Monday, October 26. 2009

Lynchburg Web GIS with All the Bells and Whistles; Another Signal of Desktop GIS' Demise?

Lynchburg, VA just updated its online GIS website. Among the new additions: the ability to document your markups, save measured lines, jump to Google StreetView or Bing's Bird's Eye views, and tools to better see the relationship between records and parcels. (See What's New for details and screen shots.)

The app seems to be ADF-based ArcGIS Server apps and does not use Flex. WorldView Solutions did the consulting work.

The updates make sense when you learn that most common users of the site are "real estate agents, builders and others in development-related fields." One agent who uses the site daily is still finding new features.

Costs: $228,500 for the changeover from the old system, $50,000/year maintenance (the same as the previous system, interestingly).

The more apps like this I see, the more I wonder about how quickly desktop GIS use will drop inside local governments. Apps like this are as easily used inside as well as outside local government. The question is when, not if, most gov employees will move off the desktop. The related question, then, is how this new business model will change revenues for software developers.

- News and Advance

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in ESRI at 06:00 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0) |

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Here in Michigan we're barely able to scrape enough budgetary monies to pay for our ESRI maintenance, let alone drop a quarter MILLION on a web-based interface. Our ArcGIS Server apps run on our intranet, but if we bring up the proposition of spending even $5K to develop a workable front end for the public, it doesn't make it through the preliminary budget workups. Lynchburg must be rolling in the dough and not experiencing our 15%+ unemployment rate and decimated property values that translate into slashed property tax revenues to run local GIS departments.

#1 Anonymous on 2009-10-26 08:40 (Reply)

We have an affordable solution that we are looking for some feedback from people on... I would be interested in getting in touch with you...

#1.1 Jeremy (Link) on 2009-10-29 07:56 (Reply)

Hi, sorry, my last comment was directed at the first post. Also, great site Lynchburg! Worldview Solutions has done a slick job standing up this site, I really like the swipe tool.

#2 Darin Herle (Link) on 2009-10-27 14:46 (Reply)

I work for WorldView Solutions, the GIS consultant responsible for developing the Lynchburg applicaiton. We appreciate the positive feedback the City has received on this application and think it is a great example of how GIS can be distributed in a powerful yet easy to use set of tools for a variety of users.

I did want to address the cost - the cost referenced in this article refers to a much larger enterprise GIS deployment for the City that included implementation planning, database design, migration of the City's data from Intergraph GeoMedia to an ESRI geodatabase, desktop tool development and an internal web mapping application.

The total cost for the web application mentioned in this article was approximately $20,000. While this is not an insignificant sum of money, it is in line with the cost for most off-the-shelf products and is certainly very competitive with other custom applications available from other vendor.

#3 Jamie Christensen (Link) on 2009-10-27 16:01 (Reply)

This is a real nice site...but it's still just a map viewer. Yes, there are lots of nice features and tools here...but the title of the article mentioning desktop GIS' demise...that's not really the case. Sure, maybe you have a lot of people that could access it this way; but that's always been the case with web mapping applications, this one is really no different.

You cannot create GIS layers with this or do analysis (other than simple search, markup and buffers maybe). We've had sites just like this (maybe not quite as full featured)...but you still have to have desktop GIS to manage your GIS data layers and information.

#4 Nick on 2009-10-30 10:56 (Reply)

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In reply to	[ Top level ]#1: Anonymous on 2009-10-26 08:40   #1.1: Jeremy on 2009-10-29 07:56 #2: Darin Herle on 2009-10-27 14:46 #3: Jamie Christensen on 2009-10-27 16:01 #4: Nick on 2009-10-30 10:56
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