2009 SAG Award Winners

Animal Health Board

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Project Goal

New Zealand needed to set regional and national targets for TB vector control, but was hampered by a lack of uniformity in capturing activity progress and results. Another difficulty was the fact that activities were scattered over a large area: more than 7,000 projects covering 8.4 million hectares. Before AHB took over the management of the vector control process, more than a dozen regional councils used differing methodologies to try to achieve this task. AHB took the best practices from these councils to develop business rules, procedures, and interfaces for a geospatial approach to vector control. This new approach would incorporate the local knowledge at the regional level and would centralize it at the national level. Operation managers needed to visualize possum densities in different areas, then link this to performance and financial data so they could identify the most effective control efforts.

Business Problem Solved

To eradicate bovine TB in cattle and deer herds, the Animal Health Board needed a technological system for sharing geospatial projects previously managed by local councils operating different types of data management systems.

Technology Implemented

AHB created VectorNet, an application that uses a map-based interface to access, query, and report on all aspects of AHB’s disease and vector control processes. ESRI’s Arc Geographical Information System was tightly integrated into the application, built on .NET 2.0, and securely deployed over the Internet to multiple users. Eagle Technology Group, ESRI’s New Zealand partner, provided Arc software. Functionality was progressively released in just 19 months. VectorNet links more than a dozen previously uncoordinated regional systems, creating consistent, accurate, and easy-to-manage geodatabases. Approximately 40 AHB staff use VectorNet for contract management, strategic planning, and reporting. Individual field contractors have the capability to update the database from the field with GPS-enabled handheld devices, then upload information through a Web browser to VectorNet. The data is validated and added to the geodatabase.

Development Team Biography

Datacom New Zealand
EGL New Zealand
Hunter Group New Zealnd
Jody Bullen - Senior Developer
Kelly Beuth - GIS Team Leader