Data Issues and Municipal GIS/LIS Applications (Data Problems When Moving From Paper Paper To Electric Paper)

Prepared by: 
G.G. (Gerry) Tychon,
SPATIAL DATA SYSTEMS Consulting 

ABSTRACT

Municipalities implementing GIS/LIS technology often fail to fully appreciate the data requirements (both depth and breadth) associated with various applications. That is, what type and kind of data we need, to be able to efficiently do what we want, is not fully addressed. This applies to both the "novice municipalities" as well as some who have been "at it" for several years. The primary aim of this paper is to raise the profile of data issues. Discussion will focus on municipal applications often considered desirable, implications for the kind of data needed, and the relationships among the data. The power (and necessity) of data integration will be discussed and illustrated. Data sharing as part of corporate strategy will be included in the discussion. 

1 INTRODUCTION

GIS technology and associated applications revolve around the use of data. How successful projects and applications are is directly proportional to the quality of the data in the broadest sense. This includes accuracy of course, but also structure and meaning; internally -- within data sets -- and externally -- to other data sets. 

Often GIS applications are approached as various map problems rather than information problems. That is, how are maps going to be made with computers rather than how to manage and make effective use of "spatial" land related data in the municipal (digital) environment. In effect, people who have been making "paper paper" maps simply shift to making "electric paper" maps without taking into account larger issues. Instead of stacks of "paper paper" we have the equivalent stacks of "electric paper". While this was an appropriate (and in fact good) approach 10 to 15 years ago, this is no longer the case today. 

What is suggested here is that a paradigm shift must take place in the GIS municipal arena to treat GIS data and applications from an information management point of view rather than paper drafting or map product point of view. It is also important that information management be viewed from a corporate perspective rather than as discrete applications which are often technology led and/or focused on a particular process or task. The purpose is to avoid a "symptomatic" approach (to use a medical analogy) to implementation and data management. 

2 APPLICATION AREAS

Municipalities, in general, provide a wide variety of services related to the provision of basic services (sewer, water, waste disposal, streets, etc.), safety (fire, crime, health), recreation (parks, arenas), and so on. In support of these services a municipality collects taxes, maintains facilities, processes permits, performs inspections, etc., and must maintain a large variety of records. The vast majority of these services and administrative functions relate to a specific location. Past studies have shown that the great majority of all municipal information handling is land related.  

This variety of services and activities can be broken down and categorized into a number of broad areas, not necessarily totally exclusive of each other. These include: 

Emergency Planning and Response
Application/use of GIS technology for disaster and emergency response; notification -- toxic gas leaks, flooding; etc. 

Environmental Planning and Impact Assessment
Applications involving siting (e.g., waste locations); hazardous route planning; impact analysis of potentially harmful activities (factory, processing plant). 

Health Care and Epidemiology Research
Applications involving distribution and delivery of health services; location and spread of infectious diseases (e.g., spatial clustering of cancer -- relationship to environmental factors). 

Land Records/Property Management
Applications to assist in the administration of property boundaries, ownership, assessment, taxation, etc. 

Permits and Inspections
Applications to track and manage permit and inspection activities for a given properties. Reports (for development) and statistics can be produced. 

Planning
GIS technology used to facilitate planning functions. This can include: the subdivision process; design and enforcement of bylaws; land use planning. 

Transportation Planning and Research
GIS can be used to maintain road and street improvement records for maintenance scheduling. In conjunction with a land records database, a GIS can facilitate: production of street improvement maps; schedule road improvements with other activities; provide notification to residents of the interruption of services and road closures; determine what land uses and facilities are adjacent to a given street segment; provide a base for research and setting of transportation priorities. 

Utilities and Facilities Management
Applications can include monitoring and planning the layout of pipelines, cable networks, the location of facilities, transmission lines. Also inventory pertaining to utilities and facilities; maintenance records. 

Mapping and Drafting
Not to be ignored is the basic application to provide graphic (visual) products. This includes: municipal maps, report maps and sketches, subdivision plans, business graphics and graphic arts for reports and presentation material. This is considered the most basic of overall GIS technology and allows for the map production and map maintenance process to be automated. Is usually a component, in one way or another, of all other applications.  

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Base Application
It should be noted that most applications require a lands/property/parcel application as a base.
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Within the context of the various overall applications, a number of specific land related tasks can be performed or assisted with the use of GIS technology. Examples of these are:

acquire and dispose of property
administer bylaws
data exchange with other agencies
dispatch emergency vehicles - fire, maintenance, etc. 
drafting - computer assisted
engineering studies - assist
facilities planning - location, design, maintenance
inspections - planning, tracking
inventory of utilities and facilities 
land use and facilities determination. 
landscaping
licences - issuing
maintenance records - the maintaining of
mapping - computer assisted
notification to residents (improvements/closures).
permits - issuing and tracking 
reporting and information dissemination in general roads - repairs, pavement management
site plans - review, approve
street fixtures - repairs, siting
street improvements - scheduling, coordinating, maps
street naming and addressing
subdivision planning
work orders - issuing
zoning bylaws - determination and administration

In summary, GIS technology provides the capability to store and correlate a variety of data on the basis of geographical location. It becomes possible to relate many records, activities and events from a single geographic feature, location or region to each other. From a single geographic database and an integrated set of GIS applications it is possible to coordinate many activities including: property assessment, tax billing, notification, and utilities maintenance. GIS technology provides a mechanism for bringing about greater efficiency and effectiveness for land and infrastructure administration. This is especially important in the current economic climate where most municipalities have a limited number of staff with which to perform the myriad land related functions. Even large municipalities are under pressure to be more efficient with existing staff and individual staff members must often perform many functions. 

3 SOME EXAMPLES

Given that we have such a broad range of applications and tasks, what kind of data problems tend to occur? Below follow some illustrative examples of applications and common problems which occur. 

Notification
Is often a legal requirement. May be necessary for road closures and repairs; utilities construction and repairs; hazardous site conditions, etc. Also do not want to over-notify which can lead to higher costs. 

Problems:
> no proper and consistent municipal address base.
> no linkage to municipal address base.

Taxation/Assessment
A fundamental municipal operation.

Problems:
> parcel base created by one department has no linkage to assessment data in other department.
> spatial objects representing parcel base have no structure facilitating linkage.

Emergency Planning
Problems:
> no data.

Infectious Diseases Reporting
Problems:
> no address to coordinate conversion data or linkage.
> no data units for aggregation.

Dispatch of Emergency Vehicles
Problems:
> no proper municipal address base.
> no proper street network -- comprehensive; structured.
> no linkage of addresses to street network or properties.
> no linkage of street network to parcels/properties. 

Pavement Management
Problems:
> no proper street network.

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Underlying Problem Themes:
Common underlying problems usually encountered consist of missing data; missing linkages between existing data; existing data has inappropriate structure. 

4 LOOKING AT DATA

There can be many factors which hinder our effective use of data and the integration of data. Often, within the municipal environment these are organizational. But, just as often, our use of data can be hindered by our understanding or conceptualizing of the data. Examples illustrating this follow. 

How we categorize and label data
There are many types of land related records. In simple terms, land related records can be viewed as consisting of three components: property or land; structures -- the built component; and people. Often in initial GIS technology implementation, a categorization of existing and needed data takes place. It is important in this process not to confuse the information component with the technology component (the technology available or currently being used) or with the end products which will be produced. There is a tendency to categorize and label data according to points, lines, and areas since the technology may be orientated in this manner. Design should be at a level independent of technology.  

Out of sight, Out of mind
An examination of GIS municipal applications reveals that a variety of data components must be considered when implementing an application if downstream functionality is to be obtained. Often, when design and implementation of a specific application occurs, not all data components are carefully considered. This seems to be especially true of nominal geocoding and linking data. A good example of this is the municipal addressing system. It provides both nominal geocoding (geocoding which is not precise) and linkage between most of a municipalities land related records. 

Apples and Oranges
Some barriers to data understanding involves the "mixing" of different concepts. This can result in poor data description or in extreme cases poor application design and implementation. Items subject to misunderstanding (or misconceptualizing) include: Scale; Topology; and the notion of "Graphics". 

Scale 
The ratio or relationship of the distance on a map, chart, or photograph to the corresponding distance on the ground -- the real world. Data does not have scale -- data has varying degrees of accuracy and precision. Maps and the visual representation of geographic data has scale. 

Topology 
The way in which geographic elements relate to each other. All data has topology. Topology is encoded in different ways depending upon vendor system. How topology is encoded depends upon what efficiencies the vendor is hoping to achieve with their system. 

"Graphics" 
Representation of a spatial entity; basic graphical elements used to draw (render) images. "We have graphics and we have data." -- users infer their systems have graphics and have data -- "graphics" is a picture of the data. The representation of data should not be confused with the data itself. To do so can cause extremely poor system/application implementations. 

5 DATA INTEGRATION/ DATA SHARING

DATA INTEGRATION As can be seen from previous discussion, it is by taking and using -- that is integrating -- different information that we are able to accomplish most of the significant applications considered desirable. It is data integration which provides municipal GIS with underlying "strength". We have to be able to integrate data if the applications and products desired are to be effective and be able to operate on a day to day basis and not be "one offs" or take a week to accomplish with the development of special software each and every time. 

DATA SHARING -- A CORPORATE STRATEGY 

Given that we believe that to maximize the utility of our data we have to be able to integrate it, the implication is that data sharing is necessary. We must be able to share the data between the various components of the organization, especially if we are to avoid the concept of "islands of automation" applying to the data. Thus it is imperative that data sharing as a corporate strategy be considered.

Why?

The reason data sharing should occur within the context of an organizational plan is quite simply cost. Cost in terms of saved money, saved time, greater success, and greater capability. In fact data sharing is one of the few significant ways to reduce implementation costs. Specifics often mentioned include: data is captured once and only once; there is increased functional capabilities; there is the possibility for greater data reliability -- better data, more consistent data; better data security; technological freedom. 

Suggested Organizational Strategy

It has been shown that centralized coordination with distributed responsibility is an effective means to implement a data sharing strategy. This requires overall leadership which is not directive and which ensures that all concerned voices are heard. Often, this type of organizational strategy can be realized by the use of appropriate management and technical committees. 

A good strategic plan must take into account the organizations: functional requirements; existing resources; product requirements (with priority assigned); and source data. An analysis of quality and accessibility of source data must be performed. Adequate and reasonable time must be allowed for staff to accomplish meaningful results. It is an important part of the plan to assess needs. It is not possible to intelligently determine requirements without first investigating needs. In the words of S. Holmes/A.C. Doyle, "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." 

Standards/Specifications

It should be noted that for effective data sharing and integration to occur it will be necessary to implement standards or specifications. Sometimes standards and specifications are viewed negatively because there is a perceived loss of autonomy or loss of flexibility. Often the opposite is true -- the user is freed from much pain and aggravation. The important point is that "self-interest" should prevail. It should be cheaper to adhere to specifications than to ignore them. 

Specifications can apply to many aspects of the data which is to be integrated/shared. A few examples are: terminology; definitions of data items and models; accuracy; representation and display; access; consistency. 

6 CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the most important point to stress is that users should approach data and GIS implementations from an information management point of view. Users should not confuse the structure of the data with output products generated or with technology.  

For applications to be successful (or in some cases even possible) consideration for all of the data components needed as well as consideration for data necessary for integration (data glue) must be contemplated in initial implementation planning. The real benefits from municipal GIS flow from data integration which should be part of a corporate data sharing strategy. 

On a more fundamental level, what is proposed is that a shift in paradigm take place. A paradigm is the framework by which we approach, understand, describe, and solve problems. The emergence of a new paradigm affects the whole structure of how we practice in a field. The GIS/LIS field is maturing and, as such, we are developing a new and more unified approach to data use and structuring (a new paradigm) than was the case in the past.