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Dutchess County Office of Computer Information Systems

Project Goal

Dutchess County wanted to develop a web-based bridge among the departments that had been active with GIS over the past decade. We developed an enterprise GIS for departments to manage their metadata, data transfer, downloads, queries, and viewing of GIS data. The enterprise system is a collection of web based applications that are interconnected. Users can switch between applications and maintain their geographic extent as well as links to metadata. This has allowed us to build small focused applications that are easy to learn and use. This architecture has proven to be very robust, flexible, and efficient for our users. The system is now available to the public and municipal officials at dedicated stations throughout the County.

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Business Problem Solved

The business problems that were solved revolve around two constant themes.

1. The lack of awareness and accessibility to GIS data. The lack of awareness caused the inefficient use of the data we had and in many cases the duplication of data layer creation among departments. And, when people were able to find data, the issue was accessing it. This in turn led to versioning issues because data were updated but not necessarily redistributed to all data users.

2. The proliferation of ArcView requests to perform GIS functions. As GIS becomes more common, an increasing number of personnel are asking to do basic GIS functions from their desk. Individual licensing and data maintenance issues were becoming difficult to manage without centralizing the GIS data and tools.

The Dutchess County enterprise GIS has enabled us to significantly increase awareness and GIS data accessibility as well as increases access to GIS data and basic GIS tools to the benefit of an ever growing number of users.

Technology Implemented

Our web based solutions are built using ArcIMS with ServletExec on IIS5. We use HTMLviewer with substantial javascript modifications and ASP functionality to SQL_Server tables and geodatabases accessed through SDE on a SQL_Server. And, we also use ActiveX connector with ASP to geodatabases. Supporting languages include HTML, CSS, VBScript, JavaScript and VB6 executables. We are currently building Java connector applications and ArcMap Server applications.

Development Team Biography

The Office of Computer Information Systems GIS team members include Andrew Fitch (now with University of Maryland), Joseph Rutkowski (GIS Programmer Analyst), Phil Thibault (GIS Project Leader at OCIS), Christopher Wren (GIS Technician), and Cheng Zhu (GIS Systems Analyst).

The GIS team at OCIS is "one leg of the kitchen table". The other three critical legs are the data producers, database administrators, and the network and PC administrators. The major data producers are Emergency Response, Real Property and Taxes, Planning, Environmental Management Council, and the County Clerks office. There would be no need to build these GIS tools unless there was valuable data to share. The database administrators have revolutionized GIS data availability. It used to be confined to local PCs, but major efforts have made it possible to centralize these data making them accessible to a wider audience. And, the network and PC administrators have made it possible to link a complex collection of PCs to the GIS applications and data.

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