The City of Kfar-Saba

135 Weizman st. Kfar-Saba,

Tel: 972-9-7649101

Fax: 972-9-7675479

President G.G. Systems Ltd

 GIS Consultant to Kfar-Saba

45 Tchernichovsky st. Kfar-Saba,

Tel: 972-9-7414404

Fax: 972-9-7445267

 E-mail: gsystem@netvision.net.il

The city of KFAR-SABA, Israel, has the leading comprehensive GIS in

the country, and therefore had decided to be the first one to introduce its

GIS on the Internet.

 The 1^st Israeli GIS on the WEB is not only a technological breakthrough (a beta-site for Esri�s IMS in 1997), but mainly a practical turning point in opening government information and databases to the public, using the WEB as the principal vehicle.

This is a whole new approach taken by the city�s officials, and it is regarded as another major step towards the ultimate goal of offering better services to the public.

Israel is enjoying a major breakthrough in GIS technology with the implementation of several large projects in the federal government, local governments, and public utilities . But more recently, the Minister of Science and Technology has announced his ministry�s goal for the year1998 : to make government information available to the public by using the Web and other means of communication.

The 1^st Israeli GIS on the WEB is highly regarded as a practical turning point in opening government databases to the public, using the internet, and answering the call of the Minister of Science.

The city has been using its Geographic Information System for 9 years (from 1989) as a joint venture of the Municipality and the Water Company of Kfar-Saba.

Like other successful GIS projects, it took a team of "dedicated patrons" to make it true. In our case, it was the city chief engineer, Mr, Eldad Merhav, the general manager of the Water Company, Ms Nurit Aluf, and the GIS consultant, president of G.G. Systems, Mr. Baruch Heinoch.

The city's GIS is advanced, effective, and a leading model within Israel of

how GIS can be made to pay its own way.

The city has compiled diverse source maps and documents to create a multitheme geodatabase that includes a cadastral base, a photogrammetric base, all utility distribution networks, zoning, land use, topography and natural terrain. All the properly deeds and government leases, historic and current municipal regulations, tax assessment districts and environmental controls (from both municipal, regional, and national authorities) have been either loaded into the database itself, or correspond with the map base.

Kfar-Saba is using an innovative image recognition and automatic vectorization technology to cut down dramatically the cost and time needed to build the database. Only about 6 months for approx 4,000 acres.

The Kfar-Saba system enables the municipality to serve its citizens and staff with very accurate, reliable, and up-to-date information, while dramatically reducing the time needed to retrieve and prepare the information.

The GIS revolution has also been adopted widely by the municipal engineering division (headed by one of the �patrons�), which is changing its procedures and even its way of thinking! Already in-place is a public counter with a GIS terminal operated by a city staff person, for the service of any architect, engineer, planner, or resident who needs information about the building rights, zoning, ownership, or infrastructure impacting a given land parcel. Using a network of workstations and pc's with ArcView , connected to a central geographic database. The city�s staff are able to access and provide graphically-formatted information about any one land parcel, and are able to create larger-area maps and digital files.

Than came the year 1998 with the new capabilities of GIS on the WEB, and all these pieces of information became accessible to all those architects, planners etc. and of course to the public at large � 24 hours a day, 7 days a-week on the Web, from home or office, without having to come to the municipality�s offices.

But back to the history of the system. Kfar-Saba decided to develop a GIS when it had to face the problem of the dangerous lack of security in its municipal information, both paper documents and �wetware�, when a fire in the engineering division destroyed many records, drawings, and most of the maps. At approximately the same time a few of the city�s veteran employees who had 30 to 40 years of city experience and knowledge �in

their heads� were due to retire. On top of that, Kfar-Saba has been experiencing rapid growth with an associated growth of data and records that had to be made available quickly and maintained accurately.

The city�s pro-growth and public service policies were already being implemented as part of the development of information management system (the writer is also the IS consultant to the city). The city saw that this comprehensive MIS could be enhanced by GIS technology to help coordinate the flow of information necessary to review and control the public and private construction projects within its legal jurisdiction. Every proposed project must be approved by the infrastructure Department, the public building permit dept, the Water Company, and the fire Department, as well as the telephone Company, the electric corp., as well as the (federal) Lands Authority and Survey of Israel.

Kfar-Saba�s goal was to integrate the flow of information within its own departments, and to exchange geographic-based information electronically with the national utilities (a tri-lateral agreement was signed and implemented with the electric corp. and the telephone Company), as well as with federal authorities like the Lands Authority of Israel, Survey of Israel etc.

 Because of Kfar-Saba advanced system, it also serves as test bed for those organizations plus the Ministry of Interior and others, which are involved in creating �the National GIS�.

One must remember, that implementing any software in Israel is a challenge by itself, since our language, Hebrew is written from right to left. The implications are, that more time is needed to adopt any software to the Hebrew language, and to the direction in which it�s written (right to left).

Kfar-Saba began its GIS development with a dedicated management structure using well-proven, conventional technology, and was able to respond with many innovations to the challenges that were uncovered during the construction of the geographic database. The management team which meets weekly during these years includes the city�s Chief Engineer (Mr. Merhav), the Manager of the Water Company(Ms. Aluf) and the city�s GIS Consultant (Mr. Heinoch) and more recently a technical manager (Mr. Mordechai Av Revaya) responsible for the ArcInfo central DB. The management team is currently responsible for: decision making, planning, budgeting, design, Construction, quality Control, installation, and staff training.

Last year an important step forward was taken by forming a �GIS User Group� within the municipality, a group composed of 25 representatives of various city�s departments, who meet once a month to discuss recent developments, plans for the future, and to exchange ideas, problems and solutions regarding the system. This forum is highly regarded by the management team as an important source of new ideas for further development of the system.

Initial project milestones comprised selection of GIS software and hardware (Esri�s ArcInfo, ArcCad and ArcView, running on networked SUN workstations and PC�s, were selected) and conventional database consprocesses, including:

• Geodetic survey � using GPS
• Aerial photography
• Photogrammetric mapping
• Facilities Conversion -

As the next stage of DB construction began, digitizing the cadastral maps and capturing their relevant historical documents, problems with the methods became apparent. Many and diverse source records had to be compiled and their apparent contradictions and inaccuracies had to be resolved. Fortunately, Kfar-Saba happened to be home base of Mabul Imaging Systems, which developed an emerging technology that employs image recognition and classification techniques to automatically (batch-mode) vectorize scanned maps and link them with scanned and interpreted legal documents.

Using the automatic vectorizing technology, the city was able to load the general plan, zoning maps, and all the archived permits, previous "tabas" (urban planning maps), development maps, and engineering as-built drawings into the planimetric and cadastral land bases.

The more the system gained recognition by other city officials, the more useful it became as a managerial tool

An important decision that made it a real High-level DSS (Decision Support System) was the integration of demographic data into the GIS. In Israel, the Ministry of Interior maintains the central database of all the citizens. Part of it is open to the public, so that the municipality of Kfar-Saba can use �its� share of the DB, Consisting of its 75,000 citizens. Putting this information �into action� on the base of the geodata creates a powerful managerial tool.

The Education Division, the Welfare Department, the Youth and Sports Department, and many other municipal units began using heavily the demographic analysis based on the GIS. For example, prior to each school year, the Education Division analyzes the distribution of potential students according to age groups, in order to update the school zones.

At Esri�s 1997 User Conference, we were introduced to the new internet tools. Since we felt that our GIS was ready to move to a higher level - the databases are constantly updated, and the information is highly accurate -

• decision was taken to go ahead. The international User Conference of Esri�s representative in Israel (systematics Ltd.) on Sept. 15, 1997 seemed like a perfect and suitable stage to introduce The 1^st Israeli GIS on the WEB.
• And so it was - The 1^st Israeli GIS on the WEB was constructed in a very short time (less than one month) using Esri's software: the IMS (Internet Map Server) and Mapcafe.
• The configuration consists of 2 servers: a web server (NT server) and a map server (IMS) which is loaded with ArcView's data from the GIS server.

The 1^st Israeli GIS on the WEB, the Kfar-Saba site is exercising a major breakthrough in the philosophy of serving the public.Information needed to obtain building permit, a process that usually takes a week or 10 days to get from the city�s Engineering Division � is now offered by the city of Kfar-Saba to the public, on the internet, 24 hours a-day, free of charge.

And so, the vision is coming true � key government information � is being offered to the public via the internet.