Cadastre Information System for Rail in Portugal

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12-12-2014 01:51 PM
FernandoGil
New Contributor III

1. Cadastre Information System for Rail in Portugal

1.1. Why a Cadastre Information System?

Ferbritas decided to move forward with FBSIC implementation on May 2009, for purely internal reasons towards production processes improving, aiming productivity and efficiency increasing concerning land acquisition processes, which final aim is ensure the availability of sites for national rail infrastructure construction works (Figure 1).

Figure 1 – Availability of site for construction (Gil & Mata, 2011c)

Business demands that expropriations projects have to deliver various documents (drawings, spreadsheets, reports), thus information after being collected and consolidated, has to be distributed to a wide set of reports with completely different formats. Moreover, tools and methodologies available on early 2009 implied that many hours were lost into numerous files and folders manipulation and subsequent digital drawings reports information incorporation, with lots of time lost only with its composition.

Difficulties soon arise, first, in the assembly of the whole process, but they are intensified soon after if there would be a need for an update. In this case, there is a need to replicate the updated information so many times and how often it was initially distributed by different formats or files.

The facts above described framed company awareness to proceed with a solution implementation to highly improve the way information was traditionally captured and transformed; to enable right information to be found and shared across the enterprise, boosting its use in a productively manner; and to provide users with day-to-day tools and capabilities integration, where the majority of the procedures would be automated and within reach of a click (therefore, when someone needed to produce a map or report, this document should be preset and obtained by access to a tool, in a simple manner, according to the context in which the user is in the solution and problem that had to be solve).

1.2. FBSIC planning stage

The process started with collecting and processing cadastre and expropriation information from the “foundations” and continued building up the collection of valuable information that the company already had, seeking its immediate availability to the customer and all internal specialties. Geographic information technology was adopted and a solution developed, that was properly integrated with other information subsystems of the organization, focused on the production and business management.

First we proceeded to update the design of the technical and business processes, then the objectives were detailed and the technological platform selected, which were the preconditions to start the project. From this point, the implementation process followed a standard design with the establishment of requirements, functional analysis, application design and related developments.

1.3. FBSIC implementation stage

Initially, a prototype was developed to support better decisions on the system to implement. In next stage, we proceeded with the Cadastre Information System (FBSIC) implementation. Below, in Figure 2 is presented an illustration composed of several images: FBSIC Central Module interface (v1.0) (as background image); examples of module outputs and overview images (on top of the base image).

Figure 2 - Cadastre Information System (v1.0) (Gil & Mata, 2011e)

The project team was designed to adequately cover the needs of business and was therefore composed by functional units’ elements that have business "know-how”, coordinated by a GIS team and supported by an information systems team, with direct involvement of the first level of management. Another condition, that was also essential to promote internal and external resources integration, was performing the work at Ferbritas premises.

Ferbritas Cadastre Information System (FBSIC) is the first step of a business strategy that has multiple purposes, particularly related to increase value for customers and for the reference shareholder, with efficiency of services, information integrity, generation and "democratization" of knowledge in a timeless framework.

FBSIC is used permanently by three business areas and has allowed to formulate new innovative services, and to respond to the needs expressed by clients. They were metrics established that had confirmed the efficiency gains and significant rigor established in pilot projects developed in the preliminary phase that would be confirmed after production entry at cruising speed.

1.4. Benefits of FBSIC project

FBSIC is supported by a scalable architecture, standards-based information technology and communication, and interoperability, ensuring a high sustainability of long-term application. It allows viewing and editing of geographic and alphanumeric information of cadastre and expropriations projects. It has a modular character, comprising:

  • Data Migration Module (geographic and alphanumeric), with some features for element validation;
  • Field Module (information gathering activities support);
  • Information Processing Module (field data import and validation);
  • Central Module (provides tools that enable: information load and edit on a geographic, alphanumeric and document basis, monitor the quality of the project phases and their transitions (workflow); print maps and formal documents, among other features);
  • Backoffice Module (system administrator support);
  • Approval Module (enables to perform an approval cycle of expropriations design data before it is sent to DUP);
  • Public Domain Management Module (enables to perform land parcels management cycle till their acquisition by the national authorities).

In Figure 3 are shown interface examples of the following modules: Data Migration, Field Module, Information Processing, and Approval.

Figure 3 - FBSIC modules overview (Gil, 2010b)

The benefits are evident at the level of operational efficiency, with the inclusion of tools that enable process integration and standardization of procedures, facilitate analysis and quality control and maximize performance in the acquisition, maintenance and management of cadastre and expropriations information (expropriations projects). The implemented system achieves levels of robustness, comprehensiveness, openness, scalability and reliability suitable for a structural platform.

PS: This text is extracted from my Master's Thesis in GIS and Science (published at RUN: The implementation of an Enterprise Geographical Information System to support Cadastre and Exp... ) Dissertation's State of Art chapter 2.

Bibliography

Gil, F., 2010b. Cadastre Information System (SIC). [Online]
Available at: http://www.slideshare.net/FernandoGil/cadastre-information-system-fbsic-esri-emea-2010
[Accessed 19 02 2014].

Gil, F. & Mata, L., 2011c. Cadastre Information System (FBSIC). [Online]
Available at: http://www.slideshare.net/FernandoGil/111101-esri-meauc-v2
[Accessed 19 02 2014].

Gil, F. & Mata, L., 2011e. Cadastre Information System for Rail in Portugal. [Online]
Available at: http://sensorsandsystems.com/article/features/20982-cadastre-information-system-for-rail-in-portugal...
[Accessed 19 10 2013].

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