Bringing Players to the Table: The NC OneMap Regional Demonstration Site

by Zsolt Nagy and Julia Harrell 

"If you build it…"

Remember the film Field of Dreams and its tagline, "If you build it, they will come"? That's not how they do things in North Carolina, at least not when it comes to GIS. In North Carolina, they drew on as many players as possible from the beginning, and had them participate, not just in the building, but the planning and the vision definition of an interoperable statewide data sharing application. And, it's worked. The NC OneMap Regional Demonstration Site has been online for several months, and has provided its creators with key insight into future solutions.

History

The project began as the "Mecklenburg County Urban 133 National Map Site" in October 2002. [The 133 Cities project was a USGS project to gather imagery for 133 cities in the U.S. The National Map is a USGS initiative to provide a consistent framework for geographic knowledge needed by the nation.] At that time, the USGS, in partnership with NIMA, was acquiring high resolution orthoimagery to support homeland security. Mecklenburg County (NC), the North Carolina Center for Geographic Information & Analysis (CGIA), and USGS were already involved in data sharing and partnership activities. That team decided to test available technology as part of The National Map initiative to explore what was possible. Early success and an enthusiastic team helped keep things moving.

Several months later, the project received a new name, the NC OneMap Regional Demonstration Site. About the same time, ten new communities were knocking at the door asking to participate. They brought with them ten new mapping services with data from North and South Carolina. Each partnering organization nominated one representative to form the demonstration project team.

Unlike some projects of this nature, a portal was not the only, nor the main goal. The purpose of project was, and is, to collaborate in the testing of technology for integration of geospatial data common to both The National Map and NC OneMap. More specific objectives include exposing technology, fostering collaboration within the state, providing input into the formal implementation plan for NC OneMap (the actual portal) and helping identify benefits, obstacles, strengths and weakness in the process for collaboration. The project clearly includes a mix of technology goals and human goals, underscoring the commitment to the players involved.

Using Standards

Choosing to implement OpenGIS specifications was as much a technology decision as a "people" decision. "It's the only way to have a centralized map viewer serving up data from all over the state, with different organizations using different GIS products," noted Zsolt Nagy, North Carolina GIS Coordinator. "From a people perspective, we didn't want to burden existing web mapping sites with changing their software, nor did we want users of the application to have to use more than one viewer to get at all the data."

The system currently supports the OpenGIS Web Map Service (WMS) Interface Specification (WMS) 1.1.0, but the plan is to upgrade to the current WMS specification soon, and hopefully later incorporate Web Feature Service and other OGC Specifications.

Many communities in the state had already implemented GIS systems and provided Web interfaces for public access to their data using ESRI's Web mapping platform, ArcIMS. Participants in the project now serve up maps using the Web Map Service (WMS) extension to ArcIMS. Johnston County relies on open source Minnesota MapServer and PostgreSQL/PostGIS to serve its maps. Operating systems in the project to date include Windows 2000 & 2003 Server, Solaris, and Red Hat Linux. The demonstration project team invites participation from any county, region, or municipality to join the project, regardless of operating system or GIS application software, providing it is OGC WMS capable.

CGIA hopes to begin testing the open source Degree Feature Server, and offerings from several commercial GIS software vendors. Additionally, there are several application service providers and local GIS software vendors that are actively doing business in the North Carolina GIS community, that do not support the OpenGIS Specifications. Says Julia Harrell, GIS Application Programmer at the CGIA, "by utilizing OGC interoperability standards and demonstrating the benefits of integrating map services in the demonstration viewer, we are exposing the advantages of OpenGIS to the community at large." The hope is that vendors and integrators will help fill in gaps in standards support so that their customers may also participate in NC OneMap.

The Players and the Data

Currently, the map viewer part of the project is a volunteer effort for the state, county, and municipal participants. There are 4 state agencies, 9 county governments (including 1 in South Carolina), and 3 municipal organizations involved. Nagy is quick to point out that these numbers change regularly. During one week in October, two new partners signed on.
 

Several data layers from each participant are included in the viewer, as well as many layers from USGS. It's important to remember this is a demonstration site, not a "final portal." There are in fact many more North Carolina data layers available in the map services from CGIA and the other local government participants, but for now these are not included. Harrell is resigned to the project moving slowly. "The state needs to do more work with implementing the Web Feature Service, Catalog Interfaces and Styled Layer Descriptors before truly functional applications can begin to emerge." She also points out that the lack of core funding for software, hardware, training, and research and development efforts is limiting the team's ability to move forward in more meaningful ways.

The Viewer

The Viewer draws heavily on past USGS work, so it may look familiar to those who have visited The National Map and other projects. The opening view illustrates counties that are participating and a pull down menu offers a quick jump to a region of interest.

The demonstration viewer is actually hosted on a Web server at the USGS EROS Data Center (EDC) in Sioux Falls South Dakota. The data are served from several locations including the USGS Map servers, the main North Carolina map server at CGIA, and local map servers in more than 10 community sites in North and South Carolina.

While the focus of the current implementation is data viewing using the Web Map Service Specification, several partners offer data for download on their websites as well.

Serving Participants, and In Time, Citizens

The demonstration viewer serves the statewide geospatial community by exposing practical implementations of current technology and by providing an Internet presence to the statewide coordination program. Specifically, the project serves members of the NC Geographic Information Coordinating Council, CGIA, the USGS, and each participating organization by providing an informal forum to develop, test, and discuss technical and institutional issues surrounding the integration and/or publication of existing geographic information. In that sense it's a sort of "playground." The project is intended to expose current technology and help assess the institutional landscape for intergovernmental collaboration statewide. Said another way, partners are encouraged to share their toys and data, and learn to play well with others.

The project indirectly serves to complement and advance North Carolina's component of several national geospatial initiatives including The National Map, GeoSpatial One-Stop, the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI, including its subcomponents, such as Cadastral NSDI and Coastal NSDI), and also the efforts of the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC). In time, the demonstration team expects, what is learned will reach deeper into the state, and across the nation.

The Future

While very pleased with the progress to date, the demonstration project team has several goals, pending support, for the coming months and years including:

• upgrading from support of WMS 1.1.0 to a new version
• supporting Web Feature Service, so that vectors can be delivered to visitors
• eventual support for WAP so that PDAs and other devices can access the data
• creating a locally hosted and supported viewer for the permanent NC OneMap site
• increasing the participation of state and federal agencies
• developing a cataloging and metadata delivery system
• enhancing data download capabilities

Lessons Learned

When it comes to issues and challenges the NC OneMap demonstration project team is in good shape. Says Nagy, "most of the issues and next steps we face with the demonstration viewer are coincidental and are identified (by design) as part of the NC OneMap implementation plan and schedule." In short, the team expected, and planned for, challenges.

That said, Nagy does have an important piece of advice to those looking at a similar implementation. "Involve all relevant stakeholders from the beginning, especially those that represent the county and local government perspective. Involve both the executive decision-maker and the technical experts. Their insight and participation will positively affect the outcome of the project and the results will be more relevant to the statewide community."

Cleary the NC OneMap demonstration website is the most visible part of this project, but what lies underneath, pieces of technology tied together with standards, combined with a variety of players with different interests and experiences, are where the true value lies.

About the Authors Zsolt Nagy is the state GIS Coordinator for North Carolina. Julia Harrell is a GIS Application Programmer at the North Carolina Center for Geographic Information & Analysis.