The present state of geographic information systems for towns and cities in the Czech Republic

1
The present state of geographic information
systems for towns and cities in the Czech
Republic

• Ing. Jirí Cajthaml
• Department of mapping and cartography
• Faculty of Civil Engineering, CTU in Prague
• Thákurova 7
• 166 29 Praha 6
• E mail cajthaml_at_gama.fsv.cvut.cz

2
Aims of the work

• - survey of usage of GIS in offices
• - get information about implementation
• - discover advantages and disadvantages of GIS
  products
• - get some relative information about GIS
  products and their usage
• - find problems of GIS usage in the CR

3
Specific surveys

• 1. Survey in municipal authorities
• - email correspondence with offices (58 out of
• 72 (81) of towns and cities answered to my
• questionnaire)
• - web pages of towns and cities
• - data from students work at our dempartment
• 2. Survey of GIS products
• - web pages of firms
• - conference reports concerning GIS
• - email correspondence with GIS producers

4
Complex IS vs. GIS

• - two options how to create GIS
• a. create complex IS with GIS part
• (products T-WIST, Cityware,
• City2000)
• b. create only GIS and try to cooperate
• with other IS, which is used in the
• office
• (widely used IS are products
• GINIS, Radnice VERA, MUNIS,
• Stavební úrad VITA, SAP R/3,
• Radní, Starosta,)

5
Complex IS 14 out of 58 offices (24)

• T-WIST (by T-Mapy) 6x
• GIS part consist of
• thick client (ArcGIS or GISel)
• thin client (T-map server)
• Cityware (by Geovap) 7x
• GIS part consist of
• thick client (Microstation GeoStore)
• thin client (GSWeb)

6
Platform GIS vs. independent solution

• Two groups of software products
• 1. superstructures of general products
• (so called platform products)
• 2. independent solutions
• (dont need any other software to function)

7
Platform GIS 35 out of 58 offices (60)

• Superstructures of products by
• - ESRI 14x
• (T-Mapy, Digis, VARS, Elgeo)
• - Intergraph 1x
• (Espace)
• - Autodesk 1x
• (AAC, Sitewell, DataSystem)
• - Bentley 17x
• (Geovap, HSI, Berit)
• - UMN 2x
• (Help Service, Help Forest)

8
Independent GIS 15 out of 58 offices (26)

• Products by local producers
• - City2000 1x (product City2000)
• - Gepro 5x (product MISYS)
• - Geodézie-Topos 4x (product Gramis)
• - Geod. Krkonoše 2x (product GIMIS)
• - T-Mapy 1x (product GISel)
• - Unicom Consult 2x (product KomPas)

9
Usage of RDBMS

• - advantages
• - multi-user editing
• - transactions
• - versioning
• - widely used
• - Oracle (T-Mapy, Geovap, Sitewell,
  Unicom, Berit,...)
• - MS SQL (T-Mapy, Geovap, Geodézie
  Krkonoše, Unicom,...)
• - external connection by ODBC

10
Approach to RDBMS

• - gate for storing data into database
• - ArcSDE by ESRI (used by T-Mapy)
• - GeoStore by Geovap
• - PostGIS OpenSource project
• gate for PostgreSQL

11
Support of data formats

• - vector data
• - most supported are
• - SHP, Coverage (by ESRI)
• - DWG, DXF (by Autodesk)
• - DGN (by Bentley)
• - MIF, MID (MapInfo)
• - VFK (interchange format of
• Czech cadastre)
• - problems with own formats of local products
  (VYK in MISYS, BD in Gramis,...)
• - universal format - GML

12

• - raster data
• - most supported are
• TIFF, GeoTIFF, JPEG, GIF, BMP, CIT,
• WMF, ECW, PNG, PCX, MrSID, RLE, RAS, COT
• - attribute data
• - more modern approach is to save
  attributes into RDBMS

13
GIS functions

• - tools for geometrical data upkeeping
• - better refined in platform GIS
• (topology rules,...)
• - tools for attribute upkeeping
• - analytical functions
• - show power of GIS, often
• missing in independent solutions
• - visualization tools

14
Data for GIS

• - most important part (most expensive)
• - cadastre data (VFK or VKMDBF)
• - raster cadastre maps (CIT)
• - ortophoto maps (TIFF, JPEG, MrSID)
• - urban plans (mostly DXF or DWG)
• - digital technical maps of cities (DTMM, mostly
  in
• format DGN)
• - ZABAGED
• - DTM
• - many others....

15
Price of GIS

• GIS hardware software data
• hardware PC, scanner, plotter, internet
  connection,...
• software GIS product, web server,
  relational database,...
• data up to 80 of total costs

16
Total costs

• - only 36 offices answered
• 1. big regional cities (6 of 36)
• costs above 15 million CZK
• 2. bigger district cities (9 of 36)
• costs between 5 and 15 million CZK
• 3. smaller district cities (21 of 36)
• - costs under 5 million CZK

17
Open Source GIS

• - GRASS analytical GIS
• - PostgreSQL relational database
• - PostGIS gate for storing data into database
• - MapServer map server, a project of UMN
• - QGIS tool for browsing many formats of data
• - JUMP tool for browsing and manipulation of
• many formats of spatial data (like ArcView)
• - Deegree
• - Help Service Remote Sensing applications
  above Mapserver

18
Information about GIS implementation to offices

• Who implements GIS?
• - mostly the manufacturers of software
• - sometimes geodetic firms
• - rarely offices themselves
• Year of introducing GIS to the office
• - every year since 1996 several towns introduced
• GIS
• - no trend

19
GIS administration

• 45 offices answered
• 4 groups
• - 6x more than 2 administrators (district
  cities)
• - 9x 2 administrators (satisfactory)
• - 25x 1 administrator
• - 5x without administrator (external firms)
• - in many cases office network administrator is
  also GIS administrator

20
Conclusions

• - complex IS best way, but it means
• reconstruction of whole system (problem)
• - platform GIS (better, more expensive, ideal for
• bigger cities)
• - independent solution (without analytical
  functions, cheaper, ideal for smaller towns)
• - data storing best way RDBMS
• - interoperability (data formats) problems with
  own data formats, GML should be used
• - OpenSource solutions alternative to
• commercial products

21
Thank you for your time and attention

• Ing. Jirí Cajthaml
• Department of mapping and cartography
• Faculty of Civil Engineering, CTU in Prague
• Thákurova 7
• 166 29 Praha 6
• E mail cajthaml_at_gama.fsv.cvut.cz