Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Sep. 21-22, 2006v FME Worldwide User Conference - Vancouver
FME at the City of Nanaimo: A Home Run
Jason Birch & Tim Taylor, City of Nanaimo, BC
City of Nanaimo 2
Nanaimo
Small community of approximately 80,000 residents
Located on the east coast of Vancouver Island, approximately 50 km west of Vancouver
Strong recreational opportunities and a reasonable cost of living
City of Nanaimo 3
GIS at the City of Nanaimo
GIS functions are spread across several departments
No central authority for Geospatial information, standards, or enterprise-wide initiatives
Cooperation is achieved through consensus, but often business requirements lead to divergent solutions
City of Nanaimo 4
IT’s GIS Role
Maintains and tracks assets of all departments’ GIS software.
Develops internal and external web mapping applications.
Responsible for scheduled translations between all supported GIS formats.
City of Nanaimo 5
Engineering’s GIS Role
Corporate data management of the city’s infrastructure. Data models Data acquisition and maintenance Infrastructure analysis Cartographic output
Technical and process support for all departments without GIS capabilities.
Remotely sensed data collection and management.
City of Nanaimo 6
Planning Department uses MapInfo for traditional analysis and mapping, and ArcGIS/ArcScene for 3D analysis.
Public Works Department uses MapInfo for job planning, asset location, and video data management.
Fire Department uses MapInfo to maintain simplified map books located on fire apparatus.
Parks and Recreation uses MapInfo to generate public-facing cartographic products.
Other GIS roles at the City of Nanaimo
City of Nanaimo 7
Life before FME
All corporate data was held in file-based formats such as Autodesk DWG and MapInfo TAB
There were some high-maintenance translation procedures in place, but only for a few critical data sets
Staff was spending considerable time coordinating data between departments
Base data easily became stale, increasing the risk of poor decisions, and difficulty in integrating data sets led to many undiscoverable data sources throughout the organisation
Understanding of and support for shared corporate database technology was limited
City of Nanaimo 8
Goals
The City identified three needs: Current departmental tools and processes had
to be supported to maintain operational efficiency
Data currency and efficiency of distribution needed to be addressed
Migration of existing processes into “best practices” enterprise geospatial systems had to be supported in a non-disruptive manner
City of Nanaimo 9
Approaches
Two components were identified as being required to address the organisation’s goals: Scheduled translations: ensure that existing
operations are not disrupted and, for legacy data formats, that organisation-wide data currency is improved
Enterprise spatial database(s): allow for more efficient and accessible data stores
FME was a critical component for the implementation of both of these strategies.
City of Nanaimo 10
Scheduled Translations
Costs Initial software acquisition and maintenance Process development and maintenance Continued reliance on file system for integrity and
security Benefits
Data update cycle lowered to one day (or as changed) Existing users and applications not disrupted Easier to achieve buy-in for a low-cost solution with clear
potential to reduce ongoing costs Allows quick switch from using legacy data store as
source format to using an enterprise database, enabling a phased database access strategy
City of Nanaimo 11
Enterprise Spatial Database
Costs Initial purchase and maintenance fees for new software
and hardware Internal training or consulting for implementation and
maintenance Migration of existing applications End user training to access and update the new data
source Benefits
One source for data update and retrieval Immediate change visibility Data integrity Granular permissions
City of Nanaimo 12
Example Scheduled Translation Project
Existing process: Three person-days per month in cleaning, building, and
translating the data out into MapInfo Impossible to ensure consistency between translations Unreliable custom scripts used to refactor the layers for
MapGuide, extracting items like centroids into external tables
Resources Required: Safe Software FME Professional Edition Enough knowledge of FME to replicate existing manual
and automated procedures Scheduling system to automate the process
City of Nanaimo 13
Scheduled Translation Results
Seamless replacement of manual procedures with automated ones
Currency of data greatly improved
Positive return in approximately six months. Cost less than $5000 for a staff savings of $10,000 for the initial project alone, with additional processes having minimal incremental cost
City of Nanaimo 14
Example Enterprise Database Project
FME was initially used to assist in the population of a corporate Oracle based spatial asset management system from the city’s existing cad structure and related datasets
The migration to this corporate database was achieved through the use of staged translations of data, avoiding disruption of existing processes
As the enterprise wide dataset continues to evolve, FME is used to ease the transition from departmental silos of information into a shared environment
City of Nanaimo 15
Update Process Example“Fire Flow Testing”
Date Field Test PZ Orifice Static Residual
Pressure Drop (psi)
Pressure Drop (%) Hi Low Difference Usgpm l/s
Available US gpm
13-Mar-06 5 (437') 2" 89 71 18 20% 67 55 12 528 33 10912x2" 89 70 19 21% 57 30 27 792 50 1589
* Dead end main + 200mm dia. Not enough psi drop @ residual hydrant between 1x2" and 2x2" test. First test w ith only 2" port open seems to be OK
13-Mar-06 6 (396') 2" 82 65 17 21% 79 66 13 549 35 11042x2" 82 50 32 39% 56 29 27 792 50 1132
13-Mar-06 4 (574') 2" 84 80 4 5% 81 65 16 609 38 27222x2" 84 75 9 11% 69 32 37 927 58 2674
Enabling the integration of information in a corporate sense – throughscheduled translations
Enabling the integration of information in a corporate sense – throughscheduled translations
City of Nanaimo 16
Enterprise Update Integration
City of Nanaimo 17
Opportunistic Use
Although none if these effects were expected when implementing FME, we have enjoyed them nonetheless: Easy publishing of data to Google Earth Substantial efficiencies in ad-hoc projects such as
reconciliation of data with neighbouring communities Scheduled translations of data into formats suitable for
public consumption Innovative solutions, such as generating a Dispatch Run
Card book from a street centerline dataset
City of Nanaimo 18
Efficiencies Gained
Preserves and enhances the traditional data delivery and access mechanisms, maintaining operational efficiencies.
Provides a platform which allows the organization to gradually move towards an integrated spatial management environment
Reduces the number of specialized software packages required to perform detailed spatial analysis and create traditionally accepted reports
City of Nanaimo 19
Experience
FME was easy to learn, quick to implement, and provided transformative capabilities far beyond translation
FME allowed us to easily work around weaknesses in current enterprise databases schemes, such as multi-platform editing and text/symbol representation
This process encouraged better inter-departmental communications, improving project collaborations and increasing organisational efficiency
City of Nanaimo 20
Questions?
Tim Taylor and Jason BirchCity of Nanaimo
[email protected]@nanaimo.ca
