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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.
