Implementing the New York city GIS utility
Roles
The roles of the GIS Utility include the following:
- Maintain the central GIS data repository.
- Provide the tools and applications for the departments and the users to access, query, and
download data for the central GIS data repository.
- Provide technical support and training to the users for data access and sharing.
- Maintain network and data security to protect the information assets in the central data
repository.
- Maintain metadata for the data owned, managed, and maintained by the Utility.
- Define the data standards for the shared GIS data.
- Assist in organizing and supporting the development of applications that use GIS data.
- Provide technical support and advice to the New York City GIS community, especially
City agencies.
Primary Activities
Introduction
The activities of the GIS Utility can be divided into four broad categories that include the
following:
- Data handling
- Application development
- GIS needs assessment and planning
- Technology and standards assessment
Each of these described below.
Data Handling
The primary focus of the GIS Utility has always been data. This has traditionally involved the
following activities:
- Extracting, transforming and loading of existing City data
- Implementing international standards where they add value and are relevant
- Creating new datasets
- Performing quality control or quality assurance of other’s data
- Maintaining data
- Compiling and maintaining geospatial metadata
- Distributing data to licensees
The GIS Utility works with a wide variety of both spatial and tabular data. The systems
infrastructure put in-place to support this has several key technologies includes Safe Software’s
Feature Manipulation Engine (FME) and Oracle Spatial. These foundation technologies have
served the Utility well all of the major GIS software vendors have enhanced their primary
software offerings to incorporate direct access.
Application Development
The most visible face of the GIS Utility is often the myriad web applications that have been
created for DoITT and other City departments. The first application created was Everyone Map,
which went live on the City’s intranet in December 2000. This site is still the flagship GIS
website for the GIS Utility and provides integrated general user access to a wide variety of
mapping and tabular data for the City’s 250,000 staff. A screenshot of the application is
included as Figure 1 on the top of the next page.
Figure 1. – Everyone Map Screenshot
The second major GIS website completed was the Emergency Online Locator System (EMOLS)
which former Mayor Guiliani personally unveiled to the public in August 2001. This website
was completed to support the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM), which needed
to communicate geographic information to the public during emergencies such as hurricane or
winter storm evacuations. Five different versions of the EMOLS application have been created
since to support different types of emergency information communications. EMOLS has
received national awards from Public Technology, Inc. and the Urban Regional Information
Systems Association.
Other GIS websites created have included the following:
- Poll-site Locator application for the Board of Elections [internet]
- GIS Utility Home Page [intranet]
- Capital Project Browser application for the Department of Design and
Construction [intranet, but being migrated to the internet]
- Asbestos Mapping application for the Lower Manhattan Air Quality Task Force
[intranet]
- GIS web interface for the Mayor’s Management Report coordinated by the
Mayor’s Office of Operations [internet]
- GIS web interface to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s
HPDInfo system [intranet]
- Property Info application for the Economic Development Corporation [intranet]
- Mass Transit Strike Information application for the Department of Emergency
Management [internet]
The GIS Utility published its first web service to support a version of EMOLS in the summer of
2002 and the GIS Utility is aggressively moving to implement a wider suite of web and web
mapping services.
Non-web applications development has also occurred. One of the more notable is the geographic
enabling of the City’s recently released 311 (non-emergency customer information) system. The
GIS Utility enabled remote access to the Department of City Planning’s Geosupport system,
which has a VSAM architecture running on a mainframe. The City’s requirements included a
sub-second response time for all queries and 99.999% uptime, which were both met with custom
technological solutions.
The GIS Utility has also been able to create and publish two product suites that have utility
across applications and systems and provide assistance with a third. These include the following:
PCGeo – The component collection and systems architecture enables remote SNA
or IP-based access to Geosupport. Coders can call either the C-based DLLs or the
Java-based JARs in their applications. Both transactional and batch processing are
supported. It is expected that this architecture will soon be extended to provide
remote access to other City mainframe-based assets including the City’s primary
permitting system and potentially the City’s real estate / assessment database.
PCGBAT – This product supports remote batch Geosupport processing on a
Windows client. The end user sets up a simple control file that defines the
processing parameters. Performance and processing speed is comparable to
traditional Assembler or JCL-based processing via a SNA client.
Geosupport for Windows – The Department of City Planning has re-compiled
mainframe code in a Windows environment and their Geosupport for Windows
product supports the porting of the Geosupport functionality and data to any
Windows-based computer. The GIS Utility has helped with testing and the
development of a component to support multi-threaded request handling.
All of these product lines are in active maintenance and are available free to other City agencies.
