High and Low Roads to GIS Developmentby Bijan Azad, Cadastre
Automation Advisor,
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Bijan Azad |
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Abstract : |
Organizations either adopt a very formal approach to geographic / information systems (G/IS) development or a more informal incremental approach to building G/ISs. These approaches each have its advantages and disadvantages. Therfore, the issue is not whether to use a formal Information Engineering method or not, but what are the trade-offs and how should they be made?
This paper addresses how G/IS architecture can be used to support organizations that face the dual challenges of "speed and flexibility" and low cost and efficiency". At the heart of this challenges is the basic notion that G/ISs have been anything but flexible in the past, and that for many agencies, G/ISs are more "disablers" than "enablers" of flexibility.
This paper discusses two broadly defined architecturally solutions: the "high" and "low" roads, and the benefits and pitfalls of each. We conclude that neither solution will succeed on its own and that organizations need to combine elements of both to meet the challenges of the turn of the century. The examples are based on research and consulting experience of the author in the transportation arena based on attempts to implement IS/GIS. These experiences will illustrate the importance of and the struggle over choices for IS/GIS architecture. The paper is intended to help guide, provoke, stimulate and entertain others who believe that the integration of IS/GIS with organizational management and strategy should be of paramount concern to managers of the public sector organizations as much as of those in the private sector.
Bijan Azad - Profile :
Bijan Azad did his master's work at MIT.
He has worked in city government environment on GIS and LIS development and maintenance for the Boston Redevelopment Authority for 6 years from 1986 to 1992.
He then joined the private sector performing a variety of GIS implementation services with the firm of GIS/Trans, Ltd. in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 1993 to the middle of 1995. He was a Director with a firm managing three large state Departments of Transportation projects for the states of Pennsylvania, Delaware and Florida.
He has joined the World Bank sponsored Lebanon Cadastre Operations Modernization and Automation Project since mid 1995 as the overall coordinator and technical specialist for the effort. The project is being managed by the ministry of finance. This is an $18 M project to modernize both the land registry and cadastral mapping parts of the land records in Lebanon and put in place spatial information infrastructure to develop maps for unsurveyed portions of the country.
Bijan Azad obtained his master's degree from MIT and has just obtained his doctorate from the same institution in GIS management. He has pursued both practice and theory of GIS implementation management&emdash;in 1992 he was a National Center for Geographical Information and Analysis grant recipient and contributor to other NCGIA initiatives since then.
Currently he is serving a 3-year term on the Board of Urban and Regional Information Systems Association which is a 4000 member association promoting effective use of spatial information technology in government.
He has also thought a series of workshops on the use of SQL Databases in GIS.
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