Farallon Geographics integrates City of San Mateo’s GIS with Google Earth
Media Contact: Joe Metro Farallon Geographics, Inc. Tel.: 415-227-1140 x128 E-mail: jmetro (at) fargeo.com
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. Google Earth offered a simple and easy to use interface that is quickly understood by all users. However, the back end GIS was not able to deliver geospatial data directly to Google Earth. The City asked Farallon Geographics to build a prototype that integrates the two systems for real-time visualization and test the functionality and processing speed for public access.
“We wanted to use Google Earth because it is an interactive, intuitive and a fun interface but we needed the functionality of our enterprise GIS such as our high-resolution images and parcel information,” said Patrick Crevelt, GIS Coordinator for the City of San Mateo.
The City uses Intergraph’s GeoMedia family of GIS applications with a Microsoft SQL Server relational database back-end. Farallon Geographics developed a suite of web services to dynamically publish the City’s most current GIS data and high-resolution aerial photography to Google Earth. Using Microsoft’s .NET technology and GIS interoperability specifications developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), Farallon Geographics developed web services that stream GIS data in KML format directly to Google Earth.
Farallon Geographics’ approach will allow City staff and residents to easily visualize the most current GIS data using Google Earth while GIS professionals may simultaneously access the same data for more sophisticated analyses via the OGC services. Each type of user can view and manipulate the data in the way that is most meaningful and useful to them individually.
“We worked with Farallon Geographics because of their integration experience and understating of user interfaces. After we test drive this interface, I foresee adding Google Earth layers for bike routes, parks and other community information,” said Mr. Crevelt.
Click this link (http://www.fargeo.com/google-earth/) to view high resolution graphics showing comparison between GIS display, Google Earth display and Google Earth user interface driven by GIS back end.
About Farallon Geographics
Farallon Geographics (www.fargeo.com), based in San Francisco, is a leader in the planning, implementation, and integration of geospatial data and GIS systems to support mission critical business functions. As systems integrators focused on geographical data, Farallon provides unique and unbiased strategic and technical implementation services for enterprise-scale GIS.
