Client: Richard Murphy, Glenelg Hopkins Catchment Management Authority

The environmental performance of farming is a key issue for the community and the Victorian Government. The Environmental Best Management Practice on Farms (EBMP) program, run by Victoria’s Catchment Management Authorities and the Victorian Department of Primary Industries (DPI) provides a series of questions for farmers to self-evaluate the environmental performance of their land management practices, benchmark their performance against their peers and develop plans for action that improve their land management practices.

Glenelg Hopkins Catchment Management Authority engaged Spatial Vision to design and develop a new Web application to deliver the EBMP program. The EBMP application provides a range of functions for landholders and EBMP administrators:

The new EBMP application streamlines the business processes of the EBMP application. The application provides a single central application and automates many of the data presentation, capture, storage and reporting functions that previously had to be manually. The application can be more easily deployed and demonstrated to groups of landholders.

Demonstrated Capabilities

•  Web application development
• Spatial Vision followed the IEEE 12207 Software Development Lifecycle Standard in developing the EBMP application.  Spatial Vision’s methodology involved  an initial  specification and design documentation to specify the scope and design of the application and an Agile based approach with frequent client feedback to ensure client requirements were being met during development.
• Client consultation and facilitation
• Spatial Vision conducted a series of workshops with EBMP stakeholders to determine requirements and the best solution design for the EBMP application. The workshops allowed an agreed vision for the EBMP application to be reached amongst the multiple organisations and individuals involved in the EBMP program.
• Data modelling design and conversion
• Spatial Vision converted existing data stored in a desktop database to a server based Oracle RDBMS.

Technologies Applied

• The EBMP application is a Java J2EE web application interacting with an Oracle RDMS for data storage.
• Atlassian JIRA (issue control) and Confluence (design documentation) available to internal Spatial Vision staff and external stakeholders. 
• Atlassian Bamboo -a continuous integration server for automated testing and quality control
• Rich faces and Ajax technology provides for a rich user experience similar to a desktop application
• Crystal Reports-for the reporting functions of the application.