Scarborough's GIS speeds up the map-making process

Ontario's City of Scarborough has rolled out a computerized mapping program that eliminates thousands of sheets of paper and could save some customers hundreds of dollars apiece.

Designed for anyone needing cartographic information about the city -- chiefly engineers, architects, property developers and real - estate agents -- UMAP (User - Defined Mapping Application system) sits on a counter - top PC and lets users view the area of their choice directly on the computer.

They can then print out a color or black - and - white map, for between $5.00 and $20.00, depending on size.

The city charged $7.00 per page before UMAP came on the scene, but that pricing was deceptive. "To cover some of the areas that we covered, you may have needed 50 or 60 sheets," explains Raphael Sussman, GIS manager at the city's GIS (Geographic Information Systems) group, Works and Environment Department. "You would have had to glue them all together and send them out for photo reproduction yourself.

So the cost and time for a really large map would be in the $1,000 range."

The application, developed using ESRI's Arc/Info and Oracle's relational database management system tools, pulls up data from several corporate databases in different city buildings. UMAP outputs the map information either centrally, to the city's high - end electrostatic color plotter, or to local devices.

Now, instead of having to wade through "a whole bunch of standard maps" at the counter, customers simply walk up and view the whole city on a computer screen. They can zoom in to a specific area and request as much detail as they want -- side - walks, driveways, trees, underground services -- and then plot it out on one of seven different - sized sheets of paper, to any of a number of scales.

Pre - UMAP, extra details like street names and addresses had to be drawn in by hand. And the maps themselves were cumbersome. "The whole city was blocked up into some 3,500 sheets of paper," says Sussman. "Each time, somebody would come in and say, 'oh, I need the point right at the intersection of all of them.'"

Anyone wanting to change the scale of a map was faced with the task of photo - enlarging or photo - reducing it -- with mixed results. "If it was small, all your line work would be just obliterated because it would be so thick," says Sussman.

Although UMAP has distilled the operation down from days to minutes, Sussman still isn't satisfied with his system's ability to produce custom maps. "It was designed to be very simple, for the most generic of map users," he explains. But the GIS group wants to cater to customers with "very specific requirements" such as the fire department.

Another goal is to put UMAP all over the city. Sussman envisages it on different municipal departments' counters; at Scarborough's public libraries; and -- eventually -- in public information kiosks.

He also plans to link the mapping application to other departments' databases so that a customer can find out the name of a building's owner, for example.

Sussman claims a computerized mapping system like UMAP is rare in North America. Since UMAP's launch in October 1994, several municipalities, including the City of Halifax and the City of Vancouver, have asked if they can buy the system. But "it probably wouldn't be appropriate to take it as it is," says Sussman. Instead, he's offering the city's services in a consulting capacity, to help municipalities build their own customized versions of UMAP.

UMAP didn't take long to build -- just a few weeks, according to Sussman, because the city already had the tools, and its mapping data was pre - stored in ArcInfo format in a spatial library.

And it was easy to learn -- the city's three counter clerks mastered the application in three hours. "It's very simple," Sussman maintains. So simple, in fact, that "anybody could come to the counter and operate it."

If customers start operating the system themselves, however, "our biggest concern," he confides, jokingly, "is that they won't pay us."

Copyright Plesman Publications Ltd. Feb 1995
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