Introduction
In a place like northern Australia, it takes powerful tools to tame the land. The Department of Planning and Infrastructure-a department of the Northern Territory (NT) Government of Australia-is responsible for delivering integrated and sustainable land, transport, and infrastructure systems to promote the sustainable development of the Territory. Within that department, the Land Information Systems Program provides the spatial data infrastructure for the Territory's government agencies, integrates data visualization solutions into back-end systems, and provides assistance for government staff using Geographical Information Systems (GIS).
Challenge
For years within the NT Government, back-end databases of geospatial information were scattered across legacy systems with no standard way for users to push the information into meaningful visual presentations, let alone present data in interrelated ways. For example, in land administration, water and other GIS data were siloed; in the public health sector, location information on disease outbreaks and patient records was in a warehouse with no way to organize information or generate geographical reports; and in the transportation department, it was impossible to see where train tracks crossed roads. With multiple versions of geospatial data, different file formats, and duplicate copies residing in different places, the NT Government's highly skilled GIS employees spent much of their time wading through data to produce up-to-date maps for their colleagues at other agencies.
Solution
Phillip Rudd, Director of the NT Land Information Systems Program, explains why the
department selected Google Earth Enterprise to complement existing GIS solutions from
ESRI and Oracle, among other tools. "We chose Google Earth at first because we simply
wanted to manage our library of current and historical aerial and satellite images," he
says. However, when staff realized the potential of the tool for integrating all the
disparate geospatial data throughout the department and the power of automated web-based
data visualization, the use of Google Earth began to pervade the NT Government. Image
management turned out to be a relatively small part of a much larger solution, spanning
several agencies.
The NT Land Information Systems Program has built two separate worlds using Google Earth
Enterprise to serve two distinct purposes. The first, for counter-terrorism and emergency
management, resides on a secure network for the use of authorized law enforcement and
disaster relief officials. The second Google Earth globe is a more open system used by a
wide range of government agencies-and their constituents-for land management and
development processes.
In the counter-terrorism and emergency management arena, Google Earth helps public safety
officials visualize police incidents, plan search and rescue operations, locate remote
landing strips, and has an important role in the management of natural disasters
throughout the region. The intuitive Google Earth interface allows NT government users to
get started with little or no training. Today, as soon as there's an incident, people
start capturing data and displaying it in Google Earth.
The land management globe serves as a comprehensive single point of truth for geospatial
data coming from many agencies, and being used by many more. "We are making visible data
that was in siloed datasets before," says Rudd. The land management globe also includes a
Web Feature Service (WFS) search solution which allows users to query for certain land
information via the search box in Google Earth, with results displayed on the globe.
The Department of Natural Resources, Environment and the Arts automatically feeds GIS
files (in various formats) into Oracle databases, which in turn relay information
directly into Google Earth for environmental and resource monitoring purposes. In the
area of public health-and in cooperation with local service providers-the NT Government
is starting to use Google Earth to locate and serve citizens in nearly a thousand small,
remote communities spread across the 1.4 million square kilometers of the NT through
web-based mapping solutions.
And as an example of streamlining the delivery of government services to the public, real
estate professionals can freely subscribe to the department's systems to access land
title information, building valuations, and planning codes. Users can select pertinent
data and publish their own web maps via the free, easy-to-use Google Earth interface. All
these capabilities and more are accomplished without the users or the NT Government
needing to alter existing systems.
"Google Earth has provided the framework to easily view data in a huge range of client
applications," says Rudd.
Google Earth Enterprise has become integral to the NT Government's automated mapping
processes that fuse database information from various types of spatial environments.
Standards based geospatial data repositories (which includes the Google Earth globes)
generated by government agencies in the Northern Territory have become the central point
of truth for custodians and publishers of web mapping solutions throughout the Northern
Territory.
"We made the decision to store everything natively in Oracle Spatial and create
shapefiles through an export, transform, load solution with Google Earth as the
visualization front-end," explains Rudd, noting that this method of integration has been
extremely effective. The team has also made extensive use of KML file format which can
display geographic data on Google Maps and Google Maps for Mobile, in addition to Google
Earth.
Results
Having a single source of truth for geospatial data has eliminated duplication of data, facilitated information sharing among agencies, and reduced confusion. So much so that Google Earth has become part of the standard operating environment for all NT Government employees. In fact, in the police department, the use of Google Earth to display incident data is being written into the standard operational procedures manual.
Furthermore, the GIS staff have benefited from significant productivity improvements. Automated map production using Google Earth as a source for imagery now takes about three to five minutes by non-GIS staff picking mapping formats and making data selections from web forms. Previously, that same work would take a skilled cartographer a week or so. Now, about 10 land information staffers are devoted full-time to web mapping-resulting in huge productivity gains for everyone needing a print quality map to visualize data.
Rudd explains that cartographers can now focus on analysis and discovery rather than producing maps. "The GIS people weren't really doing GIS, they were mostly creating maps. Now, they are free to perform higher level tasks such as data mining, analysis and leveraging geographical data in ways that add value to the NT government and the public."