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A Publication Featuring The Information
Services Technology of Maine State Government
| Volume VII, Issue 6 | June 2004 |
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The Maine Office of Geographic Information Systems(MEGIS), the Department of Environmental Protection( DEP), and the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (IF&W) are currently developing a common editing environment for maintenance of the state’s GIS hydrography database.
Over the years the state has collected a lot of information relating to hydrography, including GIS data. The collection, maintenance, and updating of hydrography GIS data continues by several agencies on various versions of the hydrography database, and in different environments. MEGIS has been working with the GIS Executive Council to develop a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for agencies to consolidate efforts for maintaining and updating GIS data in a common editing environment.
The SOP for the common editing environment contains an agreement between the participating agencies that is signed by the GIS Executive Council representative from each agency. The SOP also details the people at each agency who are responsible for the updates and the responsibilities of each participant. The first common editing environment will be tested and developed for the hydrography GIS database.
In the initial development of the hydrography common editing environment the goal of the GIS Executive Council and the participating agencies is to get the updates from all three agencies into one common database, so that everyone benefits by having access to one database that contains all of the updates from IF&W, DEP, and MEGIS. The longer term goal is to get all of the available hydrography information within state government into one common database, and one common editing environment.
MEGIS, DEP, and IF&W have been working together over the past few months to consolidate their hydrography data into one database. The consolidated data has been loaded into the MEGIS ArcSDE Oracle database and the three agencies are currently testing a common editing environment of ArcSDE and ArcMap to update the hydrography database. Each agency is responsible for updating different aspects of the database so that the updates by each agency are complementary to each other. Technical issues and processes still need to be worked out during the testing phase before the concept is put into production.
It is anticipated that custom programs will need to be developed to help standardize the update processes. If the common editing environment is successful then MEGIS will work with the GIS Executive Council to use the hydrography common editing environment as a template for furthering the use of the common editing environment for other GIS databases.
Even though representatives from DEP, IF&W, and MEGIS have incorporated a lot of hydrography information into one database it is believed that there is probably a lot more hydrography information within state government that could also be incorporated into the hydrography common editing environment as the project progresses. If you want more information about the common editing environment or the SOP contact David Kirouac at David.Kirouac@maine.gov.
David Kirouac is a Senior Programmer Analyst at the Maine Office of GIS where he is responsible for the GIS database. If you are interested in learning more you can contact David at David.Kirouac@maine.gov.
