AWWA IMTECH51375

Traditionally, municipal GIS development has been a departmental undertaking with little coordination between departments. In the last few years, improvements in technology such as cheaper memory and software that read multiple formats, have made it much more feasible to approach GIS on an enterprise-wide basis. Most city departments use data from other departments, or would if they had access to it. The biggest barrier is that most departments, especially in larger cities have functioned as basically independent entities with very little cooperation across departmental lines. How do you go about developing an enterprise-wide GIS? How do you bring all the players on board? What do you do with existing, incompatible systems? These, and many other questions are what the City of Cleveland, Ohio faced when the Public Utilities Department decided that the development of the Water GIS should be coordinated with other city departments. The project, after many years, is still not complete, but this paper discusses the steps that have been taken to date. Includes appendices. See more