Case Studies on Web Applications
City of San Mateo Master Address Database
Challenge
Addresses are a key dataset used by the City of San Mateo to provide essential services. No single complete, accurate, and current address list existed within the City that could be used as the authoritative list of business and residential locations. This limited the ability for City departments to coordinate efforts and integrate information across business systems.
Solution
Farallon designed and deployed a Master Address Database (MAD) as a central authoritative service for all City departments. The MAD offers increased data availability, reduced errors and maintenance, elimination of duplicate data, and enhanced City services. Read more details...
Categories: Web Applications, Enterprise Mashups, GIS/IT Integration, Pavement Management, Asset Management Systems
Farallon assists with litigation support
Challenge
A California legal firm was handling a dispute over a large parcel of real estate located in rural California. They needed a way for a San Francisco jury to visualize the size of the property.
Solution
Farallon used publicly available parcel data for the relevant areas and overlaid these outlines on a Google Earth orthophotograph of the City of San Francisco to show the property size in relationship to the size of San Francisco. Read more details...
Categories: Web Applications, Property Review
City of Boston Redevelopment Authority: Web Based GIS Redevelopment Project Tracking Portal
Challenge
The Boston Redevelopment Authority manages the review process of City development projects. Over time, redevelopment related data had become spread across several independent databases making it difficult to integrate the data necessary to complete a formal redevelopment project review.
Solution
Farallon created a web application to integrate the City's permitting system with an enterprise databases using GIS . Fast and simple access to 2D & 3D maps, City GIS data, and project specific redevelopment information, was developed using web services to dynamically overlay GIS results onto Virtual Earth. Read more details...
Categories: Web Applications, Enterprise Mashups, GIS/IT Integration, Asset Management Systems
Contra Costa Economic Development website integrates spatially-aware database and MS Virtual Earth
Challenge
To promote economic development, Contra Costa County Community Development Department wanted a website to help real estate professionals and business owners search for properties available for development or new business locations.
Solution
Farallon developed an easy-to-use prototype "GIS Site Locator" website using Microsoft's Virtual Earth that dynamically queries geodata and broker information stored in Oracle Express. Users enter parameters such as price range and square footage to quickly find and display properties on a map along with photos and driving directions. An RSS feed automatically keeps users updated of relevant new properties. Read more details...
Categories: Web Applications, Enterprise Mashups, Property Review, GIS/IT Integration, Business Intelligence Systems, Geodatabase Design, Open Standards Solutions
Bay Area Geological Hazard Abatement Districts use GIS Mashup to Identify and Manage Critical Data
Challenge
San Francisco Bay Area Geological Hazard Abatement Districts (GHADs) manage risk related to property damage from potential landslides. They needed to analyze 15 years of quarterly data tracking water levels, angles of slopes that have been sliding, and homeowner reported cracks, in order to identify potential at-risk properties and proactively manage landslide risks.
Solution
Farallon created business rules in Oracle Express to determine locations that exceeded threshold levels for risk and then displayed these as markers in Google Earth along with links to supporting details. The GIS mashup provides an intuitive and powerful decision support system with low cost, high speed, and easy scalability. Read more details...
Categories: Web Applications, Enterprise Mashups, Geodatabase Design
Town of Hillsborough Enterprise Geodatabase Development
Challenge
The Town of Hillsborough had devoted time and resources to initiating a GIS on a departmental desktop-level basis. To minimize data duplicities, increase data accessibility, and make data manageable by Town staff, they needed an enterprise GIS implementation.
Solution
Farallon devised a three-part solution that included building a RDBMS- based enterprise GIS, developing two web-based GIS applications (property review and notification) and training Town staff to manage their data and applications. Read more details...
Categories: Web Applications, Notification, Geodatabase Design, Planning & Training, Training & Technology Transfer
City of San Mateo Google Earth integration with OGC compliant data
Challenge
The City of San Mateo uses a suite of GIS applications for staff to access geospatial data. The City wanted to provide more intuitive access to its GIS data and make it accessible to the public using the Google Earth interface. However, the back end GIS was not able to deliver geospatial data directly to Google Earth.
Solution
Farallon built a web service interface using .NET to translate data from the City's Intergraph GeoMedia WebMap server to a format usable by Google Earth. This allows a Google Earth user to view selected City GIS data such as high quality aerial imagery and point, linear, & polygonal features - all in real-time. Read more details...
Categories: Web Applications, Enterprise Mashups, Property Review, Geodatabase Design, Open Standards Solutions
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. Read more details...
Categories: Web Applications, GIS/IT Integration, Geodatabase Design, Network GIS
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. Read more details...
Categories: Web Applications, GIS/IT Integration, Pavement Management
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. Read more details...
Categories: Web Applications, GIS/IT Integration, Asset Management Systems, Geodatabase Design, GPS Field Data Collection, Planning & Training, Training & Technology Transfer