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Page 26
Suggested Citation:"Chapter V - Defining the System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. Guide for Implementing a Geospatially Enabled Enterprise-wide Information Management System for Transportation Agency Real Estate Offices. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14504.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter V - Defining the System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. Guide for Implementing a Geospatially Enabled Enterprise-wide Information Management System for Transportation Agency Real Estate Offices. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14504.
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Page 28
Suggested Citation:"Chapter V - Defining the System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. Guide for Implementing a Geospatially Enabled Enterprise-wide Information Management System for Transportation Agency Real Estate Offices. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14504.
×
Page 28
Page 29
Suggested Citation:"Chapter V - Defining the System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. Guide for Implementing a Geospatially Enabled Enterprise-wide Information Management System for Transportation Agency Real Estate Offices. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14504.
×
Page 29
Page 30
Suggested Citation:"Chapter V - Defining the System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. Guide for Implementing a Geospatially Enabled Enterprise-wide Information Management System for Transportation Agency Real Estate Offices. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14504.
×
Page 30
Page 31
Suggested Citation:"Chapter V - Defining the System." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. Guide for Implementing a Geospatially Enabled Enterprise-wide Information Management System for Transportation Agency Real Estate Offices. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14504.
×
Page 31

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

26 It is important that you understand what you want from the system as you define it. Are you primarily looking for a tool to effectively manage the information associated with right-of-way activities or are you looking for a digital work environment that captures and supports business processes? Are you completely redesigning a system or enhancing an existing system, such as adding geospatial capabilities? Are you expanding another agency system to incorporate right- of-way activities? Do you want to incorporate decision support tools? Does your office work on local desktop computers or on agency servers through the Internet/intranet? These questions should be answered when you define your requirements. Understanding these requirements in conjunction with how you want to meet them is the basis for actual design and development of the system. This chapter is designed to review different criteria and to provide guidance on how you can use the 8-55A logical model. Role of Workflow Management How work is performed in your office will provide important input to the design of your system. Factors to consider include: • Does your state centralize its right-of-way activities or are they delegated to the regions with the central office providing oversight? • Are right-of-way activities performed by staff, contractors, or a combination of both? • What functions are performed in each area of your office? • How do you manage workloads? • How do you handle approvals? • Do you have internal performance measures that need to be tracked and reported? • Who responds to owners or people being relocated when they call? Who responds to the public? If you are considering a system that provides an electronic work environment, you will need to capture the business processes that are performed by each area in your office to ensure the same functionality is provided in the system. The 8-55A logical model includes the business processes identified from FHWA’s Project Development Guide. Technical Architecture (Type of System) The specific architecture of the system will be determined based on your requirements, capabilities, and the type of system that you want. Whether you want a user-friendly ledger-entry type interface to a comprehensive enterprise database or a customized front-end to a system built on service-oriented architecture will define how the design moves forward. Regardless, you will C H A P T E R V Defining the System

Defining the System 27 want your system to be accessible, scalable, and reliable. Conceptually, the system will be composed of four logical components: user interface, application, data, and security. User Interface The user interface needs to be straightforward and understandable by each person for his/her own activities. Navigation between “pages” should be intuitive or easily learnable. Users should be able to get to the information they need easily in as few steps as possible. Application In the current technical environment, you will probably design the application to reside on a server that is then accessed remotely through the Internet/intranet. This structure typi- cally consists of a web server, a development server, an application server, and the database server. You should work with your IT department to define the structure that best meets your needs. The software residing on the web server manages connectivity and supports resource management—directly affecting system performance. This is extremely important for rapid access to the underlying databases and should be designed to accommodate the expected number of simultaneous database connections. The application server hosts the actual application and executes user processes and requests from client software. If you are doing the development in-house, you will want a development server separate from the application server. This is where you make changes to the software and test it prior to launching it onto the application server. After you have implemented the system, the development server is used for adding upgrades and correcting problems. Data The database server houses the database software as well as the data. In a distributed environment, the data may reside on multiple computers or servers throughout the agency, which are then usually managed by the database software from the server for specific applications. Security Security is important at several levels of the enterprise architecture including the network, the application, and the data. Security should be carefully implemented to protect your investment while meeting accessibility needs. Additional Considerations When defining the characteristics of your system, several factors are important to consider. Compatibility and scalability issues include the following: • Internet/intranet accessibility including speed and connection types • Firewalls and security management • Use of copyrighted and proprietary data/files • Data sharing capabilities, such as XML • Validation of data entry • Workflow management • Wireless support

• Accessibility standards compliance • Use of non-proprietary/portable software code, such as Java or .Net, where possible. Other factors you should consider in defining your system include the following: • Every agency starts at a different point in the development process and approaches that process differently. • Building a system using internal resources has different constraints and requirements than working with a consultant to build a system. • Where your agency is with respect to the use of technology and willingness to embrace new approaches, hardware, and software will impact how you move forward. Starting Point Although not exhaustive, the following cases present some common starting points: I. Your office does not have centralized information management capability and is developing a full geospatially enabled enterprise information management system or is totally replacing an existing system that is no longer responsive to current needs. II. Your office wants to add geospatial capabilities to an existing enterprise information management system. III. Your agency has an enterprise geospatial capability (a GIS warehouse, agency-wide geo- database, or geospatial data service) and you want to incorporate it into your information management system. In this case, the term enterprise indicates the ability to access geospatial data through the Internet/intranet. Case I For the first case, you are starting, more or less, from scratch. This case gives you the most flexibility. Following the guidance provided in Appendix B, you can use all or part of the 8-55A logical model as the backbone to build your system. If you are creating your own business processes, you have the ability to extract activities from the model with their corresponding components to incorporate in your process. Case II The second case is a common condition for states that have an information management system in place. The 8-55A logical model provides a specific component that includes just the geospatial functionality, called “geospatial decision making activities” (GDMA). Although it is impractical to provide a step-by-step link from this model to an existing information management system, the structure clearly identifies the data necessary to support status tracking and activities that could benefit from geospatial analysis. These data elements and activities are connected back to the overall model in the 8-55A logical model so that the source is identifiable for inclusion in your system design. Case III The third case can be considered from two perspectives. One perspective is similar to the first case in that you are designing your system and linking to the agency geospatial system. As with the first case, you will work closely with the manager of the GIS data to provide the appropriate connections from the data to your functionality. The second perspective is from 28 Guide for Implementing a Geospatially Enabled Enterprise-wide Information Management System

Defining the System 29 your right-of-way office that is using a GIS and wants to build right-of-way business function- ality behind the geospatial interface. With this case, you can use the 8-55A logical model for ac- tivities that are not associated with GIS or are just passing status attributes directly to an exist- ing GIS to build functionality. For geospatial activities, you can use the model as a reference to program additional functions into the GIS interface as desired. Data Structure Transportation agencies have extensive data and most have migrated to one or more enterprise database systems such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, or IBM Informix to manage these data. When you identify your capabilities, which system to use is probably already determined by your agency, or possibly, your state. As part of the design phase, you will create a data architecture for your system. The architecture should include descriptions of the following: • Data in storage • Data in motion • Data stores • Data groups • Data items • Mappings of those data artifacts to applications, locations Appendix D provides the initial data architecture that evolved from the 8-55A logical model development. Geospatial Capabilities Geospatial capabilities have become available in a multitude of different areas within trans- portation agencies. Historically, GIS has been prevalent in planning offices as represented by where the GIS office often exists in an agency’s organization chart. With the rapid changes in technology from desktop to cloud applications and from localized to centralized or distributed data management, GIS has become more accessible to personnel and functions across every aspect of transportation including right-of-way activities. Given the ready availability of on-line spatial visualization tools such as Google Maps and Earth and Microsoft Globe, you already have access to some capabilities. If your agency has a license with one of these providers, you can provide functionality that interfaces with these tools to display your geospatial information on top of their underlying imagery and layers. You should note that these tools do not support more advanced geospatial analyses. If you have access to a GIS such as Esri’s ArcGIS, Bentley’s Microstation, or Caliper’s TransCAD, you will be able to include GIS in your system. However, the one geographic feature that can limit a geospatial system’s usefulness—the availability of a statewide parcel, or cadastral dataset— can be a difficult obstacle to overcome. Some options that you might consider are outlined in the following paragraphs. State GIS Office You can partner with your state GIS office to build your state cadastre layer. This process will probably be time consuming and potentially expensive unless other agencies are also supporting the effort.

Taxing and Other Agencies You can consider partnering with your state’s taxing agencies or other jurisdictional entities if they have a geospatial parcel layer. This option can be challenging for several reasons including the number of agencies involved, difficulty in identifying who has geospatial layers, and the need to work out mutually acceptable agreements. Point Locations If you have access to a comprehensive list of properties that include a set of coordinates or other readily geo-locatable information representing their locations, you can use this to create a point layer within your GIS and then use the points in place of boundaries for many geospatial activities. Your Own Parcel Layer It is usually impractical for a state transportation agency to create and maintain a statewide parcel layer. Although less than ideal, you can work with your engineering and mapping group to extract parcels from the right-of-way maps for new projects and add those parcels to a parcel layer that you have created as part of your system on a project-by-project basis. Applications exist that can convert CADD drawings to GIS or, in some cases, interact directly between the two sys- tems. You will need to add the associated information about owner and other attributes that you specify in the design. Using this method limits the dataset to only those parcels that are part of a transportation project; so again, your functionality will be limited. This approach may not meet the standards set by the Federal Geospatial Data Committee for a cadastral layer of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, so it should be used with care for other purposes. Document Management Document management should not be confused with reporting. A document management system is a computer system used to track and store electronic documents and/or images of hardcopy documents. Reporting systems are used to generate readable reports from various data sources. In many cases, these reports will be stored in the document management system, but these two systems are distinct. Most right-of-way activities include a multitude of documents to meet legal, auditing, or business needs and requirements. These documents may come from other agencies or offices, such as titles, tax records, or right-of-way design drawings, or they may be generated by business activities in the right-of-way office, such as a certificate of appraisal or a written offer to an owner. As with databases, many transportation agencies have implemented an enterprise document management system which should be leveraged. If such a system is not available, including a system in the design is worth consideration given the benefits of near-instant desktop access by any approved stakeholder; the ability to search for documents using key words, names, dates, or other attributes beyond project and parcel numbers; reducing the possibility of misfiling or not re-filing a document; freeing up physical storage space; and, with appropriate backup procedures, eliminating the possibility of loss due to fire or flood, etc. Remember that the document management system contains only those documents that have been entered into it. Your agency may or may not have invested in adding historical documents (documents from before the implementation) to the system. Any documents prior to that time will still be in hardcopy and you will want a way to reference their location if those documents are necessary to your business. 30 Guide for Implementing a Geospatially Enabled Enterprise-wide Information Management System

Defining the System 31 Reporting Although reporting may seem a minimal design consideration, it has the potential to be one of the items most responsible for project creep. You will want to define the critical documents and reports that are necessary for your business activities and ensure these are included in the technical design. You will also want to create a running collection of desired reports that you identify during the implementation process and after the system is in place. The 8-55A logical model does not explicitly address reporting although it does include required documents as identified in the FHWA Project Development Guide.

Next: Chapter VI - Developing an Implementation Plan »
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TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 695: Guide for Implementing a Geospatially Enabled Enterprise-wide Information Management System for Transportation Agency Real Estate Offices provides guidance for right-of-way offices in implementing a geospatially enabled enterprise-wide information management system and includes a logical model to assist with this implementation.

NCHRP Reort 695 presents the guide for implementing the logical model; a CD-ROM, included with the print version of the report, presents the logical model and a guide for its use. The annotated bibliography and executive summaries are available online.

The contractor's final report, which documents the research related to development of NCHRP Report 695, may be downloaded from the NCHRP Project 8-55A web page.

The CD-ROM is also available for download from TRB’s website as an ISO image. Links to the ISO image and instructions for burning a CD-ROM from an ISO image are provided below.

Help on Burning an .ISO CD-ROM Image

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CD-ROM Disclaimer - This software is offered as is, without warranty or promise of support of any kind either expressed or implied. Under no circumstance will the National Academy of Sciences or the Transportation Research Board (collectively “TRB’) be liable for any loss or damage caused by the installation or operation of this product. TRB makes no representation or warranty of any kind, expressed or implied, in fact or in law, including without limitation, the warranty of merchantability or the warranty of fitness for a particular purpose, and shall not in any case be liable for any consequential or special damages.

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