Success Stories—Xmarc

Xmarc technology is incorporated into many mission critical systems throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia-Pacific. In most cases, the technology is embedded in a broader solution, expanding spatial awareness to Oracle and Informix databases and providing access in both client server and Web-based applications. Some of the organizations that are currently benefiting from Xmarc technology are summarized below:

CMP Information (formerly Miller-Friedman) is part of United Business Media Group, based in Tonbridge, Kent, England. The division operates a £100M-plus business across the UK, the United States, Asia, and Europe.

CMP Information uses FIRE to link some 80 exhibition planners per day to a CITRIX environment and the PIVOTAL system that provides the exhibition planning, floor, and advertising space sales. On-line access to floor plans is critical to the business when handling more than 100 exhibitions per year; FIRE provides the integration between exhibition layout design plans and the teams who sell space and juggle requirements that change daily.

FIRE is an important integration toolset for the complex media sales and exhibition space provision that comprises CMP Information core business. Having proven that FIRE offers business timesavings integrating the delivery of floor plan visuals to exhibition planners and administration teams, CMP Information now plans to provide users with interactive functionality to update the plans.

Greater Western Sydney Spatial Portal As one of Sydney's fastest growing areas, Greater Western Sydney (GWS) is a constantly changing landscape. As a result, accurate regional planning information is critical. To demonstrate the possibility of producing a centralized repository for planning and decision support data, the Hawkesbury City Council and the University of Western Sydney initiated a project called GWSspatial.

Funded by the federal government through the Local Government Incentive Grants Scheme, the Greater Western Sydney Spatial project aims to increase the accuracy of available spatial information across the region. This will also greatly reduce the cost and resources currently required to collect data.

The project allows councils, utilities, environmental groups, planning organizations, and the community to view and query map data in the form of layers of spatial information and associated textual features, such as digital maps, from an Internet browser. The Web-deployed spatial portal uses Xmarc FIRE and Oracle technologies to combine the spatial data sets of 21 organizations. A PDA version has also been created for Web-enabled devices.

Green Flag is part of the Direct Line insurance company, which in turn is partnered with Royal Bank of Scotland-throughout, a group that relies on a customer-relationship approach and systems to maintain levels of service and profitability.

The Green Flag operation provides roadside assistance (similar to AAA in North America) to motor insurance policyholders. Through its call center, it responds to approximately one million incidents each year and strives to maintain a best in practice service among its peers.

FIRE is an integrated part in the process between the call center system and the policyholder requiring assistance. On validation of the caller's policy, the operator checks the availability of a response vehicle in a satisfactory location to support the client within the service level margins. Green Flag has an average call out time of 39 minutes and reaches 90 percent of its one million calls within the hour.

Overall, saving a few seconds when allocating and choosing the most appropriate response vehicle with respect to location ensures cost-effective practice at Green Flag; FIRE enables the rapid completion of spatial analysis in the call center process used by 150 operators daily.

Italian Ministry of Finance—SOGEI SOGEI chose Xmarc and Oracle to implement a client/server and Web-based geo-spatial system for on-line processing of all land surveying and property ownership transactions. The Oracle8i platform data management system, the Oracle Spatial technology, and Xmarc's Internet visualization platform power a national land database and deliver more efficient land transactions. The system has been in operation for four years and currently uses 1,100 license equivalents across more than 215 regional servers throughout Italy. SOGEI has also contracted for 8,000 Internet license equivalents to support its e-government initiative, which will support up to 80,000 users from central, regional, and local government to the surveyors themselves.

The system makes land, data, plans, and many other types of geographic information readily available to authorities. The economic importance is significant as geographic data is related to building construction, road, infrastructure development, civil defense, tax assessment and collection, urban and regional planning, agriculture, and a myriad of other uses. Making this information available through the Internet decreases cost, increases convenience, and delivers enhanced speed of response.

New York City 311 PlanGraphics geographically enabled New York City's new non-emergency citizen response (311) system, built by Accenture. The 311 system gives New Yorkers one easy-to-remember phone number to obtain all City services, including street repairs, illegally parked vehicle removal, tree prunings, and tax or tourist information. In addition, it allows the City to reduce operating costs, use resources more efficiently, measure accountability and citizen feedback, and deliver timely, consistent, and personalized customer service.

This work was performed for the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) and was an extension of the services with the same agency for the implementation of the Citywide Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Utility. The Citywide GIS Utility is the City government's central clearinghouse for spatial and tabular data and analytical services. PlanGraphics has developed tools to access existing legacy systems throughout the City. Access to these systems and their databases is vitally important for the success of the 311 system to deliver accurate and real-time data to the public.

In order to deliver sub-second response time, access to the Oracle database occurs through Xmarc's fx8i OCI servlet. The application at current levels of functionality and usage supports 300 call center employees and 30,000 transactions per day.

STEPs NYC PlanGraphics' engagement with New York City began in 1995 and thrives today. One of the primary tasks of this engagement was to design and implement a centralized data repository to accommodate the convergence of multiple GIS systems and to provide this data as a "utility service" to City agencies. The justification for this project was based on improving the operational efficiency of the City and the integration of multiple "stovepipe" databases of geographic data.

When disaster struck on September 11, 2001, PlanGraphics personnel were supporting and staffing the Office of Emergency Management. It quickly became evident that the response to an emergency requires appropriate and timely knowledge about, and allocation of resources to, a specific location. Without spatial information or sound knowledge of location, including street networks, buildings, utility and transport infrastructure, floor-plan layouts, assets, and personnel, the emergency response can be seriously compromised.

Today, PlanGraphics has expanded on its proven model from NYC to deliver STEPs, Spatial Templates for Emergency Preparedness-a phased approach for any public authority or large facility manager to implement a clearly defined plan to converge unstructured data into a centralized "datamart" to improve operational efficiency and information sharing for routine workflows and to address the needs of emergency planning, response, and recovery.

NIMA Graphic Geographic Search (GGS) Tool IntelData contracted with PlanGraphics to assist with the design and implementation of GGS, an Xmarc Fire-based, Web-deployed map library metadata search and retrieval and map ordering tool utilizing Oracle Spatial. The application gives National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) librarians and field personnel access to NIMA's Voyager map database to determine which maps are available for an area of interest (AOI) by interactively sketching an AOI and/or selecting attributes and interfacing with a Voyager Oracle database to order the appropriate maps. This greatly simplifies the previous Voyager system interface that does not allow any spatial visualization.

GGS is a Web-based application that offers two methods of searching:

• A geographic search tool lets users draw a search perimeter on a world map on the computer screen. This method restricts results to maps within the drawn perimeter (a geographic search can also be initiated by typing in the name of a location).
• A non-spatial attribute search allows users to specify values of various non-spatial attributes, such as key word, language, or map scale. Users can use either or both search methods simultaneously. Search results are displayed graphically as labeled polygons on the map and textually in a list at the bottom of the computer screen.

The current release of GGS (version 2.1) incorporates enhanced functionality that, for example, lets users register for automatic e-mail notification when any of their subscribed queries have been updated or modified in the library database. This version also improves performance across low-bandwidth connections. Users who need to run the same query repeatedly can save the criteria to their GGS database account, thus eliminating the need to re-enter all of the search criteria every time. There is no limit to the number or complexity of queries that can be saved for and by each user. The application is used on both military secret and top secret networks.

The Port of Rotterdam is the largest port in the world, and its management is committed to using advanced technology from Xmarc and Oracle to maximize its efficiency and resources. In this case, port management was looking for new ways to migrate its drawing office data currently stored in proprietary AutoCAD databases to better utilize the information throughout the organization. The Port retains AutoCAD in the drawing office for centralized data maintenance; however, all existing AutoCAD data is migrated into an Oracle database using an Xmarc Fire front-end, which features additional data management capabilities.

State of Oregon: Digitally Integrated Mining of Oregon Networked Data (DIMOND) The State of Oregon Department of Administrative Services (DAS) desired a means of consolidating State data resources for general use across State government. This would normally involve a massive and complex data warehousing initiative. However, DAS desired to achieve data integration and availability across the enterprise through more dynamic means. To this end, the State contracted with a team led by PlanGraphics, Inc., for a proof of concept project demonstrating a virtual data warehouse, called Digitally Integrated Mining of Oregon Networked Data (DIMOND). This approach was made possible by using a middleware product from Xmarc, Inc., which is part of the consulting team. ESRI, Inc., the vendor of the State's preferred GIS technology, was also part of the consulting team. The proof of concept utilized 20 license equivalents distributed across five physical locations exclusive of Internet usage.

The Proof of Concept was implemented in two parts. The PlanGraphics/Xmarc team developed a related pair of demonstration applications using Java clients interacting with Xmarc's middleware and data translation servlets to remotely access data stored in Oracle, Oracle Spatial, coverage, shapefile, and other formats. The end user need only have a Java-enabled Web browser such as Netscape or Internet Explorer. ESRI staff also built an application using ArcView 8.1 as a client, which interacted with data stored in the Oracle Spatial instance managed by Xmarc middleware. Data providers for the Proof of Concept included the Oregon Geographic Data Committee, Multnomah County, and Tri-Met (the regional transportation authority for the Portland region).

The final demonstration of the Proof of Concept was successful. Remote data connections were established to data providers, and the results of real-time queries were merged and presented to the user via Java-based client technology. Data sharing was performed with minimal impacts on data provider systems and demonstrated adequate security through use of built-in Java security features and a user login function based on Oracle database tables and JSP.

Timbercorp Asset Management System Timbercorp is Australia's largest plantation management company. The AssetMaster Asset Management System (AMS) was developed using Xmarc FIRE technology to specifically address the strategic, financial, and operational facets of forestry and plantation management organizations. It is specifically designed for organizations that need to maintain and organize activities associated with the production of land, assets, and the resources required to optimize those activities.

The Timbercorp project includes 25 AssetMaster licenses used concurrently across three states—Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia—connected by a WAN to a centralized system in Victoria. The AssetMaster suite of software provides management support for the strategic, financial, and operational aspects of fixed assets such as buildings, fencing, pipes, and equipment. AssetMaster integrates spatial data and the asset register by creating a common data model and then provides advanced functions to enable integrated management processes. By incorporating spatial data into the asset data model, activities such as weed infestation control, spraying, deforestation, and any "area-based" activities can be effectively managed. AssetMaster allows clients to use spatial intelligence and asset management to vastly improve decision-making and operational support for infrastructure activities.

ZK Celltest, a provider of test and measurement equipment to wireless carriers uses Xmarc to deploy its automated test product for wireless carrier networks. "We tried implementing legacy GIS and mapping software for our data-intensive automated drive test product, but those products failed to meet our industry's performance requirements," said Rich Miletic, president of ZK Celltest. "Using Xmarc technology, we successfully met our current requirements, and are confident that this solution will support the volumes of data required for next generation of wireless networks."