applications has grown based on the availability of information for our data layers. Some of the initial cartographic applications of the GIS will be discussed. The use of GIS to resolve major challenges with the development and implementation of the City's wastewater system will be highlighted, with specific reference to anomalies in the originally implemented billing mechanism, and how GIS enabled the City to recover thousands of dollars in lost revenues. The paper will conclude with a look at ongoing challenges and problems, as well as the approaches taken to resolve these.