Applying Enterprise GIS for Urban Management Authorities :A Case Study on Ar-Riyadh Development Authority

Salah AlaSheikh
Manager of Information Management Unit
Ar-riyadh Development Authority
SSheikh@arriyadh.net

Mohamed Misbah ,Ph.D
GIS Consultant
Quality Standards Information Technology
8 Gazaer St. - New Maadi - 11435 , Cairo, Egypt
Mobile:+2 0106600150
mohamed.misbah@qs4it.com

1. Introduction
This paper illustrates the concept of applying GIS Enterprise in Urban Management Authorities, illustrating case study on Ar-Riyadh Development Authority (ADA) in KSA. The paper demonstrates the GIS Enterprise project mission, objectives, and scope of work. It presents also the project management and software development methodology that represents an innovative down to earth methodology to apply Enterprise GIS in the urban authorities considering the departments' different business requirements, creating a well structured environment for data sharing, efficient information retrieval, and sophisticated analysis via building a Unified Geodatabase with customized specific applications designed according to departments' specific needs maintaining Joint Application Development with the users, to whom an extensive knowledge transfer takes place.

Finally the paper presents how this generic state of the art methodology could be applied in urban authorities maximizing benefits of GIS across the organization, the way that achieves system usability and sustainability

Ar-Riyadh Development Authority (ADA) is one of the greatest urban authorities in the Middle East which started using GIS early in 1986. ADA is publishing GIS awareness through all the government agencies and utilities companies that work in the City of Riyadh. By the mid of the year 2005 ADA initiated the implementation of GSADD Project " Geostatistical Simulation Analysis & Database Development " that is an Enterprise GIS System that aims at solving ADA current problems, which are mainly represented in the existence of enormous amount of data stored in separate islands with different non integrated formats, in addition to the absence of geographic & statistical full analysis utilization, the way that leads to data redundancy, effort duplication, information retrieval complexity, and sophisticated integration between the organization .

2. Project Mission
GSADD project main mission is to develop a unique down to earth GIS based Enterprise Solution for ADA including advanced spatially enabled database management, highly controlled process automation, and innovative geo-statistical analysis, in order to achieve a significant advancement in GIS utilization, the way that supports ADA in sustaining its leadership responsibility in the development of the city, and the whole region, leading ADA to be a pioneer GIS reference worldwide.

3. Project Objectives
GSADD main goal is realistically solving ADA current problems, which are mainly represented in the existence of enormous amount of data stored in separate islands with different non integrated formats, in addition to the absence of geographic & statistical full analysis utilization, the way that leads to data redundancy, effort duplication, information retrieval complexity, and sophisticated integration. The main objectives of GSADD could be briefed as follows:

Developing an integrated usable Enterprise Geostatistical System that fulfills ADA current business needs, with a scalability to solve ADA future requirements.
Creating a unified mechanism for spatial data sharing & management, achieving high transparency and efficient information accessibility.
Defining responsibilities and authorities for spatial data management via Service Level Agreements, including editing authentications and layers ownership.
Achieving powerful link between geographical and statistical tools the way that maximizes data analysis and information retrieval.
Performing an efficient knowledge transfer to ADA staff in order to take over the system operation and management effectively.
Building a solid system that represents a solid foundation for an integrated Geostatistical information system serving Ar-Riyadh City

4. Project Participants
GSADD Project includes different participants representing various disciplines as follows

Research & Studies Department

Studies & Housing Research Unit
Strategic Studies Unit
Information Management Unit

Strategic Urban Planning Department

Environmental & Utilities Unit
Urban planning Unit
Transportation Unit

Urban Information Services Department

5. Implementation Approach
The project implementation approach is based on main key points which could be briefed in defined down to earth scope of work, Joint Application Development approach, state of the art software development methodology, formal project management methodology, and faithful extensive knowledge transfer to ADA staff

5-1 Defined down to earth scope of work
Based on the ADA mission, current resources and legacy system and their set of objectives, the project scope is as follows

Geodatabase Design for departmental schemas.
Data Modeling for Central Geodatabase schema.
Defining layers ownership and authentications through Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
Defining the required resources including SW, HW, network specifications and human resources, for system production
Implementing different customized applications according to units' specific requirements, in order to support process automation for data manipulation and geo-statistical processes.
Metadata Management via building metadata for the implemented Geodatabase schemas, plus application development for Metadata exploring and management.
Developing customized routines for automating data conversion processes.
Defining rules for data acquisition, organizing workflow for data conversion procedures, from different formats into Geodatabase format according to the designed schemas.
Maximizing usage of GIS & Statistical analysis in the participant departments via defining the required tools, and building awareness for their usage in the units specific business.
Holding on job training on the system for ADA chosen staff members.

5-2 Joint Application Development (JAD) Approach
One of the project key points is the joint interaction between both the technical team and ADA staff members, using Joint application Development (JAD) approach, through out collecting user requirements, and recognizing problems that are currently faced with the existing systems. The main aim is helping users to recognize how the developed system could enhance the daily activities in ADA participant units.

Achieving real cross interaction between project team members and ADA staff ones, is via forming Champs Group, whom will be recommended by ADA Units Managers, to work closely and jointly with project team members during the project whole life cycle in order to achieve deep involvement and applying real knowledge transfer during the whole project phases. Additionally cross interaction will be achieved via frequent meetings and workshops that will be held during the project life cycle.

Joint Application Development Concept

5-3 State of the art software development methodology
Concerning the modeling strategy followed, Unified Modeling Language was adopted to design the proposed system. Requirements gathered in the analysis phase in terms of UML defined Use cases and Activity diagrams. Following this modeling strategy, using UML, communication of important decisions that are not obvious and can not be inferred from the code itself are facilitated among the project team; this is the result of using a unified language (using standard notations and rich semantics ) that is communicated among all team members and champs group across all phases.

Following as well the iterative incremental methodology, provides a controlled iterations by identifying key elements and starting work on them via groups of related use cases forming the incremental units, on which subsequent iterations (development cycles), take place.

Ongoing requirements verification that takes place throughout an iterative incremental software development life cycle for developing successful systems, sharing the customer experience and getting a regular feedback together with the early risk management. The chosen Iterative Incremental Framework combines the simplicity and ease of management of waterfall and the power of risk management attributed to incremental spiral systems.

A key element to this process is that requirements are gathered by the team in the project, in the form of use cases, and then prioritized into phases for development. The project team runs several iterations to ensure customer functional requirements are met, while maintaining a focus on the business case and user needs.

The framework is divided into four major phases – Inception, Elaboration, Construction, and Transition – performed in sequence. Incremental development means to aim for running code at the end of as much iterations as possible

The Interactive Development Concept

The methodology advantages cab be briefed in the following

Receiving early and regular feedbacks from the customer and spot potential problems before going too far with development
Attacking risks particularly risky iterations with higher challenge being tackled first
The early discovery of work complexity
Easy incorporation of changes in technology
A regular release of software through out the software development life cycle.
Precise assessment of the project status

5-4 Formal project management methodology
There's a formal project management that fulfills high monitoring and control on the project. It's based on the following point

Schedule/project plan is available for all the team.
Deliverables dates are clearly set for each phase.
Task assignment is identified for each team member (for each phase).
Weekly Meetings between project team members and champs group.
Reports, including monthly progress reports will be available to Project Board to monitor the project performance.
Workshops, internal workshops will be held on the departmental level, while general workshops on the enterprise level will be hold upon each deliverable.
Project deliverables are reviewed by the project board, and project managers.
Customer satisfaction survey will be held during the project whole life cycle, for project performance evaluation.
On-job training to familiarize the customer with the product to be used.

5-5 Faithful Knowledge Transfer
There are several levels of knowledge transfer, which are as follows

Knowledge transfer of concepts during the whole project life cycle
On job training to maximize GIS tools usage in the participant departments during the construction phase
Application training during the transition phase.

6. Risks that face applying GIS Enterprise in the Urban Management Authorities
This section discusses different main risks facing applying GIS Enterprise in Urban Management Authorities, the issue that may lead to systems non sustainability, leading to system failure and redevelopment in future. The section highlights mitigation approaches to overcome such risks.

The potential risks are:

Users System Disloyalty
Applications non usability
Interdepartmental conflicts in data usage and sharing
Absence of Global View
Separation between Departmental Requirements & Enterprise Vision
Enterprise Data Inconsistency

System Disloyalty
One of the main risks that may face applying GIS Enterprise in Urban Authorities is system disloyalty from the users side. This may occur due to the lack of contribution from the users side in the system implementation, the issue that may lead to disloyalty and offensive attitude towards applying the GIS Enterprise. Overcoming such problem could be via the following points:

Building Champs Group generated from the participant departments
Applying Joint Application Development Approach having deep contribution of Champs group
Faithful and extensive Knowledge Transfer, to qualify the champs group to take over the system operations.
Applying Milestones Workshops:
Internal Workshops to be held on Departmental level
General Workshops to be held on the Enterprise level.
Awareness of each Department needs taking in consideration Enterprise Vision

Interdepartmental conflicts in data usage and sharing

There is an expected conflict between different departments in data sharing processes, thus Service Level Agreements should be issued providing certain rules to organize data ownership among different units and departments. These rules have to be agreed and signed by all the participant departments. The SLAs include defining interdepartmental agreements for the following

Data Sharing
Data Format
Content
Schema
Updating Frequency

Separation between Departmental Requirements & Enterprise Vision
Absence of Global View may lead to separation between Departmental Requirements & Enterprise Vision. Overcoming this problem could be done via applying Iterative Incremental Proposed Methodology, applying Joint Interaction between Project Team & Champs Group, plus performing Internal & General Milestone Workshops

Enterprise Data Inconsistency
The problem of data inconsistency could be solved via building Unified Data models in the sight of SLAs, plus applying defined mechanisms in interdepartmental data sharing.