Client Success Story

Over the past five years, a strong focus on local, sound environmental management has given rise to a range of significant funding programs from Commonwealth and State governments. Increasingly, however, the question is being asked; “What on-ground outcomes are being delivered for the dollars spent”. A key principle of CAMS from the start has been to link activities to on-ground outcomes so that such questions can be answered.

The Department of Natural Resources and Environment (NRE) in Victoria, in conjunction with the various Catchment Management Authorities (CMAs) are responsible for the allocation, management and reporting of a range of funding projects such as the National Heritage Trust. Historically this process has been managed at the local level by a variety of databases and spreadsheets linked, in some cases, to a desktop GIS for recording the extent of a funded works project. Whilst such local databases no doubt met the needs of the offices in which they were developed, the information collected in each varied widely, from simple payment cheque details to Word and Excel files, making regional or statewide summaries and reporting difficult. In addition, accompanying GIS was implemented in only a few places and to varying standards.

The Regional Data Net (RDN) is an initiative of the Catchment and Water Division (CAW) of NRE. The main objectives of the RDN are to record, report on and manage catchment activities and to improve and support the GIS capacity in regional Victoria. The Catchment Activity Management System (CAMS) is aimed at the first of these objectives, that capture, recording and management of information on catchment-based activities.

In mid 2000, CAW engaged Spatial Vision to develop the CAMS application and related components to support the RDN. CAMS is delivered as a web-based application and is available both to NRE and CMA staff via a secure extranet. It is developed in ColdFusion and utilises an Oracle RDBMS.

Since CAMS began operation in early 2001 over 300 registered NRE and CMA users have recorded over 4,700 works projects funding almost $30 million for over 11,000 activities.

CAMS is based on a comprehensive data model which incorporates aspects of the locally developed databases which had previously been in use. An issue in developing this data model was achieving a common understanding amongst the various users regarding the scope of CAMS. Reaching agreement on the terminology to be used was also more complex than anticipated, with many different terms in use for similar (or slightly different!) concepts. The most important aspect of dealing with these issues was good communication between the various stakeholders. Figure 1: Main Works Project Screen.

As well as recording textual details of works projects, their activities, outputs and funding details, CAMS also has a full mapping capability, allowing users to directly capture a feature depicting the extent of the works project activities. Figure 2: CAMS Mapping Screen

The mapping drawing and enquiry capabilities are provided by an existing NRE application (LandView), and the web-based spatial feature capture is provided by a custom-developed Java applet. Figure 3 : CAMS Java GIS Capture Screen

GIS-trained users can also upload an ArcView "shape" file containing their spatial features and have these automatically linked to the relevant records. These shape files can be field-captured from a GPS or captured in a desktop GIS application such as ArcView. Figure 4: Statistical Report

CAMS provides users with a variety of reports, from map or textual summaries of a works project to regional reports summarising expenditure by budget line or activity or output categories.

The summary reports have a quite flexible query capability to enable viewing of just the data required. Figure 5: Report Query Screen

CAMS also produces automated letters to land holders, giving the details of the project to be funded and any special conditions that may be required. The automated production of these letters not only saves time but provides a statewide consistency in the form and content of such letters. Figure 6: CAMS Automated Land Holder Letter

Although CAMS provides a number of standard reports, maps and letters, users may wish to undertake more customised analysis or reporting of the data. To facilitate this, CAMS provides users with the ability to extract the spatial dataset for an area of their choosing and have it e-mailed to them for use in their desktop GIS software. The underlying textual data can also be accessed using ad hoc reporting tools such as Crystal Reports or Infomaker.

CAMS not only provides significant value to the local users on a daily basis but also enables a far more comprehensive statewide analysis capability. Previously this had been difficult since each local database or spreadsheet captured different information in different formats. CAMS delivers statewide consistency in the data captured, especially by the use of many drop-down lists for data.

For users who before CAMS collected little or no data, CAMS has placed extra demands on their time. Users who previously created local databases have had to learn a new application and in some cases, adapt to different terminology. In both cases the payback is that CAMS provides letters, maps and reports that assist them both locally in their day to day operation and also in their reporting requirements to management. At a strategic level, analysis and reporting are more consistent and simplified and all data is spatially linked.

Copyright © Spatial Vision, Friday, 21-June-2002