Clients
Case Studies
Nothing shows Farallon's capabilities or commitment to customer satisfaction better than real-life case studies of our projects.
California ISO GIS and Transmission Information Display System
Challenge
The California ISO manages the transmission of electricity through the State's extensive network of high voltage lines. To manage the electrical grid in response to factors such as wild land fires and extreme weather, the ISO needed a complete and positionally accurate accurate representation of the grid from all of the State's primary electricity generators and transmitters.
Solution
Farallon developed a Unified GIS data model that merged the State's major power generators' GIS data into a single, consistent, validated, and audited database. It offers a broad array of online and offline visualization and mapping capabilities and can easily integrate future external databases.
Bay Area Air Quality Management District ESRI-based Enterprise GIS
Challenge
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District assesses the health risks associated with exposure to high concentrations of toxic air contaminants and comes up with a strategies to reduce risk to residents. They needed an efficient means of analyzing large volumes of data and a way to visually explain these results to policymakers and the public.
Solution
Farallon developed and implemented an enterprise-class GIS that provides BAAQMD with a central data repository to store and share data across the organization as well as perform targeted and visual analyses.
Automated integration between San Mateo County’s GIS and asset management system
Challenge
San Mateo County catalogs infrastructure assets and creates preventative maintenance schedules using Hansen's asset management software. Spatial data from their GIS could automatically update corresponding location information in the asset management system. However many data fields were derived using GIS tools and then had to be entered manually.
Solution
Farallon implemented a complete automated solution that would keep the two databases in sync for all types of data. This resulted in more complete and accurate data as well as an expected labor cost savings of almost 15 times the investment.
MTC StreetSaver PMS-GIS scalable web application
Challenge
Sonoma County had worked with Farallon to integrate their GIS with MTC StreetSaver pavement management system (PMS). MTC wanted to make this integrated GIS-PMS solution more widely accessible and asked Farallon to create a web-based implementation that would be used by Sonoma County and then extended to other Bay Area jurisdictions.
Solution
Farallon designed and deployed a custom web-based application which displays Streetsaver tabular reports along with a map highlighting corresponding street sections. The web-services XML based application will readily scale to accommodate other Bay Area counties and completely new applications.
MTC SAFE’s Bay Area Freeway Service Patrol fleet management evaluation
Challenge
MTC SAFE's Freeway Service Patrol Program uses an Automatic Vehicle Locator (AVL) system that allows the California Highway Patrol to verify that tow service trucks are at their designated locations. The FSP needed a comprehensive diagnosis of their existing telecommunications network, especially the AVL system.
Solution
Farallon examined the current software, provided diagnosis, made recommendations for technical and logistical improvements, and to develop and implement a fleet management program, as well as integrate with external incident management systems.
ISO Innovative Analytics risk management geoprocessing using Oracle Spatial
Challenge
ISO Innovative Analytics, a risk management insurance company, wanted to analyze massive amounts of unstructured historical data (both spatial and non-spatial ) in order to develop a flexible, customized and configurable nationwide set of potential risk factors. This would be used to improve the way insurance companies currently rate auto insurance policies.
Solution
Farallon developed a series of pre-processing services and custom data structures for the intensive geoprocessing using Oracle Spatial 10g. Tens of millions of individual policy locations were combined with historical claims records to determine predictive correlations between potential risk factors and location of policy holders.
Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) Oracle Spatial Transportation Asset Management
Challenge
UDOT maintenance division had developed an Oracle database with tabular reports to track and analyze Utah's 5,900 miles of roads and 250,000+ transportation-related assets. UDOT wanted to integrate this with a web-based map interface to make spatial and business data more accessible and allow for field verification techniques.
Solution
Farallon worked with UDOT to create an enterprise-wide spatial database building on their existing Oracle infrastructure. This allowed UDOT to pilot a spatially enabled transportation asset management system, without having to deploy a new or separate GIS.
King County, WA: Homeland Security Public Safety Portal Development
Challenge
King County, Washington needed to improve coordination of local emergency responders in the event of natural or man-made disasters using a Public Safety Portal. A critical requirement was for the portal to integrate large volumes of both spatial and non-spatial data.
Solution
As part of the team, Farallon designed and implemented a data model using Oracle Spatial to allow for quick cross-referencing between non-spatial data such as contingency plans with geographic location. This combined information could then be rapidly visualized in online or printed maps for pre-incident planning. .NET web services made it easy for County programmers to incorporate revisions.
Virgin River Watershed Habitat Conservation Plan
Challenge
Rapid population growth and development near the Virgin River Watershed area of Nevada required the city of Mesquite to develop a habitat conservation plan. They needed a way to visualize and plan around endangered species locations and ecological communities.
Solution
Farallon is creating a GIS web application using ArcIMS, .NET and custom web services to track and manage species' data including population and habitat location for the area's endangered species. Developers and planners can use the web interface to map out and work around threatened habitats.
Army Corp of Engineers projects analyzed by congressional district
Challenge
The Army Corp of Engineers is the nation's primary federal engineering agency responsible for tasks ranging from hazardous waste clean-ups to reservoir and dam maintenance. The ACOE needed an accessible way to track and manage project budgets in CA, NV and AZ by geography and congressional district.
Solution
Farallon created a web-based application that lets a user select a geographic area, congressional district, or watershed region and retrieve a list of all current projects in that selected area. Click on a project name and a popup window provides full project details.