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Track: Local/State Government, Cadastral, Land Records
Bill Press
PlanGraphics
1300 Spring Street Suite 306
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Telephone: 301-588-8535
Fax: 301-588-5979
E-mail: bpress@plangraphics.com
Development of a GIS Prototype for Basemap and Land Records Maintenance in Oman
The Sultanate of Oman's national Ministry of Housing has initiated the development of an ArcInfo-based GIS for its basemap and land records management. A GIS prototype has been completed to examine data conversion and application development options. The prototype had three primary tasks: develop a basemap, develop a land records database, and develop an initial ArcInfo user interface. The digital basemap was compiled from four primary sources, each in a different file format. 1. AutoCAD files containing planimetric features 2. Existing ArcInfo coverages containing a limited number of parcels 3. Twenty-year-old planning maps that were scanned and registered 4. Newly generated ArcInfo coverages of parcel boundaries based on ASCII files of survey coordinates The assembly of basemap digital files also required the transformation of data from an old coordinate system to a new coordinate system. Task two was to develop a land records database based on attributes found on existing hard-copy parcel
records. Attributes were entered in Excel spreadsheets and then saved as ASCII files. The files were then uploaded into INFO tables. The land records database that was developed was designed to emulate a portion of the Ministry's existing Oracle tables. Eventually, the Ministry may link its Oracle database to the new ArcInfo system maintained by the Ministry. The third prototype task was the development of an end user application to demonstrate ArcInfo functionality of basemap and land records maintenance. The graphical user interface includes applications to perform data entry, transformation, QC, query, and output. There is also functionality to translate digital files between ArcInfo and AutoCAD. The paper will present some of the technical, institutional, and cultural challenges faced in developing an ArcInfo GIS prototype in a quickly developing country.
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