As-Built Retriever – A Spatial Document Search Engine
The As-Built Retriever is a web-based spatial search engine developed by the Jones Payne Group Information Management and Geospatial Systems (IMgS) staff* as part of a project for the City of Colton, CA. The application allows staff to easily find and display scanned as-built drawings and other property-related documents. The system is used daily within city departments by staff who need quick access to city infrastructure documents. Its user-focused design helped ensure adoption by staff as part of their enterprise GIS achievements.
GIS Based Spatial Search Capabilities
The As-Built Retriever uses ESRI ArcIMS to spatially query which documents are contained within an area. Users can search for documents by parcel number, street address, street name or intersection. They can also search using a map interface that allows users to draw a search area to query for documents.
In addition to its spatial search capabilities, users can also filter the search further by specifying SQL database attributes including the type of document (such as water, wastewater, electric, assessor map, and others), the date, and keywords.
Simple Maintenance
Most document management systems integrate the documents with GIS by associating each document with a particular GIS feature. As most city staff know, an as-built infrastructure drawing may contain hundreds of features. Using the methods employed by most traditional document management systems, each feature in the as-built drawing would have to be represented in the GIS and tagged with a unique document identifier for referencing spatially. As new devices are added or replaced, they must be edited in the GIS and associated with a drawing identifier. This makes maintenance of the document management system complex and cumbersome.
In contrast, the As-Built Retriever is only concerned about the area covered by the infrastructure drawing. Instead of maintaining hundreds of features per drawing, one simple polygon tagged with the drawing identifier is all that is needed to link a spatial area with a drawing in the As-Built Retriever. This greatly simplifies maintenance, and is simple enough for anyone to perform.
User Focused Design
The As-Built Retriever employs our design approach for simple interfaces intended for non-technical staff. While most GIS applications focused on a map-based user interface, the team recognized that city staff know their areas much better than software. What they need is quick access to information that doesn’t require a lot of map interaction. Using this approach, the As-Built Retriever focuses on facilitating wide acceptance by using simple “non-governmental” interface that focuses on performing non-map based spatial queries.
Search results are returned in a simple list that is similar to the results users would receive from Google or other internet search engines. Unlike other systems that use TIFF images which require TIFF viewers, the As-Built Retriever results are presented as PDFs that are easily viewable with the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. Users can also view resizable thumbnail previews of each document page before downloading the high-resolution copy. This facilitates the application’s use on slower internet connections.
Proven Useful
When implemented at the City of Colton, the As-Built Retriever was widely accepted by City staff who said that it worked great, was fast and easy to use. Other city departments soon inquired about getting their documents added to the system; and as part of its e-Government initiative, the City intends to launch an external As-Built Retriever website to enable constituents to retrieve publicly available documents.
Technology
- ESRI ArcIMS
- ESRI ArcSDE
- Microsoft SQL Server
- Microsoft ASP.Net
The As-Built Retriever can be custom tailored to work within your organization and can be interfaced with an existing document management system or database. The application can be easily installed in your organization, or we can provide high availability hosting services. If you’re just starting your document management program, we can also manage your document preparation and scanning needs.
The As-Built Retriever is just one of the many innovative client-focused solutions developed by the Information Management and Geospatial Services team*. Please contact us to learn more about how we can help your information management needs.
* The As-Built Retriever was developed by John Donoghue while owner of Donoghue and Associates and consultant to the City of Colton.