Low-Cost Client/Server GIS: An Assets Management Perspectives

Low-Cost Client/Server GIS: An Assets Management Perspectives

Akhmad Riqqi, Deni Suwardhi
Dudi Syarifudin, Lulu Lukmanul Hakim, Oki Gumilar
Department of Geodetic Engineering, ITB

Abstract
An assets management system using client/server GIS is present in this pa- per.Management assets become importance for organization whose has huge number of properties.Important not only to those that use these systems,de- cision makers and funding sources are ever concerned with keeping costs under control.Inventory is the most crucial problem in assets management.This work will consume time and resources.More than that,the location of assets can be a di .culty if the assets placed in di .erent location.A Client/Server GIS system has been proposed to solve this problem.Utilizing the combination be- tween GIS and AM/FM are the most valuable solution.Location can be useful to localize and systematize assets inventory.On behalf of need the system in more effective in cost.Open sources database and server side applications are used to store and display it on internet.Spatial engine and GIS application was develop to build client/server GIS as a tool in assets management.With this system,assets inventory and management can be more systematically in rapid way.

1 Background Assets management is important for asset ’s owner especially for large company which has large number of assets.It is a complex task when dealing with a large numbers of assets.Assets management system which has capability to do inventory systematically and manage preventable is importance to keep sustainability of assets.
      Developing this system is essential for company whose has asset in distribute location and need to maintain.One of solution to manage assets is based on their location.This is using GIS with AM/FM (Automated Mapping /Facility Man- agement)functionality.AM/FM is a system which has capability to manage assets from inventory;assets work management;maintenance;and assets amputation.
      Every asset is always being positioned in a location.This is why location based asset management system is interesting.It will be easier to do assets inventory,man- agement,and maintenance in a systematic ways.Location based assets management is also useful to search and monitor.
      Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB),was founded on March 2,1959.The present ITB main campus is the site of earlier engineering schools in Indonesia.In 1959,the present lnstitut Teknologi Bandung was founded by the Indonesian government as an institution of higher learning of science,technology,and .ne arts,with a mission of education,research,and service to the community.Since Government Decree No. 155/2000,pertaining to The Decision on ITB as Legal Enterprise (Badan Hukum has opened a new path for ITB to become autonomous (ITB,2005).The status of autonomy implies a freedom for the institution to manage its own business in an effective and e .cient way,and to be fully responsible for the planning and imple- mentation of all program and activity,and the quality control for the attainment of its institutional objective.
      On assets management,this changed gives a new problem for ITB as an insti- tution.ITB should re-inventory and change their status from government asset to ITB ’s assets in a rapid ways.For this reason,inventory was the most crucial prob- lem in assets management.This work would consume time and resources.More than that,the location of assets can be a di .culty if the assets placed in di .erent location and di .erence of custodian.A Client/Server GIS system has been proposed to solve this problem.Utilizing the combination between GIS and AM/FM were the most valuable solution.Location can be useful to localize and systematize assets inventory.The system called as SIMA (Sistem Infromasi Manajemen Aset -Asset Management Information System).

2 Assets Management Aspect

On behalf changing in organization of ITB,there were changes needed from man- agement of ITB in asset management,such as (ITB,2003a,b):

From Corrective (Breakdown Level)Maintenance to Preventive Maintenance.
From Attribute Base to Spatial and Attribute Base.
From Asset Management to Asset and Facility Management.
From Annual and monthly Report to Day to day Data Maintenance.
From Not Real Time to Near Real Time
From Government Asset Only to Cover All ITB ’s Assets.

Assets Management Information System (SIMA)was developed to meet those ob- jectives and company needs as an assets management system.The basic function of the system were assets inventory,workgroup management,reports generation, assets value assessment,assets owner changes.And of course,.nancial support was the primary constraint on system development.

3 Organizational Aspect As an educational organization,ITB has large number of assets and big organization. ITB divide organization into small enterprise as known as faculty and then faculty divide into department.Beside department,ITB has many supported organization as well as we know other university does.These departments and other supported organizations,in asset management aspect known as custodian unit.Custodian unit is smallest unit of organization whose has responsibility to manage and keep ITB ’s asset in their o .ce and report to ITB about last condition of assets.At least 50 custodian units are present in ITB.
ITB representative as organization in assets management is Biro Sarana dan Prasarana (Bureau of structure and infrastructure).This unit has responsibility to manage assets,maintain assets,and receive report from custodian unit and resume it to be attaching to ITB management and Government.

4 SIMA Architecture GIS operate on two kinds of data which can be saved in a geospatial database system.The two kinds of data are spatial data and non-spatial data.Spatial data is data consisted of image location such as maps or location sketch.Non-spatial data is the data that hold the information about the object to be managed.In GIS,those data are connected to each other;spatial data show the objects on one location with their attributes.
      Networking as part of information technology development has major in .uence on GIS technology.GIS application is taking the advantages of networking tech- nology known as web-GIS or distributed-GIS.Those GIS technology is the latest development in GIS technology.With networking technology,GIS now has the ability to work under networking environment.
      Market GIS software which has the ability to work under network environment is expensive.Usually,software vendors sell their application based on site-license, where every work unit needs one license.For ITB,it is too expensive.In other hand,not all modules on the application are use.
      Financial support is the primary constraint on system development.To overcome this problem,one can take the advantages of Open Source and independent software which can be developed according to the purposes and needs.That software can overcome the budget problem,and reduce large amount of budget.Since open sources and independent software becomes solution,there needs more e .ort and time for system development.This technology is our answer to overcome the budget problem of assets management.

Picture 1.SIMA Architecture
As client/server system,the system is depending on the existing networking. The system consists of some component such as:

Database System is object-relational database system (ORDBMS)which is capable to store spatial and non-spatial data.
Server is a hardware which is used to store the data.There are two kinds of developed server,database server and web-server.Both of them developed under the system development purposes.
Network is a hardware which is used to communicate the data.Network can be intranet or internet.
Client is a hardware which is connected to the server from the network and has the software to manipulate the data on the server or to browse on the internet.
Operating System is a software system to run hardware such as Server,Client, and Network.Every hardware has speci .c operating system.
Spatial Engine is software which has the ability to manage and manipulate the spatial data in existing database or geodatabase.
Application Software is the software which is developed specially to meet the needs and purposes of the system in the organization.This software has the ability to manage spatial data and non-spatial data.
Administrator and Operator is human resources on system organization who has the tasks to maintain and operate the system.

This system can be used for many user that meet these criteria (ITB,2003a):

Need for data updating.
Distributed location data source.
Fast and accurate data sharing.
Capable to store most all kind of data such as:location data (maps),attribute data or textual,number data,image and picture,and others.

5 Developing the Systembr> GIS consist from .ve basic elements,such as data,human resources,software,hard- ware,and procedure.Data is the most important and crucial component.More than 50 percent from all the activities in developing and building GIS application are data input and preparation.The data to be prepared are data asset,topograph- ical maps,and building scheme.Data assets is the most di .cult to be collect they concise in many form.
From human resources point of view,in developing SIMA there are four groups of human resources,the .rst is developer whose has capability in database,pro- gramming and GIS it self,the second is system administrator whose has capability in maintain the server and database,the third is custodian user whose has respon- sibility to maintain data in the custodian unit,and the fourth is secondary user whose need and use information from the system.Human resources from di .erent profession and background which is willing to take advantage of GIS should be able to read and understand the characteristic of maps.
Software component is one system which has the ability to manage the data. Software component in this system consist of di .erence function and platform,they are (SIMA ITB,2004):

Object Relational Data Base Management System (ORDBMS).
GIS Application with AM/FM Functionality.
Spatial Engine (SE).
Web GIS Application (both server side and client side).

      Data Base Management System is software which stored,manipulate,handle and manage data.Data base needed to store both attribute data and spatial data.SIMA is using PostgreSQL.PostgreSQL is a highly scalable,SQL compliant,open source object-relational database management system (ORDBMS)(PostgreSQl,2005).In .rst development we are using PostgreSQL with Cygwin because we develop in windows environment.Since PostgreSQL 8 release we didn ’t use Cygwin anymore. PostgreSQL 8 is running in windows environment,depend on our experience Post- greSQL 8 is faster.This PostgreSQL is install in server.
      GIS Application is client side software application for custodian user.This GIS Application has capability to connect to server,update the data both attributes and spatial data,and print report as custodian user need.We developed GIS Ap- plication as system required using Borland Delphi.Due to custom of subject in ITB community using MS Windows,so our application is develop under window application.
      Spatial Engine (SE)is modular software which has capability to query data spatial from data base and send it to GIS Application on client.In SIMA,we use PostGIS as SDE.It adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object- relational database.In e .ect,PostGIS ”spatially enables ”the PostgreSQL server, allowing it to be used as a backend spatial database for geographic information systems (GIS),much like ESRI ’s SDE or Oracle ’s Spatial extension.PostGIS has been developed by Refractions Research as a research project in open source spatial database technology.PostGIS is released under the GNU General Public License (PostGIS,2005).On PostgreSQL 8,PostGIS is included in the installation package.
      Web GIS Application is a GIS system in World Wide Web browser.This system needs for secondary user whose need information about assets.In server side,we used MapServer from University of Minnesota.MapServer is an Open Source de- velopment environment for constructing spatially enabled Internet-web applications (Mapserver,2005).
      In developing SIMA consist of operational procedure standardization and .nan- cial support,security,and application standardization (SIMA ITB,2004).

Procedure standardization is a procedure which is developed based on the sys- tem purposes and needs,such as input procedure,data input,and data main- tenance.As an organization ITB has asset management system.This system was adapted to SIMA,since there is no need a new procedure on asset man- agement when SIMA was implemented.Beside procedure in this system,we have to consider other procedure in organization such as procurement,supplies distribution,and reporting.

Financial Support is one important aspect to consider for system developing. Financial consist of support for hardware and software acquisition,human resources training,system operational.Other aspect to be considered is pro .t from long-time scale system e .ciency.

Security is other aspect to consider because the system sustainability depends on the data security for system operational.In SIMA there is there level of security.First,Administrator has responsibility to maintain data base and server.Second,custodian user level has accessibility and update only to own data,both spatial and attributes.Third,secondary user used the information from the system via internet/website.

Application Standardization is a large scale aspect to be considered for system development.The system which is developed should be able for development in future.GIS Application or client application has been developing support Open GIS ”Simple Feature Speci .cation for SQL ”as PostGIS does.

Picture 2.SIMA Application
6 Environment Changing
A new system had been developing and embedding in organization.This would need new environment changing.There was one big changed in organization behavior in inventory,assessment and reporting asset.Before this system implemented to inventory,assessment and reporting,Unit Sarana dan Prasarana asked their people to go to custodian unit and then inventory or assess their assets and report it. Or they asked custodian user to deliver their asset report (annually,semester,or quarterly)to them.Of course these will consume time and budget.Normally,they will .nish their report and resume it in 3 week to 2 month.Since SIMA running they don ’t need to go to site,they enough see in SIMA system,and print their report as they want with current data from custodian user (See picture 3).

Picture 3.Environment Changing

In the other hand,custodian user become importance person in this system, data currently and validity are in their hand.This is a big changing for them;its common if new system has implementing.To prevent and prepare this changing a few activities was held,such as socialization,training,and publish the system.
Socialization is the first step to promote this new system,even this has been doing when the organization has an eager to build and develop this system in the .rst time.It was doing from top manager of organization to custodian user in several times.Socialization is the most importance step in developing,in these activities we collect their needs and harmonize it with objective of organization.Last thing of this step is adapted to the system.This is iterative activities,it causes system have version.
Training is second step to educate human resources and more over is to inves- tigate this system running well in existing network.Training was doing in two ways,class course and on the job training in every unit.This is effective way due to limitation of time and not every custodian user familiar with computer and network. Publishing the system is to publish the system to secondary user.It happen when data spatial and attributes has been inputting to the system.So,when user goes to SIMA web site,there is available information.In developing system as physiological aspect,this is importance as milestone to everybody whose involve in the system.This mark that system is running and maintaining becomes everybody ’s responsibility.Beside that,this publicity seen that top management is care and need information from this system.

7 A Low-Cost Systembr>
Low-costs are come from:

Open sources utilization. Utilization open sources in this system save huge bud- get.Same system using market software will costly over then 50.000 US $. Developing with only user requirement is most effective cost,for this system there no needs fully functionality of GIS.

Developing an effective system. System has been running in existing assets man- agement system.Computer and network system are present infrastructure in ITB.SIMA uses this infrastructure to help Biro Sarana dan Prasarana in more effective communication with Custodian User and Secondary User,and vise versa.

Save time consuming and budgeting. Save time consuming and budgeting on asset inventory,management and reporting.It is clear that changing in envi- ronment system of inventory,management and reporting is more effective in time and budget.

8 Conclusion
Client/Server GIS is solution in assets management where asset location separated. Organization,budget,and existing system in assets management are the major consideration in building system.SIMA is not just an ordinary application but developed application based on user and organization needs.Therefore this ap- plication has the ability to adapt the existing assets management system,without changing the whole working existing system in the company.Client/Server GIS can help assets management become an integrated management,nearly real time data accessibility,currently,and validity.Low-costs are come from open sources utiliza- tion,developing an effective system,save time consuming and budgeting on asset inventory,management and reporting.

9 Reference

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Mapserver.Publish by University of Minnesota.Copyright 1996-2003 Regents of the University of Minnesota.1 July 2005.
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SIMA ITB Technical Report.Direktur Sarana dana Prasarana ITB.2004.
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