|
View Photo(s) of Award Presentation
Project Goal
Citizens searching for government-related information about their neighborhoods have found the task a potentially daunting one in Miami-Dade County. A large and complex governmental structure, the County’s layers of bureaucracy and multitude of Departments can turn even simple requests for information into frustrating endeavors. A homeowner, businessperson or potential new homebuyer would have to go to several unrelated sources to determine a particular neighborhood’s “quality of life” or the best geographic location to establish a new business. To compound the frustration, some of these data sources would be online while others would not be as readily available.
In 2001, Miami-Dade County’s web portal miamidade.gov was released, a central component in the County’s “Focus on the Citizen” initiative. Using the portal as a gateway, the County embarked on an aggressive effort to make its extensive GIS data available to its residents via several online GIS applications. Today, residents have nearly 100 GIS layers, plus aerial photography, available to assist them in their planning and decision-making.
Learn more about us
Learn more about our application:
Site 1
|
Site 2
Business Problem Solved
The County’s GIS was implemented in 1987 as an enterprise model with centralized hardware, tools and data, funded and shared by the County’s 50+ departments. Today the County’s GIS includes over 200 layers.
County Services In Your Home was released as a pilot web application in 1997. Developed using MapObjects IMS, this web site enabled users to enter an address and receive information about County services near their home, such as the closest parks, libraries and fire stations.
In 1999, the County embarked on a “Focus on the Citizen” initiative and targeted the establishment of an e-government environment as one of its main goals. GIS was identified as one of the services with the greatest benefit to the public.
With ESRI’s help, My Neighborhood and My Home were developed and released in 2001. My Neighborhood provides residents with information about the community they live in, such as Sexual Offenders, Crime Incidents and Property Sales. Through My Home, homeowners can view property assessment and tax information.
Both My Neighborhood and My Home were developed using the same design structure. This provided a framework for the development of additional GIS web applications, My Business, Artificial Reefs Locator, Damage Assessment and Services Near You, a rewrite of the original County Services In Your Home.
Technology Implemented
The County’s GIS web infrastructure is currently running on ArcGIS 9 using ArcIMS for Internet mapping and ArcSDE/Oracle 9i for tabular and spatial data storage. The hardware infrastructure was deployed in a three-tier platform for high availability. It includes two load-balanced web servers running Internet Information Server and ServletExec as the servlet engine. The web servers each have two map servers and a dedicated ArcSDE server. The ArcSDE server uses Storage Area Network (SAN) technology to store and manage the data. Using this design, ArcSDE data can be updated weekly, without compromising the County’s 365/24/7 service commitment to the public. The web applications were developed in ASP, HTML and JAVASCRIPT.
Development Team Biography
Miami-Dade County’s enterprise GIS is supported by the Enterprise Technology Services department. The GIS unit is divided into two groups, Application Development and Technical Support.
The members of Application Development who develop and support the enterprise GIS web applications are:
Jane Robinson – Computer Services Manager
Clare Sibori – Senior Operating Systems Programmer
Jaime Lovett – Senior Systems Analyst/Programmer
Pedro Zanoguera – Senior Systems Analyst/Programmer
Julian E. Albo – Technical Support Analyst
David Von Werne – Systems Analyst II
The members of Technical Support responsible for the support and maintenance of the ArcIMS and ArcSDE infrastructure are:
Martha Guerra – Systems Support Manager
Julian M. Albo – Senior Operating Systems Programmer
Ileana Cea – Senior Operating Systems Programmer
Elvia Cortes – Senior Operating Systems Programmer
Mairim Avila – Operating Systems Programmer
|
)
)
)