Wyndham City Council Further Enhances its Residents Geographic Information with an Enterprise GIS Solution

May 16, 2013
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About Wyndham
Located in southwest Melbourne, the city of Wyndham is home to a diversity of sectors – strong industrial and technology districts, two major retail precincts, expansive vegetable farms, and grazing lands. Wyndham covers about 542 square kilometers of land on a coastal plain.

Identifying Goals
Wyndham City Council serves a population of 184,190 people, which is expected to grow to 300,000 by 2026. Rapid population growth, coupled with the diverse business activities of the city, has increased demand for spatial services exponentially. To sustain the demands of a fast-growing municipality, the Council developed an information technology (IT) strategy to improve the processes and efficiencies of its business operations. The strategy outlines growth and direction of IT at the Council, and provides a framework for effective management of IT investments.
 
Major deficiencies identified in the current application environment included disparate and standalone systems, complex interfaces, redundant data, and high support costs. Additionally, a number of core systems had reached the end of their useful lives, warranting a closer look at upgrading them.
 
GIS is a key system for the display and interrogation of corporate data, particularly property and asset related data. The Spatial Systems Unit planned an upgrade of GeoMedia and GeoMedia WebMap to provide an accurate and current GIS for all staff, and empower them to obtain information seamlessly, while catering to the future changes to other corporate systems.
 
Overcoming Challenges
  • Closely integrate GIS with other corporate systems and embed in the corporate intranet, in-house applications, and multiple external sites
  • Create easy access to property information across multiple, heavily integrated corporate systems
  • Involve numerous upper-level staff to better engage GIS for strategic decision-making and data analysis
  • Adopt a holistic approach to accommodate a large number of maps, customized tools, and features
Realizing Results
Intergraph has supported Wyndham City Council since 2006 and throughout its recent upgrade. This upgrade enabled advanced cartographic options, like the ability to render vector maps using Adobe Flash and WebMap Publisher.
 
Intergraph also collaborated with the Council to develop multiple tools and features to suit its needs. These include clearer map views and an easily accessible, integrated property information window that pulls data from disparate corporate systems. Since many Council services are property-based, the customized property information windows are displayed based on the selected map. The windows display static and dynamic information generated through spatial queries and operations, aerial snapshots of the property, and links to other property-centric applications. The complete customized solution is known as WynMap.
 
The Council also used GeoMedia Objects to build Property Connect, an application that enables users to quickly ascertain the nearest features of a selected property. The application provides information about a selected feature, such as its direction, location and contact details. End-users can access Property Connect directly from WynMap, as well as from the Council’s corporate intranet.
 
Internal staff surveys held by the Council helped identify that most end-users wanted faster map loading, cartographic user-friendliness and updated data. The GeoMedia WebMap upgrade reduced the average map loading and processing time by more than 24 percent. Additional rendering features and easily customizable icons improved end-user experience, reduced the number of maps required by the Spatial Systems Unit, and increased map printing across business units (averaging 80 per day).
 
To improve user confidence in spatial data and embed better data management practices, Intergraph developed an in-house spatial management tool that leverages GeoMedia to populate data management plans with information, such as coverage area, attribute information, feature counts, feature types, and the ability to modify information.
 
Moving Forward
Wyndham City will continue its journey toward an enterprise solution that will lead to integrated spatial enablement organizationwide. At present, the Council is committed to the ongoing development and implementation of an enterprise GIS.
 
With rapid advancement of mobile computing and e-services, Wyndham City Council will continue to develop self-service applications and expand web-mapping capabilities.
 
Figure 1: WynMap Main Screen showing customized toolbar and the Ajax-based Address Search (click for larger image)
Figure 2. Customized Property Information window presenting dynamically created attribute information and linked applications. (click for larger image)
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