INTEGRATION OF GIS COMPONENTS IN URBAN

MANAGEMENT APPLICATIONS

Liliana Dobrica, Traian Ionescu

Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers, University Politehnica of Bucharest

Spl. Independentei 313, Bucharest, Romania

Elena Sofia Colesca

Faculty of Public Administration, Academy of Economic Studies, Piata Romana, Bucharest, Romania

Keywords: Information systems, GIS, Urban management, Analysis, Components, Reusability.

Abstract: This article describes the main functionality that can be included in GIS-based subsystems to be integrated

in urban management applications. Our contribution is the description for the first time at the conceptual

level of several GIS –based components identified in existent solutions to problems required by the needs of

integrated urban management and increased urban quality of life. Analysis of these solutions provides a

considerable potential to reduce development difficulties since it makes possible for less experienced

software architects and analysts to reuse knowledge that has been tested and validated previously.

1 INTRODUCTION

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are used in

various domains such as natural environment,

transportation, public administration, and others. On

each of these it is indispensable to create a

conceptual architecture for a given problem so that

the application requirements can be related to a

determined one. The concerned area within the

urban management is the city, which is shaped by its

own natural and built environment. It has road

routes, constructions, open areas, climate,

vegetation, population, and others. A city is a

dynamic, living body where deep differences exist

and need to be managed on behalf of its population’s

quality of life (Longley et al., 2001). Traditional

representation systems, as the maps, are static even

if made by a computer (CAD systems) because they

represent the situation in the time they were

produced. A GIS can generate dynamic maps

keeping the reality evolution record from data

collected in administrative tasks. To do so,

management needs to see the city as a whole, putting

aside its different visions and actions over the city. It

is unique and sensitive to time changes (Johannesson

and Wohed, 1999).Urban management has grown

interest into GIS use due to the needs of integrated

city management and to increase urban quality of

life. However, the first challenge is getting human

resources with technical skills to design, implement

and maintain systems using GIS technology

(Crisman, 1997). This is even more serious with

users. Even an expert user usually faces significant

difficulties using GIS tools. (Maziero et al., 2006).

In the development of quality-based software

architectures with concerns regarding integration

into domain and reusability the first observed feature

is the great potential to reuse previous solutions

(Dobrica and Colesca, 2007) (Dobrica and Ionescu,

2000). In urban management application domain the

reuse solutions may be either from different

departments inside the same administration, or even

from different administrations (Dobrica, 2007).

Analysis of these solutions provides a considerable

potential to reduce these difficulties since it makes

possible for less experienced software architects and

analysts to reuse knowledge that has been tested and

validated previously. In urban management the basic

environment that compose the digital cartographic

base may be reused by several applications.

GIS applications have some special

requirements, but they must be developed using the

same processes as any other information system

(Lisboa et al, 1999, 2002) (Brisaboa et al., 2007).

Dobrica L., Ionescu T. and Colesca S. (2009).

INTEGRATION OF GIS COMPONENTS IN URBAN MANAGEMENT APPLICATIONS.

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Software and Data Technologies, pages 75-78

DOI: 10.5220/0002260200750078

 SciTePress

One of the many processes that are receiving

attention is the use of a domain knowledge base that

allow software components reuse, which is mainly

the domain analysis community.

This paper analyzes several solutions applicable

to requirement analysis and conceptual architecture

modelling stages. Section 2 presents GIS technology

concerns in the context of urban management

application domain. Section 3 presents and analysis

solutions of GIS components integrated in urban

management information systems. Five solutions are

described and analyzed based on a comparison

framework. They were identified by researching in

the literature of the urban management applications

domains. Section 4 is a discussion regarding the

development and execution environments. It

presents possible criteria to be considered when

these environments must be decided. The last

section concludes with the main contributions and

the perspectives over future work.

2 GIS IN URBAN MANAGEMENT

A geographic information system (GIS) is a

technological tool for comprehending geography and

making intelligent decisions.

Figure 1: A map document of a Romanian city with

several data layers.

GIS organizes geographic data so that a person

reading a map can select data necessary for a

specific project or task (Figure 1). A thematic map

has a table of contents that allows the reader to add

layers of information to a basemap of real-world

locations. With an ability to combine a variety of

datasets in an infinite number of ways, GIS is a

useful tool for nearly every field of knowledge. GIS

maps are interactive. On the computer screen, map

users can scan a GIS map in any direction, zoom in

or out, and change the nature of the information

contained in the map. They can choose whether to

see the roads, how many roads to see, and how roads

should be depicted. Then they can select what other

items they wish to view alongside these roads such

as gas lines, rare plants, or hospitals. Some GIS

programs are designed to perform complex

calculations for tracking storms or predicting erosion

patterns. GIS applications can be embedded into

common activities such as verifying an address.

Implementing a complex computer system in a

large organization is challenging. Ensuring that each

work process is clearly understood and modelled

accurately requires a lot of time and attention.

Complex implementations often get delayed and

sometimes completely stalled from lack of industry,

product, and system experience. Several methods are

considered to ensure success when implementing

new business systems. Among the most important

works we can mention the efforts of the Open

Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and ISO standards in

defining software components to be reusable in

many GIS applications (ISO/IEC 19101, 2002)

(ISO/IEC 19107, 2003).

3 COMPONENTS AND URBAN

APPLICATIONS

This section is a description of reusable solutions

that could be considered for GIS-based technology

subsystems for urban management.

3.1 Work Order Management

In order to design this subsystem an important factor

to consider is the decomposition in units of the

organization of the public department. The

components of the subsystem are: Concrete

Operations Component, Alley Lighting Component,

Streets Inspection Component and Streets Repairing

Component. The last mentioned component has been

conceptually obtained by extending functional

features of the Concrete Operations Component.

3.2 GIS for a Development City

The functionality of this subsystem is customized for

searching for parcels, closest hydrants, plans, streets,

and engineering drawings; viewing sale deeds and

drawings; report generation; and creating mail-

merged letters for notification. The application

consists of four main components. Component for

ICSOFT 2009 - 4th International Conference on Software and Data Technologies

Municipal Officials is obtained through a

customization of the application framework that is

provided by the integrated development platform.

The customization must satisfy the requirements of

municipal officials. Component for public access

consists of Web sites for public access. Component

for emergency management services is design based

on the component libraries provided by the

integrated development platform. The Fire

Inspection Component implements the logic of an

user interface that lets fire inspectors without any

GIS training or experience easily add data.

3.3 Management of the Natural

Resources

The management of the natural resources requires

maintenance, protection, and replacement of trees

(ESRI, 2006). Also it requires the identification of

hazards, such as dead branches that overhang

parking spots, streets, or sidewalks, and the remedy

of these hazards in a timely manner before they

cause injury or damage to property. Examples of

hazard identification are locations where tree roots

are lifting sidewalks and driveways, situation

especially important to the elderly. Mainly the GIS

Subsystem for Urban Management performs a

detailed and comprehensive street trees inventory.

The inventory tracks data regarding species, size,

location, and tree condition. It is important that this

information must be easily accessible for managing

the maintenance priorities of the tree crews.

3.4 Analysis of Urban Traffic

A GIS-based traffic analysis subsystem may produce

spatially oriented diagrams of accidents where they

happened, whether at intersections or midblock.

Midblock accidents are accidents that occur between

intersections. In order to provide such a capability

this subsystem must query a database for all the

accidents that have occurred at a selected

intersection or midblock location. The data stored in

the database contains all the characteristics of an

accident, including accident type, vehicle direction

of travel, street names, vehicle manoeuvres, and so

on. The subsystem analyzes each accident and

places it in the appropriate location on the map. The

map view can include any additional features that

the analysts want to evaluate. These features might

include edge of pavement, road centerlines, or signs.

An urban traffic analysis subsystem help to improve

the safety of the citizens and the function of the city

roads by providing an accurate diagram of the places

where these occur and by identifying factors that

contribute to their occurrence.

3.5 Workflows and Data Management

A new organizational strategy moves geographic

information system (GIS) functionality away from

desktop software and onto the Web (Colesca and

Dobrica, 2008)(ESRI, 2007). This makes the

management of updates and adjustments to the GIS

easier. Four components are considered. These are

Inspector Activity List Component, Public Works

Management Component, Thematic Map Generator

Component, and Mailing Address Report

Component. Public Works Management Component

is obtained by generalizing Gas Valve Maintenance

Component. Thematic Map Generator Component

provides a Web accessible user interface. The first

two components give access to property and utility

data, respectively. The third component creates real-

time maps of utility assets, and the last on is used to

notify residents of upcoming construction.

4 DISCUSSIONS

The selection of the development environment for

the GIS-based subsystems depends on the

achievement of the following important

technological constraints: (1) it should allow the

integration of the current Web practices into the

components of the GIS subsystem; (2) it should

provide access to a library that enables the creation

of a customized GIS component that solves

problems; (3) it should provide users the ability to

manage map layouts so they can control and

manipulate maps effectively. Also the integrated

development platform is established such that it

allows seamless integration and interoperability with

various database technologies.

Execution environment selection is another issue

of concern. A decision regarding this must consider

the reuse of existent assets of the current information

system of the organization (for example, the reuse of

the data server that contains databases of other

applications). Execution environment selection may

consider a mobile one (laptops, PDAs) and wireless

communication solutions. Some of GIS components

are designed to provide Web access to the city

citizens that can use them for various services such

as information retrieval or to send requests regarding

public domain quality usage. Subsystems that

integrate GIS-based technology often require a

INTEGRATION OF GIS COMPONENTS IN URBAN MANAGEMENT APPLICATIONS

higher level experienced personal. Under this

circumstances training activities must be planned.

Data models for urban management applications

are customized based on a general model. All data

are stored in the relational database. So, the data

transfer among standalone software applications can

be realized directly through database connections.

Since the relational database supports relationships

between its tables, feature-to-feature spatial

connections can be set up among the GIS data layers

together with linking and joining of external data

tables

5 CONCLUSIONS

In urban management information systems there is a

high potential of reuse of solutions that have been

applied with success in other departments of the

same organization or other cities. One particular

property of GIS subsystems is that usually the data

handled by these subsystems have a strong

relationship among each other, because they

describe geographic phenomena about one specific

geographic region. The data type set that usually

creates the geographic data for one GIS subsystem

has a conceptual structure alike other GIS

subsystems. This particular property makes GIS

subsystems strong candidates to benefit from reuse

of existing designs.

Our study has an immense potential to improve

municipal management applications using GIS, as

well as reduce time and therefore costs in stages

such as requirement analysis and software

architecture conceptual modelling. However, for this

approach’s success it is necessary to create a

cooperation culture among researchers and system

developers. Reusability of a good and practical

documented solution is a very attractive and useful

idea. A good solution doesn’t need to be original and

innovative, but much important is that this solution

should be a tested and validated one for well known

problems. In urban management applications

domain there are no unique problem solutions.

Knowing the best practices that have been a success

for other cities is an advantage.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is partially supported by the Romanian

research grant CNCSIS IDEI no. 1238/2008.

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