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A Publication Featuring The Information Services Technology of Maine State Government
| Volume V, Issue 8 | August 2002 |
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ProjExGIS allows MaineDOT to locate all projects in our capital program. Having geographic locations for all projects will allow us to see all projects, from all sources, as we plan future projects.
In 2000, an Oracle-based project management system called ProjEx was implemented at MaineDOT to support project scheduling and management. Road project locations have been defined in this system as route, begin milepoint, and end milepoint because the descriptions from the legacy financial system such as "3.10 Miles south of the Orient Town Line south to an improved section" do not readily lend themselves to mapping project locations. To improve our ability to accurately locate projects, an ArcView application called ProjExGIS was written by MaineDOT programming staff, most recently Vincenzo Marotta. This application runs in conjunction with, and supports, ProjEx.
ProjExGIS allows the user to enter project locations via a map by "point and click" or by entering route/milepoint(s) for projects on an existing road. (The application handles new road, bridge, and other types of projects but improvements on existing roads are the more common type of project.) A GIS shape is created based on the road curvature in the map. When not supplied, the route/milepoints are collected from the map data and written to the Oracle tables in ProjEx. The Plus in the title of this article refers to an additional feature of ProjExGIS. The application also uses GIS functionality to drill through many geographic layers, collect all the appropriate information, and further populates ProjEx tables.
This is the way it works. ProjExGIS can be invoked from a screen in ProjEx. The user defines the project location by pointing and clicking begin and end points or by keying in route and milepoint information when known. The application displays the project extents for the user to check for correctness. Once the project extents are located, the application drills down to get information from polygonal datasets, such as town(s), county(ies), Legislative District(s), MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization), Maintenance Division(s), RTAC (Regional Transportation Advisory Committee) region, etc. In ArcView 3.2, a table collects all of this data and then writes it back to the Oracle database, allowing query and reporting from within the ProjEx system.
ProjExGIS frees the user from researching what geographic areas a project is in and entering the data manually into ProjEx. The data is used to help us to prepare informed reports and to create maps that identify where we are working at a glance. With this information, MaineDOT representatives can more easily prepare for meetings with municipalities because ProjEx has data for every project that will be undertaken in the town, and ProjExGIS will make it possible to accurately display project locations.
Questions? Author Nancy Armentrout is a Systems Team Leader in MDOT’s Information Systems (IS) Division . She may be contacted by calling 624-3209, or e-mailing nancy.armentrout@state.me.us. The programmer for this application is Vincenzo Marotta, a GIS Programmer Analyst, in MDOT’s IS Division.
