Enterprise GIS

Requirements

In the early GIS years, GIS users were mainly working at separated and sometimes isolated workstations. Today, workstations are connected, linked to other applications, and therefore integrated in the whole information technology (IT) infrastructure of an organization.

The requirements for an enterprise GIS are as follows:

• Easy and flexible modeling of the business logics of the different processes
• Support of the different functional requirements in the departments from road construction to planning and facility management, just to mention a few
• Support of different user groups, experienced as well as occasional users
• Efficient organization of data commonly used internally by individuals or departments
• Ability to exchange data, integrate, or link data and software components of different GIS and other applications

Technical Issues

To establish an enterprise GIS, a number of IT-techniques/technologies have to be considered. The most important ones are as follows:

• Client-server architecture (see Figure 1)
• (Distributed) database managements systems allowing multiuser access, definition of access rights, and so on—sometimes also data warehouses
• Sophisticated data management and integration tools
• IT standards such as SOAP or WSDL to implement service-oriented architectures (SOA) GI standards such as GML and OGC Web services such as WMS and WFS
• Work flow support

GIS vendors offer specific modules to build an enterprise GIS that in general support the techniques listed here.

Organizational Issues

Establishing an enterprise GIS requires complex technologies, but the real challenge is often an organizational one. All the potential categories of [Page 913]users, their processes, the different kinds of data, functional requirements and software products, and the systems that must be linked have to be known, and a corresponding system architecture has to be defined. It is often a balance between having an IT landscape that is homogeneous and satisfying the different requirements of the various user groups.

Figure 1 Three-tier client-server architecture Source: Author.

Figure 2 Overview of an example of the organization of an enterprise GIS

Source: Author.

Figure 2 gives an overview of one example of the organization of an enterprise GIS. Technically, it is client-server based and includes one central database and different GIS clients with external databases in the departments. Each of them can offer GIS-based services for the whole enterprise; however, many organizational decisions have to be made (who is doing what, where, in which way, and so on).

The organization of an enterprise GIS varies depending on the size of the enterprise, the complexity of the processes, the form and number of integrations of other systems, and other aspects mentioned above. One common approach for an enterprise GIS does not exist.