Integrating document management with GIS
Sylvia Kendra GIS Coordinator City of Richardson, Texas Introduction The City of Richardson is located within the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. It has a population of 89,000 residents and has an area of 27.4 square miles. The City has approximately 800 employees. All city managed buildings, such as city hall, service center, fire departments, and police department communicate with either fiber optics or wireless networks. The city web site is www.cor.net. The City’s Geographic Information Services (GIS) group is a division within the Public Services department. The GIS staff supports all GIS endeavors within the City of Richardson. Previous projects include full GIS database development, Intranet GIS Map services, Crime Analysis, and 911 GIS support. The GIS division uses the ESRI suite of GIS products: ArcSDE 8.1, ArcGIS, ArcView, ArcIMS, and ArcExplorer. The database used is Microsoft SQL Server. The Document Management project was conceived, funded, and developed during the 2000-01 fiscal year. It is a joint project between the City of Richardson Public Services, Development Services, and Information Services Departments. Each department played a significant role in selecting vendors, hardware, and software. We currently have completed the database design, and have initiated full production of document scanning. We expect to continue scanning until all documents have converted. Projected final scanning date is October 2002. Reasons for Project The City of Richardson initiated this project primarily because the equipment that was being used to view aperture cards had become obsolete. Aperture card viewers with printing capabilities are no longer manufactured. They have been replaced by scanning /viewing technology. Rather than continuing with the aperture card storage system, we opted for digital imagery. We also wanted to bring order to current filing system. In this case, files were kept either as aperture cards or as large-scale hard copies. In many cases, it was difficult to determine the location of files and documents… many one of a kind. We felt that the new database/imagery technology would resolve these issues. We wanted to centralize storage of documents. Copies of documents are stored in many departments as hardcopies for various reasons. When a notation is made on one of these copies, the comment is not reflected on all the copies. We wanted to keep one single digital image, which would hold all comments from all departments. We wanted to provide access to departments that are not located in City Hall through the network. Currently, if a staff member of a remote department needs to view a construction design document, that person need to drive to City Hall to do so. Once this project is implemented, that same document can be viewed through the City’s intranet web site. Last, we wanted to further develop a comprehensive procedure for disaster recovery of documents. Currently there are procedures in place, but they would be difficult to implement if truly needed. Boxes of aperture card would need to be brought back from storage, and there is no guarantee that a complete inventory is on file. By keeping all documents as digital files, and standardizing the way in which we store the images, we can keep a copy of all documents on back up tapes off site. Recovery would be a simple matter of reloading these tapes on a new server. Project Goals City of Richardson staff and the Consultants selected for this project created the following list of goals.
Development Services Department:
Although the current funding only included resources for the Development Services Department, since it was this department that had the aging technology, many other departments were interested in participating in later years. To take advantage of the available consultant resources, we decided to design the database for all departments. Even though they did not have the resources during they current fiscal year to begin scanning. Using this economy of scale saved the ciy in the long run from further consultant fees to further develop the database. The plan included:
The City of Richardson has used ESRI products for many years and is a seasoned GIS User. Having this experience greatly simplified the task of relating documents to GIS.
How are spatial links created? In very simple terms, a relationship is established between a field in the attribute table of the GIS layer and a field in the properties table of the document. Relationships are not “hard coded” they exist only while the query is active. For example, a GIS points layer called “Zoning Ordinances” exists in City of Richardson GIS database. Each point has an attribute called “Ordinance Number”. This ordinance number relates to an Ordinance document. When the ordinance number of the GIS layer and the ordinance number of the document “match”, then a spatial link is created. The City of Richardson purchased software to facilitate these relationships. Two software in particular where chosen because of their compatabiltiy with the exisitng GIS database. One is the database used to store the documents (Filenet), the other is an extension for ArcGIS, ArcIMS and ArcView that facilitates the link between documents and GIS layers. Conclusion At the time of this writing, the project is fully underway. Staff members have been trained in using the Filenet and ArcGIS products. All 8.5 X 11 ordinance sheets have been scanned and loaded into the database. Approximately 2,000 of the 15,000 24 X 36 as-builts and plats have been scanned. No problems have been detected. Future scanning efforts for other departments are dependent on city funding priorities. | ||
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