Staff Development and Training
Hanson: Staff development and training. We’re going to organize this in terms of those 5 user classes. The one thing to keep in mind is the job descriptions may change because of the GIS. You need to allocate staff responsibilities accordingly or hire staff to meet the GIS needs of the department. That will have an impact. That has an impact not only in the development, but on training of staff (inaudible). The staff development and training recommendations are based on those 5 user classes. Right now, what we’ve seen in terms of GIS specialists, the departments that would probably have a GIS specialist are the Auditor, the County Assessor, Zoning, and Secondary Roads. That’s based on their application needs and the skill sets in those departments right now.
Slockett: What about the City Assessor?
Hanson: It didn’t quite look like that. From what Jerry had indicated, they do some of their own mapping in the County Assessor’s department, and should they get to an integrated CAMA system, they would possibly use a GIS specialist. That might become an advanced GIS user. But definitely, the Auditor, the Zoning, Secondary Roads, somebody who’d be at an ArcInfo workstation. Those type of users need ArcInfo training, ArcView training, and training in any other GIS products they might be using, whether it’s Roads went to AutoCAD Map, probably training in that. If you were still using that in conjunction. I don’t see AutoCAD going away anytime soon. I think it’d be part of the process. I think the biggest impact in terms of AutoCAD will be with the parcel management. That might move out of AutoCAD. Until then, your whole process is AutoCAD driven. At some point that’s going to be phased into an ArcInfo (inaudible), so you’re not constantly doing something in AutoCAD and translating. The advanced GIS user should be given ArcView training, formal 2-day ArcView training. One thing the County might want to consider is having the GIS Coordinator or someone from one of the departments certified as an ESRI ArcView trainer. It costs like $500 or $1,000.
Campbell: Plus the training time up front.
Hanson: Plus the training time, but then they can give certified ArcView training to the County.
Jordahl: With the emphasis being on you, or would there be a cost that has to be kicked back to ESRI for that?
Campbell: You have to pay for the books. ESRI requires you to pay for books.
Hanson: And the training (inaudible). We just did training, Boulder County, it’s a 2 day class. We did 3 different sessions and trained 30 people. I did the parcel (inaudible), and then like Engineering and Zoning came as a group, and I think the Assessor or someone else…
Dvorak: Can somebody be a licensed instructor in ArcInfo?
Hanson: No. They always…
Campbell: Not authorized. ESRI does not allow… ESRI makes a lot of money off their training.
Dvorak: How about if we hire one that’s already licensed?
Campbell: Well, the thing is, you can’t use their materials, you can’t present an authorized course, but you can do lots of unauthorized courses. You could do that. There’s actually a fair amount of material out there on the web, even, where you can pick up ArcInfo training and development. The problem is, right now it’s all ArcInfo 7. Everything’s going to change when ArcInfo 8 actually arrives at your doorstep. A quick note. If you’re not familiar enough with the technology, ArcInfo 7 is the old, difficult command line driven ArcInfo product that you always hear horror stories about how long it takes you to learn. The general rules on ArcInfo 7 in previous versions were that it took a couple weeks of hard core training, 6 months of intensive use to become a beginner. That’s changing dramatically with the new release of ArcInfo 8. They’ve redesigned the whole product to try to reduce the training time associated with it. It may be that we don’t see that… there’s not enough evidence out there how short that training cycle is because it’s just brand new, but indications from what I’ve seen on the product, it’s going to be a lot easier to use and a lot easier to learn. It’s also going to be a lot easier for a CAD person to make a transition to ArcInfo. ArcMap, which is a new mapping and editing component of ArcInfo 8 is CAD-like. ESRI finally gave in and made it CAD-like because they knew that CAD was easy to use for editing the files. It’s changed quite a bit from ArcInfo 7 to ArcInfo 8. I’m sorry, do you have a problem?
Hanson: No. That’s fine.
Campbell: It’s probably too soon, because I knew you were going to talk about software later.
Hanson: That’s all right. Specialized GIS user will be application-specific training. As applications rolled out, for that user it might be like a 2-hour training class. The general County user would be more informal. There might be like when the internal web map application’s employed, there might be a one-hour training session or something like that. Real informal.
Schultz: It’s going to be totally…I just wanted to point out, there’s going to be a totaling separate training that’s going to be needed like on the IS Staff. (Inaudible).
Hanson: Yes. That’s coming. Wait until I hit this button. Information Services Department.
Schultz: Just wanted to make sure.
Hanson: The Information Services Department. This is a very important department in terms of implementation of Johnson County. A lot of the application development skill sets, the database administration skill sets, the network administration, those skill sets we feel the County should leverage through their Information Services Department. That puts a certain high level or degree of training requirements on the Information Services Department. We are recommending an SDE solution, that’s a spatial database engine, where data is now stored in relation to database and for the County that may be SQL server. To manage that database is going to require SDE database administration training for Information Services. It’s going to require SQL Server administration training. Now, you might have already had that, but we’re putting that in this list. The application environment, the programming environment will include such tools as Avenue MapObjects, Visual Basic. I think there are existing Visual Basic skill sets. Learning how that interacts with the MapObjects, ArcInfo 8, which is a (inaudible), how that works and then maybe customizing your applications in Avenue. Backtracking a second, the GIS specialist should be given training in some of the customization languages. If there is any legacy AML programming or if there is some Avenue. If they wanted to create utilities to help them in their department, it’s probably good to have a GIS specialist with some skills to do that. That’s more of a customization type programming than application development. Information Services probably should have someone go through the ArcInfo and ArcView training. You’re going to have to identify staff to do that. Web server administration and then the GIS web page development, we have just a list of some of the tools that are applicable for that. Within the user classes there really wasn’t a user class that we identified for Information Services, because of the role that they are going to be playing. The database management, administration, application development. Is that clear? It makes sense for the County to keep using those skills.
Parcel Database Development
Joint development is recommended
Hanson: OK. The GIS data requirements. In the report we have broken up data requirements in these 6 categories. There’s the parcel related data that current reside in the 800 AutoCAD drawing files. This is the data that’s going to be part of the… when we get into the implementation plan, the database development phase, that’s your parcels, your dimensions, your street centerlines, your city limits, roads, there is some drainage information in there, your public land survey control network. It’s a really rich data set. That data set needs to be developed and translated from the AutoCAD drawing format to a GIS format, which we’re recommending is the SDE format. That’s also the first year of GIS implementation. Other data sets identified through the interview process were data sets that could be created using existing county data sources. There’s a lot. The Zoning Department has numerous data sets that other departments are using. Zoning, the land use, the soils, corn suitability ratings, the traffic counts; there is quite a bit. That data, at some point, needs to be translated and put into the central database in SDE. There’s the water well and wastewater systems. Those are on location cards. That data needs to be converted. Secondary Roads, as you do road designs sometimes (inaudible) could go to the Auditor’s and help with parcel mapping. So, these data sources are a combination of paper, AutoCAD drawing files, some might be in GPS format, some might be Shape files or some other proprietary format. Those data sets, as the departmental applications are rolled out, they’re going to need to be developed and put into the central database. Some of them, if they are large, might be contracted to 3rd parties to develop it. The water well/wastewater, there are 10,000 cards. You might not have the time to do that. You might want to set up a contract for that.
Jordahl: Rick has been working with ArcView for the last 18 months or so and has data that has come in without all this translation.
Hanson: It’s all in AutoCAD format. Is that correct?
Dvorak: Well, then we got all the DNR information that (inaudible), census information that’s out there now.
Hanson: The zoning though, we’re recommending that you manage that in the ArcInfo format, so you can do more spatial analysis and overlay analysis and build an actual database side to it. It’s just AutoCAD right now, layering and coloring schemes. So, it’s more of a CAD file than GIS.
Dvorak: In other words, you can’t click on it. It doesn’t tell you anything.
Jordahl: It’s helped you quite a bit.
Hanson: A third data requirement would be the addressing. The addressing project would require geocoding your street centerlines and building an address pointer database. The geocoded street centerlines is basically, as you move up a streets, and your streets have to be captured in a correct direction as they flow, as addresses increase. As I move up a street, my left address range might be 0-99, my right is 1-99, 0-100. The next block would be 101-199. All the structure of the street centerlines needs to support that in your from-to node topology. So, there are some issues there in building that. An address formula is then an actual point showing the location of a condominium, a unit, might even have to point stack on each other. An address point then has a key field that will go out to your database that might show either the address or ownership information. A lot of the structure that’s going to be dependant on whether or not you purchased for your E911, whether or not you purchase a 3rd party product. Some of those are out there and as you investigate what product to use you need to identify what underlying data structure they support. The street centerline, the left-from addressing is pretty common. Of addresses pointer the structure might vary per product. But the addressing, I know most departments would like a solid address database. Ambulance and SEATS you mentioned. Zoning. Photogrammetric mapping, that’s going to require the County putting on an RFP. I think we mentioned their prices generally range from $10-20 an acre, depending whether you’re in an urban or rule area. For mapping downtown Iowa City, it’s going to be more expensive than mapping 10 miles east of there. Part of that is including the digital orthophotos. There’s a high demand for digital orthophotos.
Campbell: Are we going to talk more about satellite?
Hanson: Yes. There’s a discussion in the report about satellite imaging, too.
Campbell: There’s a new batch of satellites that are basically going up. The first one has been up there about 3 months now, put up by a company called Space Imaging out of Colorado. But there are a couple of other companies that are rapidly on the tail. They produce high-resolution, black and white imagery of the world, and it’s a lot cheaper of a source than going for photogrammetric mapping. It’s not as accurate, but you get down to a one-meter pixel and it’s not that bad. It should be a fraction of the cost of classic photogrammetric mapping. It will get cheaper over time, because right now Space Imaging is the only company out there doing it, but there is a couple of other companies trying to keep their satellites up there in the sky and images popping back. So, once they get up there there’s likely to be some competition. Prices should be dropping in the next couple of years.
Slockett: What’s the story on the shuttle mission that just got back? On that mapping, it’s supposed to be so accurate, terrain mapping.
Campbell: Yes. They do a lot of terrain mapping, 3-dimensional mapping. Very high-resolution terrain data sets of the world. I don’t know whether we’re ever going to see that. I’ve noticed that I haven’t got a lot of information on how that’s actually going to or if that’s going to get distributed. What bothers me a little bit is that FIMA, which is the Defense mapping agency, was the one who contracted for it. They’re obviously very interested in high accuracy terrain information for routing planes and that type of stuff through enemy territory. Whether that stuff is open to the public or not at some point, or whether we’ll end up seeing a degraded image of that, I don’t know. But in either case, they were talking at least a couple of years before any useful stuff comes out of there. But it’s terrain mapping. It’s x, y, z’s. But if a data set becomes available, and I just haven’t heard whether it’s actually going to become commercially available, that’s going to be a great data set. It might also help to replace some of the need for photogrammetric mapping.
Jordahl: Isn’t it also going to map the houses that are part of the terrain? They’re part of the 3-dimensional structure of what they’re going with.
Slockett: It’s radar isn’t it?
Campbell: They are sampling points. They might pick up structures.
Hanson: I don’t know if you’re going to be able to get the (inaudible).
Campbell: It’s a good question. I don’t know.
Jordahl: They talk about the degree of resolution that would allow you to capture structures.
Slockett: It is radar imagery.
Campbell: It is radar imagery.
Slockett: Would that show things like wood structures? I don’t know anything about it.
Campbell: Yes. They have some that do. Photogrammetric mapping and the new photogrammetric mapping, they explicitly exclude any buildings, so it’s basically the terrain, but that’s because they can actually pick the points that they want to sample and pick up the x, y, and z. With the radar, they are literally bouncing off of everything. So, if the proper wavelength is there, you are popping off of buildings just as easily.
Jordahl: The way I heard about that is that it’s going to be for defense uses first. But I imagine in 20 years you’re going to have it on the Web.
Campbell: I’m assuming so.
Jordahl: How much sooner is it going to be on the web.
Hanson: Right.
Campbell: Again, I just haven’t heard how available that stuff is going to be.
Slockett: It probably depends on how soon before somebody else does the same thing and makes it available.
Campbell: That’s why we’re seeing high-resolution satellite imagery right now.
Slockett: That’s right.
Campbell: The one-meter satellite came out because the Russians were selling their data.
Hanson: Photogrammetric mapping would include building footprints. There are some building footprint sources and the Assessor has them. Whether or not those can be converted and given the spatial location, the real world coordinates, needs to be evaluated. But, if you did a photogrammetric mapping project, I think we’ve got this out in year 4. It would include building footprints, paved and unpaved road areas, driveways, utility- I think there was a need for some utility transmission lines and some utility point feature- vegetation areas, forested areas, lakes and rivers, that type of information would be captured. The County would need to put out an RFP and evaluate it (inaudible).
Campbell: It’s expensive. It can be very expensive. It may be something that you don’t necessarily go for. You wait and look at the satellite imagery and see what that’s like.
Jordahl: Yes. But satellite imagery might be sufficient to do some of the road designs, for example.
?: One meter (Inaudible).
Al Miller: Maybe a preliminary look at something. But if I don’t have a contour that’s within 3 foot, it’s going to be difficult to (inaudible).
Campbell: Most engineering applications require higher accuracy than what they’re going to provide. But, most generally, if what you’re doing is looking at slope on a parcel or something similar to that, it might be real well to do a good job and things like that.
Hanson: In the project data that you guys collect, you (inaudible) GIS data and they just apply this on a project.
Al Miller: They’re going to be strips.
Hanson: Census data. Rick has… You have the base census data without the demographic or the socioeconomic information.
Dvorak: We do have all that.
Hanson: You do have all that.
Dvorak: It will be obsolete in April.
Hanson: Right. Is that in coverage format?
Dvorak: I can click on an area and it’ll tell me anything you want to know about it.
Hanson: Right. That information is, for finer resolution, that information might be captured by some of the COGS. Is that right? (Inaudible) the local COG in eastern Iowa.
Dvorak: This information came directly from the DNR.
Hanson: In terms of data requirements, data sharing initiatives, we put that under responsibilities of GIS Coordinator in conjunction with the GIS Committee. There are some real opportunities for data sharing initiatives in the area. With Coralville’s GIS, Iowa City is going to be starting in GIS, there’s probably opportunities to share data and share costs. In terms of like, if digital orthophotos were identified, that would, I think you’ve already entered into some of those agreements with cities, is that correct? In terms of flying orthophotos or not? In the past?
Slockett: Well, in the past we did it with some utilities.
Hanson: Right.
Slockett: But we haven’t seen a lot of interest in doing more of it. I think if the cities are doing it, we’d want the same level of resolution. The problem with the utilities is they didn’t need the same level of resolution for what they were doing.
Hanson: Right. This is just, to talk about the parcel database development project, this is the first phase of GIS implementation. Your base data set. You get the information in those AutoCAD drawing files translated into the ArcInfo world, into a GIS format. These were the costs alternatives that were presented in the paper we gave, the report given on January 4th. There are just 3 different alternatives that we were asked to look at: in house, strictly by the County, the joint County and FSI development, and then just having contracted with FSI. The approach we recommended was the joint development and our reasoning was that we leverage the skill sets and knowledgeable parties. We’ve got a rich data set and a set of users in the Auditor’s Department who are pretty skilled at managing that parcel information and they know it really well. You could probably ask- we’ve actually called Gale and said something about a street in Coralville before and he just kind of new and he probably didn’t even go to the computer. Your access to source documents are right in-house, so you are closer to the sources. That does make a difference in a parcel-related project. During the course of the project, the County staff is going to start developing GIS knowledge and GIS skills, learning how to use ArcInfo. You’ll be embedded in the ArcInfo world and those people will be doing it daily, not being trained and walking away from it for a year. So you’re going to really be building up some GIS expertise there. We will be developing supporting software. We’ve done a lot of database development projects and data translation projects and we feel pretty confident we’ve got a flow of how to manage that data. We’ve also worked with the City of Coralville, which used the Johnson County parcel data. So we do have a knowledge of the data we’ll be working with. Then, the project management duties are shared. We see that as an advantage. I think the biggest advantage, the in-house County development, the biggest disadvantage there is the time frame. It would probably take several years. It’d take a longer time frame. I think we proposed to have the joint project done in a 12 month time period. Would that be right?
Campbell: Uh-huh.
Hanson: OK.
Campbell: A quick note on that. The price (inaudible) do include the SDE license and an additional ArcInfo license and a work station that’s (inaudible). There’s some software and hardware costs in there as well.
Hanson: That was presented on January 4th.
Hanson: The GIS software recommendations. We evaluated software from the prospective of prior County commitments. The GIS application requirements. When we break out for each application in the report, we get a description of the user class, the software platform, what departments would be using, that type of thing. So, in terms of the application needs, we’re evaluating software in terms of that. We’ve looked at the requirements of the application, the user classes, the product development path. That’s the main reason we are recommending ArcInfo 8 over ArcInfo 7. ArcInfo 7 is basically the whole data model and programming environments change into ArcInfo 8. We feel it should just, as you’re entering into GIS, you might as well enter into the most current technology and learn that now. The ease of deployment and the cost. You’ll see a lot of the applications we’ve mentioned, ArcView or possible MapObjects, they’re lower cost development applications than say ArcInfo. ArcInfo is a component object model, so you can development applications in Visual Basic. But, even if it’s a small application, or it has a small application footprint, it requires a license. Is that correct Bill?
Campbell: The Run Time.
Hanson: ArcInfo 8, the Run Time will require a license.
Campbell: Correct.
Hanson: You don’t want to be going out and buying a lot of $10,000 ArcInfo licenses, when you can buy ArcView licenses or a MapObject license. It’s a lower cost of development and deployment. When we look at the software recommendations, the applications are basically, you’ve got a database development management and maintenance application, that type of application. You have analysis and mapping applications, and then just sort of a query/display. Who owns this, where is this, retrieve the information and display it, which you’re general account users (inaudible). So, there’s different categories this software is going to be directed towards. So, for the database development management maintenance, that’s your GIS specialist, we are recommending ArcInfo 8.0, using the Spatial Database Engine, SDE. That ArcInfo 8.0 is using the geo database model. It’s an object model. It’s most of the application development in (inaudible) world is object model based. The (inaudible) are object model based. In its fully component object model, or com reliant, you can development in Visual Basic, Visual C++, and there’s a slew of different development, Delphi. Whatever language your department’s comfortable with. Do you have C++ skills, too, plus Visual Basic skills? That’s one of the reasons we’re making this recommendation. You have good Visual Basic skills in the I.S. Department. Also, Visual Basic might be the environment that some of the GIS specialists do some customization. You might use Visual Basic to create just some utilities that a department can use. In terms of their career path, that makes sense for them to get in now and learn the Visual Basic and the object model than going back and maybe writing AMLs. You write maybe some AMLs, because they’ll still be supported. They’re going to be, in terms of your own career or profession, you’re going to probably be moving toward Visual Basic. It also leverages the SQL Server experience. SDE, there is a version or a deployment for the SQL Server. Also, in this first category, the other products we’d recommend would be NovaLIS Parcel Management. That does come free with ArcInfo 8.0. There are costs associated with training and support. I’m not sure the tools you have now with the parcel maintenance and AutoCAD, will they work with AutoCAD 2000 or are those now becoming legacy?
Kistler: They should work.
Hanson: For analysis and mapping, this is looking at the advanced GIS user. (Inaudible) ArcInfo and possibly some ArcInfo development. I think a lot of that might be ArcView development. Again, a lot of that is based on the cost of the ArcInfo and applications developed with ArcInfo using ArcInfo license. I don’t know if you have… We’re recommending 2 licenses, those are floating; you’d still run into collisions. Then for query and display, there’ll be some applications that will use map objects and some that will be the Web software. We are recommending the ESRI products, ArcView, MapObjects, ArcInfo, SDE, those are all ESRI products. Part of that is the County’s already made a commitment in some level to the ArcInfo and ArcInfo really addresses the needs of what the County plans on doing. The applications you’ve identified. ArcInfo is well suited for that. We’ve not made a solid Web recommendation.
Campbell: Yes, let me expand on that. There’s one part of this that we are holding off on any recommendation, and that is the Web mapping software. There’s an Autodesk product out there called Map Guide, there’s an ESRI suite of products called IMS. The current IMS suite of products are not up to snuff, but they have a brand new release coming out from ESRI that’s called ArcIMS that should be competing well against Map Guide. But the industry is moving so fast right now and these vendors are leapfrogging over each other so fast right now, that if you make a decision now, it’s going to be different from another one that you make in 2 months, which will be different than in 6 months. You have to wait until you guys actually begin development and employment of a Web-based application and then base it on what’s available then, what to migrate, what the technology path looks like, what the requirements of the application are. We would make a very different recommendation, I suspect, in another 2 or 3 months compared to the one we would make right now. If there’s one part of the GIS industry that’s changing really, really rapidly right now it’s Web-based mapping.
Slockett: Does IMS stand for Internet Mapping System? I never have seen that spelled out.
Hanson: Internet Map Server.
Slockett: Map Service?
Campbell: Server.
Slockett: Server.
Hanson: That’s the (inaudible), we used to have a MapObjects in ArcView, right?
Campbell: Well, no. It’s actually separate. ESRI has 2 products out there right now. Both are called IMS products. One’s based on MapObjects, that you have to basically build an application from scratch, and then you can deploy it on the Web. The other one is an ArcView based IMS that allows you to do develop an ArcView application. It’s actually fairly quick, fairly simple to get and deploy an application. Both of them, right now, work on the server side, and that means when you submit a request to the IMS server, it goes back over to the server, does something, and delivers it back to your desktop. The problem with that approach, and ESRI is finding this now, is it’s slow. It can be exceedingly slow for an end user, depending on how much data you’re moving across. You submit a request, it goes back to the server, it does something, it snaps this picture, and it sends it back to your machine. That can really bog down a server. On the Map Guide product that’s going to be out there, it doesn’t do that. Actually, does a lot of stuff locally on your own machine; therefore, it’s a little bit quicker. If we recommend the solution today based on Web-mapping, that’s a good push to go with the Map Guide solution. ESRI is now in the process of releasing, or getting within a couple months of releasing their competing product, which is called ArcIMS. That’s more of a strategic product that does either server side or client side processing. That kind of takes a little leap frog over Map Guide. Map Guide obviously will probably take a little leapfrog over ESRI technology in about another 6 months or so. The thing I wanted to get out of it is that side of the technology is moving so quick right now, so until we’re ready to deploy an application and develop, that’s when we make the decisions, based on your requirements and based on what the technology looks like then.
Hanson: Do we have people that are ESRI shops and ArcInfo shops using MapGuide. They play well together, the products do.
Campbell: Relatively well. There are advantages and disadvantages with both approaches. The Autodesk products do not directly support SDE, for instance. If you go to SDE, that means there has to be another step right now, from SDE out to a coverage, and then do a snapshot over to your Web mapping application. That could be a big downside for the SDE application. I suspect that Map Guide will have better support for SDE in the future. It’s just changing too rapidly right now to give you a specific recommendation until we get to the point of saying, OK, let’s start, and at that point, you look where the technology is, you look where the products are, and you make a recommendation.
Slockett: Are they pricing them comparably, or is there a difference in the way the 2 companies are pricing?
Campbell: No, they’re roughly comparable. They’re 5 to 10K. I think ArcView IMS is running about $3,500 right now. That’s the cheapest, but the other ones, I think Map Guide is running about 8K if I remember right, and the ArcIMS pricing has not been established, because the product is not officially out yet, but I suspect it would 8 to 10K. They’re all competing against each other, so they can’t be a whole lot more expensive, and chances are, they’re not going to come in a lot cheaper, unless they really want to threaten their own profits and rough up competitors, and that could happen.
Hanson: One of the things to keep in mind when you develop these is if the application is a spatially centered application or a database. Spatially centered meaning a lot of your entry and query is based on spatial features, parcel locations, streets, centerlines, addresses, then something like ArcView is more suited for that application. It’s designed better for spatially centric applications. A database centric application, where maybe you’re in a building permit application, and you just want to make a quick display of where the conditional permits are, that type of application is well suited for MapObjects. Where you’re not really doing a lot of mapping, you just want to see spatially where the query your database (inaudible), where that information is. If you’re going to be entering it with a spatial, through a map context, ArcView is generally better, than if you’re like in a database application. In a form, in a corner you want to pop up a quick sketch of the parcel and the owner, then that would be a MapObjects.