City of Vernon, British Columbia

With its snowy mountains, lush wineries and sunny beaches, Vernon seems to have it all. Nestled approximately 440 km (275 miles) northeast of Vancouver, the City of Vernon is home to 36,000 people.

One of the key tools in managing the largest city in the North Okanagan Regional District is the City’s internal GIS application, originally based on Autodesk MapGuide. When issues of performance and compatibility with the Regional District arose, the City of Vernon began searching for an Internet mapping solution to replace their existing system. With a staff of about two hundred, they recognized the need to find an efficient and functional mapping platform that would perform at least as well, if not better, than MapGuide.

The City also knew that with 50-80 internal GIS users in various departments, they needed an out-of-the-box application that would require minimal staff involvement in developing the tools and functions they needed. After considering new web-GIS technology being released at the time by both Autodesk and ESRI, the City of Vernon decided to migrate to ArcGIS Server for the deployment of its server-based enterprise GIS. From there, they sought out options for an efficient, out-of-the-box solution.

After initially starting the development of a Geocortex IMF/ArcGIS Server Connector-based site, some compatibility problems with ArcSDE 9.2 relating to SDE annotation led to Geocortex Essentials, which was still a relatively early product. However, the City decided to license Latitude Geographics’ Geocortex Essentials upon release of version 1.2 given the variety of new features and the GUI-based Geocortex Essentials Manager.

Barend Donker, Database Administrator at the City of Vernon, explains that, “We were confident Latitude was looking ahead to ensure our applications would make use of the stream of new features being added to Essentials.”

December 2007 marked the start of Geocortex Essentials 1.2 implem-entation in earnest, with “super user” training beginning in February 2008 to initially deploy the new application. General staff were introduced to the application in March 2008 with open-house demonstrations.

One challenge posed by the transition to a new GIS application was the issue of data trans-fer, given that the City’s existing MapGuide reports couldn’t be integrated with other applications. The technical team devised a solution; replicated data from MapGuide reports was delivered in the form of working report templates that were compatible with Essentials. This effectively solved the issue of current and future data transfer by giving the City the means to complete their own data entries and conversions.

To capitalize on their new application, the City of Vernon also had Geocortex Essentials customized to integrate their TempestTM property management software. “One of the main reasons we chose the technologies we did was that we wanted the ability to integrate our existing systems and software to create a true enterprise GIS for the city,” observes Barend Donker.

“The product continues to mature and develop, we were expecting some initial difficulties, however, things have progressed better than expected and we are confident that by ArcGIS 9.3 release, most of the issues will have been resolved”, explains Wayne Ikesaka, Manager Information Systems.

“I think we’re on track with where we expected and hoped to be with the technology,” explains Donker, “and we look forward to the full maturation of the technologies and the new capabilities that come with that process.”

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