Local governments have long known the benefits of using GIS applications. The strategy for many cities is not only to improve productivity but also to collect revenue more efficiently. An implemented GIS forms an important part of the infrastructure of government operations. However, without proactive strategies backed by a cooperative environment, the implementation of an Enterprise GIS will be costly for all involved.

The City of Fort Lauderdale welcomed this challenge by developing an "Educational Partnership" with the GIS Lab. The Department offers several master-level GIS courses where students work on "real-world" projects with public agencies. The GIS Lab is also an educational training center for Esri, which is able to provide technical training to many employees of the city of Fort Lauderdale.

Fort Lauderdale is situated on the southeast coast of Florida. The City shares boundaries with nine other municipalities, as well as unincorporated areas of the County. Encompassing 34 square miles within its corporate limits, the City's population is approximately 163,000. Fort Lauderdale is the seventh largest city in the State and largest municipality in Broward County. The City shares boundaries with nine other municipalities, as well as unincorporated areas of the County.

For many years, a citywide GIS was discussed by the City of Fort Lauderdale. There was a great need to automate, exchange, and integrate geographic data from multiple sources throughout the city. Between 1990 and 1993, the City assembled an ad-hoc committee comprised of city staff from the following departments: Public Services, Engineering and Information Systems Services. The purpose of the committee was to identify potential GIS applications that could be used by various departments. This GIS committee identified 30 potential applications. However, these GIS applications never got off the ground because there was no implementation framework in place.

In 1994, the discussion of a GIS turned into "action" when the City of Fort Lauderdale approached FAU�s GIS Lab. The City's need for an Enterprise-wide GIS created a new cooperative relationship between a local government and a public university. There were several factors that led to the formulation of this partnership:

• Limited Resources: Since 1991, there has been a 10 percent decrease in full-time staff. In 1993, many departments were consolidated: (a) Fire-Rescue, Code Enforcement was merged with Building; (b) Public Works and Engineering were merged into Public Services.

In the summer of 1995, The City and FAU developed an educational partnership. This challenging partnership entailed the following: (1) a citywide user needs assessment,

(2) development of a seamless GIS base map and (3) the development of a work order management program for Public Services. This was the first phase of the partnership.

During Phase One, the GIS Lab and four graduate students enrolled in the Department conducted a citywide Needs Assessment. The needs assessment utilized two surveys. The first survey was distributed to Department and Division heads. The second survey was provided to the technical staff and contained more detailed questions regarding data flow, work procedures, system design, and user needs.

The purpose of the needs assessment was to identify the framework required to implement an enterprise-wide GIS based upon user needs and functional requirements.

The GIS Lab developed the citywide GIS base map within a nine-month time frame. Using ArcInfo, utilizing ArcTools, and creating several AML Graphical User Interphases for Quality Control and Quality Assurance, the GIS Lab graduate interns completed the following tasks:

• Imported the CAD's DXF mapping layers into ArcInfo. The layers included: corporate boundaries, lots, blocks, subdivisions, right-of-way (ROW), water ways, street centerlines, easements, section boundaries, and annotation.

The first phase of the partnership served several purposes:

1. identified user needs citywide;

2.conceptualized the implementation framework required to build an enterprise GIS; and

3.created a seamless citywide GIS base map.

In April 1997, the City of Fort Lauderdale approved the continuation of the partnership between the City and FAU's GIS Lab. The purpose of the partnership was to assist the City in developing an enterprise GIS. As an educational partner, the FAU GIS Lab accepted the responsibility of assisting the City in the following areas:

1. Produce GIS Implementation Action Plans for each city department;
2. Develop and maintain the Citywide GIS base map; and
3. Provide ArcView™ ä and ArcInfoä training for city staff.

Implementation planning and management, developing the digital map library for the City, and training of staff were the primary elements to implement a functional citywide GIS.

The purpose of the Department�s GIS Implementation Action Plan was to narrow the conceptual applications identified in the Citywide GIS Needs Assessment Final Report (1995-1996) to a more focused strategy of implementing GIS applications in each division. Although there was a need to share information and databases among different departments, each department has its own specific functions, ranging from crime analysis to issuing permits to prove water services. To address the specific needs of each division within the City, a series of workshops were held for each department.

The next phase of the project was to assist each department with their GIS implementation efforts based upon a participatory framework developed by FAU. The participatory model for deploying the Citywide GIS consists of representation from each department that will use or support GIS activities. The participatory model is defined below:

• GIS Executive Review Committee (ERC): The ERC consists of management level individuals within each department. The ERC serves as the oversight committee of the entire Citywide GIS project. This committee is responsible for policy decisions, approval of plans and resource allocation, resolving special policies and/or change related issues, setting milestones, establishing interlocal agreements, and identifying funding sources.

• GIS Technical Review Committee (TRC): The TRC consists of technical staff from the following departments: Engineering, Information Systems Services, Planning and Economic Development, and Public Services. The TRC establishs the design strategies to implement the distributed, enterprise GIS for all the departments. It also provides recommendations regarding base map management, future database designs, data sharing exchange protocols, application development, and procurement for GIS related services.

• Citywide GIS Coordinator: The Citywide GIS Coordinator serves as the GIS liaison between the city departments, ERC and TRC, FAU, and other external agencies. The Coordinator is responsible for: (1) reporting to the ERC regarding the status of the Citywide GIS efforts, (2) chairing the GIS TRC, (3) evaluating potential data sharing capabilities, (4) developing procurement procedures for GIS services, (5) acquiring fiscal support, (6) educating city staff, (7) identifying potential applications, and (8) identifying internal and external funding sources.

• The Stakeholders - Departmental GIS Project Teams: Each department head assigned a GIS Project Team to work with the FAU GIS Lab to identify potential applications, to provide information about existing data flow, articulate short- and long-range projects, and to assist in identifying computer needs. It is the responsibility of the department/division head to carefully balance the GIS project with other responsibilities so that staff do not feel that the GIS project is their primary responsibility. The GIS implementation project must be incorporated in the staff's work assignments.

In order to narrow the conceptual implementation framework identified in the Citywide GIS Needs Assessment to a more well-defined set of implementation tasks, a series of workshops were arranged for each department.

This format allows all stakeholders to organize and agree on what they will be responsible for and how they will do it.

The FAU GIS Lab served as the facilitator throughout the process and was responisble for the coordination of approximately 30 GIS workshops for the departments scheduled up to September 1998, see Table 1.

The workshops promoted a collaborative approach that allowed participants to work with rather than against one another. The workshops represent the collective interests of each division in the department. The workshop format is described below:

• Workshop 1: Official GIS Implementation Kick-off :

The GIS applications identified by most departments cannot be placed in operation simultaneously. A small number of applications were chosen initially for each department. The GIS Implementation Action Plans were based on a "phased" approach in which applications were developed incrementally dependingon the intensity of need. This gave departments the opportunity to focus on the following implementation and management issues:

• Users needs: The identification of potential GIS applications that would enable users to achieve their goals and objectives

Since April 1997, several departments have moved forward in implementing their GIS activities. This section provides a summary of implementation activities for (1) Police, (2) Fire-Rescue, and (3) Public Services.

All three departments have developed a "self-directed" GIS Team to oversee the implementation of GIS activities within the Department. A "self-directed" team is a group of employees brought together to focus on a particular task, project or problem. This concept has been utilized by such organizations as the Palm Beach County GIS Implementation Team.¹ The Team was given clearly defined responsibilities and authority to plan, implement, control and resolve issues related to GIS projects. Several minds working together creates the potential of increasing productivity and efficiency, thus reducing operating costs.

Applying the phased approach toward application development, the GIS Department Action Plan recommendation for Phase One was to develop or utilize a user-friendly mapping program that would automate incident mapping, analyze trends, provide more sophisticated analysis capabilities, and generate maps and reports for internal and external consumption in a timely manner.

Based upon the user needs and recommendations set forth by the GIS Department Team, the Police Department acquired CrimeView™ as their official geographic analysis product tailored specifically to incident reporting and crime analysis.

CrimeView™ acts as a suite of integrated crime analysis tools designed for use in object-oriented ArcView™ GIS™ 3.0x environment operating under Microsoft Windows NT™. This software package facilitates the accomplishments of both simple and more complex crime analysis, including mapping, and reporting tasks under a common interface.

The primary reason for this recommendation was based upon the cost savings associated with automating the process of incident mapping. The following presents a cost-benefit assessment comparing the existing method of plotting incidents versus automating incident mapping.

Prior to GIS, the Crime Analysis Unit (CAU) manually plotted incident maps of major crime types. The task of manually plotting incidents was divided into three police districts. There were three CAU analysts who were each assigned a district. Due to the time requirements to manually plot incidents, the CAU only plots major types of crime by police district.

The time required to manually plot major offenses for three (3) districts per day was 9 hours. There are 240 working days per year (48 weeks), thus the total hours per year to manually plot major offenses for all districts was 2,160 hours. Table 2 depicts the annual costs associated with manually plotting major offenses.

Table 2. Annual Costs Associated with Manually Plotting

Major Offenses

Utilizing ArcView™ and CrimeView™, the average time required to plot the same number of incidents is described in Table3 .

Table3 . Automating the Plotting Process: Time Requirements

Table4 depicts the automation costs associated with manually plotting the same number of incidents for all three (3) districts per year.

Table4 Annual Costs Associated with Automated Plotting of Major Offense Incidents

Figure below compares the existing costs of manually plotting versus automating this process. Based upon the cost comparisons, the direct benefits derived is an annual cost savings of approximately $28,800 dollars per year.

Other benefits derived through the use of CrimeView™ and ArcView™ include:

1. Enhancement of incident mapping: incident mapping by location, known felon, near an address, district, sector, zone and crime reporting area
2. Automation of reports
3. Repeat Calls
4. Crime Density

The Fort Lauderdale Crime Analysis Unit has seen substantial benefits from implementing a GIS. Whereas a few months ago, the department could only manually track business and residential robberies, vehicle theft, and burglaries, they can now plot any crime for any time frame within a short period of time. Crime analysis using a GIS is much more extensive and feasible now than the tedious limited manual process.

One of the most useful applications has been the ability to visually display problem areas to show crime trends and concentrations by locale, shift, and type. This in turn has assisted in patrol planning and resource allocation. Another application involves locating auto theft on a map based upon auto recoveries. This has allowed the department to target patterns of organized crime. As a long term application, the department can locate and track sexual predators by name and residence to ensure their whereabouts when a sexual offense occurs, aiding the police in their investigation.

Implementing a GIS within the department has also allowed data sharing capabilities between the city departments and other external agencies. By plotting traffic accidents, the Crime Analysis Unit has identified areas of concern that the Transportation Division can address. A Buffer Application developed for the Planning and Economic Development Department is also being used in the Police Department to locate incidents within 300 feet of convenience stores and assess whether or not convenience stores or grocery stores generate more criminal activity.

A Buffer Application developed for the Planning and Economic Development Department is also being used in the Police Department to locate incidents within 300 feet of convenience stores and assess whether or not convenience stores or grocery stores generate more criminal activity.

Another application involved the analysis of an unsolved homicide occurring in Palm Beach County. A prostitute, murdered in Palm Beach County, had been apprehended several times in Fort Lauderdale. Palm Beach County officials approached the Fort Lauderdale Crime Analysis Unit for assistance in learning more about the woman to target possible suspects. Cataloged sex offences and vehicular theft near her previous known locations were geographically sited and analyzed. This has allowed analysts to better understand the circumstances surrounding the woman�s disappearance and murder. The Police Department is also making progress toward sharing data with Broward Sheriffs Office in an effort to locate problems and crime in proximity between the city's jurisdiction and the county's jurisdiction. ArcView™ is the common denominator while data standardization is the key to successful integration.

This department is comprised of both Fire-Rescue and Building Inspections. The mission of this department is to reduce the risk to life, property, and the environment that the community faces through emergency response, inspections, and construction services. Working together, the Fire-Rescue and Building GIS Team are developing incident mapping applications. Using ENCOMPASS, the citywide land record database containing property-related information and Fire-Rescue's Inspection Database, the two divisions are using GIS to plot the following incidents:

Building upon this application, the Fire Inspection is working with ArcView™ to analyze and display all repeat violators who had faced criminal prosecution as a result of their excessive code violations.

Public Services is the largest of all the departments. It is comprised of 56 divisions including: Customer Services, Water and Wastewater, Environmental resources, Engineering Distribution and Collection, Treatment, Maintenance, and Solid Waste.

According to the Public Service GIS Department Team, the single most critical need is to convert Water and Wastewater Infrastructure into digital format designed not just to view digitized maps, but to help manage and follow the day-to-day operations of the city's water, sewer, and customer service needs.

The recommendation of the GIS Department Team is to develop an Enterprise Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Management system that interfaces HANSEN (their future IMS) with GIS. This IMS/GIS must be user-friendly, allowing Public Services staff to access, to query, to display, and to update critical information on a timely basis.

Public Services Department is currently moving in that direction by creating the framework for a comprehensive utility information management. Public Services Department is reengineering their information management system by phasing out their existing work order program with HANSEN IMS.

In August 1997, Public Services Department personnel went through an extensive HANSEN training program. The installation and use of HANSEN will begin in phases. First, Customer Services will utilize HANSEN IMS for processing work orders and tracking customer complaints. HANSEN 's Work Order capabilities offer a unique array of data entry, costing, scheduling, tracking, condition assessment, analysis, and work completion features. Second, HANSEN 's Customer Service capabilities are designed specifically to manage incoming calls from customers and citizens having utility service problems. Some typical service problems and requests are low water pressure, no power, sewer backups, sewer overflows, abandoned vehicles, no water, missed garbage pickups, high utility bills, and general information requests.

Eventually HANSEN will be incorporated by all the divisions in Public Services. Public Services administrators foresee using HANSEN for implementing performance-based criteria in the area of customer satisfaction, service response time, job costing, crew productivity, and resource management.

The long-term objective is to interface HANSEN 's IMS with GIS. In contrast to many GIS projects that simply wish to automate maps, Public Services is looking to interface HANSEN 's IMS with GIS to perform a number of specific work management applications: (1) work order management, (2) customer service, (3) job costing, (4) field inspection, and 5) map production.

As GIS implementation efforts evolve, so too does the need to share data among different departments. Part of the implementation of the citywide GIS has been the development of the digital map library. Using ArcInfo's LIBRARIAN™, the FAU GIS Lab has been creating a map library partition by section and stratified by theme. The FAU GIS Lab graduate research assistants and the citywide GIS Coordinator are conducting the Quality Control and Quality Assurance. Once the section tiles are verified, they are indexed and stored on the City's Window NT Server where various departments have network access to the spatial information. Additionally, the spatial data has been linked to ENCOMPASS utilizing ODBC compliant drivers.

Additionally, FAU has developed the citywide parcel map and a series of special overlay zones for Planning and Economic Development, Fire-Rescue and Building, and Public Services.

The Annotations directory includes two (2) ArcInfo coverages to be used with ArcView™ for placing text in maps. Shape files cannot manipulate annotation files; therefore, these layers are being maintained as ArcInfo coverages. CITYANNO and BCANNO have a predefined text size; therefore, the user cannot change the size of the text from ArcView™ .

ArcExplorer is free shareware from Esri to view GIS data, including ArcInfo coverages, ArcView™ shape files, and images. In addition, it allows the user to view GIS data on a network and on the Internet (if the user�s PC is "Internet enabled"). This product is limited in its query capabilities and its ability to produce outputs plots.

Table 5 is a list of GIS layers that Florida Power and Light (FP&L) provided for the City of Fort Lauderdale. All of these layers are in State Plane, NAD83. These layers are protected by copyright laws. City employees are allowed to use this data for any City related work. Vendors and Outside Consultants are not allowed access to this data without prior approval from FP&L and the City-wide GIS Coordinator. Providing this data in digital form to anyone who is not a City of Fort Lauderdale employee would severely violate the City of Fort Lauderdale�s license agreement with FP& L.

Paper map products that in anyway display this data can be provided freely to public but they must contain reference to the following disclaimer in a clear and unobstructed area of the map:

Table 6 is a list of GIS layers that have been compiled from various sources. All of these layers are located in NAD83. All of the Shape files contained in this directory are public domain and can be used and distributed freely to the public.

Table 6

This directory contains tables that can be linked with GIS Shape Files to enhance query tools. Tables included are:

Table 7

There is a Subdirectory Called Census which is links up with the CENSUSBG, CENSUSTR, and TAZ GIS layers. Contains Census information. At the present time, it only contains the Census DATA from Broward County�s Planning department and is located in a directory called BCPLANNING. This Directory is further Broken up into 3 subdirectories, BLOCKGROUP, TRACT, and TAZ.

The files contained in this directory provide ArcView™ uses with an alternative way to annotate their Views without having to use ArcInfo annotations. They include:

Table 8

Currently, the City of Fort Lauderdale has archives of digital aerial photography in selected areas. Figure# shows the extent of aerial coverage.

Figure 2

This aerial photography is grayscale photography provided by the Broward County Planning Department and the State of Florida Department of Transportation. It should be noted that it is scanned from a second generation aerial photograph and while it is registered to the NAD83 State plane Coordinate System, it is not Ortho-photography and contains some edge-matching errors.

The GIS CIP fund was approved by the City Commission as a five-year project to develop a Citywide GIS infrastructure and promote GIS development within the City of Fort Lauderdale. The project includes $3,000,000 for GIS development during these 5-years, appropriating $1,200,000 at phases I and II, and $600,000 at phase III. Table 8 provides the original budget schedule.

This Document will explain all of these items, provide a status of where we stand, and will provide the standards and procedures on how the City will spend this fund.

This item covers the salary and benefit package for the position of Citywide GIS Coordinator. This position was approved by the City Commission on 4/6/97, and was filled on 07/28/97. The Citywide GIS Coordinator oversees all GIS activities in the City, works with all GIS users in technical and managerial matters, and coordinates GIS tasks between the City and FAU.

The City of Fort Lauderdale has contracted with FAU to develop an action plan for each department in the City. This action plan details the GIS needs of each department and provides direction on how to proceed with GIS implementation for the department.

The City of Fort Lauderdale has contracted with Florida Atlantic University to have FAU develop and maintain a citywide library of GIS layers. The total cost of this project for the first phase is $200,000 being paid in quarterly installments. This project includes several large task including:

• Updating the FPL layers and providing continual maintenance of this layer. This layer was originally created by FPL in 1995 and has not been updated since.
• Developing general layers needed by all departments in the City. These include Commission Districts, Police (Districts, Zones, and Reporting Areas), Fire Districts, etc.
• Aligning old layers so that all layers in the City�s map library overlay properly.

In order to develop an accurate layer of facilities such as water lines, fire hydrants, sewer lines, etc., it was necessary to contract a reputable firm that has experience using Global Positioning System (GPS) technology to inventory such facilities for the implementation of a Facilities Management (FM) GIS.

There was a need to develop applications that will not be specific to any particular department, yet will benefit all departments. These applications consist mostly of data queries and address tasks such as:

• Providing application tools for all departments to query the parcel base map in order to retrieve property owner information.
• Providing an application to match an address list and provide some key information about each address.
• Providing solutions for having GIS data on the City�s Internet Page.

This item covers all hardware costs associated with the implementation of a citywide GIS. These include servers, network components, and peripherals. This item does not cover hardware needs that are specific to a particular department.

This items covers all software costs associated with the implementation of a citywide GIS. These include a full ArcInfo and ARCVIEW™ license for the Citywide GIS Coordinator. Future GIS software needs will possibly include internet Mapping Software such a Map Objects and Spatial Database Engine.

The City of Fort Lauderdale contracted Florida Atlantic University to provide basic GIS training to City staff. The total cost of this contract was $30,000 for Phase I, paid in quarterly installments from the CIP fund. More specialized training was necessary for some users.

According to Table , a total of $150,000 was originally reserved for the acquisition of FP&L Parcel Base Layer for the City of Fort Lauderdale. Information Systems was able to negotiate free delivery of this data. In addition, a late start in FY96-97 limited the amount of money that was spent on the other items. The late start freed up a substantial amount of money that was used by the departments for departmental GIS expenditures. Table shows a revision of the items where a substantial amount of money was assigned to help departments develop GIS applications. This money was used as seed money for each department to spend on GIS-specific tasks. According to Table , $342,000 was available for application development for department specific applications. In order to avoid the misuse of these fund and to encourage buy-in from all departments, some rules needed to be established for the use of the fund.

As departments complete their GIS Action Plans and have acquired the Esri products for installation on their systems, FAU and Esri have continued to provide training. FAU has been providing ArcView™ training at the GIS Lab. The GIS Lab is also an official Esri Training Center, city staff has the opportunity to take Esri courses offered at the FAU campus.

The GIS Action Plans serve as the guiding force in terms of implementing a GIS within the department's divisions. The GIS applications identified by the GIS Department Team cannot be placed in operation simultaneously. The timing for developing applications are based on the need of the users, system design requirements, and financial feasibility.

All implementation activities are carefully reviewed by the GIS Department Team, GIS Executive Review Committee, and the Citywide GIS Coordinator. The GIS Department Team (the Team)is a "self-directed" team who identify user needs, assess implementation requirements, and seek funding through the department. The GIS Executive Review Committee serves as the oversight committee of all implementation activities occurring citywide. They must give the Team the authority necessary to make decisions. The City GIS Coordinator's responsibility will be to assist, to monitor, and to evaluate the Team's performance.

No matter how carefully the implementation planning has been completed,even with a solid commitment towards implementation, some changes will always be required. It is important to understand that the Action Plans are a living thing. Once implementation begins, end users and technical staff will identify new opportunities and modifications to applications in progress or already implemented. Thus, Action Plans must be flexible for any reengineering of applications or system design that may occur.

Scott Burton

Director / Adjunct Faculty

GIS Lab

Department of Urban and Regional Planning

College of Architecture, Urban and Public Affairs

Florida Atlantic University

220 SE 2^nd Ave, Room 728

Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301

Email: s_burton@fau.edu

Telephone: 954-762-5646