New technology expands GIS access

Government agencies have spent years capturing massive amounts of geospatial data for such diverse uses as site selection, mapping, traffic analysis, forestry management and search-and-rescue operations. However, most of this data is in a variety of information systems that are not integrated, making it difficult to access.

But a recently announced agreement between two California companies has made it practical to incorporate desktop spatial visualization and analysis capabilities within mainstream government business applications and enterprise client-server architectures. The agreement, between Oracle, a Redwood Shores-based supplier of information management software, and ESRI, a Redlands-based GIS software supplier, will allow government agencies to cost-effectively access geospatial information.

With the the combined technologies:

* Traditional GIS users may access full-function spatial data management capabilities based on industry standards with an open interface to their data. The capacity for database sizes and the number of dimensions supported in GIS applications is virtually unlimited;

* Government agencies that have not used spatial data now have full access using familiar database technology;

* Organizations using GIS and Management Information System (MIS) technology can merge their data stores, enabling applications throughout the organization to use data from both departments. This will help meet the increasingly demanding analysis and reporting needs of an expanding geospatial data user community.

Bringing spatial information management into the open systems world also gives end users the benefit of distributed access, portable performance, data integrity, multi-user access, backup and recovery, security access control and generic query language. In other words, open systems technology enables anyone to access data from anywhere, using any type computer.

With this technology, scientists, environmentalists, city planners and citizens now have access to geospatial information on a national scale.

Any business, government agency or non-profit organization using location as a critical factor in the decision-making process and daily operations will benefit by spatially enabling their applications.

The technology also provide the means for system developers and integrators to build open, high-performance applications for spatial data management and analysis.

Examples of governmental applications benefiting from this integration include location planning, land management, operations support, forestry management, seismic mapping, traffic analysis and modeling, command and control, acquisition and logistics and emergency dispatch.

Additionally, thanks to this new technology, GIS may now become an integral part of every city and county Information Technology (IT) structure. This will allow multiple agencies to share spatial databases which will minimize the costs of developing separate databases and foster a generation of repeatable solutions.

Everyone from city planners to public works employees to 911 emergency dispatch operators will have on-demand access to geographic data to help them make faster and better decisions.

But applications are not limited to local government. “The synchronization of tabular and GIS data is critical to the Forest Service,” says Steve Werner, Information Resources Manager, GIS Center of Excellence, U.S. Forest Service, Washington, D.C. He says the service has already standardized on the core database and GIS technologies with excellent results. “It means better, faster access to important data about our nation’s forests.”