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Using FME to find out… … what we already know

Roland Martin Senior GIS Consultant

Using FME to find out… …what we already know

!  Everyone deals in data !  We all tread a line between:

!  Reinventing the wheel, and !  Doing things the old way

!  It helps if you are aware of what you already know about a particular location

!  A global, integrated, multidisciplinary firm of professionals working together to tackle complex planning, infrastructure and building design challenges

!  11,000 engineers, designers, planners, management consultants and economists

!  90 offices in 37 countries

!  Full service from concept through completion

!  Dedicated to delivering value through expertise, global resources and local delivery

The kind of questions GIS people normally get asked

!  Source: made up

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10 GIS? What’s that?

9 What do you spend all your time doing anyway?

8 Don’t you just draw maps all the time?

7 Is GIS really as good as AutoCAD / MicroStation / BIM?

6 Is it really worth using GIS when I can do it in CAD?

5 Can you get the data out of this scanned PDF for me?

4 Can you show me my project in Google Maps?

3 Can you draw me a map of my project location?

2 I need something that looks “cool” or “cartoon-like”. Can you help?

1 What data do we already have for my project location?

What kinds of things might we already know about a location?

!  Base mapping !  Topography !  Land ownership !  Site photos !  Site surveys !  Aerial imagery !  Borehole locations !  Project reports

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How would we normally find out what information we already have?

!  Much of the time, it simply isn’t possible !  Occasionally, someone will remember something…

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Can we actually reuse any of the data?

Probably

Possibly, but data is often licensed to a particular client

Unlikely – data is normally licensed for a particular project

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What do we want to do with the data?

!  For a decent, modern web map, you probably want: !  Leaflet (or OpenLayers) on the front-end !  PostGIS (or CouchDB) on the back-end,

generating GeoJSON directly !  Something in between to serve the data (we went

for a PHP-based API) !  FME Server, to automate the data loading process

Building a database of existing GIS data

!  Office locations !  Previous projects !  Site photos !  Site surveys

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Mapping office locations

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Mapping project locations

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Enriching the data

!  Weed out the obvious errors by overlaying the locations on country outlines

!  Use a geocoding service to add project locations where addresses are known

!  Project-specific datasets may provide the clue to more locations…

Mapping site photos

!  Thousands of photos are taken for projects

!  But everyone forgets they exist!

Changing technologies

!  When people come back from a site visit, they mark up a map with the photo locations

!  Wouldn’t it be easier if they could go straight on a web map?

Stealth GIS data collection

!  The smartphone revolution !  Photos are still being taken –

but now they include location information!

Searching for existing photos

!  The “Directory and File Pathnames” (PATH) reader – lets you build a simple file spider

!  You can also extract additional properties (i.e. who last modified the file, and when)

Adding more photos

!  Use FME Server’s scheduling capabilities to regularly check a shared folder location

!  Use the notifications in FME Server to allow people to email photos directly at the server

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Collecting site surveys

Spiderer – loops through the drive looking for particular file types

!  We searched our drives for files matching the patterns: !  *SV*.dgn or *SV*.dwg !  *survey*.dgn or *survey*.dwg

PostgreSQL

Collecting site surveys

SurveyReader – reads file locations from PostgreSQL and writes footprints into PostGIS

Collected site surveys

Collected site surveys

!  Survey data may not be reusable on other projects

!  Surveys in some locations go out of date very quickly

!  But… this is still an extremely valuable resource

Bringing it back together

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Thank You!

!  Questions?

!  For more information: !  Roland Martin – roland.martin@arup.com !  Arup – www.arup.com

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