Online access for all members of the community

The Mapping Manningham website was developed as part of the Local Government Online Services - Development of Internet GIS applications for Local Government project. Manningham City Council’s intention was to provide ratepayers and community members with online access to Council and Public information via a user-friendly GIS interface.

As the online GIS will be used by community members with various PC configurations and IT savvy, some basic requirements of the website were identified:

• easy to use, intuitive and require no intitial user training
• the ability to run on standard Internet browsers and not require plug-ins to be downloaded
• guaranteed performance even when accessed via a low capacity modem.

Manningham City Council also had an additional list of mandatory functionality to be included in the site:

• Basic zoom, pan, window an area, print (including date/time stamp, council logo and disclaimer).
• Distance and area calculations.
• Scale dependent feature display - based on a table of features defined by the council, the features displayed would alter depending on the scale of the view. This could also update the legend for the view.
• Find a property - the GIS solution would need to accept PIP data. Using this data users should be able to find a property within the municipal area.
• A ‘When does this happen at this location?’ tool - the GIS would need to assist users in finding out when rubbish collection, street pruning, road grading and other typical council activities are scheduled.
• Links to Council webpages - by clicking on the Council Tip, the tip's webpages launch detailing opening hours, etc.
• the ability to search various content items from pull down lists.

GeoSamba provides the perfect solution

NGIS identified that web-mapping solution, GeoSamba, would meet all the criteria set out by the Manningham City Council, as well as providing a communication medium that would allow them to be proactive in sharing information with ratepayers and other interested parties.

GeoSamba’s open, service-oriented architecture allows it to easily interact with Manningham’s existing suite of ESRI products, including ArcIMS - the map renderer selected for the project. Being database independent means the council's system administrators can easily connect to any ODBC compliant database structure; for example MS Access, SQl Server and Oracle.

GeoSamba’s ultra-thin web client guarantees high performance, even over a 56K modem, as is commonly found in the suburban home. GeoSamba is compatible with most web browsers, making it accessible to the majority of ratepayers without the need to download any plug-ins.

GeoSamba’s user-friendly web interface is intuitive and easy-to-use, meaning community members could start navigating the website without any user training.

GeoSamba also comes loaded with a comprehensive range of spatial modelling tools and mapping functionality, all of which met Manningham’s minimum requirements.

To keep the site user-friendly, users can either select a location on the map, or from a drop-down box on the menu. All the relevant council information for that location is then displayed, for example, rubbish collections and street tree pruning.

GeoSamba’s ability to integrate with Microsoft Office products, combined with NGIS’ expertise as a Microsoft Certified Partner meant NGIS was able to create a whole range of tasks that integrated geographic information into mailmerges, reports and so on.

Being database independent, GeoSamba can easily link to other community and volunteer group databases, such as business directories and facilities management/booking systems.