The Texas Legislative Council (TLC) has developed a GIS application using ArcInfo for the redistricting projects in the State of Texas. Three main applications have been written to accomplish this task: Redistricting Application (REDAPPL), Boundary Definition System (BDS), and Spatial Integrated Cartographic Environment (SPICE). These application programs have been written using a combination of AML and C code. REDAPPL is used to assist legislators and their staff to create house, senate, congressional, state board of education, and Judicial districts based on TIGER, U.S. census, and election data. BDS is a user interface system used by the GIS specialist at the TLC to create and update cartographic databases primarily for precinct coverages, voter tabulation districts (VTDs), and updates to school district boundaries. SPICE is the main menu-driven application for producing large numbers of maps. The SPICE menu system allows operators to choose a specific map for production and customize which features to show based on the needs of the request. This paper discusses how each application is used in the GIS application process for redistricting.
The trend in modern organizations towards flatter structures and the involvement of many stakeholder groups in solving today's spatial decision problems, have created a need for information technology capable of supporting collaborative spatial decision making. Such information technology has developed in recent years for the computerized support of group decision making aimed at solving business problems, e.g., market strategies, corporate planning, product development, and others. Similar information technology to support group decision making aimed at solving spatial decision problems, e.g., site selection, choice of environmental and economic strategies, and urban/regional development, are now beginning to appear in the research literature. GIS, often designed for spatial decision support, have lacked a capability to collate interests and interactions to support collaborative spatial decision making, particularly for face-to-face meetings. As a step towards addressing this void, we present a spatial decision support system for groups (SDSS-G) called Spatial Group Choice. A spatial problem focusing on prioritization for habitat site development is used as a backdrop to present the design and development issues. We discuss the technical and social-oriented design guidelines adopted for the development of Spatial Group Choice using a framework that characterizes meetings in terms of spatial-temporal dimensionality. We then describe the design and implementation of Spatial Group Choice, including a "tour" of the software, using a habitat restoration decision problem. We conclude with issues unresolved and prospects for future development.
GIS is an important tool in any planning department and geographic data is currently being produced at a rapid rate. Typically, the training and equipment necessary to get an entire staff using the available data in ArcInfo is cost prohibitive. ArcView presents a solution to this problem b y allowing geographic data to be accessed through the PC. Unfortunately, most staff members do not want to learn another software package no matter how easy it is to learn. At the same time they want and need the benefits of the GIS. The solution to this problem is to write Avenue applications that allow the staff to do its routine tasks while needing minimal to no instruction in the use of the software. This paper/presentation will discuss the development of such an application and demonstrate the final product. The application allows planners to pick a property by a variety of methods and then automatically generates a soils map, a floodplain map, a zoning map, and a notification map. The application performs queries on an assessor's database and automatically shades the selected properties and places property information text and house markers. In addition, it creates an assessor database report and a soils report. The application utilizes DDE links to other office software and SQL requests to an Oracle database. Its development presented a number of challenges and the solutions to some of those challenges will be discussed as a part of the application development process during the presentation.